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.

I have never stated that I don't believe, but merely doubt. However, no matter how much I repeat it, I am still labeled an "atheist troll".

I guess the puzzling thing for me is I do not understand the "basis" of your doubt; for it seems to me you know what the Truth is. Yet you will not give it your assent. Or so it seems to me, dear kosta.

IMHO, skepticism has good use in "objective science." But yours seems to be a radical skepticism, the kind that effectively makes it impossible to consider questions of meaning and value. Again, or so it seems to me.

But how can a man be fully man if there is no world of meaning, of value, for him? Other animals don't need such a world. Machines don't need such a world. But arguably, man absolutely does need such a world in order to express his full humanity. Anyhoot, I myself couldn't live in a state of radical skepticism, where nothing could make any sense, ever. I'd probably go insane.

Just some stray thoughts, dear kosta. (I wonder whether you realize that I truly do care for you.)

In an earlier post to metmom, you wrote this:

"Christians" who deny the divinity of Jesus are NOT Christians; "Christians" who deny the resurrection of Jesus are NOT Christians. Mormons are NOT Christians. Jehovah's Witnesses are NOT Christians; Gnostics are not Christians; Nestorians are not Christians, Jews are not Christians, Muslims are not Christians for all the same reasons —they all deny that Jesus is one and the same God as the Father and the Spirit, or they deny that Jesus resurrected form the dead, or both.

Well said. A Christian is defined as one who affirms/believes "that Jesus is one and the same God as the Father and the Spirit" and that "Jesus resurrected from the dead."

On the other hand, it seems unjust to "reduce" any person to a mere definition — though I admit sometimes I blunder into such an error. For me, the important thing to remember is that God unfailingly knows His own, and will save whomever He wills.... My opinion doesn't really matter, in the end. Meanwhile, I have certain obligations WRT my neighbor, regardless of his religious affiliation or lack thereof.

But I do get a bit hot about atheists! The "public atheists" seem devoted to undermining the very structure and fabric of American society.... In effect, I see them as a threat to national security....

JMHO, FWIW

Thank you, dear kosta, for writing!

Apparently you have zero understanding of the Principles and Foundations of our Country.

Our founding fathers were deists and a few Unitarians. They didn't believe in the Bible or the God of the Bible.

Adams, "This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it."

Jefferson, "It is too late in the day for men of sincerity to pretend they believe in the Platonic mysticisms that three are one, and one is three; and yet that the one is not three, and the three are not one. But this constitutes the craft, the power and the profit of the priests." - to John Adams, 1803

"I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature."

"I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world, and do not find in our particular superstition (Christianity) one redeeming feature. They are all alike founded on fables and mythology."

"Christianity neither is, nor ever was, a part of the Common Law." -letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper, 1814

"Gouverneur Morris had often told me that General Washington believed no more of that system (Christianity) than did he himself." -Thomas Jefferson, in his private journal, Feb. 1800

Benjamin Franklin, ". . . Some books against Deism fell into my hands. . . It happened that they wrought an effect on my quite contrary to what was intended by them; for the arguments of the Deists, which were quoted to be refuted, appeared to me much stronger than the refutations; in short, I soon became a thorough Deist." .

"If we look back into history for the character of the present sects in Christianity, we shall find few that have not in their turns been persecutors, and complainers of persecution. The primitive Christians thought persecution extremely wrong in the Pagans, but practiced it on one another. The first Protestants of the Church of England blamed persecution in the Romish Church, but practiced it upon the Puritans. They found it wrong in Bishops, but fell into the practice themselves both here (England) and in New England."

"The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason." -in Poor Richard's Almanac

"I looked around for God's judgments, but saw no signs of them." .

"In the affairs of the world, men are saved, not by faith, but by the lack of it."

"It is much to be lamented that a man of Franklin's general good character and great influence should have been an unbeliever in Christianity, and also have done as much as he did to make others unbelievers" (Priestley's Autobiography)

Thomas Paine, "The New Testament, they tell us, is founded upon the prophecies of the Old; if so, it must follow the fate of its foundation.''

"What is it the New Testament teaches us? To believe that the Almighty committed debauchery with a woman engaged to be married; and the belief of this debauchery is called faith." .

