A sudden realization

[fpb]

I suddenly realized the reason for the fad for the Sorry Trinity - Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Christopher Hutchens. By all sane critical standards, their criticism of what they call "religion" is astonishingly incompetent; much worse than the notorious pamphlet by Bertrand Russell that gave Christian apologists so much matter for mirth and so

Comments

That is just what it is like

[johncwright]

"This part of the educated public is unable to cope with that; it is, to them, an unnatural invasion of reality by something that has no business being there."

Well said. I was trying to explain to one of my Christian-from-the-cradle friends what it is like to be ab ex-atheist. The central part of the atheist experience is disgust, contempt, and sometimes rage: because there is no reasonable explanation for why perfectly intelligent and sane people believe in what you (to your atheist eyes) looks like a silly superstition combined with an absurdly transparent con game.

As an atheist, you have the same feeling you would have if you walked into a room at a party, and every one there was pretending to talk to Harvey, the invisible 6-foot-tall bunny from the old Jimmy Stewart movie. It would be funny at first, but then, as they kept talking to someone in the room you could not see, and getting him drinks, and thanking him for his help, and saying he was a doctor who could heal the sick, and saying he was a miracle-worker who could raise the dead, the frustration would begin to eat at you. Why won't your friends shut up about the invisible bunny? Why is it not obvious that no one is there? And, in order to preserve your own sanity, your reaction is one of rage, contempt, disgust. You think your friends are madmen, or liars, or outrageously gullible, of some combination of the three.