101. The New New Atheism

Comment #56789 by Lil_Xunzian on July 17, 2007 at 8:20 am

bouwe,

Fox (because it's fake news) has these comedy shows, like Hannity's America, and one of them is The Half Hour News Hour. It's basically a conservative ripoff of Saturday Night Live's Weekend Update, except it's neither clever nor funny. Anyway, I caught the second half of the last one, and at first it was just trite, dismissing End of Faith, God Delusion, and god is not Great as nothing but the result of faddish atheism. This, of course, to assure Christendom that it's safe from the big bad secularist. In any event, they moved on from that to a sketch that featured three authors, their books being "The God Scam," "I Hate God!" and another one that I can't remember. So, in the course of the interviews, one author dies from either a heart attack or a stroke (it's unclear) and another suffers from a fatal blow to the head from falling debris, while the remaining one converts to Christianity to save his life.

102. The New New Atheism

Comment #56650 by Lil_Xunzian on July 16, 2007 at 6:49 pm

Here on the backlash corner someone should also post that ridiculous, pathetic skit that was on Faux's Half Hour News Hour (idiots), mocking books advocating atheism by having God murder all of the authors.

103. The New New Atheism

Comment #56647 by Lil_Xunzian on July 16, 2007 at 6:37 pm

I like the way Berkowitz conflates the Bible with texts in general. Okay, well, what Hitchens is doing would be invalid except for one thing. The Bible, the Koran, etc. all purport to be the word of God, who is infallible, while the majority of texts (like the Constitution) are admittedly the word of man, who is fallible. Can you imagine someone saying that the Constitution is the word of God? Saying that the Bible is the word of God puts it in a different category than our usual texts. Thus, when Berkowitz accuses Hitchens of making an invalid argument, he is making a category mistake. Now, I don't believe that the Bible is the word of God, but as long as you believe that, you can't treat word-of-God-texts the same way you would word-of-man-texts. It's a blatant category error to want to treat texts written by admittedly fallible beings the same way as texts authored by an allegedly infallible being. TWO WORDS: CATEGORY ERROR.

P.S. By "man" I of course mean men, women, and other humans.

104. The Stupidity of Fox News is Truly Beyond Belief

Comment #52276 by Lil_Xunzian on June 26, 2007 at 3:52 pm

The miracle of childbirth? Hmmm. My grandfather was an atheist, and he witnessed the birth of my father, my aunt, and my two uncles. Nope, didn't change his mind, he still had enough conviction to make an atheist out of my father. Speaking of which, my father was there for me and my sister, and the experience didn't convert him to theism. Looking at this pattern, I have a good feeling that "the miracle of childbirth" won't cause me and my sister to break with precedent when/if we have kids.
When I hear people stick up for god like this after they (allegedly) read Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens, etc., I get the feeling that their reading skills must be wanting.

105. Look Forward to Anger

Comment #52194 by Lil_Xunzian on June 26, 2007 at 12:56 pm

As an American, I'd like to make the following observation. I live in the so-called "freest country in the world," though I think Peter Singer is right to dispute that claim. In any event, my basic attitude goes something like this: "freedom" is basically a species of the genus "power" (I think it's no accident that the Mandarin word for "rights," as in human rights, is "quan" with a rising tone; quan means (political) power, much like the French "pouvoir," implying that within the discourse of rights-talk, quan refers to the political power pertaining to that group or individual (nevermind China's very alien notion of rights)). As a species of power, freedom can be abused like any other form of power, just as power corrupts, so can freedom. Thus, noting the abuses of freedom enjoyed by religious fundamentalists, I think it's fair to conclude that freedom is only a good thing for good people--that is, people who aren't corrupted by their freedom.