Neurosurgeon Michael Egnor explains why new atheism was doomed to die young

_{Denyse O'Leary

December 17, 2019

Atheism, Climate change, Culture, Intelligent Design, Science}

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The primary autopsy finding here is that New Atheism was born dead. It was an intellectually vacuous vanity project from the start. Its vanguard was a coterie of dullards and narcissists who glanced away from their own mirrors only long enough to beg book deals. The arguments they made in their books were the stuff of comedy acts — “everything came from nothing for no reason,” “the universe came from quantum mechanics, which is nothing,” “acknowledging an intelligent Creator is an impediment to science, but asserting meaningless existence is a boon to science,” “we are meat machines, and you should pay attention to what we say,” “there is no good or evil, and if you think there is, you’re evil,” “there is no free will and you should change your mind and agree with me,” …
Michael Egnor, “New Atheism: A Shipwreck of Fools” at Evolution News and Science Today

And anyone who didn’t immediately accept all this rubbish as Big Insight was a moron, right? But Dr. Egnor goes on to warn that reason will not emerge victorious from a horse laugh at the declining new atheists’ expense:

But rational moral theism will not easily emerge victorious from this little fight. Paganism, not atheism, is the natural religion of unreflective men. We worship, and creation is full of beauty and mystery and ravishing idols. Pride and lust of eyes and flesh reigns in our culture, and Asherah poles are popping up everywhere. The Valley of Hinnom is our altar of child sacrifice, and we tithe in penance for our sins against Gaia.
As New Atheism stops twitching, another beast — a rougher beast — is rolling the stone from its perennial crypt.
Michael Egnor, “New Atheism: A Shipwreck of Fools” at Evolution News and Science Today

In the context, notice the easy indulgence offered in popular science publications to crazy stuff like Greta Thunberg’s “children’s crusade” against climate change.

If climate change is so serious, where are the Joint Allied Chiefs of Staff, so to speak? Why wouldn’t Thunberg and her followers be encouraged to go back to school and study science instead of striking from school and threatening people?

Unfortunately, when reason is no longer believed to exist, unhinged people, impassioned minors, substance abusers, etc., start to seem like prophets.

Forecast: It’ll get crazier at first. Buckle up.

See also: How did new atheism become the godlessness that failed? Ever since the new atheists declined (or whatever), discussions of Darwinism and evolution have become much more open-minded. For example, researchers seem to talk more openly about work that points in a direction other than Darwinism. Perhaps they don’t worry so much about 20,000 semi-literate trolls writing their Dean of Science to get them fired just for saying that their research points in another direction.

