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7.29.2008


Cleaning our own houses


Matt Dillahunty from The Atheist Experience is a consistently good representative of what a modern atheist should be. He knows the Bible inside and out, he knows his logic inside and out and he has no problem whatsoever with taking other atheists to task when they're wrong.


Recently on the blog for The Atheist Experience, he's done just that. A fellow atheist emailed him about an exchange with Ray Comfort (of Banana Nightmare fame) over a bumper sticker available on Comfort's site. The emailer turns out to be Patrick Greene. Greene has a reputation for being the squeaky wheel looking for some grease. He is threatening Comfort with a lawsuit if he doesn't remove this "offensive" anti-atheist bumper sticker from his site.


So on the blog and the latest show, Matt took Patrick out to the wood shed. You can't go around trying to silence people who have a different opinion. Patrick is playing into the hands of people like Comfort when he gets upset and aggressive about a stupid bumper sticker. Patrick tries feebly to fight back, but doesn't seem to get it.


I've said it before and I'll say it again. I don't give a free pass to anyone who's an atheist just because they agree with me on one topic. People come to the same conclusion for wildly different reasons. It's not always a measure of intelligence or good judgment or much of anything. If we don't keep our own shit straight, we can't criticize others for failing to do so.

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posted by Sacrilegium

at 9:20 AM Permalink

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7.01.2008


David Mills: Atheist Universe - The Thinking Person's Answer To Christian Fundamentalism

While I find myself in agreement with most of Mills' points, it's basically "Refuting Fundies 101." There's nothing wrong with that, and given how many times Pascal's fucking Wager comes up in debates it's probably necessary for some folks. It didn't have much new to offer me personally, and I doubt most fundies would be convinced. At least it would let them know we've heard their arguments so they're gonna have to come up with something more persuasive.

On the plus side, the language is simple and accessible. This isn't The Ancestor's Tale, so you won't get a constant biology lesson or have to re-read chapters in order to grasp the details. This is more for fence-sitters or for creationists wondering what the materialist response is to their main arguments. I did find his explanation of the fossil record (and of the creationist denial regarding it) simple and effective.

In listening to a radio interview with Mills recently, he took some flack from callers for singling out Christianity. Why didn't he attack Islam? They believe wacky things too, and they kill people over it. Fair enough, but you tend to write what you know. This book is about Christian fundamentalism. Islamic fundamentalism is a whole different can of worms.

A better refutation of Islamic fundamentalism is found in Dawkins' works, which have the advantage of providing the materialist explanation for our world. This trumps the spiritual paradigm as a whole, and doesn't rest on the specific claims of any particular religion. When you understand more about how humans and their universe came to be, you tend to stop needing a tidy alternate story to fill in those gaps. The backbones of religions being gone, their other edicts become merely cultural representations of the times in which they were written. Interesting, but nothing to base your life on.

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posted by Sacrilegium

at 8:10 AM Permalink

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