|
willbeurdaddy -> RE: The Religious Right and the New Atheism (10/26/2010 12:35:52 PM)
|
quote:
ORIGINAL: PatrickG38
As an atheist deeply sympathetic to serious Christianity (not fundamentalist nonsense), I would like to respond to the arguments offered by the OP and examine whether the equivalence between the religious fundamentalist and the atheist truly exist. It is asserted with little support that neither position is provable and this is no doubt true in the mathematic sense, but that does not mean that one side does not have a superior argument (it is not ‘provable’ O.J. Simpson killed his wife, but it is by far the better argument if debating whether he did or did not). So that neither can be absolutely proved should not prevent judging of the strength of the claims. The atheist does not usually say (when speaking carefully) that there is no god, but rather that there is no evidence there is a god and there is no need to posit there is a god and that therefore the belief in a god is an incorrect belief without sufficient (or any) serious empirical support. There is no god in the sense there are no unicorns; should a unicorn be found, a different opinion would be wisely held (I am excluding very powerful augments against the existence of an omnipotent omnibeneficent God).
Some atheist absolutely go too far in arguing, but in policy they pose no significant danger as the striking of words from money (which I could not care less about) will hardly alter society. Fundamentalist Christians, however, are an organized political force that poses an immense danger to individual freedom.
So while strictly true that there is no mathematic formula proving or disproving god, the two sides hardly have equal arguments and the danger posed by one is substantial while the danger posed by the other is non-existent.
Your presentation of the atheist argument is solid, but you stray when you try to extend it to the political arena. There are certainly atheist initiatives that have altered society. The banning of the pledge of allegiance in schools, for example, has had farreaching effects on how the US is viewed by different generations. The Courts have been used to enforce a tyranny of the atheist minority.
OTOH "Fundamentalism", regardless of the extent of its organization, has not managed to win favorable rulings from the Courts, despite the prevalence of theism in the country. Their influence on politics has been consistent with their mass, which is the way a democracy/representative republic is supposed to work.
Your comparison of the "dangers" of the two groups is vastly overstated.
|
|
|
|
