Monday, November 30, 2015

Atheists Are Allies You Don't Want To Have

It is a guilty pleasure,  seeing the athe-bots proving that their real political enthusiasm is their hatred for the religion of about 85% of the American people, Christianity.   They are going on, and on, and on about the Republican-fascists saying exactly the same things they say about Christians, only about  Muslims.   And they don't see the irony of that.

Most of the Christians I know and read condemn the Republicans pandering to anti-Isalmic bigotry and did so before it occurred to the athe-bots of the blog set that it was wrong to characterize 1.6+ billion people for the acts of a small number of terrorists who violated the teachings of the Quran in the name of Islam.

The funny thing about seeing the athe-bots doing that on a political blog is that the Christians who condemn the Muslim bashers don't go out of their way to alienate the rest of the Christians who constitute a political majority in the country and who, because of that, could have a far stronger effect on thwarting the Republican-fascists on that issue.  The atheists, through their political innumeracy of bashing the far, far, oh, so very far many more Christians in the country, are almost certainly entirely counterproductive in that effort.

Atheists have been a political loser for the left, their greatest role in politics has been in Republican-fascists using their intemperate and offensive language to recruit people to vote for Republicans.  The last thing that beleaguered Muslims need is them championing their cause, that is when they don't turn on a dime and start in with the Muslim bashing, too.    Their movement began with Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens saying what the Republicans say and worse about Muslims in the wake of 9-11.    I don't know of any among even the Republican candidates pandering to the worst of American bigots who have made more hateful and demented remarks about Muslims and how they should be killed, en masse than Hitchens and, especially Harris.


Update:  Here I didn't intend to touch this post again until I got home and here I find I'm accused of cribbing something a Jeff Sparrow said in the Guardian yesterday.   It's not as if I hadn't said these things before yesterday, it's not as if a lot of us haven't been pointing out that Harris and Dawkins and Hitchens are flaming racists and bigots against Muslims and Christians in the past.   If this is new stuff to the athe-bots it's because they don't seem to read much.

Sparrow asks if they can save atheism from the new atheists.  Well, I doubt that, having read large amounts of what the old atheists have said,  Those as decorous and lofty as Bertrand Russell, forgotten figures such as Joseph McCabe, those of the bottom rung gutter snipes and bigots like Madelyn Murray O'Hair and once somewhat major now forgotten racists and antisemites like James Hervey Johnson and Woolsey Teller.   The history of atheism, especially popular, movement atheism doesn't really provide much else but bigotry and nastiness.

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