The New Philistinism

[Anonymous No.1225657]

The New Atheist writers are supremely self-confident in their ability to dispatch opponents with a sarcastic quip or two. And they show no evidence whatsoever of knowing what they are talking about.

http://www.american.com/archive/2010/march/the-new-philistinism

[Anonymous No.1225664]

Ya those guys are annoying faggots wwho don't have anything interesting to say

[Anonymous No.1225667]

Atheists on the internet are as bad as real life religious fundamentalists.

[Anonymous No.1225671]

>>1225657
His article says nothing that most people in academe don't already know.

We don't need some self-important, new found observant Roman Catholic like Edward Feser to tell us that Dawkins and the other anthropologists are not theologians. Jesus. This article was a bore.

[Anonymous No.1225675]

Religion is like alchemy, who gives a shit nowadays?

:3

[Anonymous No.1225683]

It's true that some of their arguments are weak, but it's always better than having no argument at all like the religious.

[Anonymous No.1225682]

>>1225675
This is true

[Anonymous No.1225689]

>>1225675

>the older something is, the worse it is

[Anonymous No.1225691]

>atheists not totally aware of what they reject or why they reject it

STOP THE PRESSES!

[Anonymous No.1225692]

>>1225683

>ignore 2000 years of philosophy

[Anonymous No.1225695]

>>1225692
more like ignore 2000 years of blind faith and opression

[Anonymous No.1225696]

>>1225692
Like he said: no arguments.

[Anonymous No.1225698]

>>1225683

Actually they just pick on the weaker ones that can't keep them going like creationists rather than actual religious scholars.
I'd love to see Dawkins go tete-a-tete with someone like Bonhoeffer

[Anonymous No.1225700]

This is something everyone already knows. Richard Dawkins is a douchebag faggot. I don't need someone else to tell me that.

>>1225683
Bullshit. They don't have "weak" arguments, they just don't have any at all. Religious people who actually follow what they believe (read: the nice ones) will simply try to be nice, and one of these guys will just call them an idiot. Anyone who makes the generalization that all religious people are oppressive and mean-spirited, yet calls new atheist writers idiots, is just a hypocrite.

[Anonymous No.1225703]

>>1225700
I'm not calling any religious person mean-spirited, I just call them all irrational because there is no rational grounding for their belief AT ALL.

[Anonymous No.1225708]

>>1225703

>no rational grounding for their belief AT ALL.

Faith is an individual thing, which is why I'm opposed to "organised religion" rather than individual faith. They have their reasons, especially late-life converts who have made a decision.

[Anonymous No.1225710]

>>1225708
I'm not saying they don't have their reasons, I'm just saying their reasons are irrational.

[Anonymous No.1225711]

>>1225703
Honestly, there is no rational grounds for atheism either. They're just going on the belief that when we discover how and why the universe was created (which I doubt will happen very soon) that there won't be a higher power behind it. It's still all individual faith. Except new atheists tend to be a huge collective consciousness hugbox when something doesn't go their way.

[Anonymous No.1225716]

>>1225703
But this is observed in totality but the concept of faith, as far as faith based religions go.

Faith circumvents reason and rationality, so in effect, as far as argumentation goes, this is not a principle upon which we may criticize certain religious beliefs.

I know this sounds like a cop-out, and I myself do not observe any religion specifically, but I will say that the religious have carefully and suspiciously organized their arguments in such a way as to avoid criticism from a rational mindset.

Anyways, Edward Freser is blabbing on about ideas which were explored five years ago. Most scholars will not acknowledge the term 'new atheists,' as they are not a wholly collected group of thinkers, or atheists for that matter. They are scientists, not thinkers, who have used their specific fields of discourse to generate statements which are supposedly applicable outside their field, ie. religion.

Freser is hack. I just rewrote his argument with more insight in one post; his knowledge of theology, however, seems much more expansive than my own.

