Lots of folks on both sides of the ID divide have strong feelings about prominent New Atheists, particularly the “Four Horsemen” – Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, Hitchens – and Jerry Coyne.
Here’s a thread in which to air your criticisms of them, or defend them, or a bit of both, as the spirit moves you.
Obviously, I don’t think there’s a problem with being “Islamophobic” or “Christophobic” (I don’t think that’s a common enough thing to have the correct term coined for it yet) because I genuinely hate all manifestations of both those religions, although especially Dominionism because of the destruction it does to my nation. And I’ll go further, I’m disgusted by even the wishy-washy christians and moderate Muslims, because I think that the numerical support they give to the illegitimate preference towards religion allows and abets the extremists among their brethren. Without the support of the so-called moderates, the extremist Islamic and Christian terrorists could all be isolated and dealt with legally. Elected governments wouldn’t have to worry about losing the majority of faithful who felt that their faith was somehow being attacked upon the arrest of criminals for inciting “holy war”. The danger of organized religion persisting in our world is so obvious to me that I’m always surprised when decent people aren’t “religiophobic”.
But I think there’s a reason that “Islamophobic” is an insult we can use, while “Christophobic” isn’t even a thing. It’s because it’s all too easy to slip from detesting Muslims who are acting as supporters of an odious Islam to detesting them as a race of people in general. When you look at the kinds of things right-wing US politicians and commentators say against Islam, you can notice that they almost never attack the faith in god/Allah or the belief in carrying out god’s orders — because the RWAs need to preserve the privileged position of faith, not attack it (and if they do actually comment on the Islamic belief, it’s usually to mock the 72-virgins idea, not to mock the idea of excessive faith itself). It’s actually NOT about religions. Anti-Islamic commentary mostly turns out to be about “race”. It’s about those people who dress ugly. It’s about those people who have Halal butchery. It’s about those people who are sexual deviants who want to marry young girls, and more than one of them, too. It’s about that whole “race” of brown people who, with their many children, are going to swamp the “race”‘ of white people. It’s about the overt prejudice and random anti-Muslim violence which keeps Muslim immigrants in narrow enclaves, the existence of which is then taken as further evidence that “they” don’t want to integrate, or contribute to “our” society.
And yes, “Islamophobia” is clearly about the genuine fear and hatred of a religious education system which has been perfected for turning young boys and girls into suicide bombers.
But when we – especially as non-theists/skeptics – talk against Islam, we need to be very careful not to tar a billion people in general just for their mere existence. It’s irrational to despise people for their national origin or their class status or their skin color. We should always be clear that our hatred of Islamicists is for their specific political acts inspired by their particular version of Islam. I think if you don’t choose to make that clear, you deserve for other people to insult you by calling out “Islamophobia”.
“you” in general, of course, not you personally, petrushka.
hotshoe and KN,
What led you to the sweeping condemnations I highlighted in my earlier comment?
keiths, not interested in explicating. Sorry.
Come to your own conclusions, as you surely will anyways.
hotshoe,
You’re quite interested in bashing, and you do so repeatedly, but you’re not interested in giving your reasons.
Why?
keiths, not interested in explicating, sorry.
KN,
I’m particularly interested in hearing why you characterize the New Atheists as “bourgeois apologists for neo-imperialism”.
What’s that about?
hotshoe,
You characterized Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens as “typically sexist jingoist assholes”, yet you haven’t offered any evidence for your claim. I’m beginning to wonder if you have any.
keiths,
keiths, not interested in explicating, sorry.
hotshoe,
It’s irresponsible to label people as “typically sexist jingoist assholes” when you can’t justify the condemnation.
keiths,
keiths, not interested in explicating, sorry.
Of course you aren’t, hotshoe.
Why think when you can blindly bash? Vilify first, ask questions later — if ever.
hotshoe_,
That’s fair, no one can force you to support your claims. If you’re not willing to do so, though, you should retract them, at least until you are willing.
keiths,
keiths, not interested in explicating, sorry.
Patrick, not interested in explicating, sorry.
hotshoe, to fifthmonarchyman:
Now that’s some seriously hypocritical pomposity.
OK, keiths.
hotshoe,
I’m telling you this not as your friend — because I could never be friends with a person like you — but as an empathetic human being who is concerned for your spiritual value which you are degrading by indulging yourself in words like “typically sexist jingoist assholes”.
What do you benefit when you score a cheap shot here and lose your soul?
LOL. How do your words sound in playback, hotshoe?
keiths,
OK, keiths.
keiths seems to lack the skills to distinguish between an argument and a rant.
A rant is an emotional outburst. The statements made in a rant are not meant to be taken literally nor are they intended to be the object of rational analysis. As such, a proper question would be directed towards what motivated the outburst, not towards demands for logical reasons and empirical evidence.
keiths never rants, and we can know this because he always defends his statements. But not everyone is like keiths.
hotshoe_,
Since you like Hitchens, here’s an appropriate quote: “That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”
I’ve disagreed with you on several topics here over the past couple of years, but until now you have shown intellectual honesty and integrity. Refusing to substantiate or retract these smears demonstrates the opposite of those qualities.
Patrick,
OK, Patrick.
It’s interesting to see the normally voluble hotshoe reduced to these one-line “plead the fifth”-type responses.
She might as well be saying “Guilty as charged.”
To spare her the trouble of repeating herself yet again:
keiths,
Sure, keiths.
I see that KN is back.
KN,
What led you to these conclusions? I’m particularly interested in the “bourgeois apologists for neo-imperialism” part.
Wouldn’t that be tied up with the anti-Muslim stuff?
walto,
I don’t see why it would. One can criticize Islam without wanting to take over Indonesia.
keiths,
I mean it’s ‘tied up’ in the sense that it gives comfort and cover to people who WOULD like to take over Indonesia.
