An ID Warning to All Believers: Bury Your Head Further In The Sand

A poster at the pro-ID blog Uncommon Descent wrote a "Letter to Thinking Christians (and other theists)." I found the whole thing so indicative of the "thinking of a believer" that I thought I would share.

The author, O'Leary, starts by throwing all religions together ("Christians/theists/non-materialists"). I suppose it's a sad attempt to cover ID's fundamentalist Christian political origins, but I actually agree with her here. All religions should all be lumped together as "traditions," as they are all fucking stupid, based on no evidence (faith), and none is admirable. Her enemies, all those atheists/materialists like me, she labels "anti-spiritualists." The term is rather hilarious, as it puts O'Leary's gods on the same tier as ghosts, haunts, and specters (or as I call them, parlor tricks).

Anyway, O'Leary argues that atheists like me are acting out of desperation. And why are we doing whatever we're doing desperately?

The materialism they espouse is simply not confirmed by evidence and not working in society either.

Apparently, in the battle waging in O'Leary's head, supernaturalism--aka spiritualism--seems to be jumping way ahead of science--aka anti-spiritualism--in the evidence department. Planes are now known to fly because of angels, not lift, engines, or jet fuel; cell phones work by ESP, not radio transmitions; and doctors are forgoing lab testing, electromagnetic and radiation scanning, and "anti-spiritualist" pharmacology and instead diagnosing by crystal balls and prescribing prayer.

As for the society bit, I have no idea what she's arguing. I didn't know there was an atheist-only colony somewhere that was collapsing. Google didn't turn up any either.

O'Leary then goes on to chastise any moderate Christian--I mean spiritualist--who maintains that, whatever science finds, it just shows how their gods worked or work. Apparently, accepting any materialist explanation is just giving in to us atheists. She even goes after Christians who break with the "Christian tradition" and accept the gays as ok. I'll leave it to moderate Christians to explain to O'Leary how pathetic her arguments are; I don't have a horse in that race.

I will state that O'Leary never actually addresses the real issue here: what should be "spiritual" people's approach to understanding the world. She promotes "anti-materialism," but I find it hard to believe that she doesn't accept any materialistic arguments (like germ theory). So when is it ok for someone to accept materialist, versus spiritualist, arguments? When should one decide that ghouls, goblins, angels, Baal, or a 2000-year-dead super-zombie is behind a disease, a newly found species, or an unexplained phenomenon, and when should one decide when "anti-spiritualist" evidences point to a better explanation? When, if ever, should one throw away their old spiritualist traditions in favor of materialistic arguments based on new evidences? Or for a different spiritualist explanation that doesn't contradict evidences? And why is holding onto old traditions innately good?

Atheists, like me, don't have these problems. We "believe in" nothing, and accept only that which can be confirmed by multiple lines of reasonable evidences. What we don't have enough evidences for, we simply admit that we can't explain. When new evidences contradict an explanation, new explanations must be examined and the older one tossed out...no matter how much we may have liked them. My question for O'Leary's intended audience is: how is her way better than mine? How does adding supernatural beings and powers to any explanation, or argument, make it inherently better than mine?