[Anonymous No.1225718]

>>1225711
>Honestly, there is no rational grounds for atheism either.

Oh yes there is, contrary to popular belief atheism isn't the blind faith that there is no god, it is the disbelief in a god because of the simple fact that there are no rational arguments to believe in one.

[Anonymous No.1225719]

>>1225710

I wouldn't say that.
If it's something they can genuinely commit to and it inspires them to do good, that's a victory. Such is the point of God, as a means to efface the more selfish elements of man's desires.

If it's "lol I'll help this homeless Mack here so i can see jesus" or "MY PASTOR SAID OBAMA IS A MUSLIM PRAISE JESUS GET GOD BACK INTO SCHOOLS NOW!" that is irrational.

[Anonymous No.1225723]

>>1225719
Both are irrational, one is just irrational with good intent and the other is irrational, naive and dumb.

[Anonymous No.1225726]

>>1225710
If it were rational, it wouldn't be faith, it'd be science. That's not to say there is no reason in religion. Read the early Christian writers. They were pretty damned good at logic. Sometimes they're starting point was wrong though. But there's no more rationale in saying there is a God than saying there isn't. Science has not proven either one to be truth.

[Anonymous No.1225731]

>>1225718
Having faith that there is not a god in itself is blind faith. Therefore, I believe agnosticism is the only rational belief. To not claim to know a diety does not exist is the only idea that holds any rational ground.

[Anonymous No.1225738]

>>1225731
That's the spirit. Be a wishy-washy bitch and refuse to take a side.

[Anonymous No.1225742]

>>1225738

Not taking a side is itself a side.

[Anonymous No.1225744]

>>1225726
I've actually read a shitton on christian philosophers as I'm a phil student.

>But there's no more rationale in saying there is a God than saying there isn't. Science has not proven either one to be truth.

I never said there is no god, i said there is no rational reason to believe there is one.
It's true that science hasn't disproven the existence of god. But that's quite a weak argument,
the burdon of proof lies with the one that makes the claim,science has proven more than any religion,..

[Anonymous No.1225743]

>>1225723

I'd disagree.
Indeed, you don't need a Godhead in order to do good, but if there's some kind of motive be it God, personal satisfaction for reward (real or imagined) or just something off the cuff, but it's no way irrational to do something for a reason you hold dear.
I'd say it's equally irrational to suppose you'll be rewarded by the person or Karma, say.

e.g. love can be irrational at times but it doens't stop us from enjoying (or enduring) it.

[Anonymous No.1225746]

>>1225738
Well, it's either believe in something I don't know is true, or act like I know something is true even though nobody actually knows. So I don't really feel like taking a side.

[Anonymous No.1225747]

>>1225738
This argument about choosing a side is the bastard child of postmodernism. Thinkers today believe that every thing is an opposition, or a binary opposition. Either there is a god, or there isn't. Perhaps there is a third side, a side that refuses to except the other two propositions, which seem artificial in their binary presence.

Being a religious agnostic, or an atheist agnostic is choosing a side, just not a side which is prescripted by hundreds of years of philosophy and theology.

[Anonymous No.1225750]

>>1225738

>herp ur with s or against us

Sure is retard dualists in here

[Anonymous No.1225754]

>>1225731
You must've misread what i said. I actually said what you said except that my definition of atheism is more like a strong agnosticism, we can never know for sure because you can't disprove what doesn't exist, but since there are no rational arguments to believe in a god, while there are rational arguments to not believe in a god, it's better to go with the latter.

[Anonymous No.1225760]

>>1225747
What are you talking about? During the modernist period people were attacking the notion of riding the fence, because it was a new notion. Christians were attacking those Christians who were saying, "well, that's just an opinion" or "it's not scientifically provable." Taking a side was a notion long lauded by both sides. You're not somehow more scientific by being agnostic. Most agnostics are either Christians or atheist in disguise. Let's not kid ourselves any more. We're adults now. Form goddamn beliefs.