I’m not saying that this is their fault necessarily, just speculating on where the imperialist charge comes from in answer to your question.
walto,
KN’s claim is much stronger than that. He doesn’t merely say that the New Atheists’ criticisms of Islam can be used by “neo-imperialists”. He says that the New Atheists themselves are “bourgeois apologists for neo-imperialism”.
That seems bizarre to me.
KN,
I’m still interested in hearing your response to this.
I was primarily thinking here of how Dawkins and Hitchens have such antipathy to Islam — which they seem to nothing about — that they are happy to endorse a destructive and horrific war, the ultimate purpose of which was to ensure US control of the world oil market, in the mistaken belief that doing so had anything at all to do with bringing the Enlightenment to Islamic countries.
No doubt the Muslim world needs an Enlightenment, but it will have to be a home-grown Enlightenment, just as the Enlightenment of Christians and Jews was. Anyone who thinks that the Enlightenment can be exported is a fool. Hitchens and Dawkins are fools, and their support for the US military actions in Afghanistan and Iraq should be a profound embarrassment to atheists and other non-believers.
KN, it really is possible to think that child rapists and genital mutilators are scum, without regard to petropolitics. Just as it is possible to think that Stalin was scum without expressing admiration for the Tsars.
Yes, but it is naive to support a military response to child rapists and genital mutilators without regard to petropolitics when the child rapists and genital mutilators are positioned closely to the world’s oil reserves, the global economic system depends on oil, and the use of the military to control the global economic system by way of control of the world’s old reserves has been a central aim of US foreign policy in the 20th and 21st centuries
KN, don’t ever waver from your faith that somewhere in the world there are people who wield power solely for the greater good, with no regard for self interest. That and unicorns.
Off topic, but I note that as a result of fracking, Saudi Arabia may be going broke. The world might be, on several levels, extricating itself from dependence on middle eastern oil.
KN:
Wait — you were describing the New Atheists generally:
Now it’s just Dawkins and Hitchens? That’s quite a climb-down.
And even with Dawkins and Hitchens, you haven’t supported your claim that they are “bourgeois apologists for neo-imperialism”. They have supported wars, but I see no reason to think they’ve done so for “neo-imperialistic” reasons.
(BTW, what’s with the “bourgeois” qualifier?)
It’s clear that your emotions run high — and unreasonable — on the subject of the New Atheists. I’ve also noticed that you are careful not to call yourself an atheist, indicating that you may have some residual theistic leanings. i’m wondering — do you resent the New Atheists because you feel personally attacked by them?
I’d add the same is true of Harris, too.
If you think that my talking about Dawkins, Hitchens, and Harris is a “climb down” from talking about the New Atheists generally, then so be it.
I didn’t say that they understood themselves to be supporting the wars for neo-imperalist reasons; I said that the wars themselves are neo-imperialist, and Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens are apologists for these wars. I don’t credit them with an overabundance of self-insight.
I’m a Marxist.
I’m neither an atheist nor a theist. On my view, theists and atheists both make the same mistake: both assume that religious discourse is assertoric or declarative. I don’t feel personally attacked by the New Atheists, because they aren’t sophisticated enough as intellectuals to come within spitting distance of anything I believe.
My feelings run high on the New Atheists because I do not suffer fools gladly. Their theology is bad, and their philosophy is worse. And it does frustrate me when I see these fools taken as the vanguard of secularism and humanism, because there is so much better work out there waiting for a receptive audience. For one thing, the classics of secularism and humanism — Lucretius, Montaigne, Spinoza, Hume, Nietzsche, Sartre, Dewey, Rorty — are perfectly accessible to reasonably intelligent people. (It’s only the late 19th and early 20th centuries that philosophy becomes professionalized to the point that one needs formal training to understand it.)
People who love the New Atheists and don’t know the classics of secularism/humanism annoy me in the same way that I’m annoyed by people who love the Harry Potter series but who have never read Tolkien, C. S, Lewis, Susan Cooper, or Lloyd Alexander.
My heroes!
Thanks for the rec, KN.
I really don’t mean this to be Mungian snark:
What makes theology good or bad?
Walter Kloover:
KN is a fan of Terry Eagleton, and presumably agrees with Eagleton’s pompous criticism of Dawkins:
To which PZ Myers responded aptly:
I miss the old PZ.
keiths,
Yes, I do agree with Eagleton’s criticism of Dawkins.
One might have replied that Dawkins wasn’t trying to engage in sophisticated theology, but was responding to what ordinary, non-sophisticated people of faith believe.
Two problems: (a) if that were the case, he shouldn’t have even tried to engage with any theological arguments (as in fact he does); (b) he offers (so far as I can recall) absolutely no empirical data in the sociology of religion as to what ordinary, non-sophisticated people of faith actually do and don’t believe.
It’s precisely by assuming — without any evidence — that he somehow “just knows” what people of faith really do believe that Dawkins fails utterly as an empiricist. And Eagleton makes mincemeat of his attempt at theology. So what is Dawkins doing? He’s not doing theology, and he’s not doing sociology of religion. And as Eagleton nicely points out in his review, it’s not that Dawkins’s “criticism” is all that sophisticated. He is simply not the sort of upper-class British gent who goes in for religion — or, for that matter, deconstruction or surrealism or Soviet agitprop.
Religion is simply not his cup of tea, dear, and he finds it queer (to use the British term) that anyone else does. That’s not an expression of a considered, reflective intellectual view — that’s an expression of his class position in modern British society. That’s what Eagleton correctly nails him on, because Eagleton understands that “the ruling ideas in a society are the ideas of the ruling class”.