I'm kinda busy -
but as a quick response, the article is pretty dismal.

First up, I'm not sure about all the faff concerning "new atheism": I think that that's just a label that's caught on, and possibly not one that's all that useful.

Now, noone thinks that atheism demands pure rationality and nothing else besides. That'd be nuts, and would exclude all kinds of valuable things like friendship and love. Atheism is just as happy with the non-rational as with the rational. So the article is fighting a straw man on this. It also fails with its Ayn Rand analogy: maybe she was an atheist, but noone takes her seriously as a thinker; the fact that she's hopeless, though, doesn't dent atheism in the slightest.

The charge that atheism, like religion, blatantly selects is methodology to suit the conclusions it wants is simply false; the methodological naturalism that underpins atheism demands, on the contrary, that we reject our intuitions if the evidence is against them. When people do turn propagandist, they get torn a new one - and rightfully so.

The writer of the article demonstrates his incompetence when he treats feminism and postmodernism as unified doctrines. They aren't, and a reasonably decent undergrad should be able to say why. Moreover, the wilder claims of PoMo and feminism have been, and continue to be, lampooned - look up the Sokal hoax as wonderful evidence for this. None of this can be said for any religion.

When people try to enlist moral claims as support for atheism, they go wrong, by the way. The moral arguments won't influence the metaphysical or ontological ones. They can't.

Atheism is not a creed: it is a result of methodological naturalism. Hence to call it a "stealth religion" is utter bunk. There is no central belief, unless you want to call a committment to evidence a belief. If you do, then there's no hope for you.



Look - I'm not happy about defending atheism, just because I don't want to fall into the trap - set by your article - of treating it as an -ism. It ain't any such thing. There's no point in defending atheism to theists, because the belief in anything supernatural is so obviously hokey that to dignify it with a full engagement is simply an overreaction.

I could go on like this for hours, but I have to go...



Short answer: there're about three words in that item that didn't make me want to punch the writer.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Wed 11 Nov 2009, 13:51, 1 reply, 16 years ago)

tl;dr

( crackhouseceilidhband Fuck off back to Mumsnet, Wed 11 Nov 2009, 14:02, Reply)

I haven't read the article
but as long as it advocates the general awesomeness of kittens, where's the harm?
( Davros' Granddad a voice of calm reason in a world of spastics., Wed 11 Nov 2009, 14:13, Reply)

^This ffs.

( girlinthehole, Wed 11 Nov 2009, 14:14, Reply)

Fuck off you fluffy tosser.
I hope you drown in custard and huggles.
(Bazongaloid, Wed 11 Nov 2009, 14:14, Reply)

*waves tomato at DG*

( crackhouseceilidhband Fuck off back to Mumsnet, Wed 11 Nov 2009, 14:17, Reply)

omato its
(Bazongaloid, Wed 11 Nov 2009, 14:18, Reply)

AAAAAARRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!
*runs from tomato*
( Davros' Granddad a voice of calm reason in a world of spastics., Wed 11 Nov 2009, 14:21, Reply)

omato its
(Bazongaloid, Wed 11 Nov 2009, 14:22, Reply)

Are you calling me a gay?
You big hat wearing beardy cavalier.

I'd never run from tits, NEVER!
( Davros' Granddad a voice of calm reason in a world of spastics., Wed 11 Nov 2009, 14:25, Reply)