![\"Stoerer,](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/186\/2015\/09\/400px-Christus_Bartimaeus_Johann_Heinrich_Stoever_Erbach_Rheingau.jpg\")
<\/a>(Christ healing the blind Bartimaeus)
Johann Heinrich St\u00f6rer, 1861;
Erbach, Rheingau, Hesse, Germany
(Wikimedia Commons public domain photograph)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Some of you may have been wondering, even worrying, about what happened to our long-time resident atheist here, \u201cgemli.\u201d \u00a0Well, I want to reassure you that he\u2019s still out there. \u00a0And, occasionally, he tries to post here. \u00a0You don\u2019t see him, but I do (if I choose to look).<\/p>\n
You may recall that he grew deeply, deeply tiresome because, after several initial years of politely and not very effectually challenging the consensus here and of being occasionally amusing, his comments increasingly came to consist merely in repeatedly asserting his position. \u00a0He refused to read anything, refused to engage, refused to participate in any actual conversation.<\/p>\n
I thought that you might want to see that, unfortunately, he hasn\u2019t really changed. \u00a0Here\u2019s a comment that he attempted to post here four days ago, in response to the notes that I shared from my reading of Deborah Blum, Ghost Hunters: William James and the Search for Scientific Proof of Life After Death<\/em> (Penguin, 2007):<\/p>\n Does the fact that there are no such things as ghosts have any relevance to this discussion? I like to point out that we\u2019re basically monkeys with slightly larger brains, although I\u2019ve seen the occasional monkey roll its eyes when confronted with the outrageous things that some people believe.<\/p>\n There are about 4,000 different religions in the world, each one distinguished by it\u2019s different beliefs, god count, strictures, rituals, sacred texts and afterlife dispositions, etc., etc. Sure sounds like people just make this stuff up out of thin air. That there isn\u2019t a single solid, confirmable and demonstrable fact of these theological claims should be an indication that all religions are simply made up, period, full stop. The High Priests of every religion are unlikely to question a system that feathers their nests with some pretty fancy feathers, so people are advised to use their own common sense when considering their claims. If they seem too good to be true, well, they probably aren\u2019t.<\/p>\n Most committed theists believe the religion they were brought up in, even though every religion demands belief in different absolute truths. Well, there\u2019s your miracle! No one can argue with that!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Notice that he states his position (\u201cthe fact that there are no such things as ghosts\u201d) as if it were established beyond dispute, despite the fact that Ghost Hunters<\/em> is about, precisely, the quest of William James and his circle \u2014 James is universally recognized as one of the foremost minds in American intellectual history \u2014 for evidence of human survival of death, a quest in which they felt that they had found positive evidence. \u00a0Of course, gemli would never, ever, worlds without end, have lowered himself to cracking the book or considering it. \u00a0He invariably, and with wearisome consistency, refused to seriously consider anything that might count against the dogmatic atheism that, he says, he adopted in his early teens. \u00a0His reasoning was always essentially as follows:<\/p>\n Notice, too, his invocation of the unarmed themes that he repeated hundreds of times during his prolific active career as a commenter here:<\/p>\n And here is the comment that he attempted to post just yesterday:<\/p>\n Religions are strange concoctions. There are about 4,200 of them, each proclaiming to be The One True word of some god or another, none of which actually exist. A con man should be ashamed of himself if he couldn\u2019t take advantage of the desperate gullibility of the rabble. The idea that a slightly more evolved monkey will live forever if it believes in the most abject superstitious nonsense is hard to fathom, but millions of people believe exactly that. Exactly what is believed is more or less irrelevant, because it varies a great deal, depending on the religion. Still, I\u2019d hate to see religions fade away, because when they\u2019re not doing harm, wasting lives and making people bow down to the purported spokesmen for this or that nonsensical faith, they\u2019re endlessly entertaining. It\u2019s just sad to see so many lives lived in the grip of these bogus beliefs. Oh well.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Notice the repeated themes, yet again. \u00a0Notice the disdain for religious people (\u201cthe desperate gullibility of the rabble\u201d). \u00a0Notice, again, the substitution of assertion for reasoning or argument, the replacement of a premise in an argument by the argument\u2019s conclusion (\u201csome god or another, none of which actually exist\u201d) \u2014 the very definition of reasoning in a circle. \u00a0Note, too, the utter lack of interest in the specifics of the religious views that he choose to come to target (\u201cExactly what is believed is more or less irrelevant, because it varies a great deal, depending on the religion.\u201d) \u00a0What he had picked up as a young teenager in Catholic school has, he has convinced himself, equipped him to declaim with absolute authority on all forms of Christianity (including the Restoration) and, indeed, on each and every variant of theism, worldwide. \u00a0Time and again \u2014 in his earlier years, when he at least gestured in the direction of interacting with people here \u2014 he lodged criticisms against Latter-day Saint beliefs that, in fact, we don\u2019t hold and that he had imagined for us and imputed to us on the basis of his memories of his childhood Catholicism. \u00a0Consistently, he refused to read anything, anything<\/em>, that was suggested to him as a means of informing himself \u2014 even when it was brief and available online at no cost.<\/p>\n On multiple occasions, I shared with him specific evidence and full references to materials demonstrating that, whether religion is true or not, religious adherence offers measurable benefits to mental, physical, and social health. \u00a0He would never so much as acknowledge the evidence. \u00a0And so, here again, as if no challenge had ever been presented to him, he writes of religion \u201cdoing harm\u201d and \u201cwasting lives,\u201d of how \u201csad\u201d it is \u201cto see so many lives [are] lived in the grip of these bogus beliefs.\u201d<\/p>\n Those who are only just now making gemli\u2019s acquaintance may not fully grasp why I grew so tired of his increasingly repetitious comments here \u2014 often multiple scores of them per day \u2014 but those who attempted conversation with him back in those days will, I think, understand my frustration with him.<\/p>\n Still, I make an offer: \u00a0gemli obviously wants to participate here. \u00a0If I sense that the sentiment here favors his return, I\u2019ll try to make it happen. \u00a0(That doesn\u2019t seem to be as easy as the Disqus instructions say it is, but I\u2019ll make the attempt.)<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0 Some of you may have been wondering, even worrying, about what happened to our long-time resident atheist here, \u201cgemli.\u201d \u00a0Well, I want to reassure you that he\u2019s still out there. \u00a0And, occasionally, he tries to post here. \u00a0You don\u2019t see him, but I do (if I choose to look). You may recall that he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":27244,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1014,3799,38903,14937,37176,12548],"class_list":["post-110966","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-atheism","tag-atheist","tag-deborah-blum","tag-gemli","tag-ghost-hunters","tag-william-james"],"yoast_head":"\n\n
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