Exposing the Intellectual Bankruptcy of Atheists Criticizing Religion

[TheRocketSurgeon]

Well, technically it is an opinion. It's just an opinion shared by 99.9999% of experts on biology and related sciences, and happens to be an opinion informed by testable hypotheses that have been proven reliable by 150 years of research. That's what the fundies always miss: there's zero inherent value to an opinion. All that matters is what was done to verify that this opinion is based on reality.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Having read the article, I find it unconvincing.

There are times that Dawkins in particular makes clumsy arguments. But I was an atheist long before any of these so-called New Atheists came out, and their writings had very little effect on my lack of faith.

I also had to laugh at the idea of using Aquinas's Five Ways to support the idea of a Roman Catholic god. Firstly, the refutations are almost as old as the arguments themselves -- if not older; and secondly, none of those ways but the fourth can conceivably support a Christian god, and the fourth is torpedoed by the assumption that if one can conceive of perfection, then it must exist.

It's polemic, not reasoned writing, as intellectually bankrupt as it asserts on the part of its targets.

[Esquilax]

On a side note, WTF is a "New Atheist" supposed to be, really? Is there any way in which the bomb-throwing of guys like Hitchens and Dawkins is distinguishable from an "old atheist" who delighted in torturing the common believers with THINKING, like, say, Robert G. Ingersoll?

A "New Atheist" is any atheist who won't grovel at the altar of apologists from centuries past. If you won't confer automatic respect to those who tried for a long ass time to define god into existence with weasel words and self serving definitions, if you have the gall to point out that all the "great thinkers" of christianity were just skipping step one and primping up their unevidenced deity with ultimately insubstantial reasons why he must exist, rather than showing that he does, then you are a "New Atheist," whose biggest crime is seeing through the veneer of respectability that religion demands by fiat, and thus must be dismissed out of hand with jeering and mockery as "unsophisticated" in theology, because the most important thing is to keep theology looking sophisticated and scholarly, rather than what it really is: not even smearing lipstick on a pig, but pretending that the pig is there to be made up in the first place.

[Aroura]

I thought "New Atheist" meant we just don't hide it anymore.  Being vocal about it.  Or even just admitting it.

What would qualify as an "Old Atheist" anyway?  Someone who you didn't know was an atheist, because they were too afraid of rejection, prejudice (and possibly death).

[IATIA]

I am an "Old Atheist". 62 y/o.

[TheRocketSurgeon]

On a side note, WTF is a "New Atheist" supposed to be, really? Is there any way in which the bomb-throwing of guys like Hitchens and Dawkins is distinguishable from an "old atheist" who delighted in torturing the common believers with THINKING, like, say, Robert G. Ingersoll?

A "New Atheist" is any atheist who won't grovel at the altar of apologists from centuries past. If you won't confer automatic respect to those who tried for a long ass time to define god into existence with weasel words and self serving definitions, if you have the gall to point out that all the "great thinkers" of christianity were just skipping step one and primping up their unevidenced deity with ultimately insubstantial reasons why he must exist, rather than showing that he does, then you are a "New Atheist," whose biggest crime is seeing through the veneer of respectability that religion demands by fiat, and thus must be dismissed out of hand with jeering and mockery as "unsophisticated" in theology, because the most important thing is to keep theology looking sophisticated and scholarly, rather than what it really is: not even smearing lipstick on a pig, but pretending that the pig is there to be made up in the first place.

Reminds me of my college roommate's best friend's mom (yes that sounds like a line from Spaceballs). When his friend came to him, because my roommate was openly gay, for advice on how to come out to his mother, the mother demanded to know who "put him up to this" when he did so. I sat there and listened to the conversation when she called him and said, "You turned my son gay!"

He calmly explained that, no, your son was always gay. I just gave him advice on how to tell you that fact. To her credit, she eventually calmed down and seemed to accept the fact that she had a gay son, and that Rick had nothing to do with "converting" him. But it was her last line that stuck with me, through all these years, and has been the source of many a chuckle when I talk to Rick, over the years. 

She said in an exasperated tone, "Well, they're just everywhere, these days."

Aside from being funny on its own, it made me think about it. Did she really think that there was a time when there were fewer gays, as opposed to people just too afraid to admit it to anyone? I hear this "New Atheist" rhetoric along the lines that Aurora pointed out... they think we're a new thing because the previous generations of atheists were not permitted (faced more reprisals than we do, nowdays, even though it is still an issue) to be open about their faith, so the majority could go along comfortably believing we were not there. That illusion has been shattered, and they react in silly ways in an attempt to protect their fragile bubble of illusion, in which the world is full of Good Christian People™, and there aren't more than a few, disgruntled heathens and homos "out there" (as opposed to in their own families, neighborhoods, etc).

My favorite example of this sort of delusion was when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claimed there were no gays in Iran.

[jenny1972]

delicates next thread called " proof atheists are scared and lazy and refuse to have a serious discussion with christians and how its christian persecution " not responding to his own thread the next should be ' this is it! i will prove you dont know what your talking about ' not even responding to ppl here lol selective vision just like they read the Bible

[abaris]

There are times that Dawkins in particular makes clumsy arguments. But I was an atheist long before any of these so-called New Atheists came out, and their writings had very little effect on my lack of faith.

I also had to laugh at the idea of using Aquinas's Five Ways to support the idea of a Roman Catholic god. Firstly, the refutations are almost as old as the arguments themselves -- if not older; and secondly, none of those ways but the fourth can conceivably support a Christian god, and the fourth is torpedoed by the assumption that if one can conceive of perfection, then it must exist.

First, same as you. I didn't need any of the atheist posterheads to become an atheist. Just common sense and school knowledge on biology and geology. Secondly, even now I'm not interested in what they have to say or, in the case of Hitchens, had to say. I don't need and don't suck up to any authority in any field. Least of all atheism, since I don't consider it a field at all. As I have said ad nauseum, it's only my absence of belief and certainly not what makes me, even less, what makes me part of any movement. To put it bluntly, outisde of this board, I don't give a single shit about my atheism.

And last, Aquinas lived in the 13th century. However liberal he may have been in his line of thought, he still was a 13th century clergyman. Part of a period, that is considered the least educated and ignorant of history.

[Iroscato]

I saw the concepts of gods and demons as the ridiculous fairy tales that they are looooong before I even knew what the word 'atheist' even meant.
Not a single, solitary argument has ever swayed me from that conviction in the 13 or so years I stopped believing since.

[Minimalist]

And last, Aquinas lived in the 13th century.

That may be a good excuse for Aquinas.  I'm far less impressed with the ignorant assholes who keep citing such medievalism as relevant today.