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.

In fact the whole John 3:3-4 is suspect because such pun, even if it were, could not have been understood as such by Nicodemus in Aramaic because in Aramaic the word 'from above' and 'again' are not even close. And it's a real stretch to even imply that Jesus used a really strange Greek hyperbole to a member of the Sanhedrin.

John made it up...

Your point that the word anothen means "from above, from the top" can be freely granted without reading into the passage everything else you are reading into it. And as far as a highly educated Nicodemus not understanding a Greek concept, if indeed that was what Jesus was using, at other times when it suits your purpose you tell us how Hellenized the Jews were. Most Jews lived life as participants in both cultures. Your conclusion that John made it up is overreaching, considering the little amount of evidence you have presented in support of it.

Robertson's Word Pictures of the New Testament
John 3:3

Except a man be born anew (ean mh tiv gennhthi anwten).: Another condition of the third class, undetermined but with prospect of determination. First aorist passive subjunctive of gennaw. Anwten. Originally "from above" (Mark 15:38), then "from heaven" (John 3:31), then "from the first" (Luke 1:3), and then "again" (palin anwten, Galatians 4:9). Which is the meaning here? The puzzle of Nicodemus shows (deuteron, verse 3:4) that he took it as "again," a second birth from the womb. The Vulgate translates it by renatus fuerit denuo. But the misapprehension of Nicodemus does not prove the meaning of Jesus. In the other passages in John (3:31; 19:11,23) the meaning is "from above" (desuper) and usually so in the Synoptics. It is a second birth, to be sure, regeneration, but a birth from above by the Spirit.

[emphasis mine]

Cordially,

That was one occasion friend, one occasion. And on that occasion Jesus was not looking to preach to those moneylenders but to prove a point — that the house of God is to be kept holy. This is a different case

Though I do not think as Christians we should ever be mean and hateful towards anyone, we are given commands from Scripture about how to treat the unbeliever. First of all, we should do all things to the glory of God, whether in word or deed. We should also be ready always to give an answer to anyone who asks us, in gentleness and with respect. However, we must come out from the ungodly world system and be separate. We are told in Ephesians 5:11-12:

And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them. For it is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret.

We must also do as Timothy was exhorted in II Timothy 4:1-4:

In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I give you this charge: Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction. For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.

We should always treat others with respect because we do not ever know how God is working in their hearts, but we should NEVER shy away from rebuking and reproving false teachings. Also, we should know when to walk away from those who refuse to hear the Gospel after many attempts. There are many, sadly, who will go to their graves hating the very idea of God. We would do well to note them and pray for their repentance, but we should avoid "foolish and unlearned questions", "profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called" and "foolish controversies and genealogies and arguments and quarrels about the law, because these are unprofitable and useless". All wise and helpful advice, I think.

So, you are saying Jesus was speaking sophsiticated Greek to a member of Sanhedrin? That's novel.

Your own example shows that anothen never meant "again". In fact it mentions that Paul uses is in a single instance together with palin (which mean again)in a rather curious way:

again

palin

palin anothen,/b>] to be in bondage?" [Gal 4:9]

And as far as a highly educated Nicodemus not understanding a Greek concept, if indeed that was what Jesus was using

Nicodemus' reaction is simply non sequitur. It is a real mystery how Nicodemus, assuming he understood Greek, could have (mis)understood genneti anothen as "born again" (or better yet "born anew") rather than "born from above".

at other times when it suits your purpose you tell us how Hellenized the Jews were

I never said all Jews were Hellenized. The Jews in the dispersion, in Asia Minor and Egypt (Alexandria) were thorgoughly Hellenized; not the Palesitnian Jews.

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