Comments

@2 Seversky: "Maybe because it’s their generation and beyond that will have to clean up the mess that our generation has left behind it?'. And? If life is purposeless, why should we fight? We are a 'fluke'. Atheist 'logic'. A 'Shipwreck of Fools' no doubt.Truthfreedom_{January 16, 2020
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Lack of belief in reason isn't the problem. Corruption of reason is the problem. All of these crazies use reason as their prime weapon against unbelievers. In general there's no hope of recapturing a word or idea after it's been corrupted by fashionable elites. The best approach is to abandon the concept entirely. If it can be turned backwards so easily, it's not worth using or defending AT ALL.polistra_{December 18, 2019
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Bornagain77 @ 4
That Seversky himself champions global warming is perhaps the best evidence on UD that global warming must be a fraud.
I'm just curious to see just how much land has to disappear under the waves before the denialists concede that maybe - just maybe - something is wrong.Seversky_{December 17, 2019
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Bornagain77 @ 3
Seversky, atheism died a thousand deaths long ago. You just keep exhuming the corpse and try to persuade others that the corpse is alive.
You seem to be remarkably alarmed by a corpse that cannot possibly harm you - unless it rises from the dead, of course.Seversky_{December 17, 2019
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The bands in the climate fraud parade just keep on a' comin':
Recently, this billboard was spotted in the DC Metro Subway by Heartland Senior Fellow Edward Hudgins.
More CO2 could lead to smaller grapes. Save the wineries. Wine not take the Metro?
The implication is that more carbon dioxide—produced from driving your car instead of taking the Metro—will have the effect of making grapes smaller and therefore affect wine production levels and perhaps quality. This 2014 paper, “The impact of climate change on the global wine industry: Challenges & solutions,” suggests a wide range of negative effects on the wine industry due to “climate change” resulting from increased CO2, but it also offers solutions. The source of this concern is an abundance of research articles published in recent years that suggest crop yields will be reduced as ambient atmospheric CO2 concentrations increase. Yet in spite of these warnings, we have clear evidence that crop yields of all types throughout the planet have dramatically increased in the past 50 years, while CO2 levels have increased. Some of these trends are due to better farming and irrigation practices, some due to selective breeding to make better varieties that have higher yields and increased resistance to diseases, and, yes, some of it is due to increasing CO2 in our atmosphere that allows for more efficient photosynthesis and better internal plant water management. After all, isn’t the latter reason why many greenhouse operations inject highly elevated levels of CO2 into their greenhouse operations? Here is an excerpt from a Canadian report on Carbon Dioxide in Greenhouses:
Carbon dioxide (CO2) is an essential component of photosynthesis (also called carbon assimilation). Photosynthesis is a chemical process that uses light energy to convert CO2 and water into sugars in green plants. These sugars are then used for growth within the plant, through respiration. The difference between the rate of photosynthesis and the rate of respiration is the basis for dry-matter accumulation (growth) in the plant. In greenhouse production the aim of all growers is to increase dry-matter content and economically optimize crop yield. CO2 increases productivity through improved plant growth and vigour. Some ways in which productivity is increased by CO2 include earlier flowering, higher fruit yields, reduced bud abortion in roses, improved stem strength and flower size. Growers should regard CO2 as a nutrient.
That said, I looked specifically at how grape size would be affected and found a University of California Davis paper that specifically addressed this issue. In “Berry Size and Yield Paradigms on Grapes and Wines Quality,” the researchers concluded:
Myths are creative explanations similar to scientific hypotheses, and when not subjected to scientific tests they can become perfect hypotheses that explain perfectly what they are supposed to explain. Here we evaluated with data two longstanding and widely held paradigms of viticulture for which there had previously been little quantified observations: large berries and high yields are inferior. The data are clear in that the results of independent means of changing berry size and yield produced qualitatively different results. This renders the generalizations asserted in both of the paradigms untenable. The high yield, low quality paradigm may be applicable to environments in which sugar accumulation is limiting factor because reducing crop generally increases the rate of increase in sugar concentration in the remaining clusters. We draw these conclusions about the dependence of composition on yield and berry size: the viticultural practices used to control yield in a vineyard are more important than the yield values per se in determining the quality of the resulting grapes and wines; and the environmental conditions determine berry size are more important the size per se in determining the quality of the grapes and resulting wines.
In other words, the practices of the viticulturalist have more of an impact on the quality of berries than anything else, and larger grapes sizes aren’t necessarily better for wine production, despite what the myths promoted by the DC Metro might suggest. So, whom would I trust on wine? The DC metro or the vitculturalists and researchers themselves? I’ll go with the vitculturalists every day of the week and twice on Sundays. Salud!
To me, the bigger takeaway is that it takes a 700-word blog post with five citations to debunk one 14-word D.C. Metro propaganda poster. Like Winston Churchill famously observed, "A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on." Or in this case, all around the nation's capital.jstanley01_{December 17, 2019
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That Seversky himself champions global warming is perhaps the best evidence on UD that global warming must be a fraud.bornagain77_{December 17, 2019
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Seversky, atheism died a thousand deaths long ago. You just keep exhuming the corpse and try to persuade others that the corpse is alive.
Weekend at Bernie's (7/10) Movie CLIP - Bernie is Buried (1989) HD https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3Ubm7iCzuA A DEFENSE OF THE (Divine) REVELATION AGAINST THE OBJECTIONS OF FREETHINKERS, BY MR. (Leonard) EULER Excerpt: "The freethinkers (atheists) have yet to produce any objections that have not long been refuted most thoroughly. But since they are not motivated by the love of truth, and since they have an entirely different point of view, we should not be surprised that the best refutations count for nothing and that the weakest and most ridiculous reasoning, which has so often been shown to be baseless, is continuously repeated. If these people maintained the slightest rigor, the slightest taste for the truth, it would be quite easy to steer them away from their errors; but their tendency towards stubbornness makes this completely impossible." http://www.math.dartmouth.edu/~euler/docs/translations/E092trans.pdf
bornagain77_{December 17, 2019
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If climate change is so serious, where are the Joint Allied Chiefs of Staff, so to speak? Why wouldn’t Thunberg and her followers be encouraged to go back to school and study science instead of striking from school and threatening people?
Maybe because, behind the denialists; there are vested interests that have strong financial reasons for pretending nothing is happening? Maybe because it's their generation and beyond that will have to clean up the mess that our generation has left behind it?Seversky_{December 17, 2019
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New Atheism hasn't died young. It has simply matured now that it has established its legitimate position in the public square and is no longer the non-belief that dare not speak its name.Seversky_{December 17, 2019
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