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My Dogma Ran Over My Karma
Five conversation-stopping myths behind the New Atheism and how dialogue can be restored.
Oct. 1, 2014
Sam Harris made a valiant attempt to get around this in The Moral Landscape. But as interesting a read as it was, the entire project was a dismal failure. All he succeeded in doing was to show that someday neuroimaging may allow us to identify brain states consistent with behaviors that support his preferred values (namely the happiness and well-being of sentient creatures, including us). The real question—namely, why our happiness matters in a blind, purposeless universe—remains unaddressed. I will address this issue in more detail in an upcoming essay.
What’s ironic about this is that unlike New Atheists, Creationists actually can hold such an argument somewhat credibly. This is because in the case of neo-Darwinian evolution, there are multiple alternatives (e.g. Lysenkoism, the seeding of terrestrial life by some alien intelligence, theistic evolution, Young Earth special creationism, etc.). Whether any of these are viable or not is beside the point. The fact is that as long as multiple proposals exist one can reasonably choose to be skeptical toward any of them without committing to a specific alternative. As we have seen, this is not the case with the existence of God.
Based on one from Jinn (2014).
Interestingly, this meets DSM-V requirements for a clinical diagnosis of Narcissistic Personality Disorder (Wikipedia, 2014f). To the extent that these writers can be considered representative of New Atheist thought, there’s a credible case that it’s pathological.
Contrary to popular myth, Islam is anything but a violent religion. The Five Pillars of Islam are devoted entirely to reflection, spiritual discipline, and charity, and in the Koran even the term Jihad literally means "to strive or struggle" (in the way of God)... to exert one's utmost power, efforts, endeavors, or ability in contending with an object of disapprobation.” Only in a limited sense does it involve military warfare, and then is allowed only as a defensive posture (Wikipedia, 2014e). It’s no coincidence that the primary recruiting base of Al Queda and ISIS are poor, uneducated, and disenfranchised people (predominately male) who feel culturally and politically disempowered. Few join such groups out of true religious devotion alone. The belief that Islam, all Islam, is violent Fundamentalism is due to Far-Right and New Atheist propaganda capitalizing on the post-9/11 rage of the American public. Even the popular term “Islamofascist” was coined by none other than Christopher Hitchens.
In fact, Hitchens is the only person I know who during his life was so poisoned by hate that he actually devoted an entire book to attacking Mother Teresa and everything she stood for amongst the dying and destitute in the streets of Calcutta (Hitchens, 1997). It seems the Nobel committee was more impressed by her values than his, and for good reasons.
In Chesterton’s day Hanwell was a common reference for the Middlesex County Lunatic Asylum which was located near the town of Hanwell in East London.
References
Adam G., Riess, A.V., Filippenko, P.C., Clocchiattia A., Diercks, A., Garnavich, P.M., Gilliland, R.L., Hogan, C.J., Jha, S., Kirshner, R.P., Leibundgut, B., Phillips, M.M., Reiss, D., Schmidt, B.P., Schommer, R.A., Smith, R.C., Spyromilio, J., Stubbs, C., Suntzeff, N.B., and J. Tonry (1998). Observational evidence from supernovae for an accelerating universe and a cosmological constant. Astronomical J., 116 (3): 1009–38. Available online at http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/9805201. Accessed Aug. 19, 2014.
Adamson, P., Andreopoulos, C., Arms, K., Armstrong, R., Auty, D., Avvakumov, S., Ayres, D., and Baller, B. et al. (2007). "Measurement of neutrino velocity with the MINOS detectors and NuMI neutrino beam". Physical Review D 76 (7). Available online athttp://arxiv.org/abs/0706.0437 . Accessed Aug. 18, 2014.
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