hi

It’s nice to have quiet weather for a change. Moony (clear) and 50°F / 10°Commie. The temperature will be in the upper seventies today, with only a slight chance of thunderstorms for my trip to Cheyenne later. (Then tomorrow I can finally get this tooth fixed.)

In today’s non-sequitur of apologetics, this one comes up a lot in real life. It is unfortunate pastors take advantage of their parishioners and arm them with bad arguments intentionally, so when the argument gets disassembled they go running back to the same church about the “mean atheists.” That is by design, to stop rational thinking about the question and keep the amateur apologist in the fold.

So this poor woman goes after a Christopher Hitchens quote. Hitchens was a lot of things (most notably a war-mongering neo-con ass) but his observations about bad arguments were such that he even has a logical razor named after him.

So the rebuttal she presents to this observation is a motte-and-bailey fallacy. No one denies faith exists, so she can’t argue against that at all. Instead she’ll strawman a position he didn’t take.

(I’ve had evangelists make this argument in person.)

Even if her unspoken position is correct (a god exists and it’s my particular version of a god), her answer doesn’t support that conclusion. No person’s faith in anything can ever be evidence for their audience.

I’m not on Twitter, but I know what would happen if I did respond: She would block me rather than evaluate in good faith [I did that on purpose] the illogic of her statement and quit using it. Apologists don’t give up their bad arguments because they aren’t arguing in good faith [I did that on purpose too], they are looking for someone who can’t evaluate the apologetic presented.

Saying faith doesn’t exist because there’s no “evidence” is like saying sight doesn’t exist because you can’t see. The world is far fuller and rich with mystery and it doesn’t present itself on a platter for your lazy appetite. You must hunt. #huntress #faith #atheism https://t.co/oGlsBhiaqT

— Shireen Qudosi (@ShireenQudosi) June 25, 2023