When it comes to religion, politics... just about anything, in fact, atheists and fundamentalists disagree about almost all specifics. There are, however, a few general principles that they do agree on.
What makes this interesting (or disturbing, depending on your perspective) is the fact that where atheists and fundamentalists agree with each other, they tend to disagree with more liberal and moderate believers. For example, atheists and fundamentalists tend to take statements in the Bible more seriously and acknowledge the conflicts between the Bible and science.
A forum member writes:
Something strange has been going on, ever since the New Atheism movement started. There are fundies promoting bad stereotypes about atheists. And there are some atheists that go out of their way to promote these stereotypes about themselves.
There are fundies saying that religion will save the world and skepticism is evil. And there are atheists saying that skepticism will save the world and religion is evil. And between them the message is reinforced that there is no way out of conflict.
"The Bible says science is the devil's work!" "Science says the Bible is sick and crazy!" And darned be anyone who dares to leave the battleground.
If this continues, atheists and fundies will ruin the free flow of ideas around the world.
It's really simple. Science finds truth, religion doesn't. The Bible is wrong about many things. Liberals admit it's wrong, and it doesn't bother them. Neither atheists nor fundies can understand this, but so what? Ridiculing people you don't understand is not supposed to be acceptable in the 21st century.
It's time for the word "truth" to be reclaimed. All the churches, synagogues, mosques, etc. claim to speak the truth. It's time for them to live that up, and speak the scientific truth.
It's time for science to become the golden mountain that everyone, even religious leaders, turns to and gets answers without humiliation.
The first error here is the idea that there's anything "new" going on -- atheist criticism of religion has been going on for as long as people have been vocal about their atheism. None of the things this writer attributes to "new" atheists is actually "new." All of it has precedence in earlier atheist writings. That includes ridiculing certain religious claims. This is a common error, unfortunately, and it invariably stems from a great deal of ignorance of the history of atheism, atheists, and freethought.
The second error is to presume that there is anything wrong in agreeing with fundamentalists about the existence of conflicts between science and religion. If this position is wrong, it's wrong due to the substance of issues -- none of which the writer deigns to address. The mere fact that fundamentalists believe it doesn't make it wrong and to even imply otherwise is to commit an ad hominem fallacy.
How many more errors can you find in the above?
Add your thoughts to the comments here or join the ongoing discussion in the forum.
No comments:
Post a Comment