The real New Atheism: Rejecting religion for a just world
http://www.salon.com/2013/12/14/the_real_new_atheism_rejecting_religion_for_a_just_world/SATURDAY, DEC 14, 2013 12:00 PM MST
Hitchens didn't think rejecting religion would solve everything. But he knew only reason would give us justice
JEFFREY TAYLER
Christopher Hitchens (Credit: AP/Chad Rachman)
The ever-polemical atheist author Christopher Hitchens died two years ago this month, yet his incisive, erudite diatribes against religion continue to rile the faithful and spark debate. The latest anti-Hitch outburst comes from Sean McElwee, a writer and researcher of public policy who describes himself as “a poorly practicing Christian who reads enough science to be functional at dinner parties.” McElwee calls for a “truce” between believers and nonbelievers. But he stands on the losing side of both public opinion trends and history. According to a Pew poll conducted in 2012, a record number of young Americans – a quarter of those between the ages of 18 and 29 — see themselves as unaffiliated with any religion. Atheists’ ranks are swelling, and believers are finding it increasingly difficult to justify their faith.
McElwee begins by calling the New Atheist movement “a rather disturbing trend” in a country “whose greatest reformer” – Martin Luther King, Jr. – “was a Reverend.” Dr. King won fame as a civil rights leader, not as a religious figure. McElwee would do well to recall the words of Founding Father John Adams: “the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.” McElwee goes on to attribute to New Atheists an unsound premise of his own concoction:
1. The cause of all human suffering is irrationality
2. Religion is irrational
3. Religion is the cause of all human suffering
Hitchens’ most notorious atheistic tome is entitled “God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.” But no serious reader could conclude from this book (or from the writings of the other New Atheists — Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett — whom McElwee also hopes to debunk) that he considers religion the sole wellspring of humankind’s woes. Though he derided religion long before and after he published “God Is Not Great,” Hitchens never said any such thing, and no reasonable person would believe it. Are cancer and flesh-eating bacteria manifestations of irrationality? What about about wars over territory or natural resources? Poverty and inequality? Bullying and bulimia? The “classical logical error of post hoc ergo propter hoc” McElwee ascribes to New Atheists simply does not exist.
McElwee then jumps to Hitchens’ (misbegotten) support of the second Iraq war and attempts to press it into service to discredit him in matters of faith. Hitchens, as McElwee correctly notes, opposed the 1991 invasion of Iraq, but when George W. Bush was in office, according to McElwee, Hitchens “decided that, in fact, bombing children was no longer so abhorrent” because the 2003-2011 conflict was to be a “final Armageddon between the forces of rationality and the forces of religion.” No, this was not how Hitchens viewed the second Iraq war. He advocated invading Iraq to overthrow Saddam, who was, he contended, guilty of crimes against humanity, and he (mistakenly) assumed a stable democracy would result from the dictator’s ouster.
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Over the course of human history it has justified and enabled wars, genocide, persecution, explosive population increases, institutionalized sexism, unlimited exploitation or natural resources, degradation of the environment (lest God be offended that we are ungrateful for "his gifts"
, has spawned oppressive theocracies and corrupt alliances, and has been an unrelenting hindrance to meaningful scientific advances.
Religions have it right on one thing, whenever they preach that all the others are false. They are 100% correct on this, to include what other religions have to say about their own.
Yeah, it was "science" that did all that.
CHECKMATE, atheists!
They always are making the same silly mistakes in attributing words to them that they never stated, a clear straw man technique, which seems to be the favorite strategy.
Glad to R&K this one.
Why would that be a problem?
Again, you seem to assume that if someone posts something, it is an endorsement. I don't agree with that.
This article is a counterpoint to that one. I don't agree with much of what he says, but I think he makes a cogent and rather articulate argument for his POV.
Not sure what all the brouhaha is about.
Again, I ask you, why the need to make this personal?