Sorry about the lack of posting - a combination of sickness and business has kept me away from posting.

This is what I'll be taking apart for today : This article. I won't be taking a position on satanism, mainly due to lack of knowledge, but I will definitely show the flaws with his arguments against atheists.

First off, the writer states that atheism automatically implies philosophical materialism. All atheism implies is the lack of belief in gods, nothing else. Yes, some atheists are philosophical materialists because both positions can extend from and are supported by skeptical inquiry. However, a person who doesn't believe in gods but thinks that their house is haunted by a ghost is an atheist, but not a philosophical materialist. Atheist is a larger category that philosophical materialist.

The very next paragraph, he asserts that atheists deny YHVH. Again, not necessarily true. Weak atheism is simply the position that they do not believe the claim that gods (in this case, the Judeo-christian one) exists, not the assertion that they do not. That is strong atheism. Again, the writer demonstrates that either they are not familiar with the terms or they are merely presenting a strawman because they cannot address the position of weak atheism.

In the same line as the previous statement, he asserts that atheists are angry with YHVH. He seems to think that it is logically inconsistent to believe something doesn't exist and be angry with it at the same time. This is a complete non-sequitur, and a blatant one at that. Is he angry with Santa Claus? Or the tooth fairy? The very next line, he makes a similar comment on sin. We don't believe in sin, yet we somehow celebrate it? I don't see how this conclusion could be reached.

His next implication is one I agree with - that atheists do not have an absolute ethical foundation. Of course not. There would be no basis for one in reality. But an inflexible and absolute ethical system based on a book written by unknown authors thousands of years ago is a much worse system than a non-absolute secular-derived system based upon reality. Times change, new information comes in, so ethics must change with them.

Later on, he claims that "Large atheist meetings feature cult of personality hero worship..." and similar claims. This is a tactic often employed by people who attack atheism. They say that atheism is not so different from religion. It all goes back to the flaw of thinking that atheism is, basically, a religion. The idea is that because all Christians worship a god, that because some atheists engage in hero worship, all do, or that because some atheists treat science like dogma, all go.

But atheism, as I have stated before, is merely the position of not believing in a god. It does not imply anything else. And until they figure that out, their arguments will still be based on flawed premises and hence be unsound. Every time.