^

apologies to AndyB, should have been peter every time.

@peter

btw thanks for the backhanded ad hom, very brave i'm sure...

you asked for examples but the atheists i presented were apparently not True Atheists. your definition requires being published it seems. how very elitist of you. but so be it, we'll work with your 'definition'.

as did Sir Michael upthread where he quoted Sam Harris. he is an acceptable atheist? good. well, Sam not only 'fulminates' at peoples, he is keen to annihilate them on the grounds of their ontology. is that example up to par?

then you lecture me about jumping to conclusions and write some or other waffle about the "god-botherers". shame for you i am not a theist. and i stopped calling myself atheist purely because of atheists like you, who assume anyone who dares question atheist arguments must be religious. (apologies of course if you are not atheist)

@jankaas

Even if you take the completely misinterpreted quote from Harris as a correct interpretation, it is nothing like what you claimed to exist in your statement to which I responded. If you were referring to only the words of NS responders (rather than criticizing Dawkins and company), responders who may actually have entirely different opinions from the ones they claim to represent, in order to defame atheists, then one has little interest in your opinion on that. In any case, there is still nothing explicit from you relating to the words you seem to have put into the mouths of make-believe atheists or real ones, in your post to which I responded.

As far as that quote from Harris is concerned (I haven't checked it for correctness---I assume it is), do you really agree with the quoter that it is not referring to a very hypothetical possibility, obviously well in the future, were it to occur at all? And if you disagree with that ridiculous interpretation of the quoter, are you actually saying that such a situation could never arise under any circumstances, for the opponents of a nuclear weapons possessing, ideological-crazy cult, whether they be some crazy kind of Islamists, or something else (which people justifiably fear might come to exist in North Korea)?

I realize there are lots of people around here who would like to defame Harris, and, in particular, completely ignore the more detailed explanation of what was said there. Other people can go to his website to find it.

I apologize if I seemed to call you in particular a "god-botherer", and am happy we agree on much.

For those interested in seeing how mis-represented Harris is by several above, especially Sir Michael and jankaas, I had the time to check more precisely, so just look under
"Response to Controversy"
in his blog. The quotation, that Sir Michael attempts to mine, can be seen in context there, needing only several emphases added by Harris, hardly any further remarks, other than embedding the quote in its context from the book. But dishonesty is hardly unique to NS responders.

Sorry I was too brief in the immediately previous response.

@peter

"Even if you take the completely misinterpreted quote from Harris as a correct interpretation, it is nothing like what you claimed to exist in your statement to which I responded."

and yet i have read the very book it came from, in my edition it starts on page109 and finishes the next page. the chapter is called The problem with Islam. i don't see any explanation from you how this doesn't count as an example of an atheist fulminating against a peoples purely on the grounds of text in their Holy Book. Harris advocates a 1st strike approach on Islamic states that have nuclear weapons. no interpretation required, no misinterpretation is possible.

i also have no doubt that Harris is keen to point out that context and other linguistic interpretative subtleties are required to fully appreciate his words, and his intent, but there's one hell of a lot of irony in that demand. Harris appears free to accuse Muslims of rigid adherence to the words of the Koran, including the violent ones stripped of any context or potential to be purely hypothetical/allegorical etc, but is shocked when others do the same with the content of his books.

"For those interested in seeing how mis-represented Harris is by several above, especially Sir Michael and jankaas"

i do not accept i have done this. i have commented on the exact words from Harris, and i have read the whole book. i used to use it as a blunt club to hurt theists with. but now i have seen the flaws. so if you want to act as his apologist then let's hear your arguments.

"I apologize if I seemed to call you in particular a "god-botherer", and am happy we agree on much."
thanks for the apology, and i'm not sure on how much we agree except neither of us being theist.

"But dishonesty is hardly unique to NS responders."

if that is aimed at me you may again need to apologise. where have i been dishonest? direct quote pls...

I hope there are some people who have time to read these occasionally, and some of whom do so with an open mind.

