I’ve no particular enthusiasm for the ‘New Atheists’ (they are far too religious for my tastes), but, in its combination of incoherence and hysteria, this attack on them by Bryan Appleyard (H/T Andrew Sullivan) takes some beating.
Here’s an extract (my emphasis added):
Ultimately, the problem with militant neo-atheism is that it represents a profound category error. Explaining religion – or, indeed, the human experience – in scientific terms is futile….The project is also curiously pointless. A couple of years ago I hired a car at Los Angeles Airport. The radio was tuned to a religious station. Too terrified to attempt simultaneously to change the channel and drive on the I-405, the scariest road in the world, in a strange car, I heard to my astonishment that Christopher Hitchens was the next guest on a Christian chat show.
In his finest fruity tones and deploying $100 words, Hitchens took the poor presenter apart. Then he was asked if this would be a better world if we disposed of all religions. “No,” he replied. I almost crashed the car.
The answer demonstrates the futility of the neo-atheist project. Religion is not going to go away. It is a natural and legitimate response to the human condition, to human consciousness and to human ignorance…
Appleyard is right. Religion is not going away, because, it is indeed a “natural” response (its legitimacy is an irrelevance) and, as such, rather well suited to scientific explanation.
Human experience is existentialism in philosophical terms. The political realm is where humans live their experience, therefore, the political realm needs to be addressed first and foremost, unless one desires to live their lives in a transcendent realm or under a “god” such as a Ceasar!
Transcendence dissolves, dismisses or marginalizes the human experience in the political world, as “God” is “in control” or over-seeing history, or one is to escape or transcend the real world, whether through those that lead, “God” over-intending those that lead or some form of “transcendental meditation” or “God-fearing” political commitment for “God’s sake”. This is how religion “helps”.
Leadership is directly responsible for good government. And when poor leaders lead, even “God” can’t “fix it”! Human experience, then, is lived under some form of tyranny.
Athiests aren’t “religious.”
I know. I know….
They’re “religious” is some deep down, the opposite ends meet like the two “ends” of a string held in such a way as to form a circle meet…blah blah yada yada.
But the fact is, most of them are not religious in any meaningful sense of the word.
i.e., any sense of the word that would apply to, say, a Christian or a Moslem. One of those types.
Atheists can be overly enthusiastic and cheerleaderish, but calling them “religious” is the sort of word game best left to liberals.
They excel at it. We, on the other hand, are like white guys trying to dance like Michael Jackson when we play this game when we try to give words meanings there never had before. We just can’t quite get it.
Let the liberals hijack widely-understood words in such a way that those words mean precisely the opposite of what that have meant since they were invented.
Otherwise, yeah, I totally agree with you.
For an attack that can’t be beat, PZ Meyers didn’t take long in beating it. Here is the core of his response to Appleyard:
Appleyard: Neo-athiests think science provides the only road to truth.
PZ Meyers: “Wrong. Science provides evidence that all religions are wrong or vacuous. The charge of scientism is a common one, but it’s not right: show us a different, better path to knowledge and we’ll embrace it. But the apologists for religion never do that. You’ll also find that we recognize that there are obvious attractions to religion — most of them don’t require a gun to the head to get adherents — but that they get the facts of the universe fundamentally wrong, and building on error is a bad policy.”
Appleyard: Neo-athiests don’t know the difference between athism and secularism.
PZ Meyers: “Wrong. We’re quite aware of the difference between atheism and secularism. I do not teach atheism in the classroom, nor do I encourage teachers to do so; I want a secular educational system. I do not argue that only atheists be allowed to serve in government, but that government only implement secular, non-sectarian, non-religious decisions that are appropriate for a pluralist society. You may notice I’ve got a badge over on the right sidebar to Americans United, a secular but not atheist organization that I whole-heartedly support.”
Appleyard: Neo-athiests think Darwin provided “the final conclusive proof not only that God does not exist but also that religion as a whole is a uniquely dangerous threat to scientific rationality.”
PZ Meyers: “Wrong, but hilarious. Darwin is not proof of the non-existence of gods. He showed how life actually diversified and changed on this planet, and he provided a mechanism that works without divine meddling of any kind. He makes gods superfluous.”
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/03/01/the-league-of-nitwits-has-farted-in-my-general-direction/
My response to this post it that it is the Naturalistic fallacy itself to shrug and conclude that because religion is natural, our public policies must accommodate it. Racism, sexism and anti-gay sentiment are equally natural and intractible, but the less we were willing accommodate them, the more civil society has become.
Some incivility was necessary to move us to where we are now on these issues, predominately by lefties. Neo-Athiests are also predominately lefties. I read this blog looking for evidence that conservatives (not just liberatarians) might have something to contribute to rolling back religion in the public square. I didn’t feel I received any from this post.
But don’t misunderstand. If it weren’t for Andrew Stuttaford, this blog would barely exist. I am grateful for his many interesting and regular posts. You’ve got to hand it to PZ, though. The man is prolific. His post on this issue exceeded 1,000 words and I had to go back about 17 posts to find it.