[Anonymous No.1225763]

>>1225754
See, you're implying that one thing can be better than the other. This is wholly subjective.

[Anonymous No.1225766]

>>1225763
No, I'm simply stating the "i'll believe it when i see it" attitude is a lot more valuable and rational than the "i'll believe it untill it's disproven" attitude.

[Anonymous No.1225771]

>>1225766
Well that's just agnosticism with an angry twist.

[Anonymous No.1225770]

>>1225754
I read the God Delusion as well bro.

[Anonymous No.1225776]

>>1225771
That's what I said earlier that atheism is pretty much strong agnosticism.

>>1225770
What's your point? Your arguments are weak man. And I actually haven't read it and don't intend to do so ever because as I said, I'm a phil student, I don't need shitty pseudo intellectual mass market books.

[Anonymous No.1225777]

>>1225766
>valuable and rational

you think it's valuable simply because it's rational

[Anonymous No.1225785]

>>1225777
No I think it's more valuable because the first one protects you from blind idealism while the second doesn't.

[Anonymous No.1225786]

>>1225785
>blind idealism

should be more something like blind acceptance of ideologies, you get the point

[Anonymous No.1225794]

>>1225785
Oh no, ideals!

[Anonymous No.1225801]

>ha! are you kidding me?!? etc.

[Anonymous No.1225803]

>>1225794
0/10

No more arguments, didn't even bother to read my correction and understand what i was saying.


Here I was thinking /lit/ would be an intelligent enough board to discuss atheism but if half the people here don't even know what atheism is and use the religious definition of it that atheists claim to absolutely know that there is no god, I'm pretty much done, maybe I'm just growing to old for the internet, or maybe some of you have become such big hipsters that you think it's edgy to, in an age of secularism, not consider yourself atheist.

[Anonymous No.1225807]

"At any street corner we may meet a man who utters the frantic and blasphemous statement that he may be wrong. Every day one comes across somebody who says that of course his view may not be the right one. Of course his view must be the right one, or it is not his view. We are on the road to producing a race of men too mentally modest to believe in the multiplication table. We are in danger of seeing philosophers who doubt the law of gravity as being mere fancy of their own. Scoffers of old time were too proud to be convinced; but these are too humble to be convinced. The meek do inherit the earth; but modern sceptics are too meek even to claim their inheritance." - G.K. Chesterton

[Anonymous No.1225809]

>>1225803
This is a literature board, not a "lol atheism i'm so edgy" forum. Take it somewhere where people care to have this argument.

[Anonymous No.1225816]

>>1225809
Actually I'm not the OP I just thought I'd interject and explain to you people what atheism actually is, you did seem to care to, else I wouldn't have had so many replies, but as the agnostic/religious arguments were disproven, the replies became less and less relevant and eventually were diminished to mere trolling and semantic hair splitting.

[Anonymous No.1225817]

from the article OP posted:

>If you have any doubt about this, feel free to pick up a copy or three of my book, The Last Superstition, which exposes the errors of the New Atheists, and lays out the case for the existence of God, at rigorous and polemical length

So this guy isn't just saying that there are problems with atheists, he's actually arguing FOR the existence of god, so take that into account when reading his arguments. basically he's saying that unless you know the history of Numenor, you're not qualified to say that the Lord of the Rings isn't real.

[Anonymous No.1225819]

>>1225816
You have not disproved anything. You have just shown that atheists still think they're better because they don't believe in a diety.

[Anonymous No.1225823]

>>1225819

>implying that being right isn't better than being wrong.

[Anonymous No.1225822]

>>1225819
I have disproven the claim that atheism isn't rational.

[Anonymous No.1225824]

>>1225817

That's a terrible analogy and you should feel bad.

[Anonymous No.1225826]

>>1225819
The dude has explained why rational beliefs are better than irrational ones and has explained why belief in a god is an irrational belief and disbelief in a god is rational, please stop it.

