The Shorter Anti-Dawkins
By Mitch Berg
Atheists can’t be trusted with political power. Indeed, they must be suppressed because they are intellectual descendants of Stalin, Hitler, Mao and Pol Pot – atheists who murdered among them at least 55,000,000 people. It is by these people and their legacies that atheism must be judged, and judged without mercy.
Thus, atheism must be excised from public life. It should be regarded as the sick aberration it is. The souls of 55,000,000 dead demand it.
No, not really. Let me assure my athest friends that, though I disagree with them and find no intellectual basis for atheism, I will defend their right to be politically heard.
Which is more than your men Dawkins and Harris, leaders of the new radical (I say “fundamentalist” or “wahabbi”) atheism will do for me!
I invoke the two of them, by the way, since their entire “judgement” of religion seems to be based on similar strawmen; choosing the Moslem Cartoon Rioters and Eric Rudolph and the 9/11 hijackers and Pat Robertson as the sole true representatives of faith.
This is written, by the way, just after hearing Brooke Gladstone’s fawning interviews with Dawkins and Harris on last weekend’s “On the Media”. While OTM is the biggest and most-biased waste of tax money on the air today, last weekend’s piece on fundamentalist atheism’s drive for a better media image was worse than most, citing those great theological resources Steven Colbert (speaking of wastes) and the TV drama House (which I loved the first time I saw – when it was called “Doctor Perry Cox” on Scrubs, played by John C. McGinley).
Who could possibly argue?
August 21st, 2007 at 1:38 pm
Pat Robertson isn’t so bad. A little goofy. Okay real goofy, but he did send 7 semi-truckloads of relief supplies to New Orleans on the first day of the tragedy. That was 2+ days before the Democrats decided it was all Bush’s fault.
And fundamentalists athiets scare the hell out of me.
August 21st, 2007 at 5:09 pm
Dawkins has scientific credentials. Hitchens has literary credentials. Harris’s bio, on the other hand, screams ‘charlatan’. He is famous only for promoting the cause of atheism.
Here’s an interesting paragraph from a WaPo story on Harris:
Most of his bio’s say that Harris is a ‘graduate in philosophy’ without specifying exactly what kind of a graduate he is. He apparently attended Stanford as an English major for two years in the mid 80’s, dropped out for eleven years, went back to stanford in ’97 and started a different major (philosophy), graduating in 2001 with – – what? an MA or a BA?
He claims to be doing doctorate level research in something (neuroscience or philosophy, your choice) at an institution somewhere. If he’s ever produced any scholarly work I could find no trace of it on the web.
August 21st, 2007 at 5:18 pm
Atheists define themselves by what they don’t believe in. In order to justify themselves they must deny. That lack of affirmation must be grim. The thought that Man is the summit of existence is downright depressing.
August 21st, 2007 at 9:51 pm
It would be hard for an article on this blog to be more scurrilous, more profane, I’m sure you’ll prove me wrong though.
Saying someone lacks intellectual basis for not having faith is perhaps the most oxymoronic comment I’ve ever read, anywhere.
Faith is, by definition, the belief in something without proof.
Many good, brilliant, and committed theologic scholars would claim anyone needing proof of divinity is lacking in the fundamental essence of what they are called to strive for.
From that it is both logical and and easy path to say, those who look for proof, or don’t believe, are engaging in the use of intellect over spirit.
Someone who claims to KNOW there is no god, to be able to prove such, beyond all doubt, is engaging in another kind of faith, to be sure, but to claim that it is insufficient in it’s intellectual basis, is saying that belief in god has substantial intellectual basis, meaning you look for such, have found such, please be ever so kind to point out your proof, proof that has eluded most of the faithful for thousands of years, and then, when you do, turn in your ‘faithful’ badge, and start your ‘church of evidence’ whilst the rest of us shake our collective heads at your need for evidence, at your claims thereof besides. Is there some hints at evidence, sure, and we, because we have faith, look to those as maybe having some meaning. All of use would LOVE proof – and we believe becuase we desire to, in the resurrection, in Grace, but there is NO real proof. Beyond that, Kermit (et.al.) if you seriously expect someone to prove that God doesn’t exist, well – that’s disproving a negative, and you’re smarter than to even ask that if you stop and pause a moment. It’s your claim they define themselves by what they don’t believe in, they define themselves as believing in evidence, and not in lack of it. They demand evidence, they demand intellectual and tangible proofs, THEY HAVE NO FAITH in god – that’s the point.