"I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish Church, by the Roman Church, by the Greek Church, by the Turkish Church, by the Protestant Church, nor by any Church that I know of. My own mind is my own Church. Each of those churches accuse the other of unbelief; and for my own part, I disbelieve them all."

"The study of theology, as it stands in the Christian churches, is the study of nothing; it is founded on nothing; it rests on no principles; it proceeds by no authority; it has no data; it can demonstrate nothing; and it admits of no conclusion."

Ethan Allen, Revolutionary War Hero "I have generally been denominated a Deist, the reality of which I never disputed, being conscious I am no Christian, except mere infant baptism makes me one; and as to being a Deist, I know not strictly speaking, whether I am one or not." preface, Reason the Only Oracle of Man

Lincoln, His former law partner, William Herndon, said of him after his assassination: "[Mr. Lincoln] never mentioned the name of Jesus, except to scorn and detest the idea of a miraculous conception. He did write a little work on infidelity in 1835-6, and never recanted. He was an out-and-out infidel, and about that there is no mistake." He also said that Lincoln "assimilated into his own being" the heretical book Age of Reason by Thomas Paine.

Lincoln's first law partner, John T. Stuart, said of him: "He was an avowed and open infidel, and sometimes bordered on atheism. He went further against Christian beliefs and doctrines and principles than any man I have ever heard."

Supreme Court Justice David Davis: "He [Lincoln] had no faith, in the Christian sense of the term-- he had faith in laws, principles, causes and effects."

I could go on for page after page but I hope that is enough to give you the flavor of their 'belief' betty boop.

This Country was founded on Atheist principles, diametrically opposed to religious principles.

Apparently you have zero understanding of the Principles and Foundations of our Country.

In classical style - an atheist has to lie or cherry pick a quotation to make their point -

Adams, "This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it."

Full quote : Twenty times, in the course of my late reading, have I been on the point of breaking out, 'this would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it!!!!' But in this exclamation, I should have been as fanatical as Bryant or Cleverly. Without religion, this world would be something not fit to be mentioned in public company—I mean hell.

Note how the atheist must twist the quote to make it say what Adams didn't mean. Adams clearly appreciated religion, even if he often questioned its promotion (he didn't like the zeal of minister Bryant or Cleverly, his former teacher.

As for the rest of the 'quotes', further research would uncover similar misquotations, twisting and fabrications of context to support their 'claim' while ignoring the overwhelming number of other quotations from these same people that show that these people certainly were not atheists, nor that this country was founded on Atheist principles as lg now tries present as so-called truth.

Poorly done lg

I guess the puzzling thing for me is I do not understand the "basis" of your doubt; for it seems to me you know what the Truth is.

Like I told Godzilla, if I did I would be God. I can not be 100% certain that God exists or that he doesn't exist. To declare that I do I would lie to myself and to the whole world that I am all-knowing.

We all choose to err on the side of belief of disbelief in our uncertainty (as getoffmylawn suggested). Thus#151;in all honestly—we are all agnostic to various degrees, unless we are delusional.

Just some stray thoughts, dear kosta. (I wonder whether you realize that I truly do care for you.)

I appreciate that. Things are not as bleak as you present them, bb. I think you said it all when you wrote "For me, the important thing to remember is that God unfailingly knows His own, and will save whomever He wills.... My opinion doesn't really matter, in the end. Meanwhile, I have certain obligations WRT my neighbor, regardless of his religious affiliation or lack thereof."

Let God, then, decide who is his.

Well said. A Christian is defined as one who affirms/believes "that Jesus is one and the same God as the Father and the Spirit" and that "Jesus resurrected from the dead."

Thank you for saying that, bb.

But I do get a bit hot about atheists!

Atheism is a belief; it should not be used as a sword. The same goes for Christianity or any other religion.

The "public atheists" seem devoted to undermining the very structure and fabric of American society.... In effect, I see them as a threat to national security....

I think there are other, much more aggressive and imminent dangers facing us: radical Islam, illegal immigration, dismal economy, demographic tsunamis, political radicalization, etc. that undermine our national security and stability.

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