[Anonymous No.1225827]

X isn't rational therefore Y must be rational!

[Anonymous No.1225828]

>>1225827
Nobody in this thread every claimed that, go troll someone else.

[Anonymous No.1225830]

>>1225816
That's why we don't want these discussion /lit/. They don't involve literature, just a bunch of teenagers shouting at each other. The Chesterton quotes are the only /lit/-relevant things in this thread.

[Anonymous No.1225832]

>>1225830
you just mad

[Anonymous No.1225833]

>>1225828

Your inability to understand your own arguments is disapoointing.

[Anonymous No.1225836]

>>1225833
Your inability to provide arguments instead is dissapointing.

I have never claimed atheism is rational just because religion isn't.

F
See me after class

[Anonymous No.1225839]

>>1225836

Once again we're back to you not understanding your own arguments. You really should stop parroting stuff you think sounds cool.

[Anonymous No.1225841]

>>1225839
Try harder, you're not trolling me anymore.

Either use nice greentext to quote me, prove me wrong with strong arguments and present your conclusions or else I'm not replying anymore.

[Anonymous No.1225844]

>>1225841
Good.

[Anonymous No.1225845]

Basically there's no reason to believe in god.

[Anonymous No.1225848]

>>1225760
My post has little to do with the concept of religion. I'm talking about oppositions. Religion happens to be the context of the opposition. The theory of binary oppositions is a coined term by the deconstructionists. It is chiefly postmodern.

Believe that neither of the two are correct is an opinion. You can believe that we as humans have not accurately conceptualized a god correctly yet, but at the same time adhere to the notion that such a concept may exist in reality. Not choosing sides doesn't necessarily mean one subscribes to an atheist agnosticism or a religious agnosticism; it does mean, however, that one may reject the dissident view points.

It is one thing for the modernists to be upset with what you're upset about, it's quite another thing to unwillingly except that both arguments are, in fact, binary oppositions, which is, in fact, a postmodern concept.

[Anonymous No.1225849]

>>1225845
no reason not to, either

[Anonymous No.1225850]

>>1225841

So you're admitting that you barely understand your own arguments? That's good. Admitting is the first step.

[Anonymous No.1225851]

Basically, this guy's argument is that atheists don't know what they're talking about, because they don't know anything about religion.

I wonder how he feels about that recent study that concluded atheists know more about religion than any other group.

[Anonymous No.1225856]

>>1225851
I really doubt that atheists know more about religion than "theologians" or "very educated religious people"

And he's not criticizing atheists as such, he's criticizing atheists like Dawkins etc. who, let's be honest, have some really weak arguments. They are not good at arguing the atheist case. NB I am not good at arguing a lot of the atheist case, but that's because I don't really agree with a lot of it - despite being an atheist myself.

[Anonymous No.1225854]

>>1225851

A biased study conducted by athiests to potray themselves in a better light.

[Anonymous No.1225855]

>>1225851
The author is talking abour the New Atheists, hence the term "New Atheists"

[Anonymous No.1225864]

>>1225856
>I don't really agree with a lot of it - despite being an atheist myself.

not the same guy but please explain

>>1225854
>>1225850
>>1225849
hardcore trolls

[Anonymous No.1225871]

>>1225864
>not the same guy but please explain

I don't think religion is a deeply harmful thing, that believing in a religion is bad, that all religious people are stupid, that any rational person will be an atheist, that religion is in some sense non-factual. Most of the stuff that the new atheists use to build up a positive case for atheism I don't really agree with. For me, it's pretty much: I see no kind of evidence for the existence of God, and therefore have no reason to believe in him, and therefore don't.

[Anonymous No.1225877]

>>1225855
Edward Freser falls victim to this term "New Atheists." The people who Freser quotes from are hardly thinkers, or atheists in the sense of what a theist is -- a thinker.

