Tuesday, September 22, 2009

New Atheism

I love this HuffPost piece on neo-atheists and how many of them are right-wing when it comes to international affairs. It's all terribly Randian to me, insofar as the outside world are a bunch of savages and we should just exercise our strength over them and do whatevs because they're a bunch of fuckers.

It was precisely that about Christopher Hitchens that turned me off to him: his support of the Iraq war. In my mind, basically, anyone who supported the Iraq war is an idiot. The fact that those who were against the war have pretty much been proven right (or left, I suppose) confirms that my position (no reason to invade) may have not been perfectly correct, but it was leagues more correct than the opposing viewpoint (good reason to invade).

I like Dawkins and Hitchens well enough, but their hyper-militant viewpoint about not just God, but a wider system of beliefs that are connected with religion, does damage to their position. The more points you try and open, the easier it is for your opponents to dig in at inconsistencies in your arguments. Stay focused and avoid ideology on your own part. Fighting ideology with ideology doesn't work.

Why the "New Atheists" are Right-Wing on Foreign Policy(HuffingtonPost.com)

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