Politics The nightmare of Christianity 10 Sep 2009 … the Republican home schooled authoritarian version of it, anyway. An excerpt in The Nation from Max Blumenthal’s forthcoming book, Republican Gommorah: Inside the Movement That Shattered the Party. Read More
Epistemology Morality and Evolution 7: Conclusion 22 May 201422 May 2014 [Morality and Evolution 1 2 3 4 5 6 7] So far I have made out the following arguments: Evolution does in fact debunk moral realism, as the fitness bearer for a moral claim is the agent in relation to others in their group, not the truth of the claim There is no Milvian Bridge, therefore,… Read More
Humor Buffy is my personal saviour 28 Oct 2009 As always, the Onion has the scoop. I really like this new religion of Fictionology. One gets to choose a fictional character as your messiah, deity or general moral teacher. Who better than Buffy? Look good, kick evil doers, and have time for a social life. “Unlike Scientology, which is… 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.