Damn dirty atheists!

[cambro]

I’m almost finished with Christopher Hitchens’s “god is not Great,” the latest of the slew of atheist bestsellers. It's a good read, and while he doesn't advance many slam-dunk intellectual arguments against faith, on a visceral level he does a great job of making religion seem ludicrous and offensive. (This may prove the most effective possible

Comments

[weyrwolfen]

Er... How can you hate someone/thing if you do not believe in s/he/it? The logic centers of my brain are misfiring right now...

I tend to avoid reading anything on the topic because all it does is make me froth at the mouth. Not a pretty sight. Does that make me a traitor to the field?

[cambro]

Well, you see, it's because deep down they really *do* believe in God, because it says somewhere in the Bible that everyone *knows* God is real. They're only fooling themselves by calling themselves atheists, and it's all because they're angry life isn't fair, or because ignoring God allows them to live their perverted heathen lifestyles with impunity. Or something like that.

You're probably better off staying away from the topic. Sometimes I've found that researching creationist claims is a useful intellectual exercise, in that it forces me to learn more about the background geological and paleontological data in question. More often than not, though, all I get out of it is higher blood pressure.

[derekasaurus]

I have a whole bookshelf of atheism books but the only one I would wholeheartedly recommend is George H. Smith's classic The Case Against God. Though it's from 1980, so I don't expect to see it on any best seller lists. It's thoughtfully written and lays out all the arguments so plainly that every book on the subject I have read since sounds like redundant chatter.

[cambro]

Hm. I'll have to see whether the library has that one.

[prufrock451]

I haven't read a single book on atheism, which I don't think is terribly shocking for an atheist. After all, we relativist existentialist bastards are accountable to no moral authority except ourselves, and I won't take crap from O'Hair any more than I will from Moses

[cambro]

Hitchens may be kind of a jerk at times, but I have to admit that I dig it simply because he's so good at it and so articulate. Every cause needs a bulldog. One's enough, though, and I wish some of the others (Dawkins, for instance) would be a little less smug and shrill.

Hitchens himself almost seems to agree with you about the echoes of his Marxism, since he compares his abandonment of it to a loss of religious faith and states "There are days when I miss my old convictions as if they were an amputated limb. But in general I feel better, and no less radical [having left them behind]."

As for what's on our side, artistically...geez, I don't know. "Contact"? Doesn't quite stack up to "Paradise Lost"...

[prufrock451]

Yes, we need a bulldog, but we also need a slow-motion girl in a sundress in a field of dandelions. Where's the affirmation? Where's the glory?

There's a hell of a mission there for some atheist with more talent and hubris than me.