All that said, anyone who would say that someone who sees the evils of religion is a wahabbist, beyond that being further proof that your hate speech is way beyond ‘alleged’, well, it’s ugly. Not new of course, but ugly. Mitch has needlessly debased the discussion (beyond his oxymoronic statement) into nothing much different than calling them nazis, but with different, and equally repulsive words, simply because they lack faith, and have the audacity to point out that the Church, like the United States, is hardly a perfect entity – whether we mean the Catholic Church, or just religion (organized) in general. I am mature enough to recognize that fact and reply, “and yet, it does sooooo many good things, including engeandering a decent and compassionate ideal in billions of people” (including MUSLIMS btw). I can recognize my country, when lead by people who lack moral character, has embraced evil, tyrannical governments, that doesn’t make the country evil, it makes those leaders bad, unethical people. The heart and intent of the people is generally very sound, very decent, that’s a lot to love, but it’s not perfect, it elects people like Bush, or Clinton if you like. It engages in warfare like the Spanish American War – a putup job – but that does not mean it is bad – it means it has strengths and weaknesses. Mitch calls such talk “hate America”, I call it being adult enough to admit to truth. The same can be said about the Church, Catholic priests molest children, it’s a vile thing, and maybe if the Church allowed marraige it would happen less, but fundamentally, this is the issue of the INDIVIDUAL, the Church didn’t really condone this, they turned a blind eye when they should not have, but they certainly don’t suggest it. The point is, saying what I’ve just said hardly HARDLY makes me in league with mass muderers, yet that’s PRECISELY what Mitch’s words can be easily seen as invoking. I’m sure it was really meant as hyperbole (as Mitch loves hyperbole and , btw, so do I) to mean that these were extremists who claimed to have proven there is no God, which would be an extremist stance, IF THEY HAD DONE SO, but they didn’t, they have said, there is no meaningful proof, there is no tangible intellectual basis, and therefore they don’t believe, and more, because of the evils organized religion has fallen into at times, they find the whole concept offensive.
Perhaps, when viewed from that standpoint, we can say “Ok, I heard your comments, I think you’re dead wrong – but you’re right about at least the facts that there isn’t proof, and bad men have used religion poorly, but I don’t need proof, and good men (and women) have also done marvelously wonderful things, have allowed, in our view, god to manifest himself in them, and we, politely, do not believe there is either proof of his existence, nor proof of his non-existence, and so, we find your position not much more than faith if your position is that God definitevely does not exist” Why we can’t say that, instead of the ugly, moronic comments said here, well I guess that goes to the idea that we don’t really walk the walk very well too many times, now do we?
August 21st, 2007 at 10:10 pm
peevish, the pills only help when you take them
August 22nd, 2007 at 12:28 am
peevish, have you ever read Dawkins? Mitch’s commentary is dead on as a parody of Dawkins’ methods and argumentation, to say nothing of the venous tone that he uses.
And his core insistance that science “proves” that there is no God is as much a leap of faith as believing that there is one. The scientific method is essentially an inductive structure that, based on historical evidence, attempts to form a hypothesis to predict future ones. As such, it is unable to predict or subscribe to the “miraculous.” At best, you can use the scientific method to “prove” agnosticism by using the scientific method as your belief system; you simply cannot use it to prove aethism.
On the other hand, even the hardest core scientists realize that their understanding of reality is at best limited and all scientific theories are subject to revision. As Ernest Rutherford said, “You should never bet against anything in science at odds of more than about 10 or 12 to 1.”
August 22nd, 2007 at 1:48 am
(Assuming your post wasn’t written with tongue planted firmly in cheek)Oh, don’t be so hard on us right-wing/lapsed-Lutheran/Tibetan Buddhist atheists, Mitch. Some of us just don’t believe in a higher power/afterlife (or the “miracles” of central planning or totalitarian communist butchery).
You are right about Wahabbi(the correct term is “Salafi”, you kafir! Al’ham dul’lah. . .)atheists, though. People like Harris throw around a lot of straw men, accusing Christians of trying to drive school buses by (Chaldean?) magic or some such.
You really should’ve included Christopher Hitchens in your critique, though. While I’m technically an atheist, it’s really beyond silly to blame Josef Stalin’s reign of terror on the Russian Orthodox Church (what next- Mao’s “Great Leap Forward” a byproduct of Confucianism? The Killing Fields of the Khmer Rouge simply Theravada Buddhism gone a bit awry?). . .
August 22nd, 2007 at 2:15 am
Dawkins would do well to follow the advice of Wittgenstein on metaphysics:
“Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muß man schweigen.”
August 22nd, 2007 at 2:41 am
The little I’ve read of Dawkins and Hitchens would have been laughed out of the room by a High School English teacher. For people who act like they own the copyright on the word “logic,” they sure do commit a lot of logical fallacies.
Good call on noting that House is basically a rip off of Dr. Cox. They even did an episode on it.
Funny that they mention that South Park episode, when I thought the episode where atheists were sitting around spouting platitudes while taking breaks to crap out of their mouths was far more damning.
As for Colbert, who is a Catholic by the way, wear a mask for long enough and it becomes your face.
August 22nd, 2007 at 9:29 am
PB,
Do you have the faintest idea…:
I’m guessing:
Do try to understand the question before you go off on another one of your ill-informed rants.
Thanx!
August 22nd, 2007 at 9:32 am
BuddaPat,
You are correct – and the opening was both tongue-in-cheek and, as noted by another perceptive commenter, an homage to the overheated, hateful rhetoric you get from the likes of Dawkins and Harris.
August 22nd, 2007 at 10:30 am
Hitchens is a special case. Unlike Dawkins, Hitchens really does believe in metaphysics.
In a recent debate Hitchens confessed to believing in the numinous — a word which means, roughly, a commingling of spirit with the absolute Other. It is difficult to reconcile the numinous with atheism. He used the word to describe his reaction to great works of art. As an example he mentioned Philip Larkin’s poem “Church Going”, which records the thoughts of an atheist while he explores a ruined church. It contains these lines:
It’s not religion per se that bothers Hitchens, it’s the moral authority claimed by religion that Hitchens reviles, and this because he considers it beneath his own.
August 22nd, 2007 at 7:21 pm
PB busts out. It’s just like the old 30 paragraph nobody read days.
Yippee!