My contribution to the Comment is Free question is posted. One or two commenters agreed with my suggestion that I perhaps wrote a little more carefully than Ruse did. It’s funny about that – how often we encounter some I’m-an-atheist-but critic shouting wild insults and demented misrepresentations at us in the very act of telling us to stop being so wild and demented. It causes me to suspect something resembling an agenda, much as I hate to say anything so intemperate and rash.… Read the rest

An erudite thoughtful man by the name of Greg Craven, who is vice-chancellor of the Australian Catholic University, has written an elegant, reasoned, careful piece on atheism and atheists in The Age. It would persuade anyone who read it with an open mind.

From time immemorial, this world has been troubled by plagues. From bogong moths in Canberra to frogs in biblical Egypt, unwelcome and unlovely creatures have the awkward habit of turning up in bulk. Just now, we are facing one of our largest and least appealing infestations. Somewhat in advance of summer’s blowflies, we are beset by atheists.

That’s a good beginning, don’t you think? Invoking plagues, comparing atheists to moths and frogs, saying we’re unwelcome and … Read the rest

Austin Dacey considers ‘the latest critics of the new atheists: the old humanists’.

Humanists are right to think that there is more to life than atheism, but wrong to think that they are the ones to provide it. It is not the job of religion’s critics to organize a replacement.

Indeed not, especially since we wouldn’t know where to begin (which is part of Austin’s point). It’s not, after all, as if humanists and/or atheists are like theism turned inside out – carrying all the same baggage but with minus-signs replacing plus-signs; it’s not as if we come complete with our own atheist music and atheist prayers and atheist temples and atheist holidays and atheist hats. It’s also not … Read the rest

Michael Ruse really could have been a good deal more careful. It’s only manners, and it’s also only sensible – flailing at an enemy that doesn’t exist is just a waste of time. (Never mind Don Quixote – he was fun at dinner but he was a bore about the windmills.)

There are several reasons why we atheists are squabbling – I will speak only for myself but I doubt I am atypical. First, non-believer though I may be, I do not think (as do the new atheists) that all religion is necessarily evil and corrupting.

See? That’s really careless. Of course ‘the new athesits’ don’t (all) think that. I’m not sure any of them think that, but we … Read the rest

Good stuff from Jason Rosenhouse.

The problem comes when outreach to religious groups becomes a euphemism for bashing people who take a less cozy view of the science/religion issue. Pointing to the diversity of religious opinion is fine, dismissing as fringe extremists people who dissent from NOMA is not.

What I keep saying. It’s othering, and it’s othering of people who are notoriously already The People It’s Right to Despise.

I believe a long term solution to this problem does not lie in moving people towards relatively more reasonable sorts of religious belief, but rather by moving towards a society in which religious belief is accorded far less respect than it currently is. Certainly that is a very long-term

I’ve been having a long and interesting discussion with Jean about sensitivities and what one should defer to and how to figure that out.

I do think there’s a prima facie duty to defer to other people’s sensibilities. “Prima facie” means–at first glance. So the rule isn’t absolute, but it’s always in play. Sometimes a violation is “worth it” and sometimes a violation isn’t. Contrary to what Donohue evidently thinks, every transgression isn’t worth a big fuss.

After a lot of words and a lot of consideration, I’ve ended up (for the moment anyway) still fundamentally suspicious of the whole idea, albeit with exceptions for sensibilities that really do matter – around death, mourning, objects with sentimental value, that kind … Read the rest