Overheard on the Internet...

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Anonymous said...

All you creationists seriously freak me out. It's as if you all are incapable of realizing this one simple point: that we are ALL atheists with respect to the mythic narratives we don't believe in. Wotan. Zeus. Thor. Poseidon. Apollo. The only difference is, some of us just go one god further. 

How can anyone believe that, once upon a time, human beings sinned and the world was henceforth subjected to bondage to death and decay? Hello? Death and decay were already part of nature before human beings were ever on the scene! How could they have spoiled creation? I have never heard a satisfactory answer to this crucial theological question.

For the sake of humanity, grow up, escape from your suffocating, self-referential system of thought, and join the rest of your free-thinking brethren out here in the real world.

To which another Anonymous replies:

Anonymous said...

The above post from my fellow anon (@9:24) has got to be a gag. "Free-thinker", "creationist", "we are ALL atheists with respect to (small "g") gods"...all the boilerplate internet infidel tropes are there. A gag--surely, surely it must be a gag: no intellectually superior "free-thinker" could possibly write something that is at once so vacuous and hopelessly smug.

I have a higher opinion of intellectually superior "free-thinkers" -- yes they could.

And then this:

Maolsheachlann said...

"It's as if you all are incapable of realizing this one simple point: that we are ALL atheists with respect to the mythic narratives we don't believe in. Wotan. Zeus. Thor. Poseidon. Apollo. The only difference is, some of us just go one god further."

This reminds me of one of my own theories. I mean, we all laugh at those who think that Francis Bacon, Queen Elizabeth, the Earl of Oxford and other historical personages wrote Shakespeare. But I follow the logic to its conclusion and boldly complain that NOBODY wrote the works of Shakespeare. Why do we need to posit a writer, anyway? Why can't they have just written themselves?

It's true that officialdom and teachers have fed us the William of Stratford myth. But the appeal to authority or tradition means nothing to me. I just believe in one fewer writer of Shakespeare than the rest of you.

And this:

Matteo said...

"It's as if you all are incapable of realizing this one simple point: that we are ALL atheists with respect to the mythic narratives we don't believe in. Wotan. Zeus. Thor. Poseidon. Apollo. The only difference is, some of us just go one god further."

An eminently sound piece of reasoning, if ever I've seen one. And it is universally applicable! Here's an example:

"We are ALL skeptics with respect to the crappy scientific theories we don't agree with. Ptolemaic epicycles. Phlogiston. Phrenology. The luminiferous ether. The only real difference is, that in rejecting the asininity of unguided Darwinian evolution, some of us just go one crappy theory further."

QED

My goodness! Your reasoning works quite nicely, doesn't it? It is absolutely compelling! Thanks for providing such a powerful, well-thought-out intellectual tool of discernment!

You can read the exchange at Ed Feser's blog, here.