The World of Mr. Aron Ra, Ex-Mormon and Famous Atheist
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/18
Mr. Aron Ra was born in Kingman, Arizona. He was baptised as a Mormon. He is the ex-President of Atheist Alliance of America. He is a public speaker, secular activist, and an advocate for reason in education. He hosts the Ra-Men podcast with Dan Arel and Mark Nebo of BeSecular. Here we talk about religion.
Ra began to challenge the religious people in his life. He has done so throughout his life. But as he began to experience the droll of the common and poor responses to religious faith, he wanted to challenge what he viewed as dangerous and bad ideas.
“So I started making a challenge to people: ‘Can you show me anything in your religious belief that you can show to be more accurate than any other religious belief?’ I would stress for people not just to show me where other religions are wrong, but to show me where theirs is right! So I have to define my terms very rigidly all the time.”
Ra was left to investigate the definition of Truth. To him, he found people, in conversation, they were less deep than they thought about the definition of truth. He sees truth as that which corresponds to reality. Facts amount to data points, which can be verified.
“A lot of people hate these definitions because it completely undermines their theology. They can’t make the assertions that they want to by saying anything is the absolute truth, because under the definition of either word no you don’t!” Ra exclaimed.
He views people more often pretending to believe something. He does not work to pretend to know something. However, if someone makes large-scale claims based on a theistic metaphysical view, in which a Theity – an intervening God – exists, then Ra challenges it.
The questions arise about the individuals holding the views less and more about the ideas and the premises in larger arguments. That seems to make the emphasis on ideas and arguments more than individual people.
“That’s the problem. People want to say what they know only what they believe. They pretend. There’s not a part of it that is honest. My biggest sticking point is that the only value that any information can have is however accurate you can show it to be, and if you can’t show that it is accurate at all then that information has no value at all. So it is just an empty assertion.”
He requires, in a discussion or debate format, the substantiation of claims made by religious believers. He will not accept any less than that.
Ra explained, “I can show you the truth of evolution. I can show you the facts of evolution. I can show you the positively indicative and physical evidence that is exclusively concordant with one conclusion over any other. I can do that all day, but religion can’t. No religion can because they’re all just made up. They don’t have any truth at all in them, none of them.”
He considers the best evidence given by religion is the anecdotal responses and then the citation of logical fallacies. He gave an example in the case of Kent Hovind’s son, Eric Hovind, who made the statement, to the effect, that if the Bible contains it then it is true.
“He said that we don’t need science to back us up. Wow!” Ra exclaimed, “That’s a hell of an admission. I do need science to back me up. They have to do this reversal of the burden of proof. If I don’t believe that claim that you’re making, that positive claims require positive evidence and the burden of proof is always on the person making the positive claim.”
He continues with the burden of proof line of thought. That the emphasis is on the person make the claim, according to Ra, to prove it or support it. Because the argument for the position comes from an assertion. If no assertion, then no burden of proof.
However, the believer asserts several premises for Ra to believe, which he does not agree with at all – or mostly.
He stated, “If you use religion for your reason for any action or a position, then you still haven’t given a reason because religion isn’t one. It is as far against and away from reason as one can possibly be. When people use religion as their only reason for whatever laws they want to impose of people or on other things, these are always mostly unjust.”
He cited the restrictions of everyone else’s freedom based on the brand or sect of one particular religion. The encroachment of religion into the public arena. At that point, it becomes an issue for the public of other religions, other religious sects and traditions, and the non-religious.
As an outspoken atheist, Ra will have issues with this because this limits his freedom, when religion becomes imposed in the public to restrict the lives and rights of the atheists in the United States.
If bad ideas or arguments go unchallenged, and without the public engagement work of individuals including Mr. Ra, then other religious faith believers and the non-religious can have their freedoms, rights, and liberties curtailed in the United States. That’s why these conversations matter for every concerned party.
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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