Having criticized atheism, now it’s time to defend it against strawmen

[cbayer]

Of note is that she wrote a story yesterday that was critical of atheism. You can read it here:

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2015/02/time-for-atheists-to-take-a-hard-look-at-ourselves/

This is a follow-up

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2015/02/having-criticized-atheism-now-its-time-to-defend-it-against-strawmen/

AMANDA MARCOTTE
13 FEB 2015 AT 07:59 ET



It’s one thing to say, as I did yesterday, that atheists need to embrace a philosophy of self-reflection and self-policing that religions sometimes lack. But it’s another kettle of fish entirely to use the Chapel Hill murders as an opportunity to take a bunch of potshots at atheists that appear to be rooted in a resentment that has little to do with legitimate concerns about fanaticism, which is what Christian writer Elizabeth Stoker Bruenig did at the New Republic, using this murder to grind the hell out of an anti-atheist ax.

Led by luminaries such as the late Christopher Hitchens and evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, New Atheism takes as its core creed a species of Enlightenment liberalism that exalts reason and free inquiry, without bothering to define reason or to explain what is worthy of inquiry, and why. For a school of thought that presents itself as intellectually robust, it is philosophically bankrupt and evidently blind to its similarities to the religions it derides.

I enjoy that she used one of the favorite denunciations that religious people lob at atheists: Oh yeah, well, you’re so bad you might as well be a religion! Since people who do this are trying to defend religion, it’s odd that they consider it an insult to equate something with religion. It’s a tacit admission that religion is silly and irrational or, to quote Bruenig, “philosophically bankrupt”. And sure, religious apologies do seem philosophically bankrupt to me, based more on wishing and hoping than on rational argumentation. But she baldly states that new atheism refuses to define its terms or ask what is worth inquiring, an accusation that is baldly false. Of course they do both, all the time. The God Delusion spends a huge hunk of its time laying out both why he thinks there is no god and why he thinks the question matters. You can disagree, I guess, but you can’t say Dawkins refuses to answer the questions.


Instead she says it’s just a bunch of white guys:

Because it is more critical of religion than introspective about its own moral commitments, it assumes there is broad agreement about what constitutes decency, common sense, and reason. Yet in doing so, New Atheism tends to simply baptize the opinions of young, educated white men as the obviously rational approach to complicated socio-political problems. Thus prejudice in its own ranks goes unnoticed.
She backs this up with statistics showing that it’s a lot of white guys. Which is true and no doubt a problem, but not for the reasons she thinks.

more at link

[skepticscott]

1. She fails to take her own advice

and self-reflect that the obsequious deference to any conceivable sensitivity of religionists to being offended, and their accompanying obsessive desire to show "See...I'M not like THOSE atheists" is a big part of the reason for bogus attacks on atheism like the ones that have been ginned up over the Chapel Hill murders.

But some people on this board just can't stop worshipping navel gazing.

[rug]

2. Watch out for the stampede from denouncing Marcotte to embracing Marcotte.

If we were all on a ferry we'd capsize.

[cbayer]

3. That is to be expected.

I really like her and I like her take on this from both articles. She poses the issues in ways that really requires one to step back and think, not just have a knee jerk reaction.

I continue to see this event as a possible point of reconciliation between some believers and non-believers.

[rug]

4. The ones that hate do not want to reconcile.

The ones that don't, don't need reconciliation.

[cbayer]

5. I agree to some extent and there are those that I abandoned

long ago, because I see no hope.

But there are some in the grey areas, rug. There are some that are hostile towards religion but are reasonable and capable of seeing things from different perspectives.

For me, it's important to make the distinctions and to write off those who are not interested in any kind of reconciliation.

To do otherwise is to be just like them.

[msongs]

6. when religion stops being hostile and murderous, perhaps there will some conversation available nt

[cbayer]

7. When you actually reply to those that reply to you, perhaps some

conversation will be available.

There is no conversation when one person just drops a lump and ignores what anyone might say back to them.

Religion is not going to stop being hostile and murderous because mankind is not going to stop being hostile and murderous. These things occur with and without religion, as we have just seen.

[rug]

8. I was going to reply but then msongs did.

QED.

[cbayer]

9. When she speaks, she speaks for us all, bless her heart.