Salon jumps the shark, becomes official secular atheist-bashing site « Why Evolution Is True

Jerry Coyne responds,,,

,,,O’Hehir’s piece says absolutely nothing new, but simply reiterates the idea that fundamentalism is dumb, but not all religion is fundamentalism, that the New Atheists like Dawkins and Harris attack religion as if it were fundamentalism, and therefore they’re dumb too. Have you heard that one lately? O’Hehir’s looking for some kind of middle ground between science and religion, but, bizarrely, admits in the end that it doesn’t seem to exist. I wonder why that is?

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Yes, we have had this debate, and it has continued, though I don’t think it was more active in the 18th and 19th centuries than it is now. And no, it’s not more stupid this time around, because we know a lot more about science, and we’ve seen how science has made even more hash of religious claims. And note how O’Hehir implies that he, but nobody else engaged in these arguments, understands their philosophical and theological history. Such hauteur! In fact, many of the New Atheist arguments against religion are either the old and supposedly “less stupid” ones (viz. those of Russell or Hume), or newer responses to the defensive but unconvincing lucubrations of Sophisticated Theologians.™ You want stupid? Pick your side: Karen Armstrong or Steven Weinberg.

O’Hehir does indeed go after “young earth creationism” and its spinoffs, but then says that these worldviews are “a tiny fringe” movement in Christianity, implying that most decent Christians are of the liberal Eagleton stripe. He fails to note that 46% of Americans—hardly a tiny fringe minority—are indeed young-earth creationists when it comes to human evolution; that about 70% of us believe in Satan, angels, and Hell; and that 30% of Americans see the Bible as the direct word of God, while another 49% see it as “inspired by the word of God.” O’Hehir clearly doesn’t get out enough, but at least he notes some of the dangers of melding Christianity and politics. Yet even those he hedges in a strange way,,,

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If anything is “silly” in all this, it’s O’Hehir’s futile effort to straddle the fence between science and religion. His article comes off as saying nothing beyond “both sides are stupid,” and he offers neither a synthesis nor a cogent analysis of the problem.


Salon jumps the shark, becomes official secular atheist-bashing site « Why Evolution Is True