In the Octagon with Vox Day

“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…