Those Damnable “New Atheists!”

The Reverend Paul Prather is a Kentucky minister, sometime blogger, and contributor to his local newspaper. He is also a whiner, has a stunted ability to think much beyond his limited world view, and is a caricature of the dwindling moderate Christian majority.

Recently he wrote an article entitled “New atheists embody the very things they hate.”
It’s his rant against this “new atheism,” a term that religionists wield against 21st century atheists like an epithet, much as Muslim jihadists use “infidel” or “kafir” for all non-Muslim Westerners.

The following are a few extracts from his misguided article which will serve as examples of theistic shortsightedness and myopic perspective of what atheism is all about.

“My objection to the new atheists isn't that they're atheists. It's that they strike me as hypocrites, which is the charge they unfailingly level, with mixed justification, against the religious. In opposing religion in the manner they do, they betray themselves as possessing the traits they profess to loathe.”

Hypocrites? Perhaps he thinks we DO believe in a god or gods when we say we do not? Maybe we say we are against intolerance for homosexual rights, and yet we really go out and try to make gays’ lives miserable? Perhaps we really DO reject the proofs of science deep down, and are just professing it to appear erudite? I don’t get it.

No, we, or at least I, don’t oppose religion per se, I oppose the product of theistic thought; that which impedes scientific progress, limits personal freedoms, uses belief to justify political extremism including theocracy, terror and war; and which seeks to enslave minds into a bronze age or 2nd century view of reality and morality that is defunct. Any religionists who do not subscribe to those things are not targets of my “opposition.”

“… they cherry-pick historical examples of religious wrongdoing while ignoring the innumerable instances in which the faithful have performed great acts of decency and charity.”

When acts of theistic decency have to be trotted out as a counter point to the acts of theist wrong doing in defense of religion it begs a cost benefit analysis. I’d proffer that if the evils wrought by religion are laid side by side with the contributions of religion to the advancement of civilization and human existence, that the evils would heavily tilt the scale. What benefits have been derived from religionist because of their superstition that counter acts 2000 years of Church inspired anti-Semitism, world wide terrorist bombings, the misrepresentation of the value of condoms in 3rd world nations, or the deaths attributable to intra-sect warfare through the ages? The good intentions of Mother Theresa?

“I wish these atheists would venture … into a seminary library. They'd find tens of thousands of volumes written by thinkers great and obscure across two millennia.”

No doubt. But careful examination of the contributions of theists in real world terms: i.e. science and medicine by notible theists like Gregor Mendel, Christian Barnard, Jonas Salk, Albertus Magnus, Robert Grosseteste, Roger Bacon and other personages of faith were made INSPITE of their theistic superstition, not BECAUSE of it. Had they not extended themselves beyond the precepts of their religious indoctrination and the ignorant falsehoods of scripture, they’d have contributed nothing.

Look, this “new atheist” label that seems to have bruised the sensibilities and aroused the ire of the theist majority like Prather is simply a cover for religionists’ disgust with [fear of?] the fact that activist atheists have decided not to hide in the closet any longer. We no longer are content to be anonymous observers, standing idly by while religion drags civilization back into the Dark Ages, or destroys lives and minds. "New atheist" is theist code for: "Those uppity mouthy atheists who aren't content to hide from the Inquisition like the good old days; refuse to kowtow to the Christian majority; and who insist on using reason and science openly to make us look like the backward superstionalists that we are." To that extent they’re right. No hypocrisy here.

Rev. Prather’ s whole article: http://www.kentucky.com/2010/06/12/1303777/paul-prather-new-atheists-embody.html#ixzz0tkmOZZ10