Why I Am Not A New Atheist.

I've said a few times that I believe that while it's a good thing that atheists are getting more outspoken, and maybe a little more combative about religion and its place in the public sphere and the hijacking of various faiths by extremists (since, let's be frank, religious moderates are not doing a good enough job of decrying this shit) I still think that secularists, agnostics, atheists and freethinkers would be wise to eschew the "new atheist movement".

Why?

Because for the most part, the "new atheists" or at least their spokesmen have a kind of whiff of fundamnetalism about them, a complete lack of respect for any viewpoint other than their own, a complete inability to see through others eyes.  

Or, to put it another way, just because Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins think there is no God doesn't stop them from being assholes who are dead on the inside.  In the former's case... do you really honestly, my atheist bretheren and sisteren and trangenderen really want to make common cause with America's Most Dishonest Opinion Writer?  Do you have any respect for any of his writings about the Iraq war?  For his constant lying about that conflict, about why we got into it, about Ahmed Chalabi?  Christopher Hitchens is a drunken propagandist who believes that the end of convincing you justifies any mean of tactics in his writing.

As for Richard Dawkins... the guy thinks that childhood fairytales are unhealthy. Only a cold, rational world for him.  I don't want that world. I like there being mysteries and creative responses to a world that frankly isn't always explainable and doesn't always make sense.  We can understand that those creative responses and those stories are just stories we made up. Making up a story doesn't make it fundamentally an evil story.

Comments

[Karl Miller]

Most Dishonest Opinion Writer? That's a high charge these days. Has Charles Krauthammer surrendered the tiara already?

I totally agree about Dawkins, but I think you're being unfair to Hitchens. He's really the least we have to worry about. Like it or not, his case for the Iraq war has always come from the simple belief that Iraq shouldn't be starved to death by a psychopathic crime family -- and I don't think that's a euphemistic way of putting it at all. Even Slavoj Zizek concedes that much. I don't know what Hitchens has written about Chalabi, but he was correct about Talabani. If you've seen the movie "Three Kings" and felt anything remotely emotional at the end of it -- any outrage for the triangulation and betrayal that marked our first adventure in Iraq, any frustration with Clinton's slow-boil genocide in the 90s -- then it's really hard to switch to the "realist" camp that says Iraq wasn't a priority after 9/11.

Mind you, this is only to explain the case for going into Iraq. I have never heard Hitchens defend Rumsfeld's shock doctrine, Blackwater, or torture. I know Hitchens can be contrarian to a fault, but he's also worked directly with the Kurds, sheltered Rushdie from the Ayatollah. If he's happy that Bush has (perhaps inadvertently) advanced these causes, I really can't blame him.

As for his atheism, Hitchens has repeatedly criticized the Dawkins-Dennet clubhouse -- mostly for building one in the first place. He finds the term "brights" to be cringe-inducing. I'm guessing you do, too.

And while we're throwing out titles, let's admit that Most Obnoxious Atheist goes to Sam Harris. Listen to the boy argue with people -- he works backwards from the same borderline-autistic vantage each time. A = A, ergo: fuck off. Talk about being dead inside! At least Hitchens can appreciate the irrational pleasures of sex, booze, and literature.

I wrote about these guys a while ago ...

http://tundratastic.blogspot.com/2008/06/altar-egos.html

... and if you're still really pissed at Hitchens, click over to watch his smack-down with Sean Hannity again.

[JD]

If you read 'Unweaving The Rainbow' you would know that Dawkins' worldview is anything but cold. Why do "mysteries" and "creative responses" have to be conflated with the insanity of theocratic dogma? Mystery doesn't mean one gets to posit a deity that comes equipped with a divine owner's manual for living.

Don't like the New Atheists? Become an Old Atheist with Carl Sagan and Samuel Clemens.

[Air Jordans]

That is too cool! thanks.*

[online loans]

Now i know you. You are on the right track.