Posts Tagged ‘
“New” atheism ’
Jun 7th, 2012 3:45 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
Also – I have a new gig. I get to be a columnist for The Freethinker.
Cutting”, “abrasive”, “sarcastic”, “offensive” … These are just some of the words used to describe the Freethinker magazine, which was launched in Britain in 1881 and has continued publishing without a break ever since. But it was the word “blasphemous”, dropped from the lips of a hostile judge, that that got its founder and first editor G.W. Foote into serious trouble. As a result mainly of irreligious cartoons published in the Christmas, 1882, edition, the judge declared the issue “blasphemous” and Foote was sentenced to 12 months’ imprisonment with hard labour.
But the magazine, under caretaker editor Edward E Aveling, kept rolling off
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(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog
Tags: "New" atheism, FTB, The Freethinker
Apr 27th, 2011 5:18 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
Why can’t they, asks “interfaith” atheist (don’t ask me, I don’t know how that works) Chris Stedman via a guest post on his blog by someone called Karla McLaren. He says “It’s a hugely informative and clear-eyed assessment of the state of the atheist movement.” I don’t agree. I think it’s just the 14 millionth installment of “new atheists are bad and mean ick.”
Atheism, McLaren informs us, is more visible thanks to those books by the four New Ones, or as she calls them, “the Fractious Four.” Yes really.
I call them the Fractious Four, which has a cool superhero ring to it (even though their superpower is to argue with everybody).
Dawkins, Hitchens, and Harris have written polemics
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Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
207 comments
Tags: "New" atheism, Be quieter, The backlash
Apr 26th, 2011 12:52 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
Stephanie Z has an excellent comment on Josh Rosenau’s post about how I’m totally wrong about what he means by “the New Atheism.”
It’s worth remembering where this debate came from. Atheists, only recently starting to stand up and be counted in any number, are seeing the people who have been saying the same things that atheists have been saying for centuries (as noted in comment 5, then largely ignored) being told to hush up because they’re being noticed for once and that’s making trouble. These are frequently also the people who gave your rank-and-file atheist the courage to come out and who provide sympathy when coming out results in the crap it always results in. But hush, because what
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Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
49 comments
Tags: "New" atheism, Be quieter, The backlash
Mar 11th, 2011 11:28 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Rabbi David Wolpe pretends to be mystified that atheists find theism irritating.
How harmless is it to post an article about why people should read the bible on a site devoted to religion? I did on this very page, and it evoked more than 2,000 responses, most of them angry…
It is curious that a religion site draws responses mostly from atheists, and that the atheists are very unhappy…Only the untutored assume that religious people predominate on websites (Huffington Post Religion page, On Faith in the Washington Post, Beliefnet.com) devoted to religion.
He thinks a section of a website is itself a website, or he pretends to think that so that he can claim that the religion section of … Read the rest
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
35 comments
Tags: "New" atheism, Religious bullying, Why are atheists so angry?
Oct 17th, 2010 11:57 am |
By Ophelia Benson
The gnu atheist-haters have been having a busy weekend. Yesterday Michael Ruse told us, after saying that he took Philip Kitcher’s article seriously even though he disagreed with it, and wouldn’t be writing about it if he didn’t –
(Actually, as a general rule that is just not true. I write about the New Atheists, even though I don’t think their position is worth taking seriously at all. Or rather, I accept many of the conclusions, but I think the arguments are lousy. But I write about the New Atheists because I think their hateful attitude towards believers is a potential force for great social and moral evil.)
And today Julian Baggini told us about the way atheism is … Read the rest
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
55 comments
Tags: "New" atheism, Evil atheists, The backlash
Oct 14th, 2010 12:33 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
There’s a funny little sub-group of gnu atheist-hating atheists, who claim to find gnu atheists stupid and worthless and contemptible beyond belief, yet can’t stop talking about them. I’ve started making bets with myself. “She says this is enough about the gnu atheists for now…but I bet she won’t be able to ignore that post by Jason Rosenhouse.” I’ve been winning all my bets. The sub-group is very predictable. They’re like “You’re Not Helping” that way – after awhile I knew what YNH was going to be talking about next, and YNH always obliged.
