Jeff Sparrow on the need to save ourselves from the sickishness of the New Atheists

[Minimalist]

What makes them "missionaries?"  Daring to speak up with stuff that religitards don't like?

Tough shit.

[abaris]

What makes them "missionaries?"  Daring to speak up with stuff that religitards don't like?

Tough shit.

You're not that dense as you make it seem. You probably have listened to Harris and read what he has to say.

Get the distinction, of do I really have to spell it out?

[Neo-Scholastic]

The writer lost me when he started labeling Dawkins and Hitchens with left-wing approved insults. I have come to believe that reflexively calling others racist, bigoted homophobic, sexist haters use those accusations as cover for their irrational and hypocritical hate of those with differing opinions. Nevertheless, the New Atheists bore me to tears. I cannot take them seriously. Everything of theirs that I have read displays ignorance of the religious traditions that they criticize and their lack of self-reflection.

[Minimalist]

What makes them "missionaries?"  Daring to speak up with stuff that religitards don't like?

Tough shit.

You're not that dense as you make it seem. You probably have listened to Harris and read what he has to say.

Get the distinction, of do I really have to spell it out?

No.  I've read Letter to a Christian Nation and I don't see him moving into a village of peaceful xtians and boring the shit out of them with anti-jesus fantasies or knocking on their doors and waving a fucking bible under their noses.  If they don't want to read his book, don't read it.

The problem with xristards is that merely knowing of the existence of a book which disputes their horseshit is enough to send (some of) them in paroxysms of rage.  My answer remains the same: Tough shit.  Grow up, boys.  It's the 21st century...not the second.

[Whateverist]

Instead they bemoan the lack of respect they get in academia.

This is what happens when your ideas do not comport with reality.

I've been arguing for them to scale down their God and to place him in the natural world where His only true importance -to our lives- can make sense.  No takers yet.  But I'm selling cheap.

[Whateverist]

Here's the difference they don't like:

Yeah, but that isn't the reality. The ones being called New Atheists are often missionaries. And I for one don't care for missionaries, regardless if they're spewing shit in favor of religion or for any other cause.

Simplistic, far removed from reality and ultimately not what this is about. Show me one atheist staying quiet when challenged. The difference being if you're riding Rosinante into the ban all religions challenge and want to force atheism down everyone's throat without consent. It also presents the false image of an organised community. I for one have nothing in common with many atheists, aside from not believing.

I feel you.  I'm also a known sympathizer.  But I find I have plenty in common with some atheists, and any disconnect seems to be as much because of my curmudgeonly unwillingness to go along to get along over the small stuff.  But I find plenty to like and plenty of like minded among the godless.

The thing that separates me is my willingness to acknowledge an inward sense of helpful otherness.  Now I attribute that to the unconscious and find it both valuable and comforting in its way.  But I know there are plenty in the nothing-but what you have evidence for camp, regardless of the phenomenology of ones inward experience.  Either I'm too loose or others are too self censoring, but I know whose side I'm on.  

[Brian37]

Marx was right in his skepticism of religion, but I fail to see how that means today's atheists are going to repeat the oppression Stalin, and even then, he still did not reject all forms of religion existing under him. The Russian Orthodox church was key to his support in WW2, and lets not forget that Hitler's Germany was Christian as well.

There is no such thing as "New Atheists". This is the same horrible tactic liberal and Moderate Muslims use to silence criticism of the Hadiths and the Quran, and they do so even when the critics are those who left Islam and the Arab states. Those like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and Ex Muslims of North America.

Skepticism existed in antiquity too, Epicurus, Socrates. The Age Of Enlightenment brought us the idea of western secular law.

Now, if they think atheists won't shoot down fellow atheists, the few that may be, if one were to call for oppression of theists, most atheists I consider sane WILL and do shoot them down. But it is flat out false to claim atheists want force or genocide to end religion. Certainly we think you don't need religion, and we know science does not prop up any holy book. But it does not make us monsters for being blunt or blasphemous. We will NOT barbecue your kittens, or rape your women or stick you in ovens.

[Whateverist]

The only thing that makes the new atheists new, as I read it, is the times we live in and the diminished state of religious institutions.  

When they're already on their knees may not be the most gallant time to go for the jugular.  Given their own time perhaps they'll make some compromise with the modern world which will mean more coming from themselves than the moron-shaming we could hand out.

[Brian37]

The writer lost me when he started labeling Dawkins and Hitchens with left-wing approved insults. I have come to believe that reflexively calling others racist, bigoted homophobic, sexist haters use those accusations as cover for their irrational and hypocritical hate of those with differing opinions. Nevertheless, the New Atheists bore me to tears. I cannot take them seriously. Everything of theirs that I have read displays ignorance of the religious traditions that they criticize and their lack of self-reflection.

Exactly who have Dawkins, or Hitchens insulted? I can go with "offended" but as Hitchens put it "I hope I never unintentionally offend anyone". Bigotry, sexism, homophobia, and religiously justified violence DO need offending.

No it is not a reflex, it is an apt response to bullshit. Now, this is where my well intended PC atheists AND theists go wrong. THIS IS ABOUT logic, not human rights. And the kneejerk "bigot" slur is on the left's part to their own fellow liberals, like me, like Dawkins and Hitchens. 

Liberal atheists DO NOT accuse all religious people of being bigots, but holy books do contain stories, depictions, and verses that allow other believers to come to different interpretations who DO use those claims as weapons that justify harm to their fellow humans.

The part the left misses, is that it is STILL the same umbrella religion, with the same characters both left and right worship. And with all the different versions of the bible and all the different sub sects of Christianity those different interpretations DO cause conflict to the point of harming others, via law and or violence.

How you wish others would behave does not change the positions they hold. How you wish others would pick up the same book you pick up and do things the way you do, because of how you interpret that book, DOES NOT CHANGE others see other things it it and justify their own morality WITH that same book under the same umbrella label.

No Christian reading this has any problem saying that the Quran is the same book BOTH Sunni's and Shiites use. So it stands to reason that a GOP voting Baptist Evangelical is STILL worshiping the same God and same Jesus that a liberal Obama voting baptist is, and still using the same version. Just like a liberal Catholic is still using the same KJV a conservative Catholic is.

As long as humans compete over the same religions an same books and insist on different interpretations it is most certainly a requirement to question, ridicule and even blaspheme, not to rid religion via use of force, but to keep it off it's pedestal. PC is what Iran is, PC is what Saudi Arabia is.

[abaris]

I feel you.  I'm also a known sympathizer.  But I find I have plenty in common with some atheists, and any disconnect seems to be as much because of my curmudgeonly unwillingness to go along to get along over the small stuff.  But I find plenty to like and plenty of like minded among the godless.

Let me put it this way, atheists often have similar values as I. The point I was trying to make is, atheism, for me, means individuality and the absence of any group. I don't define myself over atheism and I'm as skeptical of persons who do as I am of fervently religious individuals. The tendency to turn everything into an ideology is a strong human trait. And with ideological thinking comes the need to force the own opinions and views on others.