Atheists & Agnostics
Related: About this forumRichard Dawkins is not an Islamophobe (Salon.com)
Excerpt follows. Full article is here.
An attack on the renowned atheist as anti-Muslim is really designed to squelch honest conversation about religion
By Jeffrey Tayler
No doubt, Nathan Lean, the editor in chief of an Islam-positive online entity called Aslan Media, fired off his recent denunciation of Richard Dawkins alleged Twitter rampage about the paucity of Muslims among Nobel Prize laureates, and heaved a sigh of satisfaction. Mission accomplished! Godless biologist slapped down, Islamophobia denounced!
Lean would do well to stiffen up, however. In tapping out a risible parody of a reasoned critique, he unwittingly both beclowns himself and lends credence to the very scientist and arguments he seeks to discredit. His piece is full of wrongheaded thinking and blundering jabs at Dawkins for pointing out uncomfortable truths about the state of science, or, rather, the lack of it, in Muslim countries. Lean purports to expose the ugly underbelly of (Dawkins) rational atheistic disguise, but has authored a tract consisting almost wholly of politically correct shibboleths and befuddled assertions that insult his readers intelligence and aim to squelch honest debate about Islam and its role in the world today. If one believes in free speech, one cannot let what he wrote go unchallenged.
...
What Lean is doing here is deleterious to free speech: he is trying to equate criticism of a religion (whose followers, in this case, mostly happen to be nonwhite) with racism. This sophistry cannot be allowed to stand. Islamophobia is nothing more than a quack pseudo-diagnosis suggesting pathological prejudice against, and fear of, a supposedly neutral subject, Islam, in the way agoraphobic folk cringe at open places or claustrophobes dread an elevator. Based on the erroneous premise that those who criticize Islam are somehow ill, the term, along with its adjective Islamophobic, should be banished from our lexicon as pernicious to rational thinking. People, regardless of race or creed, deserve equal rights and respect; religions, which are essentially hallowed ideologies, merit no a priori respect, but, rather, gimlet-eyed scrutiny, the same scrutiny one would apply to, say, communism, conservatism or liberalism. No one has a right to wield religion as a shield or as a sword.
...
For Dawkins, says Lean, everything great about the West is the result of secularism and everything miserable about the rest is the fault of religion. This is Leans reductionism, not Dawkins, but, I grant, hes not far off the mark. The Industrial and scientific revolutions, modern medicine, political pluralism, freedom of speech and even freedom of religion (re both, see the U.S. Constitution, First Amendment), equal rights, and all sorts of movements aiming to ameliorate humankinds lot came about in the West after it smashed the shackles of religion, and those governing in its name, imposed on us for centuries. We should not shy away from declaring this truth loudly and forcefully, and from defending it whenever and wherever it is necessary to do so.
Emphases added by me.
skepticscott
(13,029 posts)It should go over in Religion, to see if any of the "Atheists behaving badly" trolls are really interested in discussing the issue, or just in flinging poo.
Rob H.
(5,352 posts)Mainly because (a) even when confronted with direct evidence about what a person said, they still insist that isn't what that person actually meant*, and (b) I don't care what narrow-minded anti-atheist bigots and their defenders have to say. They've made it overwhelmingly clear that the strawman version of Dawkins they've created in their own minds is the only one they're able and willing to address.
*Seriously, there's a person over there who still insists that Christopher Hitchens supported waterboarding even after he made international news by voluntarily experiencing it himself and no amount of direct quotes or links to numerous news articles will convince her otherwise. Remember, this is Hitchens we're talking about, and the man was never one to mince words; he stated unequivocally that it's torture and the U.S. shouldn't have been doing it. Apparently, direct quotes from the man himself don't count as evidence of what he very clearly said, though.
Goblinmonger
(22,340 posts)I've tried with that person, too. "He supports torture." "Um, no, he didn't. He changed his mind after having it done to him. Here's a link to the article where he says it." "He supports torture." Jesus Fucking Christ, you would think people might actually have the intellectual integrity to say, "Hey, looks like I was wrong and I'm glad he changed his mind" but that's a little too much to ask, apparently.
Response to Goblinmonger (Reply #4)
Post removed
cleanhippie
(19,705 posts)It's to be expected, it's what they do.
Rob H.
(5,352 posts)on the intertubes of him unequivocally repudiating waterboarding after he experienced it, so his words can't be parsed to claim, "Well, what he really meant was...." That isn't good enough evidence, either, apparently.
defacto7
(13,485 posts)posed with any idea that even shades on disagreement with the status quo. It's a pitiful shame. It is beyond me how anyone can so consistently deny and even lie about the tiniest proven facts as some of those in the religion forum. They even try to mind read and tell you what you really mean and one of the most virulent disruptors is on the mir-team. When the facts are in you just spit in the wind if you deny it and it's a disruptive waste of time. Don't post there as it's impossible to get reasonable discussion. What a waste of human mind it is.
And I apologize to any on the religion forum who really do try to create reasonable discourse on subjects that are acceptable to their forum and are able to succeed in doing so. There are many, but I won't see those posts since I trashed that forum due to disruptors gone wild.
As for this OP and Dawkins... how did I already know that?
Good luck skepticscott and thanks for the post.
dimbear
(6,271 posts)Perhaps a more precise characterization of Dawkin's quip would be, uh, "true."
trotsky
(49,533 posts)As you noted above though, that won't ever deter the anti-atheists. Dawkins is the ultimate atheist bigot to them, and by attacking that strawman version him, they believe they counter the arguments against religion and religious belief.
Wails of "Islamophobe" and "bigot" are all they have, the facts be damned. They realized long ago they can't win the battle with ideas, logic, or reason.
rexcat
(3,622 posts)that people banned from this forum can use the alert function and get a post hidden by a jury of ******.
Response to rexcat (Reply #7)
defacto7 This message was self-deleted by its author.
defacto7
(13,485 posts)This is a safe haven. What exactly is that supposed to mean? Does it mean we are not safe from those who have positions the rest of us don't have?
rexcat
(3,622 posts)means someone can't come into our forum and disrupt but by having someone alert a post, when no names were given out, and that post alerted and then a "jury" decides to hide a post that is where I have problems with the system. The current system is not going to change so we are stuck with it.
The people who have been banned from this forum definitely deserved it because of their rude, uncalled for behavior over here. Of course that doesn't mean they can't do it in the religion forum. There are some over there that miss the irony of their own hypocrisy.
Rob H.
(5,352 posts)I get the sense that they still lurk here on the off-chance they'll be able to click "Alert" on posts they don't like. However, as most of us here have seen recently, it's perfectly okay for someone to call all atheists "arseholes" over in Religion and not only do believers not alert on that kind of thing, the person who posted it was simply given a time-out by the hosts and then allowed back in after deleting the aforementioned post. (A later post in a related group showed that no only did he think he hadn't said anything wrong in any his of numerous posts which wound up hidden, he was misrepresenting what he had actually said.)
An atheist who called all believers "arseholes" would probably have been at least blocked if not bounced out of DU entirely, so it's hard not to cast a jaundiced eye on people over there who hit the ceiling whining about tone when religion is criticized but remain completely silent when believers (and some "Atheist, but..." posters) call atheists names.
Edit: Dang! Rexcat responded while I was writing (and rewriting and rewriting...) my post.
Pommie Dinko Cirtbag
(27 posts)"Drats. The wily bastard excerpted only four paragraphs. Can't alert for copyright."
I was going to say "hi there", but I'd rather do that in a thread trotsky can reply to. Gimme five minutes.
Ah, done: http://www.democraticunderground.com/123017272#post8