When Atheists Attack (Each Other)

The squabble between Darwin lobbyists who openly hate religion and those who only quietly disdain it grows ever more personal, bitter and pathetic. On one side, evangelizing New or "Gnu" (ha ha) Atheists like Jerry Coyne and his acolytes at Why Evolution Is True. Dr. Coyne is a biologist who teaches and ostensibly researches at the University of Chicago but has a heck of a lot of free time on his hands for blogging and posting pictures of cute cats.

On the other side, so-called accommodationists like the crowd at the National Center for Science Education, who attack the New Atheists for the political offense of being rude to religious believers and supposedly messing up the alliance between religious and irreligious Darwinists.

I say "supposedly" because there's no evidence any substantial body of opinion is actually being changed on religion or evolution by anything the open haters or the quiet disdainers say. Everyone seems to seriously think they're either going to defeat religion, or merely "creationism," or both by blogging for an audience of fellow Darwinists.

Want to see what I mean? This is all pretty strictly a battle of stinkbugs in a bottle. Try to follow it without getting a headache.

Coyne recently drew excited applause from fellow biologist-atheist-blogger PZ Myers for Coyne's "open letter" (published on his blog) to the NCSE and its British equivalent, the British Centre for Science Education. In the letter, Coyne took umbrage at criticism of the New Atheists, mostly on blogs, emanating from the two accommodationist organizations. He vowed that,

We will continue to answer the misguided attacks [on the New Atheists] by people like Josh Rosenau, Roger Stanyard, and Nick Matzke so long as they keep mounting those attacks.

Like the NCSE, the BCSE seeks to pump up Darwin in the public mind without scaring religious people. This guy called Stanyard at the BCSE complains of losing a night's sleep over the nastiness of the rhetoric on Coyne's blog. Coyne in turn complained that Stanyard complained that a blog commenter complained that Nick Matzke, formerly of the NCSE, is like "vermin." Coyne also hit out at blogger Jason Rosenhouse for an "epic"-length blog post complaining of New Atheist "incivility." In the blog, Rosenhouse, who teaches math at James Madison University, wrote an update about how he had revised an insulting comment about the NCSE's Josh Rosenau that he, Rosenhouse, made in a previous version of the post.

That last bit briefly confused me. In occasionally skimming the writings of Jason Rosenhouse and Josh Rosenau in the past, I realized now I had been assuming they were the same person. They are not!

It goes on and on. In the course of his own blog post, Professor Coyne disavowed name-calling and berated Stanyard (remember him? The British guy) for "glomming onto" the Matzke-vermin insult like "white on rice, or Kwok on a Leica." What's a Kwok? Not a what but a who -- John Kwok, presumably a pseudonym, one of the most tirelessly obsessive commenters on Darwinist blog sites. Besides lashing at intelligent design, he often writes of his interest in photographic gear such as a camera by Leica. I have the impression that Kwok irritates even fellow Darwinists.

There's no need to keep all the names straight in your head. I certainly can't. I'm only taking your time, recounting just a small part of one confused exchange, to illustrate the culture of these Darwinists who write so impassionedly about religion, whether for abolishing it or befriending it. Writes Coyne in reply to Stanyard,

I'd suggest, then, that you lay off telling us what to do until you've read about our goals. The fact is that we'll always be fighting creationism until religion goes away, and when it does the fight will be over, as it is in Scandinavia.

A skeptic might suggest that turning America into Scandinavia, as far as religion goes, is an outsized goal, more like a delusion, for this group as they sit hunched over their computers shooting intemperate comments back and forth at each other all day. Or in poor Stanyard's case, all night.

There's a feverish, terrarium-like and oxygen-starved quality to this world of online Darwinists and atheists. It could only be sustained by the isolation of the Internet. They don't seem to realize that the public accepts Darwinism to the extent it does -- which is not much -- primarily because of what William James would call the sheer, simple "prestige" that the opinion grants. Arguments and evidence have little to do with it.

The prestige of Darwinism is not going to be affected by how the battle between Jerry Coyne and the NCSE turns out. New Atheist arguments are hobbled by the same isolation from what people think and feel. I have not yet read anything by any of these gentlemen or ladies, whether the open haters or the quiet disdainers, that conveys anything like a real comprehension of religious feeling or thought.

Even as they fight over the most effective way to relate to "religion," the open atheists and the accomodationists speak of an abstraction, a cartoon, that no actual religious person would recognize. No one is going to be persuaded if he doesn't already wish to be persuaded for other personal reasons. No faith is under threat from the likes of Jerry Coyne.

"the Christian God, Lord and Savior taught his disciples not to hate, but to love their enemies."

No kidding?

"Matt. 5:44 But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you..."

Certain Skeptics think that Jesus missed the mark in living up to this admonition. Here are some examples, and the answer:

"Matt. 23:17, 27 You blind fools! Which is greater: the gold, or the temple that makes the gold sacred?..."Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men's bones and everything unclean."

