Feser Insults Readers of www.infidels.org

Jeffery Jay Lowder | February 17, 2014

Here’s the insult.

And one’s more gullible followers—people like the www.infidels.org faithful who have been buying up The God Delusion by the bushel basket—will be thrilled to have some new piece of smart-assery to fling at their religious friends in lieu of a serious argument.

LINK

Speaking of “smart-assery,” Pot, meet kettle.

I’m not sure why Feser thinks that the readers of www.infidels.org or this blog (secularfrontier.infidels.org) blindly agree with whatever the New Atheists have written, but he’s wrong. Allow me to do my best to channel my “inner Feser” and spew some of his remarks right back at him.

Very good points, Ed, it might seem–except that (as everyone who knows something about the philosophy of religion is aware) that is not what atheists who specialize in the philosophy of religion say. In fact, not one of the best and most capable atheist philosophers of religion in the history of philosophy ever gave this Courtier’s Reply — not Mackie, not Rowe, not Schellenberg, not Q. Smith, not Draper, not Martin, not Oppy, not Phillipse, not Sobel, not Salmon, not Grunbaum, not Fales, not Post, not Tooley, not Gale, not Le Poidevin, not Maitzen, not McCormick, not Drange….

Feser himself admits that “atheist academics” have criticized the New Atheists. And, of course, we can add onto this the fact that we’ve been fairly critical of the new atheists on this blog. But, hey, why should those facts stop Feser from just gratuitously insulting the Internet Infidels and its readers?

I’ve just about finished reading Feser’s book, The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism. I think Feser makes some hard-hitting, probably fatal, objections to the arguments used by the “new atheists.” While Feser usually maintains a distinction between the new atheists and atheists who specialize in the philosophy of religion, his rhetoric sometimes gets the better of him. It’s as if he moves from “the New Atheists make mistakes A, B, and C” to “all atheists makes mistakes A, B, and C,” which is, of course, fallacious. I see something similar in Feser’s gratuitous insult to our readers.