One of the things I love about atheists is their constant use of complete double standards.  It’s why I can’t be an atheist: I’m way too consistent.

First some background:

Jennifer Fulwiler wrote a post about five Catholic beliefs that would make sense to atheists.  The spirit in which she wrote it would be to show that Catholicism is intellectually honest, not that an atheist would actually agree that those beliefs as true.  As only he can, PZ Myers wrote a response entitled “Jennifer Fulwiler: Vacant-eyed, Mindless Cluelessness Personified.”  He essentially dismissed each point as supernatural nonsense, so no atheist would ever actually agree to any of them.

But that wasn’t Jennifer’s point.  Her point:

I evidently did not make it clear enough that all of my examples were meant only to illustrate the intellectual consistency within Catholicism, and therefore assumed that you would be in a discussion with an atheist who would stipulate belief in God for the sake of argument. E.g. In the case of Purgatory, when I was an atheist I would have said, “All belief in the supernatural is crazy. But if you must believe in all that God and heaven mumbo jumbo, then, yeah, you need Purgatory in order not to contradict your own bizarre little belief system.” (source, emphasis added)

The first comment to that post, addressed to Jennifer, is the atheist double standard:

“intellectual consistency within Catholicism”

I would ask then if it is possible to get a blood born disease from the blood of christ when taking communion?

I read your original article, and as an atheist I did not agree with a single point (none of the teachings made “sense” to me”, and as PZ suggested, I am not convinced you had arrived at your previous atheism from an intellectual standpoint.  It sounds as if you were just a theist in denial or in “thenial” – it happens all the time.

There it is: the No True Scotsman Fallacy.  Basically, DKeane is saying that Jennifer wasn’t a true atheist, because true atheists would never convert to theism.  She’s been a theist all along. Read the rest of this entry →