The so called "New Atheists" are scientists, who do very respectable work in their own fields, but try to apply what they have researched to a formation alien to their own field of study. Instead of the term "New Atheists" we should suggest "Hard-nose Anthropologists and Physicists who discuss Theology and Logic as Amateurs."

Freser himself is barking at straw-men, which is ironically the crux of his argument.

[Anonymous No.1225885]

>>1225877
I think it should be made clear that the hard-science version of atheism and the social-science version of atheism are very, very different beasts. Anthropologists probably shouldn't be in that sentence.

[Anonymous No.1225892]

>>1225877
I hope more people will be able to see religious views as personal, individual matters and not as "right" and "wrong."

[Anonymous No.1225903]

>>1225849
so there's no reason to not believe in the invisible dragon in my garage? there's no reason not to believe in zeus and vishnu and thor and xenu and so on ad infinitum? are you claiming that you believe everything until someone proves that you shouldn't? because a better way to think is to only believe things you have evidence for. there's no evidence for god, therefore there's no reason to believe in him.

[Anonymous No.1225905]

>>1225885
It should because many of the New Atheists are anthropologists and ethologists, like Dawkins for example.

I have no interest in the distinction between science based atheism and social based atheism, and neither does my argument.

The term we use, "New Atheists," bothers me greatly, because I do not feel that it is a legitimate movement worthy enough of its own episteme.

My argument throughout this thread has been oblivious to the actual conceptual arguments going on about the validity of any of these beliefs, but rather I'm focusing on the term which Freser uses and how he chooses to exploit this term as a means to motivate his old and tired thesis. The "New Atheists" being quoted are not authorities on the discourse, but Freser sets them up as if they are, and then prides himself in knocking them down from a pedestal that nobody in academe acknowledges, at least in the humanities.

[Anonymous No.1225914]

>>1225905
I don't think Freeser is really addressing the discourse in any academic sense. I think he's talking about the discourse in the public eye, in popular culture - where the New Atheists really are a thing. In popular culture, if not in academia, there really is dramatically increased visibility of atheists, and Richard Dawkins is among the most visible of them. Does that mean that he has the most cogent critique of religion? Of course not. But that's not really what Freeser is addressing. He's critiquing this new movement of atheism in the popular culture, in the public eye. He's attacking the movement, not atheists as such.

Also, I thought Dawkins was a biologist?

[Anonymous No.1225931]

>>1225914
You keep missing my argument. This is not a new movement in atheism. There is no epoch here. This new atheism does not have its own set of rules or episteme. It is in the public eye, but Freser's argument is that these "New Atheists" use straw-man arguments to prove their case. This is the crux of his argument. I believe that the new atheists are not worth researching as authorities and therefore Freser is using a multiplicity of straw-man arguments to prove his theory.

Dawkins has written about ethology, anthropology, creationism and evolutionary biology. Many of the "New Atheists" come from these backgrounds, as well.

[Anonymous No.1225946]

I think New Atheism might be starting to fade away

The other day, I watched one of those William Lane Craig debates where he uses the same exact arguments every time and the highest rated comment were theistic.
Considering that youtube comments are one of the strongholds of New Atheists internet chatter, that surprised me greatly.

[Anonymous No.1225953]

>>1225946
Terry Eagleton is interested in God again so the whole world follows suit.

[Anonymous No.1225955]

>>1225931
>It is in the public eye, but Freser's argument is that these "New Atheists" use straw-man arguments to prove their case.

Yes. Exactly. Here is Freser's argument:

1) There is a new development in atheism in the public sphere, in the public eye, in popular culture.

2) The atheists who are most prominent in that movement or development in the public eye - the spokespeople for atheism in the public eye - are not very good at arguing in favor of atheism.

Now, you and Freser obviously agree on the second point - that Dawkins et al. do not make particularly good at arguing their case, and do not make good spokespeople for atheism. What, then, is your problem with his argument?

