Month: July 2009

Critics of the New Atheists

There’s a possibly interesting academic book coming out, I don’t know when, called Religion and the New Atheism: A Critical Appraisal. Since I’m rather ambivalent about the New Atheists, and have some serious misgivings about Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens especially, I contributed a chapter. It’s called “The Return of Faith”; if you want to Critics of the New Atheists

Wahhabi madness

Most devout Muslims today are in favor of science, and often even philosophy. If you press further, you may run into qualifications: it isn’t supposed to be “materialist science,” certain sciences such as evolutionary biology might be tainted, etc. etc. But at least rhetorically, most affirm science. And then there are the Wahhabis and other Wahhabi madness

Rebellious spirits

A common theme in conservative apologetics is that atheists fundamentally disbelieve as an act of rebellion. Infidels don’t have any real reason to doubt, god forbid, so there must be some psychological pathology or moral depravity behind it all. There is some point to this accusation, I suppose. The conservative Christian or Muslim God often Rebellious spirits

New Chick Tract

I worry that there are people in this world who actually believe stuff like this.

Blackford and Schuklenk interview

Examiner.com has an interview with Russell Blackford and Udo Schuklenk, editors of the forthcoming 50 Voices of Disbelief: Why We Are Atheists. It’s an interesting interview, particularly where Blackford and Schuklenk, bioethicists, express frustration at religious influence on their domain. The book (coming in October) should be very interesting as well. (Disclaimer: I contributed one Blackford and Schuklenk interview