Time, Not Enough

Unfortunately (for the purposes of maintaining a blog), I have been extremely busy lately, at least intellectually. I have had several interesting and challenging research projects at work; I have been working on moot court, which requires researching and drafting a brief like one that would be submitted to the United States Supreme Court (but this is moot court, so it is just imaginary); and I have been trying to cram work for law review into the interstices. I spend the rest of my time in moments of just about complete mental disarray, often just watching television (hooray for Joost, which has added much interesting programming; I have finally been able to see some episodes of “Welcome Back, Kotter,” which was “before my time”; it was a surprisingly decent show).

At any rate, I really do hope to get back on the horse again, so I can write incisive and insightful and perhaps inflammatory things about stuff that annoys me. Until then, see the previous paragraph.

Enough Already

Here is another article about some kook who thinks that people should be atheists without actively working to strip off the gunky layers of mush-headed misdirection that thousands of years of religion have deposited on human society. Sorry, but criticizing the core of what religion is about while trying to make peace with religion is a fundamentally hypocritical stance. If you think religion is factually unsound, psychological harmful, and socially destructive—as most atheists do—then why would you not “[tear] down and [wage] war on religion”?

Obviously, people need to establish some kind of amity in order to live in society. But that does not mean atheists should facially prop up the institution of religion for individuals while privately or publicly reviling it in general. If your neighbor has a belief system that you recognize as harmful, then how can you remain in good conscience if you do not work persistently to expose him or her to a different perspective? This is exactly the kind of thing that the alleged “fundamentalist atheist” Richard Dawkins discussed and rejected in his book The God Delusion—the idea that religion should somehow be beyond question, that we should tiptoe around it in a way that we do not tiptoe around other ideological ideas, like political views.

However, I suspect that the vast majority of people who label Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, and Christopher Hitchens as “fundamentalist atheists” or mere “polemicists” have not actually read their books. It is extremely difficult to find better, more reasonable arguments than those guys make. If you just read the popular press, you would think that they are making simplistic, bombastic arguments; they are not. They are making many specific points; that is why they are writing lengthy books and not pithy blurbs for the sides of paper cups at Starbucks.

I find it quite pathetic when people counter such huge amounts of content by simply calling the authors “fundamentalist atheists” or “polemicists.” That is just another iteration of the age-old technique of ignoring what your opponent says and giving him an inflammatory rhetorical label. It is not argument; it is dishonesty. But then, look where it’s coming from—people who want to give aid and comfort to religion, home of the world’s foremost authorities on dishonesty.

If you want to know what real polemic is, then look at this post right here. I have not presented any relevant facts or cogent arguments to support a substantive position; I have simply expressed disgust and contempt for those who use the same method to respond to substantial arguments. In other words, Dawkins, et al., are making the substantial arguments; their opponents are making polemical arguments; I am responding to the polemical opponents with polemic of my own. If you want substantial replies to people like the ones discussed in the article linked above, go read the works of Dawkins, et al., and don’t complain that I am not re-presenting their works here. Go buy the freakin’ books and read them yourself. Or check them out of your local public library, if you don’t want to financially support the authors.

Them Apples

Class rankings came out today. With 45 people in my class, I am in the top 3%.

(Yeah, that was pretty sly, wasn’t it?)