Jankaas knows perfectly well now that my view is similar I think to Harris' concerning nuclear deterrence in the sad event of crazy ideologues obtaining them, and also more generally my attitude to the writings of 'famous' living atheists.

I really do not understand why people, such as he, who think they are merely debating with one or two others, bother with doing it online. Sometimes I may be wasting my time, and I would be in such a debate, but it is not always just that, I think.

"I am not anti-religion -- I simply believe that believers of all major world religions ought to be wary of their mad fringes, and of any political system that readily lends them a soap box"

Well said, I'd include beligerant and intolerant atheism in this too. I am very pleased you included the mention of aggressive and intolerant secularism of places like France, which has a president who traded in his old wife for a shiney new supermodel, and tells women what they can and can't wear. With that in mind I disagree with your proposition that secular debates produce more liberal outcomes.

A year ago the New Statesman had the Archbishop writing articles for it. It didn't concern religion, but austerity and wefare cuts. This Christmas we had Dawkins writing articles, which talked about nothing but religion. So I'd also question whether people claiming to be secular really are capable of not religiousising (is that a word?) politics.

Furthermore, if a person is silenced or forbidden from participating in politics because they are religious then that isn't democracy, it is atheistic fascism. Everyone should get a fair voice, whether or not you disagree with them.

Now I have questions for you...

2. Iran is terribly theocratic and barbaric in many of its customs, laws, and cultures. When was it last secular and democratic?

Answer - 1950s

2. Who usurped the democratic government and put a puppet dictatorship in its place?

3. Who eventually became the driving force who put a stop to the excesses of this puppet government thus forming the government of Iran?

Answers;

1. The 1950s

2. The secular powers of the UK and USA in Operation Ajax.

3. The Shah was opposed by the Iranian clerics, who were the only institution which provided some sort of safeguard from SAVAK.

Irans problems were started by the wests need for oil, and the fact the Anglo Persian Oil Company didn't want to pay taxes which were high under socialist prime minister Mohammad Mosaddegh leadership. As a result the west, and everything associated with it, is seen as toxic in Iran. They turned to their roots to find some identity and security. To just scream "religion!" as many do is overly simplistic and horribly ignorant.

"Well said, I'd include beligerant and intolerant atheism in this too."

Asking tough questions about religion is not intolerant or beligerent. This mindset that equates criticism with intolerance is strange and tiresome.

All we ask for is a level playing field with no special privileges granted to religious groups simply because they are religious.

And for the record, I can't remember guys like Dawkins ever calling for religion to be banned or calling for a war against religion. So this accusation of beligerence is ridiculous.

"Sir" :

"I'd include beligerant (sic) and intolerant atheism in this too" :
Do you make no distinction between negativity directed towards persons and that directed towards ideas? Can you give even one credible example which was atheists fulminating against people rather than their ideas?

"if a person is silenced or forbidden from participating in politics because they are religious" :
Can you give a single example of this occurring in the Western democracies or being credibly advocated there?

Your example of Iran's 20th century history has got nothing to do with your dishonest 'fulminating' against atheists at all, and that should be clear to readers.

@Sir M

hear hear. great post, i do hope the 'usual suspects' bother to read both the article and your feedback.

the points i particularly liked;
"With that in mind I disagree with your proposition that secular debates produce more liberal outcomes."

spot on. history shows that replacing one orthodoxy with another is not a guarantee of success.

and you history lesson on Iran is worth repeating to all those who just don't get how the current mess is of our very own creation.

now, if only we learned from such events i would say they were mistakes that can be forgiven...

the only thing i would add regarding this article is that it conflates 'religion' and 'extremist/fundamentalist religion', which is intellectually dishonest.

as a non-theist i actually do welcome the opinions of religious people, just as long as they subject any and all claims to verification and scrutiny of available evidence. free speech and freedom of expression cut both ways, i wouldn't wish to silence anyone, ever, no matter what they want to say. but their claims must then be judged by the rest of us.

