Actually, they object because the "new atheists" point out that the religious left are no better than the religious right when you get right down to the meat of it.

The religious left like to think of themselves as being "reasonable" and "intelligent" and the thing about the "new atheist" attacks on religion, is that they highlight things which the religious left actually do believe, and point out how stupid they are.

The religious left find a lot of their cherished mythology getting caught in the crossfire, with uncomfortable questions being raised on both sides, one pointing out how they abandon faith, the other how they abandon reason, while they try to hold on to both.

So you get these "Shut up" articles from the religious left, these desperate pleas for the vocal atheist genie to go back into the bottle that the religious right smashed - and the "new atheist" movement isn't about to cooperate.

Utter twaddle. The equivelant claim would be that the KKK's ideology didn't lead to KKK members lynching black people, or that the Nazi ideology wasn't responsible for individual Nazis carrying out the holocaust.

Take your same reasoning, apply it to racism, and you end up looking like a complete moron because it is a downright spectacularly stupid line of reasoning.

Atheism, is an absence of belief, and thus cannot be utilised to motivate anything. To say "Atheism motivates XYZ" is the same as saying "Not collecting stamps motivates XYZ." Though there have been bad atheists in history - guys like Stalin, they were motivated by other factors.

Much like a lot of bad theists were motivated by other factors.

However, with theists their religion has in fact been directly responsible for bad things. The Catholic Pope, motivated by his religious belief, recently claimed that condoms increased the risk of contracting AIDS, the Church later ammended his speech by adding "may" to that but either way, thanks to the Pope's words in Africa, to a bunch of people who actually think he is infallible, thousands of people will die.

Salmon Rushdie had a fatwa placed on his head, which means people motivated by their religious belief set out to kill him and anybody who published "The Satanic Diaries."

And you have Hindus who, motivated by their religious belief, go around attacking couples for public displays of affection. Funny how the religious all seem deathly afraid of sex, no matter what religion they are a part of.

And of course you have animists who harvest organs from living children in the religious belief that that makes the "muti" stronger.

While religion is not the root cause of all the evil in the world, it is the root cause of a lot of it - and that is enough to say that it is harmful.

Either way, I understand and respect why people both atheist and faithful have a distaste for Dawkins and the so-called New Atheists. People react with scorn to Dawkins quite frankly because he often writes like a condescending jerk, while even hypocritically committing the very errors he accuses his opponents of.

Ebonmuse, I disagree when you say,

..religion is causing vast harm around the world.

Blah blah blah must we hear this recycled argument again?!

If you say this, then you must also admit that atheism has caused vast harm around the world. Now you and others in this thread might feel degree matters, and I don't know whose philosophy has the most victims, but the point is this: Religion, atheism or Islam are not the cause of the vast harm in the world; misguided people are.

"Guns don't kill people; people kill people" is of course cheesy but employs the same reasoning. For every suicide bomber you have who knows how many regular, sane, civilized people that believe in God and would never even consider taking a human life. For every atheist school shooter or demagogue you have who knows how many sane, fulfilled, moral atheists. In fact, by stating what you do, you only further isolate reasonable believers who are beyond wearisome of weathering such charges. I don't blame atheism for school shootings, genocide or America's drug problem; why should an atheist be allowed to blame religion for atrocity X, Y or Z?

The New Atheists loathe religion far too much to plausibly challenge it...

The title of Bunting's piece is fitting save for one word - I would omit 'plausible' in favor of 'objective.' The New Atheists are very capable of plausibly challenging religion - problem is their intense bent gets in the way and befuddles their arguments.

Now, that I perceive Dawkins as a rude and ranting crank doesn't mean I'll turn a deaf ear. I've read his work critically and I think TGD is by far his worst book, and the worst atheist book I've read save for David Mills' Atheist Universe. In general, as people react negatively to abrasive preachers, I probably won't learn much from hostile, self-confessed proselytes like Dawkins who stoop intellectually low and use hoodwinkery to prove their point.

A few things some random atheists are saying about Dawkins' TGD:

"Reading it from a now neutral point of view, I think the main problem is that his good arguments (admittedly there are strong arguments) are hidden beneath the irrational, childish, hypocritical insults towards the religion, the incredibly weak arguments he also offers at other points, and the huge misportrayal of religion which litters the book, decreasing it's validity infinitely.." (student from Calumcalum, London)

"...that he comes across as slightly condascending doesn't help." (reader, Cardiff)

"I have difficulty with Dawkins’ confrontational style. I absolutely share Dawkins’ concern regarding religious fundamentalism, but I think his abrasive approach to religious belief in general not only polarises religious debate, but also hinders constructive dialogue between those on opposite sides of the fence who are willing to speak to each other." (reader, South Africa)

I'm all for being who you are and never backing down intellectually. I'm all for being passionate about beliefs. But not to an extent that isolates people and creates categories of 'us' and 'them.'

