Politics Catholic Blame Game 18 Apr 2010 Here, courtesy of Jason Brown, is a site that lists the latest scapegoat that the Catholic Church blames, instead of itself. So far they have blamed: Gays The Jews Pornography Television The Internet Pope John Paul II Victims of child rape Stay tuned for further exciting rationalisations and excuses! Read More
Evolution Are species life forms? 19 Jun 201719 Jun 2017 This is a section of my forthcoming revision to Species, presented here for comments that I can steal – umm, I mean for peer commentary. The philosophical ideas and terms of Wittgenstein have played an interesting and underappreciated role in the species debate: we saw Beckner appeal to family resemblance… Read More
Biology Henry Gee’s book “The Accidental Species” 9 Oct 20139 Oct 2013 I have three rules in life. One is, Never get into a land war in Asia. The second is, Locate the nearest exit. The third and most important is: When Henry Gee writes something, believe it. I first encountered Henry through his book In Search of Deep Time, which covered… Read More
The thing to do is write a sensationalist book that gets tons of press and stirs up controversy. Possible titles: “Why I Am (Probably) Not A Christian” “God Is (Almost Certainly) Not Great” “Breaking the Spell (To The Extent It Needs Breaking)” “A Plague On Both Their Houses” “The Greatest Show On Earth (So Far)” “Everything I Need To Know I Learned In (Years and Years of Study and Thinking)”
Knowing that you don’t know doesn’t lend itself to feelings of superiority, even if it is the “beginning of wisdom.”
Riboyzyme – ??? Do mean that in such cases knowing that you don’t know _does_ lend itself to feelings of superiority???
Just makes me feel uncomfortable as I suspect if I lived in the States I would have the same perspective as a New Athiest. I can look at the older generation of my family and ask a comparable though by no means identical question. Most who were around in the 1930’s and 40’s were very active in both the communist party and the I.R.A. Not organisations I have a great deal of time for. Ask what you would do living in the enviroment they were leads to some uncomfortable conclusions.
PZ posted it, too. You are [probably] mentioned in comment #120. You will not be shocked to know that some people wrote unpleasant things about agnostics. You don’t think they are feeling superior, do you? http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/08/best_xkcd_ever.php#comments
What I found interesting in that thread was a few people discussing Fullmetal Alchemist, which doesn’t seem to have much to do with the thread topic, but is full of win regardless.
A- “Personally, I find agnostics to feel superior to everyone else”. B- “Well, at least you’ve found a way to feel superior to agnostics while oversimplifying their position.”
I think it had to do more (in general) with accommodationists, like Mooney, et. al. who wage their war of fact-less insinuation about the defective personalities and strategies of the “gnu atheists.” And not agnostics. Unless, of course, you’re making your own personal beliefs known… 🙂
Well I have argued for accommodationism several times, and criticised the aggressiveness of atheist exclusivism, so sure.
“atheist exclusivism” Now that is a useful term -far more thoughtful than “new atheists,” and “non-exclusivism” is far better than “accomodationism.”
MosesZD, I think if XKCD wanted to take a swipe at accommodationists, it probably wouldn’t do it so obliquely. The comic would hardly even make sense as such a swipe, since accommodationists in general don’t think atheists are smug. BTW, as a geek whose a bit into Linux, the label “gnu atheist” looks more like a description of an atheist who’s almost (?) religiously into Free Software.