@Sir Michael

"We are at war with Islam. It may not serve our immediate foreign policy objectives for our political leaders to openly acknowledge this fact, but it is unambiguously so. It is not merely that we are at war with an otherwise peaceful religion that has been ‘hijacked’ by extremists. We are at war with precisely the vision of life that is prescribed to all Muslims in the Koran, and further elaborated in the literature of the hadith, which recounts the sayings and teachings of the Prophet."

I think you are assigning the wrong interpretation to the word "war". He means this as a war of ideas and for western freedoms. Not some military campaign... although I admit that Muslim terrorists make this distinction sometimes hard to appreciate.

Going back to your initial comment, the leading atheists that you accuse of being intolerant and belligerent do not ask for religion to be banned or for the use of force to suppress religion. I stick to this observation. Quoting people out of context doesn't change this.

@peter

"Can you give even one credible example which was atheists fulminating against people rather than their ideas? "

you serious? do you ever read the NS threads about Israel, Iran, Islam etc etc? the usual line of their 'logic' is that the Koran contains violent passages against non-believers, so by default no Muslim can be trusted as they are merely biding their time.

@AndyB

I hope this clears up your blatant misunderstanding of Hitch's position - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2E01jA-H6A

@peter

"Dishonest by neither quoting the entire Harris passage nor giving readers the reference to his website, where that is done, making it clear that what he says is quite different from how it has been portrayed here."

wow. you don't want much do you. so to recap you accuse Sir M and me of dishonesty because neither of us provided his rather wet defense. sorry, that's for his doe-eyed apologists to sort out.

it also strikes me as rather unrealistic as the actual quote was from near the start of the chapter on page 109, and your link has Harris quoting from the end of that chapter on page 128......in other words, you're being thoroughly unreasonable.

"That reference is quite sufficient for Harris to defend himself without my help"

i don't accept that. i think you've chickened out. you utterly failed to explain why Harris can cherry pick and quote mine from the Koran, as he does non-stop from pages118 to 123 in The End of Faith, but doing so with his book is out of bounds.

why do you give him such room for manoeuvre?

@Andyb - "Asking tough questions about religion is not intolerant or beligerent. This mindset that equates criticism with intolerance is strange and tiresome."

Is this a question?

"We are at war with Islam. It may not serve our immediate foreign policy objectives for our political leaders to openly acknowledge this fact, but it is unambiguously so. It is not merely that we are at war with an otherwise peaceful religion that has been ‘hijacked’ by extremists. We are at war with precisely the vision of life that is prescribed to all Muslims in the Koran, and further elaborated in the literature of the hadith, which recounts the sayings and teachings of the Prophet."

Those are the words of Sam Harris in a book on religion. End of Faith, a book in which he proposes we use nuclear weapons on Muslim countries.

"What will we do if an Islamist regime, which grows dewy-eyed at the mere mention of paradise, ever acquires long-range nuclear weaponry?" Harris asks. "If history is any guide, we will not be sure about where the offending warheads are or what their state of readiness is, and so we will be unable to rely on targeted, conventional weapons to destroy them. In such a situation, the only thing likely to ensure our survival may be a nuclear first strike of our own.

Needless to say, this would be an unthinkable crime -- as it would kill tens of millions of innocent civilians in a single day -- but it may be the only course of action available to us, given what Islamists believe."

If we had listened to his advice this article wouldn't exist. We wouldn't be talking about the nations of the Arab Spring overthrowing their tinpot dictators (who have long been supported and encouraged by western secular interests) but instead be counting the cost of human lives.

"I think the enemies of civilization should be beaten and killed and defeated, and I don’t make any apology for it"

The words of Christopher Hitchens.

I entirely agree that violence in the name of religion is backward and abhorrent. What those theocratic fundamentalists are doing is trying to force the population at large to accept their own view of what constitutes a better world, and decide that those who believe differently should be forced to alter their beliefs or face the consequences. That is abhorrent. I'm agog to hear why you believe that the idea of a first nuclear strike, against people because of their religious ideas, is acceptable.

