I was referring to this part of your post:

The examples I gave of Stalin and the Neocons were of rational actions, which the NA want to dissociate from by claiming it is state perversion of logic. It's in evaluating rationalists that the NA want to go by outcome.

I agree. My point is that the NA are playing a similar game of definitions.

I think the points you raise help show the NA are making some basic errors, not just balancing discussion by reminding us of the irrationality of religion. They think religion is fundamentally more susceptible to violence, which leads them to overemphasize it as a factor and down play historical contingency and the state. One of many things some people take away from this is that they can trash "southern redneck" religion and blame it for militarism and not do the hard thinking about institutions. Do not some 2+2 do that, and feel the NA back them up? Shrewder atheists don't go there, but that's still a result of NA theiophobia (if that's a word).

I guess you are going to have to tell me what you mean by "rational" here, because I don't regard Stalin's murder of the Ukrainians as a rational action. Nor do I think of the Soviet system in general to have been a particularly rational system--although this was not very obvious initially.

Here is where we might agree. I think some of the New Atheists are ambiguous in how they talk about rationality. Sometimes they use rationality to mean a fairly substantive view of how to understand the world--i.e. an acceptance of the primacy of science and empirical methods of understanding the world. On this account I think their claim that religion is fundamentally irrational is largely correct--an acceptance of alternative ways of knowing is a characteristic of almost all religious traditions.

However, sometimes the New Atheists mean something else by the irrationality of religion. Sometimes they mean that accepting religion requires you to accept some form of faith understood as an acceptance without reason as the basis for belief. This is in my view wrong as a universal description of religion. In my experience most religious people regard their religious beliefs as being justifiable on rational grounds. Thus, this form of faith actually plays a much smaller role than it is given credit for by some of the New Atheists.

I actually think the New Atheists are right to focus on religion as one of the causes of violence between states or peoples. I haven't seen any evidence here that they overemphasize it as a factor or downplay historical contingency or the role of the state in promoting violence. I think the points I've raised have more to do with criticizing the understanding of religion that some of them hold as being too narrow, not with whether some forms of religion are irrational or promote violence.

And yes, if someone reads Dawkins, et. al and comes away thinking that religion is the cause of all the world's violence, then that thinking should be criticized. However, I am not going to blame Dawkins for this unless I think he has encouraged this way of thinking himself--something that I don't think is the case.

Sure if they’re writing history or citing violence amongst, or coming out of, third-world populations. My point being there’s no “religious violence” to speak of ‘in’ modern Western civilizations.

Well I think it is worth talking about people who blow up abortion clinics and the like but yes, violence in general is way down in the first world.

Yeah, I agree that the U.S. and Western Europe are mostly tolerant pluralist democracies and currently have a relatively low level of religiously motivated violence, at least internally.

The book of revelations.


I wonder do you consider Christians militant if they have the same type of views as militant atheists? Meaning they follow Jesus' teachings of the Great Commission and try to convert and tell all others their views are false, sinful and harmful. Because if so there are a lot of militant Christians i would not consider as such. If not it seems unfair.

Lol "militant atheists" only see one cause to the world's problems, but there is only one kind of Christian; a pacifist apparently. Everyone else got it wrong. Thanks Bill.

Of course.

It doesn't follow that denouncing NA, and liking the small number of Christian pacifists, means I give a pass to all the toxic critters out there. I live in an area full of crusader types and know them well. Chris Hedges' Christian Fascists is very convincing, BTW.

By that loldefinition you are also an militant atheist, albeit a different kind to that described in your OP.

I guess I'm also a militant Spurs fan

I wouldn't agree but as long as it goes both ways, alright.

New Testament "militant" Christianity:

A militant atheist who keeps context in the foreground -- is that supposed to be bad?

I just mentioned Hedges' Christian Fascists which is a savage attack on dominionists, but is quite different from the NA approach. The NA's who want to attack religious militarism should look to Hedges on how to do it right.

He carefully shows how the dominion movement is tied in with the interests of the wealthy, he pays attention to context, and points out that the dominionists ignore the radical messages of the gospel and distort it to justify privilege. And he does it without turning it all into a face off between the rational and the irrational.

If the NA don't absorb how "rational" views become supports for militarism, they'll keep getting fooled again.

Not sure how Hedges' book would be any different than what Hitchen's would have wrote. That religionists particularly fundamentalists want and are connected to power was a particular theme of Hitchens. See The Missionary Position. He didn't just say Catholism is evil, the end.

Just going to say that I don't think Hedges' book (which I admittedly only skimmed) on the New Atheists was either very good or very fair. I agree with some of his criticisms of the political views of Harris and especially Hitchens, but I didn't think the connections he tried to draw between these views and their atheism, or New Atheism more generally, was at all convincing.