Dawkins clearly fancies himself and those who think like him 'us,' while labeling anyone who thinks otherwise as 'them.' As for me, I see people.

Although I'm appalled by most of what's done in the name of God, and although I'm down to join my atheist brothers and sisters in the fight against religious absurdity, until one group or ideology can successfully kill all adherents of opposing ideologies, we'd better learn quickly to be one people. Dawkins' divisiveness is not a characteristic I think we need in the new paradigm.

I think theists are really missing out on the possibility of going further with scientific inquiry. At one point or another, every theist closes their eyes to evidence and attributes a natural phenomenon to divine intervention. If they were simply curious and patient enough to search for a naturalistic explanation for the phenomenon, they would be more thoroughly satisfied than they are with their cop-out.

(As is the fact that this fallacy is about two steps up the hierarchy of fallacies from "Argumentum ad tu mater").

"If you over generalize in your attacks, you offend people who agree with you on the issues but may hold different beliefs, and if you do it enough, you may drive them away."

Then what were their convictions worth, if they can be changed by spite on an unrelated dispute?

-"Numad"

I think liberal religious people, such as Chris Hedges for example, bristle at the outspoken atheism of the likes of Richard Dawkins or Sam Harris because they feel rightly or wrongly that outspoken atheists give the radical religious right a target to outrage the masses.

People like Hedges believe that the Radical Religious Right is taking advantage of working class and lower income Christian Americans by distracting them with issues like school prayer, evolution and gay marriage while allowing them to get screwed financially by Republican Party economic policies. While I did not read the book, I believe this is also the point made by Thomas Frank in "What's The Matter With Kansas."

Moderate religious people and moderate atheists want to roll back the Religious Right as much as the more ardent atheists and secularists, and see atheist and secular activists as providing convenient bogeymen for the fundies, who can then rile the hoi polloi with cries of "You see how they're trying to take your religion away from you!"

Pragmatics="in linguistics, the study of the choices of language persons make in social interaction and of the effects of these choices on others (Crystal, 1987)."

On googling: if you search for a phrase w/o quotes, you will get all results where the two words appear together on the page, regardless of their proximity. (Though I believe the results are weighted for proximity) If you search for the phrase w. quotes, you get the results for that exact string, which is a better guarantee that the adjective is actually modifying the noun in question.

OMGF, et. al.: Why have you assumed I am a Christian? Because I am critical of a few atheist celebrities? Because I may have mentioned in another thread my experiences participating in non-violent direct action with people of faith? I'm not, for the record. But it certainly was a convenient way to dismiss my feminist credentials.

tobe: OK so hysterical atheists w/o quotes gets 229,000, hysterical women w/o quotes gets 1.3 mil. I still stand by my basic premise that "hysterical" is not a gender-neutral term.

This is the last I'll say on the matter: All you're examining is how often people use the word "hysterical" to describe men, women or atheists. This says absolutely nothing about the connotations of the word "hysterical" per se.

I got 1,300,000 results for "hysterical children" but only 269,000 resulsts for "hysterical banana". So what? That just means that people use the word "hysterical" to describe children more often than they use it to describe bananas. But that has absolutely nothing to do with the meaning of the word itself.

I'm aware of this. However, for atheists to believe that human consciousness is dependent solely on the operation of the physical brain and yet that a human embyro that has not yet formed a functioning brain containing the neural structures known to be necessary for consciousness is equivalent to a born human being, and is therefore of greater moral worth than the welfare or rights of the person obligated to carry it inside her body, also requires cognitive dissonance, so far as I can see.

Well then, that's a different argument, eh? So, I stand by my comments and I stand by my defense of why the two are different. So, how can a feminist find Xianity in concert with his/her views? They can't. I find this statement to be deserving of not being countered with a non sequitor about abortion and atheists.

can we cancel out the alleged connotations of "hysterical" by pointing out the rather masturbatory nature of this sort of exercise?

Now you be dissin' my peeps, da linguists.

tobe: OK so hysterical atheists w/o quotes gets 229,000, hysterical women w/o quotes gets 1.3 mil. I still stand by my basic premise that "hysterical" is not a gender-neutral term.

I don't think it's a good descriptor of Harris or Hitchens either, more accurate IMO would be "c/overt neo-cons and apologists for the war on terror."

And that's the last I'll say on word frequency on this topic, because I have used up absolutely all the time allotted to procrastination today.