Why is religious genocide so horrible, but atheistic genocide just a question we should ask?

Yes, I thought it was me.

Highly volcanic fulminations can have emotions getting in the way sometimes. The debate seems to now be settled in (not settled of course) from both our viewpoints and the reader can decide what he or she thinks Harris really meant.

I do think it's a shame that humans have a tendency to lionize a few 'heroes', like some atheists lionizing the so-called "four horsemen", rather than examining their ideas dispassionately. But rejecting and distorting them mainly because of disgust over other atheists' lack of discrimination is a similar human failing.

Jankaas and Sir.... can decide for themselves whether mainly they fall into that latter category. I'd like to think this last comment is less an ad hominem than simply an attempt to psychologically analyze a certain form of somewhat irrational thinking.

Just so utterly devastating, jankaas; what can I say? Any others here don't need this; apparently you do:

1. yes, sir did, you didn't. So?

2. Not convincing; fairness relates to playing a game, not this.

3. Out-of-context is your claim; it's unsupported.

@SirMichael'The idea that we should be compassionate and sympathetic has no evidence. It is based on emotion, belief, and ideas which exist outside of evidence and proof. It is, like religion, subjective not objective.'

It's observable in all primates to one degree or another. Try and catch up, mate.

jankaas

You call your contributions reasoned argument? All you've done is quote mine Sam Harris despite your protestations to the contrary (I have read his book as well).

I'm not scared of debate, but it has to be intelligent for me to consider it worthwhile.Surely you can do better than this. To tactic of launching ad hom attacks on leading atheists is a bit boring.

@Michael

"I hope this clears up your blatant misunderstanding of Hitch's position "

sorry but it's you who has this the wrong way round. in your clip Hitchens only proves my point that he believes that religion, in and of itself, has no business in the public realm and politics. which was my point exactly, and i think he is wrong.

why do i think he is wrong? because he insists the following can be completely ignored:

despite all evidence that shows humans are deeply irrational animals, it is assumed that merely by illustrating this irrationality, humans will become rational animals.

(badly quoted from memory of a quote by Scott Atran)

p.s. i miss Hitchens, i am a fan, but feel free to criticise him.

^

great, so we "settled in" to the routine of me providing items for your attention that you then avoid entirely. gosh, how irresistible.

"whatever entertainment or educational value this has had for readers"

i see, you do this for an audience. i am not so deluded, as i am fully aware barely anyone reads these threads. but not to worry, i will try and avoid 'discussions' with you in the future.

^

not a problem, POV = point of view

(btw i am Dutch and 47 if it's any consolation...)

@jankaas

(If I gave in to the temptation of an ad hominem, I'd ask whether the "n" shouldn't be left out, but my resistance to temptation tells me not to.)

"@peter

"Can you give even one credible example ...

you serious? do you ever read the NS threads about Israel, Iran, Islam etc etc? the usual line of their 'logic' is that the Koran contains violent passages against non-believers, so by default no Muslim can be trusted as they are merely biding their time."

So you still haven't done it, have you? You give a vague general accusation, in which, somehow, objecting to passages in a so-called holy book (hard to call them even ideas, but they are certainly not persons) somehow gets construed as an attack on persons. And the attackers here are hardly what can be called credible, being responders to NS. (Sorry, but that includes us as well, in the non-credible category.) It is Dawkins and other well-known people who are being accused, but no one (apparently including you) can find a single piece of evidence to back their accusations. I do not claim this to be necessarily conscious dishonesty; I think many of us feel it is just a natural reaction of the god-botherers when other people finally start to puncture sacred cows publicly. The cows are ideas, not people.

May I ask: is the "by default" in your mind, or is it explicit in anything credible atheists have written? Please answer with specific quotations, not general accusations without foundation.

test