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    The McMaster Department of Philosophy has now put together the following notice commemorating Barry: Barry Allen: A Philosophical Life Barry…

“You’ve just committed genocide on an entire race of strawmen.”

That memorable remark was attributed to the late Jay Rosenberg (North Carolina), but it certainly seems apt (as suggested to me by Jamin Asay) with respect to this extraordinarily silly piece by Ron Rosenbaum, purporting to be a defense of agnosticism, but which is mostly just a smear job on atheism and the "logical positivist" Alvin Plantinga (yes, that is a quote).

UPDATE:  Some good comments have appeared, perhaps from readers of this blog (if so, kudos to you folks!).  I like this one especially:

Atheism is NOT the certainty that there are no gods. It is NOT a conviction that science will one day answer all questions. Atheism is the refusal to believe in gods in the absence of evidence for their existence.  
 
Atheists do not believe in gods for exactly the same reason that you do not believe in unicorns. Even such prominent atheists as Richard Dawkins do not insist that they know with certainty that there are no gods (though they do admit to 99.99% certainty, in light of the available evidence), only that they are unwilling to believe in gods because there is no evidence that they exist (again, think of the unicorns), and are exasperated by people who not only choose to believe things for which there is no evidence, but choose to believe things for which there is ample evidence to the contrary.  
 
Until you understand the difference between not believing something and being certain it is false, you should probably refrain from writing about this subject, if only to avoid embarrassing yourself.

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