“The Irrational Atheist” (also known as TIA) is
an interesting and surprisingly good response to the New Atheism of Dawkins,
Harris and Hitchens. Unfortunately, it's written by Vox Day, a self-proclaimed
Christian libertarian whose real political positions are uncomfortably close to
White supremacism. Creationism and climate change denial are other ingredients
of Herr Day's revolution in science. He may also be inspired by the current
known as Neo-Reaction or Dark Enlightenment. Even his theology is exotic, being
a radical version of Open Theism. When not busy slashing New Atheists (or
radical-liberal SJWs), Vox is a game developer, science fiction writer and raving
misogynist.
That being said, I nevertheless considered TIA a stimulating read (please don't
slash me). And no, I haven't double-checked all the factual claims, but the
task seems well worth pursuing. Here are some of the highlights. “Blue” states
are just as dangerous and crime-ridden as “red” states, and most crime in “red”
states takes place in “blue” counties. Only four anti-atheist hate crimes were
reported in the United States in 2005. Most wars are about ethnicity or
territory, not religion. Machiavelli (who never led an army) is the only
classical writer on military matters who claims that religion is good for
recruiting and motivating soldiers. Until recently, most suicide bombings were
carried out by the secular-Marxist LTTE in Sri Lanka, not by Muslim jihadists.
Only 3,230 people were killed by the Spanish Inquisition during a period of 400
years, while Communism killed 148 million in little under a century.
Technological innovation or population increase can't explain the steep rise in
the number of deaths during the 20th century, since pre-modern rulers such as
Genghis Khan were also accomplished mass murders…
The author points out that Harris and the other New Atheists refuse to take
responsibility for the crimes of godless Communism, while often claiming that
religious moderates are somehow responsible for the crimes of their militant
co-religionists – an obvious double standard. Vox denies that Communism was a
“religion”, since it didn't believe in the supernatural. It was precisely its
non-religious/anti-religious focus on utopian this-worldly “progress” which
caused it to go totalitarian and genocidal. Vox further argues that moral
atheists are parasitical on the often religiously-derived morality of their
host societies, which empirically proves that atheism has no moral compass of
its own.
More controversially, Vox Day claims that humans are irrational and indeed
sinful creatures, which (somewhat paradoxically) means that Enlightenment
rationalists are irrational for treating their fellow human beings as if they
were rational and perfectable. Science, rather than religion, caused the (real
or perceived) global threats to human survival bemoaned by the New Atheists:
overpopulation, nuclear weapons or climate change. Therefore, it's simply wrong
to suggest that all knowledge is neutral, or that knowledge is always better
than ignorance – sometimes, the very opposite is the case. The very fact that
science can't generate a moral code of its own making, but needs outside
guidance, once again shows that science and scientists simply cannot replace
religion.
Since Vox Day, as already indicated, is a creationist and climate change
denialist, he is not particularly convincing when dismissing the religious
threat to science, claiming that no such threat exists. No? What about
anti-vaxxer religious groups? Or what about Christian fundamentalists who
refuse to take action against climate change “since Jesus will save us”? There
is also the general climate of weird obscurantism fostered by those who claim
that the age of the Earth or the origin of species can be derived from ancient
texts in Old Hebrew (interpreted or even translated differently by various
religious groups), rather than by, say, scientific observations. (Texts in
ancient Sanskrit are presumably also beyond the pale of theo-settlement.)
That being said, TIA is nevertheless an exciting read, and even entertaining
(after a fashion). Be warned that Vox Day doesn't sound like a liberal Quaker!
Threats of violence against Richard Dawkins (Vox wants to meet him in the
Octagon), claims that atheists may suffer from Asperger's syndrome, unexpected
insults against Rapture-ready Baptist women for being obese, a somewhat
obsessive preoccupation with psychedelic drugs...you get the drift. He also kindly
informs us that asking questions about religion to readers of his blog, Vox
Populi, is usually a waste of time, its denizens being more interested in
questions like “9 mm or .45?” or “what's the best way to get rid of a dead
body?”. Brother VD sure is a peculiar kind of Xian!
Since New Atheism is already out of fashion (it feels “so 2005” or
thereabouts), I'm pretty certain none of the Four Horsemen of the Atheistic
Apocalypse will ever pen a response to TIA, even apart from the fact that the
author makes Ted Cruz sound like a liberal (and hence can't be invited to
polite company). In a sense, this is a pity, since a debate (OK, make that a
brawl) between Darwin's pitbull and God's vampire, in the Octagon or elsewhere,
would have been great fun – and perhaps even intellectually interesting…
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