New Atheists have internalized Hitchen’s famous subtitle, “religion poisons everything,” which is a belief based on feeling rather than fact. In simpler terms, New Atheism is the belief that religion is the root of most or all of the world’s problems. A specious belief, indeed, given the last 100 years produced the mass slaughters of World War I and II, colonialism, Communism, imperialism, Korea, Vietnam and the Iraq war - all of which had nothing to do with religion. Popular New Atheist Ayaan Ali Hirsi, for instance, is the keynote speaker for this year’s American Atheist convention. Her name is guaranteed to drive up ticket sales among enthusiastic New Atheists. Why? She once urged for a military war against Islam - not against Islamic extremism but Islam itself, and expressed sympathy for Islamophobic mass murderer Anders Breivik. The feting of Hirsi as a voice of “reason” among New Atheists underscores the bigoted overtures of the entire New Atheist movement. Exaltation of self is also the underlying reason why New Atheists are blind to state violence. They’re blind to the fact non-state violence is always a response to state violence. They engage in double standards: non-state violence is barbaric and savage, whereas state violence, our violence, is rational, humane and reasonable.
Posted on: Tue, 20 Jan 2015 07:02:53 +0000
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