Jerry Coyne has a post entitled: Obama is an Athiest
P.Z. Myers has a post entitled: Obama is not an Atheist
These American assets are two of our nation's über-rationalists! How can their vaunted philosophical naturalism bring each to conclude the exact opposite of the other? The mind reels! Does this not mean that at least one is being irrational? May it never be!
I also find it amusing that some atheists (like Coyne) will say that President Obama is a bald-faced liar--i.e., that Obama's claim of Christianity is total B.S.--while at the same time some atheist heads will explode if a conservative Christian does the same thing--questions Obama's Christian bona fides.
These people really need to introduce Mr. Right Hand to Mr. Left Hand.
For what it is worth I agree with PZ. The President appears to be a rather garden-variety liberal Christian.
It's been obvious from the first that President Obama is a liberal Christian, and everything he's said since has supported that.
ReplyDeleteThe problem is, some atheists don't recognize the category of "liberal Christian." They don't recognize the category of "moderate Christian." In fact for some of them the only "real" Christian is a fundamentalist.
Not all atheists, as you noted, or even most. But some ...
Henry,
ReplyDeleteThanks for stopping by.
Okay, so even P.Z. can be a broken clock when it comes to non-squid issues. But "not an atheist" is far away from "Christian." I haven't seen any evidence that Obama believes the Gospel of Christ. Like the cartoon at PZ's site, I think he throws that word (christ) around, but doesn't understand the Gospel. If he did, he wouldn't accept that there are other paths to being reconciled to God.
ReplyDeleteLiberal Christian? No
Atheist? No
Cultural Deist? Yes, who thinks that Christians and Muslims believe the same thing about God, so he (Obama) is neither.
Oh, I almost forgot.
ReplyDeleteJerry Coyne is a Christian. He just sounds like an atheist in order to fit in and bring total discredit to them with his pseudo-logic and total de-construction of evidence. All the evidence points to that.
Just using the "reasoning" that Jerry did.
Bill,
ReplyDeleteCoyne is a Christian. He just sounds like an atheist in order to fit in...
Heh.
Richard Dawkins rightly pointed out in "The God Delusion" that beliefs considered "religious" are, like all other claims about reality, not exempt from critical examination (falsification), and only a fideist would claim otherwise. He is wrong that the only alternative to NOMA is that evolution conflicts with any sort of design, however, where he is right implies that atheists who think atheism is not falsifiable (Myers), are 'implicitly' fideist.
ReplyDeleteGenuine faith/belief is strengthened by evidence and weakened by counter-evidence, so there can be varying degrees of belief/faith/subjective certainty (hence, belief "scale"), but the 'truth' of the matter is very black and white (law of non-contradiction). A belief is either true or not true, regardless the amount of evidence you have in favor of it or against it, and regardless how subjectively certain you are or how strongly you believe it, which is why it is better to use "apistic/pistic" on a belief scale, rather than "agnostic/gnostic".
http://www.examiner.com/apologetics-in-san-francisco/replace-agnosticism-with-apisticism-on-every-belief-scale