Noted sockpuppet and sniveler Lee Siegel warns us that the new militant atheists may be closing the book on imagination. And for some reason the LA Times saw fit to publish this tripe.
In the last few years, so many books have rolled off the presses challenging God, belief and religion itself (by Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, Victor Stenger and Christopher Hitchens, among others) that a visitor from another planet might think America was in the iron throes of priestly repression. You’d never know that we live in the age of Paris Hilton, HBO, Internet porn and flip-flops. The 17th century Catholic Church proscribed Galileo — just imagine what it would have done with the creators of “Entourage.”
Here we start out poorly. One assumes you have to object to something only when being persecuted by it. Siegel is saying we can’t object to magical thinking unless we’re undergoing an inquisition? And that Paris Hilton is the symbol of our freedom? Atheism = tolerance of trashy whores and nudity on the TV (in the US)?
…that the separation of church and state is inscribed in our Constitution; that no priest, minister or rabbi holds any top position in the federal government; and that even the state board of education in Kansas recently forbade the teaching of creationism. The Catholic Church imprisoned Galileo and hounded Voltaire and his fellow philosophers; Harris & Co., meanwhile, are dining out on their self-styled iconoclasm in every corner of the media.
It’s true, atheism, in this country, does not result in imprisonment or persecution. We call this progress. But it’s also ignoring the points made by Dawkins and Hitchens about religion’s influence around the world, real persecution of those that are different in theocratic states, and the quieter discrimination and reviling of science and reason that we must constantly be vigilant of in this country. Siegel then goes on to acknowledge the problems he spends his first paragraphs saying don’t exist, and makes the idiotic argument that books about atheism don’t do any good unless they’re designed to convert opponents.
Who, exactly, are they aimed at? Who is the ideal reader of these attacks on belief in God? Not Muslim or Christian fundamentalists, obviously, because one of the engines driving religious fundamentalism today is, precisely, a hostility toward modern science. If anyone thinks that Dawkins’ book, “The God Delusion” — with its “scientific” attempts to refute the existence of God — is going to persuade today’s religious fanatics, here or abroad, to loosen up and enjoy a little MTV, you have to ask yourself just who is “deluded.” It’s hard to imagine anyone abandoning his faith after reading Harris’ condescending polemic, or the science of Dawkins and Dennett, or Hitchens’ vitriol.
I sincerely doubt that the goal of any of these writers is conversion of people like James Dobson or Ted Haggard, and no one realistically thinks that is the objective of the books. There are such things as people without their minds made up, people on the fence, and those that would like to solidify their arguments and understanding of atheist philosophy. Clearly they are selling though, so maybe Siegel should spend less time worrying about their audience.
The attacks in the books often don’t make much sense either. For instance, Bush and his gang preach Christian values while lying us into a slaughterhouse overseas, ransacking our public coffers and ignoring social inequities and iniquities at home — and so our heroic anti-religionists attack . . . Christian values. But shouldn’t they be attacking Bush and Co.’s hypocrisy in betraying Christian values instead? Such polemics are a case of throwing the sacred bathwater out with the baby. The analytic philosophers used to call such arguments that so sorely miss the mark “category mistakes.”
Ah yes, we call this argument the “Courtier’s Reply“. The problem is clearly not religion, because Dawkins et al., aren’t writing about true religion, you know, people helping out their neighbors and working in soup kitchens. Fanaticism has nothing to do with real religion which is all sweetness and light all the time. As J.J points out, this is a straw man, because the issue isn’t the moral lessons of each religion being obeyed (although as Hitch points out many of these are highly questionable). It’s much harder to defend what Dawkins actually attacks, the improbability of the existence of deities or the supernatural.
Now so far, all we’ve seen is the usual tripe. But we haven’t really seen how far down Siegel can stoop in his criticism of the new atheists. Prepare to see, quite possibly, the most absurd and offensive arguments yet against the new atheists.
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The question this month is “Which parts of the human body could you design better?”
, are the best arguments for not engaging in debate with denialists. Now, I realize we’re not talking about scum-of-the-earth holocaust deniers here, but the fact is, the tactics and the methods are ultimately the same no matter how noble or evil the motive. Just because the motives or ideologies of the other cranks or denialists are different, doesn’t mean that they don’t have the exact same flaws in their arguments, use of evidence, or fundamental honesty. Lipstadt explains the risks then of entering into debates with deniers: