Poison for your brain
It has taken me, literally, weeks to finish this. Not because it's particularly long, mind you, but merely because it's so... brick. It's very brick. That's the only word that comes to mind right now.
I've neither the patience, the time, nor the inclination to respond to this in full. However, I will take a few points by snippy reply, because that's all they require or deserve:
1. In the first place, a deity who hides deliberately from us yet demands our faith in it is stupid. Asking to be believed in without reason, not only in spite of but explicitly because of that fact, is just plain retarded. There is no way for us humans to distinguish between something divinely hidden and something nonexistent. Because anything lacking evidence could be either of those things, it's safest to withhold belief until we get some hard goddamned evidence, otherwise we've no way to distinguish any of the supernatural bullshit of antiquity from... well, from any of the rest of the supernatural bullshit of antiquity.
2. Merely withholding belief one way or the other is atheism. If you're not a theist, you're a fucking atheist, because that's precisely what atheism means: not theism. You're godless. You don't believe, at least not in any of the ways that are said to save you in the ways you're said to need to be saved. There are variants of atheism, to be sure, but that's what it is at root.
3. He characterizes the atheist as thinking, "If we cannot know it via the senses, then it cannot exist." Assuming (generously) that by "the senses" he means "any available empirical method at all," then I have only one tweak to make: "cannot" should read "probably doesn't." Oh, and append "as far as we know." Then I'd get behind it... oh, but that totally destroys his point. Also, anyone - human or deity - who is insecure enough to take my lack of explicit belief in their existence (in response to a lack of evidence) as a punishable insult is, in my book, a dick-bag not worth hanging out with. So while I sure think that it's most likely the case that there are no gods, I'm still open to the possibility that some entity I'd term "godly" does in fact exist, but if it's any of the ones which have been described to me, fuck those guys. If that's what God's like, he can go to hell.
4. He says,All of the people who say that they are “atheists through skepticism, because they see no evidence that God exists,” are patently unthinking people, since by virtue of turning skeptic, no one has ever done anything - employed any logic, gathered any evidence, found any way forward - to reach a conclusion about whether God exists. So these atheists have not reached a conclusion; they have made a commitment.
Just plain wrong. Ouch. I mean... ouch. The wrong-ness... it hurts.
5. As for his main thesis, that we can't find God with our eyes or minds, so we must find him with our hearts, give me a fucking break. He merely asserts that, one, our hearts are organs of cognition (which is just plain absurd), and two, that they'll all lead us to the same place: El, Yahweh, Jehovah, the sky god of the Hebrews and the Canaanites before them, big brother of Baal (who later changed into one of his rebellious subordinates), who sacrificed himself to himself to un-fuck a fuck-up which he fucked up in the first place. This is where all hearts point, if only you seek this direction hard enough. While it's true that you're not likely to find something you're not looking for, once someone has found it, they can bring you around to it. You can go through the same process they did. But saying that you must be looking for God "with your heart" (whatever the fuck that means), seemingly as a categorical imperative, is fickle business because hearts disagree. For instance, my heart tells me that no gods exist, and you can be damn sure that I've looked! Your heart tells you that at least this one does. We disagree, and we each insist to the other, "You're doing it wrong." Having disregarded the possibility of hard evidence, the only possible route left to our discourse is escalating shrillness, or: table-pounding! And if you tell me that my heart really tells me that God exists and I'm not listening, then by the same token I can say that your heart really tells you that God doesn't exist and you're a charlatan; so let's not go there, shall we?
When confronted with the lack of Tingley's "hard" evidence, and the conflicting indications of all his "heart" evidence (if we even grant him this, which I do not), the only thing left to do is to treat gods as we treat pixies, boogeymen, phantasms, and all other superstitious bullshit: by withholding our disbelief until or unless we get some good goddamned reasons.
I've neither the patience, the time, nor the inclination to respond to this in full. However, I will take a few points by snippy reply, because that's all they require or deserve:
1. In the first place, a deity who hides deliberately from us yet demands our faith in it is stupid. Asking to be believed in without reason, not only in spite of but explicitly because of that fact, is just plain retarded. There is no way for us humans to distinguish between something divinely hidden and something nonexistent. Because anything lacking evidence could be either of those things, it's safest to withhold belief until we get some hard goddamned evidence, otherwise we've no way to distinguish any of the supernatural bullshit of antiquity from... well, from any of the rest of the supernatural bullshit of antiquity.
2. Merely withholding belief one way or the other is atheism. If you're not a theist, you're a fucking atheist, because that's precisely what atheism means: not theism. You're godless. You don't believe, at least not in any of the ways that are said to save you in the ways you're said to need to be saved. There are variants of atheism, to be sure, but that's what it is at root.
3. He characterizes the atheist as thinking, "If we cannot know it via the senses, then it cannot exist." Assuming (generously) that by "the senses" he means "any available empirical method at all," then I have only one tweak to make: "cannot" should read "probably doesn't." Oh, and append "as far as we know." Then I'd get behind it... oh, but that totally destroys his point. Also, anyone - human or deity - who is insecure enough to take my lack of explicit belief in their existence (in response to a lack of evidence) as a punishable insult is, in my book, a dick-bag not worth hanging out with. So while I sure think that it's most likely the case that there are no gods, I'm still open to the possibility that some entity I'd term "godly" does in fact exist, but if it's any of the ones which have been described to me, fuck those guys. If that's what God's like, he can go to hell.
4. He says,All of the people who say that they are “atheists through skepticism, because they see no evidence that God exists,” are patently unthinking people, since by virtue of turning skeptic, no one has ever done anything - employed any logic, gathered any evidence, found any way forward - to reach a conclusion about whether God exists. So these atheists have not reached a conclusion; they have made a commitment.
Just plain wrong. Ouch. I mean... ouch. The wrong-ness... it hurts.
5. As for his main thesis, that we can't find God with our eyes or minds, so we must find him with our hearts, give me a fucking break. He merely asserts that, one, our hearts are organs of cognition (which is just plain absurd), and two, that they'll all lead us to the same place: El, Yahweh, Jehovah, the sky god of the Hebrews and the Canaanites before them, big brother of Baal (who later changed into one of his rebellious subordinates), who sacrificed himself to himself to un-fuck a fuck-up which he fucked up in the first place. This is where all hearts point, if only you seek this direction hard enough. While it's true that you're not likely to find something you're not looking for, once someone has found it, they can bring you around to it. You can go through the same process they did. But saying that you must be looking for God "with your heart" (whatever the fuck that means), seemingly as a categorical imperative, is fickle business because hearts disagree. For instance, my heart tells me that no gods exist, and you can be damn sure that I've looked! Your heart tells you that at least this one does. We disagree, and we each insist to the other, "You're doing it wrong." Having disregarded the possibility of hard evidence, the only possible route left to our discourse is escalating shrillness, or: table-pounding! And if you tell me that my heart really tells me that God exists and I'm not listening, then by the same token I can say that your heart really tells you that God doesn't exist and you're a charlatan; so let's not go there, shall we?
When confronted with the lack of Tingley's "hard" evidence, and the conflicting indications of all his "heart" evidence (if we even grant him this, which I do not), the only thing left to do is to treat gods as we treat pixies, boogeymen, phantasms, and all other superstitious bullshit: by withholding our disbelief until or unless we get some good goddamned reasons.