Near Misses April 25, 2007
Posted by ocmpoma in : atheism , trackbackI seem to be turning into some sort of ScienceBlogs commentator…
Any way, Chris over at Mixing Memory has a post up about the schism between uppity, mean, or new atheists and the rest of the atheists.
I tend to agree with most of the post:
The more strident atheists will tend to portray the nicer types as appeasers — it’s sort of in our nature, you know, since we’re strident and all. I also agree that the kinder, gentler atheists are in general criticizing the way us mean atheists carry on against religion and the religious, not the fact that we carry on against them.
I agree, as well, with Chris’s assertion that there can, and should be, dialogue (dialog?). It would be a shame to see us, marginalized as we are, arguing over how to argue.
The one thing I do disagree with is Chris’s framing of these arguments as a schism. The debate is hardly so clear cut that there are two sides, as Chris admits in the post, and, furthermore, the different groups of atheists are not mutually opposed. Framing this ongoing debate as a schism is hardly helpful and serves only to reinforce the idea that there is some sort of underlying issue neatly (and perhaps irrevocably) dividing us — in the end, not only are the lines not so clearly drawn, but both the new and old atheists (as I’ve said) need each other in order to push forward. We seem to be nearly missing as we talk past each other.
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Hi, just to be clear, the use of the word “schism” was mostly meant to be ironic. I think in reality the people who’ve tended to talk of a divide are the “mean” atheists. Dawkins invented the Churchill-Chamberlain distinction, for example.
Ah, in that case… ummm… I was being ironic, too.