I certainly don't think that the article is an argument against atheism as such. It's an argument against a specific group of atheists who are very visible in the public eye, and who broadly share certain broad traits.

[Anonymous No.1225983]

>>1225955
I see Dawkins et all as being very good *popularizers* of atheism. That is to say they are quite good at spreading the news of atheism and using rhetoric and such but I don't really see many that are trying to rise above polemics.

Dennett seems to usually be the exception in that he puts more emphasis on the "intellectual" part of "public intellectual".

[Anonymous No.1226003]

>>1225946
>one of those William Lane Craig debates where he uses the same exact arguments every time
I watched the one he had with Shelly Kagan of Yale. The format was such that formal "rebuttal-response" stuff took up only half the time and the other half was informal so he couldn't use his old formula.
He didn't do too good.

[Anonymous No.1226543]

>I've actually read a shitton on christian philosophers as I'm a phil student.
>I never said there is no god, i said there is no rational reason to believe there is one.

Then if you're a philosophy student, you're surely familiar with William James, and the concept of "pragmatism". What seems to me most pointless about people who identify themselves as "new atheists" is that they're obsessed with the *truth* value of God's existence. There is no rational / scientific reason to believe in the existence of God as traditionally defined, so God might as well be a unicorn, and you don't believe in unicorns do you? I mean, you can't definitively prove one way or the other that unicorns don't exist, just as no-one can prove definitely one way or the other that God doesn't exist, but that doesn't mean there's a *rational reason* to believe in either?

Let's sidestep the issue of whether *anything* that people believe is based on some kind of rational foundation: I don't want to get into that, I'd like to skip straight to the Will James.

James would argue that something is *true* insofar as its *useful*. And I don't see it's useful to sit around talking about God and gravity as though they're similar concepts and should have similar standards applied to them, evaluating them for supposed truth. Obviously disbelieving in gravity doesn't give you the ability to fly: in fact I don't see how believing in gravity (or any other scientific concept, like evolution) makes a bit of difference to a human life. What I would like to see atheists address is whether it's *useful* to believe in God. Are believers more ethical? Are they happier? Does atheism actually improve human existence in any measurable way?

[Anonymous No.1226545]

Because the lovely thing about atheists is that they can always come up with a laundry-list of absurdities and crimes to be laid at the door of those who believe in God, nattering on about the Albigensian Crusade or 9/11, and sidestepping the issue that Stalin and Mao didn't exactly require God to slaughter millions of people. Dawkins is typically even more mendacious: I saw him on TV recently addressing this by saying "well, Hitler was a Roman Catholic"---in the same utterly dishonest way that Dawkins will say "Newton apparently believed in God"---as though Newton didn't devote a full 70 percent of his working life to THEOLOGY. Which he did. Newton wrote a million-word commentary on the Book of Daniel, which does not (to my mind) "apparently" indicate belief in God. It quite obviously does. But I suppose it's a scandal or a side-issue for Dawkins, who'd like to sidestep the question of how scientific advances can be legitimately made by someone who does not share Dawkins' assumption that science if not all human endeavor proceeds by rational thought.

[Anonymous No.1226554]

>>1226543

>in fact I don't see how believing in gravity (or any other scientific concept, like evolution) makes a bit of difference to a human life.

[Anonymous No.1226616]

>mfw he doesn't ever try criticizing Hitchens specifically

[Anonymous No.1226618]

>>1226543
>more ethical, more happy

lolno

>pragmatism

lolno

[Anonymous No.1226621]

>in fact I don't see how believing in gravity (or any other scientific concept, like evolution) makes a bit of difference to a human life.

What I meant is that disbelieving in gravity is not going to give me the ability to levitate.

Likewise, believing in evolution is not going to give me the ability to evolve.

[Anonymous No.1226625]

>>1226621

>what i mean is that it does make a big difference but it doesn't make me capable of doing the impossible so it doesn't matter

k