Posted on 08/02/2007 9:15:56 PM PDT by Mr. Silverback
Atheism has nearly always been with us in one form or another, but the atheists we’ve been hearing the most from lately—chiefly Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris—are a new breed. Unlike the old-school humanists, the new atheists—or anti-theists, as some of them prefer to be called—don’t want to just deny the existence of God, they want to wipe religion off the map.
Christopher Hitchens follows this pattern with his new book, belligerently titled God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. In his first chapter, called “Putting It Mildly,” Hitchens writes, “I will continue to [respect my friends’ religious traditions] without insisting on the polite reciprocal condition—which is that they in turn leave me alone.”
But this is something that religion is ultimately incapable of doing. “People of faith,” Hitchens continues, “are in their different ways planning your and my destruction, and the destruction of all . . . hard-won human attainments. . . . Religion poisons everything.”
The way Hitchens lumps all religions and all believers into one category here is typical of his tone throughout the book, and typical of anti-theists in general. They don’t argue; they yell. They’ve decided that, simply because they dislike religion, there is no reason to respect it. In their minds, it’s stupid, dangerous, and that’s all that needs to be said.
That’s why I believe the anti-theist movement, as hot as it is right now with books like Hitchens’s topping the bestseller lists, is doomed to fail. The moment you take it seriously and start to study it, it falls apart. There’s no substance, just anger and a lot of hot air. Because anti-theists simply ignore evidence and arguments they don’t like, they’re ill-equipped to deal with them rationally.
The old-guard secular humanists are questioning this new trend, and rightly so. Most traditional atheists simply had their own belief system, and if we wanted our belief system that was okay. The new breed reflects the death of truth. They’re like the communists who feared religion more than anything else because it was a competing truth claim. The Star of David and the cross have been scandalous to every totalitarian leader.
Many traditional atheists and humanists seem to recognize the parallel and feel uncomfortable about it. As Gary Wolf writes in Wired, “The New Atheists have castigated fundamentalism and branded even the mildest religious liberals as enablers of a vengeful mob. Everybody who doesn’t join them is an ally of the Taliban.”
“Even those of us who sympathize intellectually,” he writes, “don’t want the New Atheists to succeed.”
When you think about it this way, you have to wonder if the anti-theists, in their heart of hearts, are a little uncomfortable with their own beliefs. After all, if you really believe that truth will win out—and to Hitchens and company, their idea of truth is so obvious that it cannot fail to win—you can let other people make their own claims and live by their own beliefs without feeling the need to destroy everything they stand for.
Because Hitchens and the others cannot do this, their polemics are destined to lead not to the end of religion, but to the collapse of their own movement. Not before, of course, they have gotten very rich. It’s not irrelevant to the debate that Dawkins, Hitchens, and Sam Harris sold one million copies of their angry diatribes last year. At two dollars a book for royalties, that’s not bad.
Not true. There is one glaring, irreconcilable contradiction:
What did Adam and Eve bring into the world?
What has to happen for natural selection to work on any real scale?
The answer to both questions is the same: Death.
Even if a Christain believes that the first three chapters of Genesis are a fable/poem/allegory (Jesus didn't, but if you want to argue with Him that's your business) it's an essential Christian doctrine that death came into the world as a result of human separation from God, and that Christ's sacrifice was the cure for this. It's also an essential component of evolutionism that billions of inferior critters had to die in order to bring forth the guy who sat down and wrote Genesis 1-3. Well, they can't both be right.
Like I said, glaring and irreconcilable.
LOL!
Gives new meaning to autoeroticism doesn't it?
Is that what the blonde Hilton did with the hamburger and the car at a car wash? [And no, I don’t want a video of the debauche-car-y.]
I believe Rabbi Daniel Lapin made this point in “America’s Real War” (an excellent analysis of the cultural war we are in, by the way).
Never lose hope! Don’t forget-at the end of the book, we win!
bump
Somehow we all know that they aren't. They fit so well the role of the "Innovator" as described by C.S. Lewis in "the Abolition of Man".
“Me: Oh? Well, where did the material for that singularity come from in the first place? Did Harry Potter create it with his wand? And what caused the explosion? Magical Teletubbies lighting their flatulence?
This is what you are left with.”
You shouldn’t assume everyone has the same intellectual limitations that you do. There are very pragmatic and logical theories that deal with this, backed up by experimental evidence. If you had a clue about science, you would know this. I suppose you think it’s better just to wallow in your ignorance about science and attack it with nothing but outdated dogma and outright lies from prejudiced Creationist websites. Instead of making utterly ridiculous statements, why don’t you go do a web search on “vacuum fluctuation”?
This isn't new.
They called it the Soviet Union back then.
They have much bravado (stupidity) this side of eternity.
How stupid are you? Did you read the article that you linked to? Like the first sentence?
“I can’t imagine Carl Sagan...”
Huh? He wrote a book on it called “The Demon Haunted World; Science as a Candle in the Dark”. I suggest you read it and discard your superstitions.
Is that in your dissertation? Sounds like interesting research.
^5 bttt LOL!
As soon as I saw the thread title I said, Dawkins come to mind. He’s the first listed!
Uh hunh. That was a very poorly-written and confusing post, but I think I got the gist of it. Tell ya what - you keep thinking that way - and I’ll stick to using the best tool available in the search for Truth - science. Like it or not, the same tool (Science), is what gave us antibiotics, genetic engineering, surgery, radio, televison, computers, automobiles, aircraft, spaceflight, the internet, nuclear power and a host of other gifts that have made our lives healthier, longer, and far more easy to bear and enjoyable to live than in the past. What has religion ever accomplished, besides being the cause for many if not most of the bloody conflicts in human history? Which is more logical, a scientific theory based on empirical evidence or surrendering one’s will and reason to atavistic (and conflicting) dogma?
“you (and I) are far less creative than complete unintelligence.”
Hunh?
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