Australian news website, New Matilda posted an article by Jeff Sparrow noting that progressive atheists don't do much to shout down the New Atheists who preach Islamophobia
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This obviously includes Hitchens, but are the other so-called three horsemen included in this list? Because to my mind Hitchens stands alone (among the New Atheists) in many of his political views. Either way, I agree, he should be shouted down, so I won’t be of much help for your conversion.
Harris is certainly as reactionary as Hitchens. Dawkins probably is, but he seems less inclined to expressly develop his work in this direction than are Harris and Hitchens. Dennett: I don't know.
Well, all religion is bad. More people have been killed in the name of religion than any other reason in history. Islam is just, like, a really especially bad religion because the people who believe in it are against civilization.
Well certainly part of that has to do with the fact that "new atheists" need to communicate with regular people, not philosophers. The expressions may not be philosophically adept, but that is neither the purpose nor particularly useful. The purpose is to annoy regular people enough to get them out of their comfort zone. The fact that it may also annoy some academics is just a side benefit.
Do you suppose Dawkins et.al. has had no access to professors of philosophy at University and never heard their arguments? I hardly think so. I strongly suspect that they know full well the deficiencies of their arguments, they just don't care.
The fact that it may also annoy some academics is just a side benefit.At least you're conscious of your own anti-intellectualism. I'm not sure why you want a cookie for it, though, as if it's something to brag about. All you're doing is embarrassing yourself
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"How many on the following list have had best sellers?"
A fair number of them. What's your point?
And more importantly, how could it possibly defend your explicitly irrationalist implication "the deficiencies of [..] arguments" aren't relevant or interesting with respect to their claimns?
Isn't it weird, though, that those very 'enlightenment' values are being propped up as justification for denying enlightenment values? "Women should be banned from wearing this and that in public because we want them to feel free in accord with good Western enlightenment values." "Islam is inherently violent, and so, in accordance with good Western enlightenment values of peace-loving freedom, we need to declare war on the religion itself."
How absurd do these self-contradictions have to get before the people spouting them realize what they're saying?
"'Women should be banned from wearing this and that in public because we want them to feel free in accord with good Western enlightenment values.'"
This seems pretty consistent with Enlightenment values.
"'Islam is inherently violent, and so, in accordance with good Western enlightenment values of peace-loving freedom, we need to declare war on the religion itself.'"
At least the condescension toward other cultures which underlies this sort of judgments seems pretty consistent with Enlightenment values too.
The narrative of western superiority, and that western-ness looks a certain way--as e.g. a certain style of dress--is intractably bound to the narrative of the Enlightenment.
It is really from the counter-Enlightenment that we get an ethics of individualism that will object to these sorts of measures.
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This obviously includes Hitchens, but are the other so-called three horsemen included in this list? Because to my mind Hitchens stands alone (among the New Atheists) in many of his political views. Either way, I agree, he should be shouted down, so I won’t be of much help for your conversion.
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Except that he is also in the staunchest denial about qualia. So…uh…scratch that.
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Do you suppose Dawkins et.al. has had no access to professors of philosophy at University and never heard their arguments? I hardly think so. I strongly suspect that they know full well the deficiencies of their arguments, they just don't care.
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Yeah right. How many on the following list have had best sellers?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_atheist_philosophers
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A fair number of them. What's your point?
And more importantly, how could it possibly defend your explicitly irrationalist implication "the deficiencies of [..] arguments" aren't relevant or interesting with respect to their claimns?
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How absurd do these self-contradictions have to get before the people spouting them realize what they're saying?
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This seems pretty consistent with Enlightenment values.
"'Islam is inherently violent, and so, in accordance with good Western enlightenment values of peace-loving freedom, we need to declare war on the religion itself.'"
At least the condescension toward other cultures which underlies this sort of judgments seems pretty consistent with Enlightenment values too.
The narrative of western superiority, and that western-ness looks a certain way--as e.g. a certain style of dress--is intractably bound to the narrative of the Enlightenment.
It is really from the counter-Enlightenment that we get an ethics of individualism that will object to these sorts of measures.
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Wow, the Enlightenment sucked.
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