Comment by Matt on May 22, 2010 at 7:32am

It's good to see other people noticing this woman's lies.

Comment by Shine on May 22, 2010 at 11:13am

Haha, I was just about to post this! :) I really want to write an essay logically refuting her purported atheism. I want to prove that saying she is not an atheist is not just a "No True Scotsman" fallacy because so many of her statements fundamentally contradict the basic premise of atheism.

Comment by Reggie on May 23, 2010 at 1:26am

This woman is nuts. Where did she come from?

Comment by Jānis Ķimsis on May 23, 2010 at 5:21am

I think Colbert said it best: "Reality has a liberal bias."

Shine, I still don't see how being a dishonest, ignorant twat pandering to the religuos disqualify someone form being an atheist.

Comment by Reggie on May 23, 2010 at 12:07pm

Jānis is right. Not all atheists come to atheism by way of honesty and critical inquiry. And there are too many atheists who enjoy pandering to the religious. Look at Chris Mooney, for example, and the majority of the Accommodationist movement.

Comment by Shine on May 23, 2010 at 12:33pm

My reason for saying that she is not an atheist mostly lies in her later comments during the Bill Maher interview, although I have seen hints of the contradiction in other segments. Maher asks her if she thinks that religious people are delusional, to which she emphatically responds that she knows many "smart" religious people. Maher attempts to make the distinction that, although smart, these people are still delusional in regards to their religious beliefs. Cupp remains insistent that these people are not delusional. I wish that Maher had forced her to elaborate, but the interview jumped topics shortly after.

Basically, my point is that she cannot logically claim to be an atheist if she does not think that religious beliefs are delusions. If she does not think that religious beliefs are delusions, I think that she is necessarily inferring that these assertions are justified. She may say, "I don't believe in God," but she also says that she does not think that people who do believe in God are delusional. A delusion is a false belief. Because Cupp will not identify religious beliefs as delusions, she is then saying that those beliefs are not false.

Maybe I'm making a leap in logic? I guess I just see her reluctance to label religious beliefs as delusions as tantamount to saying that those beliefs are true; I think that saying that a belief about X is true is simply a semantic rearrangement of the sentiment of "I believe X." Maybe she just doesn't understand the meaning of the word "delusional," or perhaps I am misusing the term myself.

Comment by Reggie on May 23, 2010 at 12:53pm

I will have to ponder that question, Shine. Is it defensible for an atheist to say that religious beliefs are not delusions? Better yet, let's make it a discussion!

http://www.thinkatheist.com/forum/topics/religion-not-a-delusion

Too late! I already did!

Comment by Shine on May 23, 2010 at 1:11pm

Good call!

Comment by Jānis Ķimsis on May 23, 2010 at 1:49pm

Of course she can't say they are delusional! They are the target audience for her book.

Comment by Johnny on May 23, 2010 at 4:24pm

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