"Matt. 12:34 You brood of vipers, how can you who are evil say anything good? For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks."

John 10:8 All who ever came before me were thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them."

A key here is understanding the function of polemic in first-century Judaism (see our response to Earl Doherty). It is certainly possible under these constraints to love one's enemies and pray for them, and also attack them polemically, though such complexity of emotion is quite often foreign to us.

Moreover, the term "love" here does not correspond with our modern psychological category; it is "not a matter of sentiment and emotion but concrete action and practical concern." [Hill's commentary on Matthew, 130] It is in fact the term agape.

It does not exclude verbally attacking and discrediting one's opponents when they are in the wrong.

Beyond that, Jesus speaks to these men not as his enemies, but as enemies of the truth.

There is no indication that he speaks to them as personal enemies, for __all of his comments reflect their deception of others__.

The ancient definition of agape __did not exclude__ polemical practices __against ideological opponents who did broad, general harm to others__, and so Skeptics are merely illicitly applying modern categories to the situation.

One would hardly suppose that Matthew 5:4 would restrict one from joining an army and fighting in a war against a Hitler or a Stalin. This becomes a case of having agape for the greater number, and generally innocent, at the expense of the lesser who are guilty.

Jesus' situation with the Pharisees and others attacked was very much in this category, since their actions imperiled the eternal fate of others. ...

HERE

But they are not going to manipulate and control my life in such a manner, and that’s all they’re trying to do. If they can keep you preoccupied with such drivel, it keeps you from being effective in spreading the truth of the Gospel. They’re Satan’s sock puppets.

And that's the whole reason why I call out the atheists and agnostics who show up here on FreeRepublic particularly on Religion Forums as the liars and frauds that every last one of their sorry asses are.

You know something, we should make a note of their screen names. If no one posts to them, and no one chooses to waste bandwidth and hours engaging their trollish stupidity, they may post what they want, no one will reply, and studious posters can then simply choose then to talk around them.

Actually one could even quote from their stupid postings just to make fun of them in fact. They'll get the picture and eventually go away, unless they like to sit here and be mocked all day long, and with no one engaging them. Then if they really get nasty and throw a tantrum, report them to the Mods and get their asses banned.

They are not here to edify anyone or to engage in substantive debate about anything worthwhile.

Atheists are not conservatives. Ignore them. They can head back to DU or Darwin Central where the bilge they all spout might have a more receptive ear.

Post to them only if you really enjoy it. As anyone knows who's followed anything I've written here over the past ~ 12 years, I'll run them through from time to time myself just for the sheer sport of it, and it usually leaves them reeling and dumbstruck in the end. It's fun, they are my playthings for a time. But I just won't waste a huge amount of time with liars and frauds, or let them play their word games because they are liars and frauds. They simply do not seek an honest answer.

They are here to cause trouble. They are here to waste your time.

All you really need to know is that atheists are not conservatives. Post to them if you wish, but my best advice to any and all legitimate posters is simply this: marginalize them accordingly.

Don't post to them. Don't play their games.

Atheists are liberal jihadists.

FReegards!

Then we try to find something that will appease our fear and, bingo, the fishers of men have their catch! We cling to religion out of fear, don't we? Fear fills the churches.

Jeepers, what an "inverted" way to look at these issues!

Trying to "connect the dots" of your logic, those nefarious "fishers of men" are just casting their hooks into the waters — to catch their next meal! Ergo, they are cannibals!!!

And religion in general (but especially Christianity) is just a satanic plot to deceive the stupid into becoming willing tools of slippery priests and pastors, for their nefarious ends!

Good grief, kosta — just listen to yourself. This is 100% polemical and 0% factually-based. It is mere opinion.

Well, you know the old adage: You're entitled to your own opinion — but you're not entitled to your own facts.

I have an "opinion," too: I regard true "fishers of men" as being in the business, not of arranging for their next dinner, but of casting out lifelines, to rescue drowning men.... Certainly enough such drowning men have grasped that lifeline over the ages that it would seem, on the basis of historical fact, that the fishers of men and their lifelines have saved men from drowning; there is 0% historical evidence that these fishers ever ate the drowning men for dinner. (We leave that sort of thing to Screwtape's Tempters College....)

Such relentlessly horizontal thinking! Jeepers, how do you think at all?

Plus to me, religion is not about fear, especially fear of my own death. To me, religion points me to the Source of life more abundantly — not just in the hereafter, but in the actual here and now. It points me to a way of living and thinking about the world that makes total sense to me, that integrates my living experience and knowledge into a unified order under God.

Who made all things, on earth as in heaven, in and for Love....

Where is the "love" in your view? Do you think love is not important in the world of nature and the world of men?

I don't mean the dishwater sentimental love of TV soap operas. But the love that motivates action which, in the final analysis, is performed as an act of love for God.

Do you suppose it is even possible for us to "get on the same page" when we are so very far apart in basic world and moral views?

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