It's doubtful Christianity will pass away and even if it does I'm not sure that prove what most atheists think it would prove.What would “victory” look like?
http://richarddawkins.net/discussions/568825-what-would-victory-look-like
Complete victory of New Atheism would be a calamity, and the nature of the question suggests the (a)theocratic false ambitions of the New Atheists, who have been hyped into thinking atheism some kind of scientific proof to it.
The passing away of Xtianity is probably inevitable, over a very long time, but the next stage of consciousness should be a robust study of the history of religion, the development of self-consciousness, and a kind of Kantian wariness at the tendency of all groups, religious or atheists, to create dogamatic or totalitarian cults out of metaphysical beliefs.
The intolerance of the new atheists, even to agnostics or other types of atheists, is an important warning that they are the same idiots in a new disguise as the Christians.
Lest this seem exaggerated consider Michael Parenti’s ‘new atheist’ book in the wake of the others, with its diatribe against Tibet: there ‘atheism’ means looking the other way at the destruction of Buddhists through murder ethnicide, and indoctrination.
The only safe stance is an intelligent agnosticism, and the intolerance toward even that shows the new atheists in their cultic infatuation, a mood created by Dawkins and his clever promotions of pseudo-science.
So let us fear this victory, and not let it happen. There is no need for victory. All that is needed is a pluralistic society where opinion is not controlled.
true this is a ID source, so take it with a grian of salt, but it does document that New Atheism and old Atheism are fighting. Irrationality of new atheism vs rationality of old.
e g r e g o r e s
UK Guardian attacks Harris as Totalitarian
Posted by on August 2, 2009
http://egregores.wordpress.com/2009/08/02/embryonically-totalitarian/
I was beginning to wonder whether or not this issue of Francis Collins’ nomination to be NIH Director had played out, but then I just saw that Andrew Brown begins his August 2, 2009 column in the UK Guardian like thisAnyone tempted to believe that the abolition of religion would make the world a wiser and better place should study the works of Sam Harris. Shallow, narrow, and self-righteous, he defends and embodies all of the traits that have made organised religion repulsive; and he does so in the name of atheism and rationality. He has, for example, defended torture, (“restraint in the use of torture cannot be reconciled with our willingness to wage war in the first place”) attacked religious toleration in ways that would make Pio Nono blush: “We can no more tolerate a diversity of religious beliefs than a diversity of beliefs about epidemiology and basic hygiene” ; he has claimed that there are some ideas so terrible that we may be justified in killing people just for believing them.And he ends it like this:
But militant atheism, of the sort that would deny people jobs for their religions beliefs, doesn’t actually believe in real science at all, any more than it believes in reason. Rather, it uses “science” and “reason” as tribal labels, and “religion” as a term for witchcraft. Any serious defence of the real, hard-won and easily lost enlightenment must start by rejecting that style of atheism entirely. What use is it to be right about God and wrong about everything else?Parenthetically I want to say that I feel especially indebted to Brown for drawing my attention to yet another example of just how incredibly godawful the writing of these New Atheists can be:
But, obviously, Brown’s critique of Harris has far more to do with substance than style. Brown correctly condemns Harris’ arguments (“To the extent that Harris has any argument at all”), as “fantastically illiberal”. But personally I believe that Brown gives too much credit when he also characterizes the posture that Harris has assumed as only “embryonically totalitarian”. That embryo hatched when Harris published his first book, if not before.
The Chronicle of Higher Eudcation
Jan 21, 2011,
The New Atheist's Narrow World view
By Stephen T. Asma
new atheists world view is narrow minded and has nothing to say to the 3d world and people struggling to survive in dire poverty. from the Chronicle of higher education
With tongues in cheeks, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett are embracing their reputation as the "Four Horsemen." Lampooning the anxieties of evangelicals, these best-selling atheists are embracing their "dangerous" status and daring believers to match their formidable philosophical acumen.
According to these soldiers of reason, the time for religion is over. It clings like a bad gene replicating in the population, but its usefulness is played out. Sam Harris's most recent book, The Moral Landscape (Free Press, 2010), is the latest in the continuing battle. As an agnostic, I find much of the horsemen's critiques to be healthy.
But most friends and even enemies of the new atheism have not yet noticed the provincialism of the current debate. If the horsemen left their world of books, conferences, classrooms, and computers to travel more in the developing world for a year, they would find some unfamiliar religious arenas.
Having lived in Cambodia and China, and traveled in Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, and Africa, I have come to appreciate how religion functions quite differently in the developing world—where the majority of believers actually live. The Four Horsemen, their fans, and their enemies all fail to factor in their own prosperity when they think about the uses and abuses of religion.
It's becoming rather common place to see people, not fundies, leftists and liberals and humanists recognizing the narrow mined totalitarian nature of new atheism.Harris and his colleagues think that religion is mostly concerned with two jobs—explaining nature and guiding morality. Their suggestion that science does these jobs better is pretty convincing. As Harris puts it, "I am arguing that science can, in principle, help us understand what we should do and should want—and, therefore, what other people should do and should want in order to live the best lives possible." I agree with Harris here and even spilled significant ink myself, back in 2001, to show that Stephen Jay Gould's popular science/religion diplomacy of "nonoverlapping magisteria" (what many call the fact/value distinction) is incoherent. The horsemen's mistake is not their claim that science can guide morality. Rather, they're wrong in imagining that the primary job of religion is morality. Like cosmology, ethics is barely relevant in non-Western religions. It is certainly not the main function or lure of devotional life. Science could take over the "morality job" tomorrow in the developing world, and very few religious practitioners would even notice.
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