http://www.aboutadidam.org/readings/parental_deity/index.html

http://www.adidam.org/teaching/aletheon/truth-religion.aspx

Plus a further quote:

“Basically, the “Creator-God” idea is a simplistic philosophical idea, based on a very primitive and naive point of view. It appeals to people who have not yet profoundly considered its implications. The “Creator-God” idea certainly must be outgrown by anyone who embraces religion, philosophy, or science most profoundly. Real God is not the “Maker”. Real God IS.”

Plus:

“God is not the awful “Creator”, the world-making and ego-making Titan, the Nature-God of worldly theology. God is not the First Cause, the Other, or any of the objective ideas of mind-made philosophy or “theology”. God is not any image created by the religious ego. God is not any Power contacted by the mystical of the scientific ego. God is not any goal that motivates the social ego.”

“Therefore, the “Great Other”—whether It is called Nature or Natures God—is your OPPONENT, not your refuge. And the very perception and conception of difference (or otherness) is the dreadful sign that the self-possessed ego-”I”, rather than Truth, is the presumed basis of conscious existence.

Truth is PRIOR or eternal Freedom and Humor, whether or not the Other or the Opponent seems to be present. Therefore, Truth is the only Refuge. And if you surrender to the Truth, which is Transcendental Being, Consciousness, or Happiness, then there is an Awakening from this nightmare of condemned life and its passionate search for pleasure, victory, and escape.”

Chris, that “orthodoxy” within the New Atheism is an interesting point I’d not thought about. That parallels Evangelicals more than Randians.

Regarding the three types of New Atheists, I think that was more or less the point I was getting at as well. Yeah there are folks who adopt a naive positivism without thinking through the implications. I’ve no idea what percentage they make of the movement, but it seems quite unfair to tar the whole movement because of that. I’d go one step further and say that even when Dawkins regularly falls into such ruts it doesn’t mean one can simply dismiss everything he says — something I think too many do. Even positivists have some good arguments. And their positivism doesn’t inherently invalidate those arguments.

Too bad about Mixing Memory. But I can understand. The technical level of my blog posts had to drop a fair bit the last couple of years due to time. And there were six months there where I posted very rarely because of time issues.

You’re definitely right about how some Christians can’t conceive of atheism except in terms of their own religious beliefs. It’s very provincial and is kind of a shocking view given the place of Asia in all this. (And frankly the low place of religion in much of Asia – let along Christianity which at best was a footnote)

Right on. What’s worse, is that they share that same shrill tone….

And I would add that one of the great things about atheism, traditionally, has been its “big tent.” We haven’t always gotten along, but atheists for most of my time as one have been incredibly tolerant of the many different types of atheists. One of the things I find most disturbing about “New Atheism” is its insistence on a sort of atheist orthodoxy, both in attitudes towards religion and science and in attitudes towards less scientifically based strands of atheism, which are usually lumped together and labeled “PoMo.”

Also, Mixing Memory may come back (on blogger) someday, when I am much less busy both at work and at home, but it’ll be a while.

When I speak of New Atheists, I usually mean those of the Dawkins-Myers sort, or those who combine this with the Hitchens-Harris strain. These are the people who are difficult, if not impossible to engage. They’re the ones who compare dissenters among atheists to those who were Hitler appeasers. They’re the ones who find philosophical argument pointless and answer theological arguments with eye-rolling and parody (as Dawkins used parody to “refute” the ontological argument, for example). And they are almost all “vulgar positivists” at least in speech, if not in action.

Also, as an atheist born of Nietzsche, Marx, and a particular, let’s say hermeneutics of suspicion-like interpretation of the findings of cognitive science, I find the idea that Nietzsche’s is the only proper route to atheism bizarre. There are routes through psychoanalysis (which, admittedly, was heavily influenced by Nietzsche in the beginning), through Marxist social and cultural critique, through classic and modern skepticism, through feminist critique, through contemporary epistemology, through Spinozian pantheism, through Eastern philosophy (e.g., atheistic Buddhism and Hinduism), and even valid routes through science (routes more sophisticated than you might find in Ayers or Dawkins). It takes a Christian, and Christian hubris, to argue that the only route to atheism is through a critique of Christianity and Christian morality.

BTW – great to hear from you again. Any chance of Mixing Memory starting up again? It’s the blog I miss the most.

Mark, I agree. And I find myself in the odd position of defending the New Atheists while being of critic of theirs. I just find that a lot of the responses to the New Atheists aren’t much better than what the New Atheists themselves do. Unfortunately because I think, as Chris noted, that there are lots of good responses. And, as Chris exemplifies himself, there are plenty of atheists uncomfortable at the tactics of the New Atheists. To me there is often a stunning parallel in methods between the New Atheists and many (clearly not all) Evangelicals.

Rob, I do think we’re basically saying the same thing in terms of what Dawkins and company have as a weakness. I think we just need be careful how we express it lest we fall into the same traps they do.