My Dogma Ran Over My Karma

Someone once said, “Gravity has no effect on validity—in other words, BS cannot be converted into truth simply by dropping it from great heights.” Until New Atheists put something concrete on the table that does so, shouting “Irrational..! Irrational…!” is mere chest beating.

And by the way, claiming neutral ground and conveniently excusing themselves from any need to doesn’t prove anything either. Speaking of which…

Myth 5: Atheism is the Null Hypothesis

Finally, we come to New Atheism’s Get-Out-of-Jail-Free card: The claim that Atheism is the Null Hypothesis. Sam Harris minces no words when he says,

“’Atheism’ is a term that should not even exist. No one ever needs to identify himself as a ‘non-astrologer’ or a ‘non-alchemist.” … Atheism is nothing more than the noises people make in the presence of unjustified religious beliefs.” – (Harris, 2008)

Or as a New Atheist friend once put it in a Facebook comment,

“An Atheist is one who rejects the claims made by theists. An Atheist is simply a person who is not a theist. Atheism is not in itself a claim, and as such, simply cannot be false. Only claims can be proven false; a lack of claim cannot be said to be false. How can I be wrong when I say 'you haven't presented a compelling argument for your case'?” (My emphasis)

Note carefully what’s being stated here. Atheism is not a claim at all. It is the rejection of one—namely belief in God and the Supernatural. According to him, it cannot be false, even in principle (recall what I said earlier about how New Atheists avoid responsibility for due diligence by deliberately crafting their worldview to be indefeasible). Reasonable as this may sound at first blush, it has three fatal flaws.

First, recall the Argument from Ignorance on which Myth 2) is based. As we saw in that discussion, this fallacy assumes both positive and negative forms. Thus, it may be corrected in a similar manner as follows;

• No evidence has proven statement A to be false. Therefore it is possible that A is true.



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