A BIG BANG? - NO, IT WAS A BUTLER'S REVENGE.

I'm writing this post under The Religious Curmudgeon banner but it might easily have gone under The Polemical Curmudgeon, The Philosophical Curmudgeon or The Aluminium Foil Curmudgeon.

Robert the - well, you know, said this in his latest post.

I often hear the accusation that religious belief is irrational, childish, wishful thinking, a crutch, and the opiate of the masses. Well Curmudgeon said this once. Not all at the same time. But he did mention one of them, at least, maybe under his breath.
Anyway, I'm all fired up to answer these accusations.
You see, none of these actually prove the falsehood of God! Their attempt to disprove God backfires. And backfires alarmingly. With a big bang.
Well that's it really. The burden of proof is with the atheist.

That's what he said in full really - I didn't include the image of a suspicious looking Belgian priest who said that he proved Einstein to be wrong though. I don't know why Robert used that - probably thought he was wheeling out the 'big guns' to support his "answer these accusations."

Georges Lemaître  was a very, very clever man who lived and worked among other very, very clever men like Einstein and Hubble. They didn't always agree however with Lemaître stating that Einstein was wrong in some areas and Einstein disagreeing with Lemaître  over many of his papers although Einstein, to his credit endorsed Lemaître's theory of the expansion of the universe. I think Robert was trying to snipe at Richard and me and all of the other atheists out there by using Lemaître as a kind of champion to 'prove' that atheists are wrong. Well, I think that he got in the way of his own backfire.

I found reading about Georges Lemaître interesting. I had heard of him but hadn't read much about his body of work which is substantial and still respected. What I can't fathom though is why someone as intelligent, educated and open-minded as he was, believed in mythical beings and a religion that sought and seeks to confuse, hoodwink and rort its followers - but, that might be a discussion for another day.

Today I want to highlight a couple of statements in Robert's post.

First this: "Anyway, I'm all fired up to answer these accusations".

And then this: "Well that's it really. The burden of proof is with the atheist."

There's a hell of a disconnect there. He gets us all excited by stating that he was going to answer "the accusation that religious belief is irrational, childish, wishful thinking, a crutch, and the opiate of the masses." but instead drifts off into spurious allusion to a Catholic scientist and his brilliant work trying to infer that this defeats 'atheist thinking'. Well, that's about as tenuous as you can get.

After this - and I admit it was interesting and spurred me to read about Georges Lemaître on Wikipedia - Robert wrapped it up saying that 'the burden of proof is with the atheist.' What a crock of shit.