Of all the obnoxious groups, I've run into online, the new atheists were perhaps the most obnoxious. I will not mention names.
You can see the path from secular liberal people calling themselves "brights" and hence, the others dim-witted to the election of Donald Trump by all the dim-witted voters. Calling yourself "bright" is not a "bright" move. Anyone participating in public discourse should start from the principle that everyone else is as sensitive as one is, even people who have never read Richard Dawkins.
I feel like I've done many rounds with the new atheists. At the time I was most actively protesting their shenanigans, I was a logical agnostic. ("I'm a militant agnostic, and so are you.") Studying biology actually opened the door to the Abrahamic religions or possibly Deism for me. The odds of humanity surviving all of the potential failure points in our evolutionary history is astronomically low without intervention, even leaving aside the far-fetched origin myth of a chemical soup+lightning+a whole lot of time. I believe that this should be obvious to anyone studying science in good faith. I already had some religious beliefs, but most of them were derived from Buddhism, which proposes "dependent arising." None of these beliefs are particularly in opposition to the others. I may be one of those tortured "freethinkers" of which you speak, but it led me to a fairly traditional belief that there is truth in all religions--that basically they describe the same phenomena. I believe, however, that almost all "supernatural" explanations also have "natural" explanations. How can something be outside the "natural?" We are just currently ignorant of the natural explanations.
It seems to me, after years of observing the new atheists, that their reactions are usually derived from some sort of childhood damage attributed to religion or fear of hell developed from their own perceptions of their failures. Arguing from fear is always a weak position. I am even more convinced of this since reading that Dawkins has declared himself a "cultural Christian" in response to his fears of Islam. They would never admit it to you, but the fear is there.
The oldest trick in the book is to declare people who agree with you smarter than everyone else. What a ridiculous sham that is.
Of all the obnoxious groups, I've run into online, the new atheists were perhaps the most obnoxious. I will not mention names.
You can see the path from secular liberal people calling themselves "brights" and hence, the others dim-witted to the election of Donald Trump by all the dim-witted voters. Calling yourself "bright" is not a "bright" move. Anyone participating in public discourse should start from the principle that everyone else is as sensitive as one is, even people who have never read Richard Dawkins.
I feel like I've done many rounds with the new atheists. At the time I was most actively protesting their shenanigans, I was a logical agnostic. ("I'm a militant agnostic, and so are you.") Studying biology actually opened the door to the Abrahamic religions or possibly Deism for me. The odds of humanity surviving all of the potential failure points in our evolutionary history is astronomically low without intervention, even leaving aside the far-fetched origin myth of a chemical soup+lightning+a whole lot of time. I believe that this should be obvious to anyone studying science in good faith. I already had some religious beliefs, but most of them were derived from Buddhism, which proposes "dependent arising." None of these beliefs are particularly in opposition to the others. I may be one of those tortured "freethinkers" of which you speak, but it led me to a fairly traditional belief that there is truth in all religions--that basically they describe the same phenomena. I believe, however, that almost all "supernatural" explanations also have "natural" explanations. How can something be outside the "natural?" We are just currently ignorant of the natural explanations.
It seems to me, after years of observing the new atheists, that their reactions are usually derived from some sort of childhood damage attributed to religion or fear of hell developed from their own perceptions of their failures. Arguing from fear is always a weak position. I am even more convinced of this since reading that Dawkins has declared himself a "cultural Christian" in response to his fears of Islam. They would never admit it to you, but the fear is there.
The oldest trick in the book is to declare people who agree with you smarter than everyone else. What a ridiculous sham that is.
It must be unfortunate to be called Mynga. There is no way to pronounce it without sounding derogatory.
Iain Duncan Smith bears an uncanny resemblance to the sainted Francis Wheen. Francis has suffered greatly because of this .🥸