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Trolling atheist blogs
10/17/06
OK, so this guy asks the question:
Dennis Prager is an Idiot?
I've commented many times on the writings of Dennis Prager. The poor quality of this arguments, the ahistorical nature of his ideas, and the outright bigotry of his positions has often merited critique. I'm not the only to feel this way, it seems.
Foreign Dispatches quotes Dennis Prager:If there is no God as Judeo-Christian religions understand Him, life is a meaningless random event. You and I are no more significant, our existence has no more meaning, than that of a rock on Mars. The only difference between us and Martian rocks is that we need to believe our existence has significance. Then comments:
Speak for yourself, buddy! Your life may not be of significance without some Bronze Age sky god to confer meaning on it, but my life has tremendous significance to me, and that is all that matters. The yearning for external validation by supernatural beings is a sign of mental midgetry and nothing more. Why does anyone pay any attention to Dennis Prager, expect perhaps to laugh?
Wow! what a brilliant response! No idiot, this guy. Let me summarize:
Atheists say that they exist as they are because of the very slow process of evolution-without any guidance or plan from a superior being. So, when somebody says that a person's life has no greater meaning than that which he places upon it because evolution has developed a phychological necessity to do so, the atheist gets upset. His answer: My life is significant because I say so! OK, so unreasoned assertion is good enough for him. Fine. Why is that any less infantile than believing that something is significant only if acknowledged by something qualified to do so (presumably something outside of the original thing itself)?
Now, an atheist can believe that his life is meaningful, but why would he? Could the act of saying so make it so? I declare my file cabinet of special significance. I consider it of more significance than the thousands of Thais who died in the Tsunami. Is it so? Can anybody argue against it? If significance is an act of self-recognition, what about people who are incapable of asserting their significance?
3 comments
That's not what Prager said. Prager said if there is no God, then a person's life is meaning-LESS, i.e. has NO meaning at all. You can't attack someone for getting "upset" over something when they are actually criticizing something different. That's called a Straw Man argument and, when it's so obvious, it has to be classified as deliberately deceitful.
"Why is that any less infantile than believing that something is significant only if acknowledged by something qualified to do so..."
If only people other than yourself are qualified to determine if your life has meaning, then you're suffering from way low self-esteem. Get a hold of yourself.
That's a claim you'll have to support in order to even come close to making the argument you're trying to make in your post.
"It would be like saying shoelaces are as valuable as Gold just because I say so."
This doesn't help your argument. Gold has value to us because we say so. If you have a pound of gold and no one wants it, then what sort of "value" does it have? Only the value you personally assign to it. My mother always said that something is only worth what people are willing to pay for it - if you own the Hope Diamond and no one wants to give you money for it, then it's just a chunk of rock. I think she was right.
If your shoelaces are as valuable to you as gold, then so be it. I would think it's odd, but no one can tell you how much to value something like that. I can give you reasons why it's not rational to value shoelaces so highly and to value gold more highly, but all those reasons are based upon social interactions. If you were alone in the world, not only would those reasons disappear, but I can think of many reasons why the shoelaces would become more valuable. The gold would be almost worthless.
"Life either has an intrinsic value or it doesn't."
True, but irrelevant. First, "the absence of intrinsic value" isn't the same as "the absence of value." Second, you're attacking a blog post which dismisses the need for gods to give life meaning. That's a separate issue from whether life has intrinsic value unless you think that intrinsic value can only exist in the context of a god which specifically gives meaning to life - but you have to argue for that, not simply assume it.
So in the end we find that your entire argument depends upon a host of interconnected assumptions, none of which you even mention - much less defend.
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