Surprise! A Fundie Is Incapable of Understanding the English Language!

It seems there is a persistent and irascible (also under-educated)  little fundie who still is unable to parse or grasp the distinction of the agnostic atheist – in terms of withholding belief in a deity. He evidently read my previous blog on fundies unable to process these subtle distinctions- leading his febrile brain to go haywire once more, and end up with the wrong conclusion.  But this is to be expected when one's educational standards have always been low, and the person in question is more at home in a bar fight than a classroom.

So, it seems we must explain it to him again, not that it’ll do any good – especially if one lacks the capacity for abstract ACH thinking. (As an aside, it’s clear this character couldn’t pass a PSAT Verbal test, far less a GRE Verbal test!)

 

Recall I had written:

“What is happening here is not active disbelief, i.e. in making a statement “There is no god,” but rather simply passively withholding belief in a statement already made. Hence, the deity believer has made the positive claim. The ontological   (implicit) atheist’s  response is simply an absence of belief in it. No more and no less. It does not and never has implied  active disbelief, aggressive rancor or a vehement and militant opposition to the beliefs.

Let me quickly add here that this withholding of belief is the more natural position, as opposed to advocating belief, which is unnatural.”

 

Now, believe it or not – probably not – this dumb fundie demands:  “make up your mind” i.e. “Is it withholding belief or absence of belief’?.’ This guy, who’s probably had too many knocks on the head either from bats in bar room fights or from DI pugil sticks, thereby interjects a false dichotomy (thought he likely doesn't know what that means either).  Clearly he doesn’t grasp that they amount to one and the same thing.

 

If I withhold belief what am I doing? Am I actively DO-ing anything? No! Despite the word, it is a passive act.  However, the consequence of the withholding is yes, the absence of belief in the claim.

 You tell me you have an alien in your attic but you can’t prove it or give me a snap shot, so I withhold belief. I do not “deny” you have such an entity, only tell you that minus the evidence I can’t bestow any investment of mental capital to concur with it.  Hence, you walk away minus that belief, and so for you - there is an ABSENCE of my belief. How simple can it be? But evidently it's like general relativity or advanced rocket science for this moron fundie.

Again, via any withholding, what is the EFFECT? The effect is an ABSENCE of that which is withheld!  (See for example the cartoon graphic pertaining to the doofus withholding Jacks from his playing card deck but claiming there's no absence of them in his deck.)  Ipso facto, by any withholding one has engendered an ABSENCE of that withheld.  This absence could not have existed if one didn’t withhold.  Why the inability to process the logical connection? I suggest a lack of ACH thinking ability, which as James Cheyne has observed, is also a critical feature of many standard IQ tests.

The error made by this fundie lamo is to equate “withholding” belief to an active response, as opposed to an absence of belief.  In his incapacitated, regressive and forlorn brain, withholding is like denying! He doesn’t grasp that there is a logical and fundamental connection between withholding and absence -of whatever it is withheld.

 

The Webster’s Encyclopedic Dictionary defines withholding as:

“to refrain from granting or giving something”

 

It defines absence as:    “a lack or deficiency of”

 

And continues by way of explicating: i.e. to withhold granting something will create a deficiency or lack in it, for example withholding food- say to a starving populace-   creates a deficiency or absence of food.

 

In other words, a logical connection obtains between the words. Now, it is true that by use of the term “withhold” the causal consequence, i.e. directly leading to absence may not be immediately apparent, but it ought to be implicit.  At least it ought to be to a person of  even average intelligence. But then this guy was never even minor sub-Mensan level (e.g. top 20% as opposed to 2%) to begin with. (He may be Densan, or lower 40%).

On that note we shall have to leave it because though this deluded idiot believes he’s “checkmated” me he’s really only shown the extent to which he’s checkmated himself by stupidly entering a semantics war he isn’t outfitted  (educationally or intellectually) to win.  Maybe if he sits down and plays computer chess or GO he may improve his intellectual prowess, but given his only activity is blogging misinformation about his backward religious beliefs....I wouldn't make any bet that would work

 

The point remains that withholding belief in a deity is the warp and woof of the agnostic atheist, and it is correlated to an absence of belief - no matter how much hard heads want to contrive a ridiculous false dichotomy where none exists.