Combox Atheist Comedy

Over the last day or so, somebody styling himself a Meta-Ethical Subjectivist tried to concoct some system of morality based, as near as I could make out, on propoositions like “Ought” means “Whatever I desire and I don’t have to explain that” and “Things are wrong if you have the power to make people who do things you don’t want them to do to stop.” It was a very confusing conversation with a person as firmly convinced of their soaring intellect as they were unskilled in making sense to anybody outside the tiny bubble of their thoughts. You can read it starting here. It’s really quite funny and does a marvelous job of illustrating my point that atheist attempts to derive “ought” from “is” always consist of theft from theism with its capacity for a Transcendent Ought.

What amused me the most is that Chris simply does not seem to grasp in the slightest what I was getting at and remains as firmly ensconced in his sense of overwhelming intellectual superiority. It’s a classic case of the tendency of some atheists to worship the intellect rather than use it. Meanwhile, I will let the inimitable Tom Kreitzberg do the autopsy on Chris’ hilarious train wreck:

I get that the Enlightened Thinker, who sees through the superstitions and magical thinking of the herd, will suddenly appear and with a great gush of words try to make himself understood.

I get that, when the herd reacts poorly, with distrust and mockery instead of understanding and acceptance, the Enlightened Thinker will move on.

What I don’t get is why, nine times out of ten, the Enlightened Thinker can’t leave without hurling insults of his own on the way out.

It doesn’t reflect well on Enlightened Thinking that Enlightened Thinkers, once the fizz is gone from their Suck-O-Lux Vacuum Cleaner Company of Walla Walla Washington opening, almost always turn out to be as petty and narrowminded as the pettiest and narrowminded Herd Thinkers.

One possible explanation is that Enlightened Thinkers are almost always merely Herd Thinkers who have wandered over from another herd.