Now it’s Michael Ruse’s turn to do the ‘atheists are evil’ routine using the numbingly familiar ‘atheists are evil’ weapon of shameless exaggeration and misrepresentation. In short, like all his pathetic allies in this tawdry campaign, he paints the people he dislikes as violent and aggressive when all in the world they are is verbally explicit.

In the past few years, we have seen the rise and growth of a group that the public sphere has labeled the “new atheists” – people who are aggressively pro-science, especially pro-Darwinism, and violently anti-religion of all kinds…

‘Violently’ – in the sense of coming right out and saying that they think religion is a bad thing in many ways. That’s a pretty … Read the rest

Jason Rosenhouse points out another way of looking at the matter:

What is so significant about the New Atheist books is the sheer volume of books that they sold. They have revealed that to a far greater extent than was previously realized, there is a hunger in America for books written from a non-religious perspective. That is a momentous accomplishment, and one that should warm the hearts of anyone who cares about promoting science and reason.

Quite; and in doing that, they have also made it easier for atheists to be frankly as opposed to covertly atheists. That too is a momentous accomplishment, and a useful one. That is one reason it is irritating to have reactionaries telling us … Read the rest

The twins are back with a vengeance. They are worse than ever. It is as if they have swallowed some terrible slow-acting Kool-aid that is dissolving their brains in tiny increments. Where will they be by October?! Curled on the floor drooling?

It’s the same old thing, only worse – the sequiturs more non, the rhetoric more cranked up and deceptive, the petulance and finger-pointing more brazen.

…assault on their faith…straight into a world of moral depravity and meaninglessness…in-your-face atheist touting evolution…unending polarization around evolution and religion…

Pause to note that Mooney and Kirshenbaum themselves are working energetically and overtime to foster and increase the very ‘unending polarization’ they complain of.

…no tolerating nonscientific beliefs…attack and belittle religious believers,