They hate hate hate certain gnu atheists – and oh man do they hate the “gnu atheists” joke – yet those very gnu atheists set … Read the rest
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
66 comments
Tags: "New" atheism, Gnu atheism, The backlash
Jul 10th, 2010 12:50 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
Are the few people who commented on JK’s post on the Toxic Sock affair really (though metaphorically) “participants in [a] witch-hunt” and “the 21st century, virtual-world, equivalent of a medieval mob baying for the blood their latest victim”?
No.
I can see why they (we – I was one) look like a crowd, because there are quite a few comments and they are critical and sometimes hostile. On the other hand, there are only (if I counted correctly) 23 people total, not counting Jean, and a few of them are friendly; there’s a total of 63 comments. So a rush of mostly-critical comments, yes; a mob baying for blood, no.
But more to the point: are we the Bad People? … Read the rest
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
184 comments
Tags: "New" atheism, Be quieter, Chris Mooney, The backlash
Jun 17th, 2010 11:21 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Backlash against “new” atheists, chapter 479,811.
We were initially surprised that our co-authored book, Unscientific America, was so strongly attacked for observing that scientists should strive to improve their skills at public communication–and that this probably includes not alienating potential religious allies or mainstream America. But in a sense, the attacks made a kind of sense. Mostly, they came from those for whom this advice ran contrary to their particular project of denouncing much of America and the world for alleged ignorance and superstition–the New Atheists.
That’s “backlash” because it’s untrue, and distorted, and misleading. It’s dishonest and unreasonable, and those qualities make it backlash as opposed to disagreement or criticism. It is of course entirely possible to … Read the rest
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
64 comments
Tags: "New" atheism, Accommodationism, Be quieter, Chris Mooney, The backlash
May 31st, 2010 11:02 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Andrew Brown spots another opportunity to piss on “the new atheism” and pounces on it with his usual cheerful malice.
…the new atheism, with its constant use of “religion” as a term which means something (nasty) is an attempt at social construction. In particular it’s an attempt to make fresh deep boundaries between ingroup and outgroup.
Yes, in some senses, and partly. But one could say the same thing about the civil rights movement; about science; about feminism; about scholarship; about liberalism; about conservatism; about any human endeavor with actual specific articulated ideas or truth-claims. And it might and should occur to Brown that religion too is very often an attempt to make fresh deep boundaries between ingroup and outgroup, … Read the rest
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
7 comments
Tags: "New" atheism, Be quieter, The backlash
May 24th, 2010 12:32 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
Karl Giberson explains about political science in the US and what it means for how we have to behave:
America has a complex and enduring commitment to pluralism. We want people to be free to act — and believe — as they please. But we must all play in the same sandbox, so we are attentive to the idiosyncrasies of our playmates, especially when they don’t make sense to us.
By “attentive” it turns out he means we don’t disagree with them, and by “idiosyncrasies” it turns out he means beliefs, no matter how unreasonable and arbitrary and evidence-free. So we must all play in the same sandbox, meaning, apparently, that we must all spend our lives three inches from … Read the rest
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
38 comments
Tags: "New" atheism, Accommodationism, Be quieter, Karl Giberson, The backlash
Apr 27th, 2010 9:15 am |
By Ophelia Benson
It gets more and more tedious, but it can’t be helped – or it can be helped but it shouldn’t be. The relentless brainless dishonest denigration of “New” atheists has to be shown up for what it is every damn time it happens. It may be futile to say “That’s a lie, and that is, and that is, and that’s another”; it may just entrench the lies even deeper (depressingly, there is research that indicates this is what happens); but it has to be done, if only for the record. (What record? Oh shut up.)
Michael McGhee, Comment is Free (sugar and tea, rainbows at sea, la de da dee).
I am not a believer. I incline towards a secular
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Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
14 comments
Tags: "New" atheism, Religious bullying, The backlash
Apr 25th, 2010 12:36 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
It reminds me of the old Bugs Bunny line – “Of course you know, this means war.”
This means war. The grotesque punishment meted out to Harry Taylor might as well be an official government announcement that atheists have no rights.
It is a common accusation that the “new” atheists are bullies who gang up on poor innocent bystanders like Mooney and De Dora and other Be Quieters.
Well – not so fast. Let’s pause and consider. Who exactly is bullying whom?
Which is the majoritarian view? Which is the conventional wisdom? Atheism? Hardly. No, the majoritarian conventional wisdom is, at the very least, that religion deserves an almost infinite amount of “respect” and that any atheist who falls short … Read the rest
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
40 comments
Tags: "New" atheism, Be quieter, Freedom of speech, Secularism
