Theism and atheism are different ways of interpreting the same reality. Not necessarily a simple binary. Believing or not believing in God doesn't in itself make you smarter than someone who believes the opposite. But―and I'm sure I've said this before―the belief that atheism is in itself a mark of intelligence is a self-negating prophecy. Dummies lazily flock to it because aligning yourself with the smart set is easier than thinking for yourself.
That's something to think about when considering recent comments made by Sam Harris, the morality of covering up hypothetical child corpses being one of them.* Harris isn't stupid by any means, but neither is he immune from being misled by intellectual shortcuts. And that's true of other New Atheists as well. Christopher Hitchens―about whom we're just supposed to remember the good stuff―went from unofficial prosecutor of Bill Clinton to advocate for George W. Bush, apparently not noticing that the two men were the same product marketed to slightly different consumer blocs. And COVID-19 has revealed that Richard Dawkins is unable or unwilling to scrutinize scientific authorities the way he does religious ones. To the extent New Atheism was treated as a philosophical game changer, it reflects the myside bias of journalists.
*If the prospect of a second Trump term was like an asteroid hurtling towards Earth, does that make his first term half an asteroid? The dinosaurs were pussies.
2 comments:
You've found some of my least favorite public intellectuals for this post. From what I've come to understand about these three - Harris, Hitchens, and Dawkins - they came to the conclusion that if all the evils of the world were based on religion then eliminating religion would bring about world peace. That's a very simplistic view pretty much proven so long ago by the Jacobins of the French Revolution when they attempted to mandate atheism with their 'reign of terror'.
Their views aren't especially new yet all three have been very succesful in promoting themselves and their views in social media and best selling books. None of them like Christianisty but they all universally despise Islam - 'you can't talk to these people so it might be best to kill them' said all of them in various ways.
I think what I like least about the New Atheists is their disenchantment with the world and an outlook that denies hopefulness in the name of brute reality. (Dawkins essay not withstanding).
"if all the evils of the world were based on religion..." Well that's a pretty big if, isn't it? But yeah, no matter how you slice it just eliminating such an essential part of the human condition and expecting everyone to be happier and freer is naive to the point of insanity. The French Revolution, and especially the Reign of Terror, was the first attempt to restart the human experiment at Year Zero, even renaming all the months of the calendar. It was a disaster, but people keep repeating it.
Likely the only Muslims they ever dealt with were apostates at the posh universities. For the rest they're just faceless masses ready to explode into violence. Once you start interacting with Muslims in the real world these two extremes retreat. While I don't agree with everything Hayaan Kirsi Ali (who I linked to yesterday) says, she does have first person experience at least.
While I don't think everyone who doesn't believe in God subscribes to a cold mechanistic view of the universe and flat utilitarian ethics, the atheist superstars often seem to.
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