“Those fanatical atheists”

Dan Gardner, who writes for the Ottawa Citizen, frames the atheism debate nicely in an article from last Saturday.

Those making this case [for atheism lately] have been dubbed the “new atheists.” They have also been called fanatics who are dogmatic, zealous and intolerant of other views — the mirror image of religious extremists. As one English university dean said in the Guardian, Richard Dawkins is “just as fundamentalist as the people setting off bombs in the Tube.”

Less Olympian thinkers have portrayed strident atheists as hacking away at the bonds of morality, which must inevitably lead to various forms of depravity ranging from the sexual to the genocidal.

Don’t you know Stalin was an atheist? That’s the way it goes. First you read Richard Dawkins. Then you have an abortion. Then you’re putting a fresh coat of paint on the Gulag.

This frames the debate in a pleasingly symmetrical way. Over on that side are the insane religious fanatics who fly jets into skyscrapers and march around with signs saying “God Hates Fags.” Over there are fanatical atheists. Between the two extremes are sensible moderates who take the Goldilocks approach to faith and reason.

He goes on to sum up the famous atheist Richard Dawkins’ message:

If you claim that something is true, I will examine the evidence which supports your claim; if you have no evidence, I will not accept that what you say is true and I will think you a foolish and gullible person for believing it so.

That’s it. That’s the whole, crazy, fanatical package.

Well worth a full read.