Reductionism, Ridicule and Red Herrings

I usually avoid reading the atheists because I find (not surprisingly) that they don’t have much to say. Not believing in anything gives one precious little to write about. All that is left is to attack what other people believe in. The atheists are rather like the ultimate Protestant. What belief they have is derived from the thing they hate, and with the atheists it is even worse: they have no belief, so nothing left but a constant sophomoric rant against the big bad one: Catholicism.

But in going back to read some more of the atheist writings it seemed to me that these men who society vaunts not only as intellectuals but THE intellectuals of our age so often resort to the three babyish debating tools of reductionism, ridicule, and red herrings. Reductionism is the argument that reduces something great to some insignificant, and to do so, reduces individual aspects of the great thing to their smallest components to show them (and therefore the whole thing) irrational and stupid. The reason for doing this is so the great thing can be ridiculed. Once a thing is thus ridiculed it can be dismissed. Red Herrings are irrelevant arguments which (in this tactic) are thrown in to add weight to the ridicule.

To illustrate what I mean, I thought I would write a little exercise using the same tactics in order to show how stupid and dangerous athletics are: Read more.