Jeffrey Tayler continues making Salon friendlier to anti
canada goose black friday sale The Borowitz report satirizes Hillary Clinton campaign announcementI guess Salon, which most New Atheists dislike because of its historyof accommodationist and atheist bashing articles, doesn really care whether it has a unified viewpoint or not, for it begun canada goose outlet england to publish a string canada goose jacket outlet sale of long and hard hitting anti theist articles by Jeffrey Tayler, a contributing editor to The Atlantic who lives in Moscow. And although nobody can replace Christopher Hitchens, if you have a Hitch shaped hole in your God Module, it pretty well filled by Tayler prose, which pulls no punches. canada goose black friday sale
Thepiece is nominally about Bill O and his odious colleague Ann Coulter affront at Bill Maher repeated attacks on religion, and on the duo that Maher is promotingthe well known On Christians a war that completely imaginary except in the minds of jihadist Muslims. O arguesthat Maher is a known religion hater with free pass to bash people of faith. Well, most of that is true, but it given that O and Coulter long engagement ina real war: the war on atheists, and canada goose outlet new york the fact thatboth have long had a free pass to bash people of no faith. In fact, both O and Coulter are far more strident in their rhetoric than Maher ever was (read Coulter bookGodless or, better yet, my 2006 review of it to see how hateful these people are).
But the real excuse for the article is Tayler desireto unload on the incursion of unsubstantiated and harmful religious belief into American politics. I not sure why he started doing this lately, but I fully approve. Here are just a few excerpts do read the whole thing, even though for most readers Tayler will be preaching to the choir:
cheap canada goose uk It hardly takes a journalistic sleuth to ferret out the simultaneously ludicrous and lamentable false equivalency that O’Reilly has drawn here between the horrific, all too real massacres of Christians underway in countries afflicted with canada goose outlet store near me terrorism abroad, canada goose outlet phone number and the barbs, criticisms, and, yes, insults about religion coming from some vocal atheists, including Maher, in the United States. The death toll from the former stands in the hundreds; from the latter: zero. I’m unaware of canada goose jacket outlet toronto a single atheist who, motivated by his or her nonbelief, has called for or committed acts of violence against Christians anywhere, at any time. Obviously, nonbelievers possess no “sacred canada goose outlet online uk text” with which they could justify harming anyone, let alone canada goose outlet miami people of faith. (NB to those who will take to the comments section and rant about Stalin and Mao. Murderous dictators both, they ordered their atrocities not on account of their atheism, but to “defend the revolution” and secure their power.) cheap canada goose uk
buy canada goose jacket One of the reasons I such a fan of Tayler pieces is, I suppose, because they echo so closely the premise of The Albatross: that religion claims to help us understandthings about the universe, but, unlike science has no way to test or verify its claims. Both science and religion canada goose outlet online store review compete to understand reality, but only science has the method to verify its findings, while religion merely buttresses emotional and epistemic commitments made in advance, commitments impervious to evidence. buy canada goose jacket
cheap Canada Goose All in all, rationalists should applaud O’Reilly and Coulter for having the courage to so boldly air their mendacity, mischaracterizations, and canada goose outlet seattle lopsided analogies, which are in fact illuminating. Namely, they both argue from a premise so widely accepted that they leave it unstated: that those who believe, without proof, fantastical, far reaching propositions about the nature of our cosmos and how we should live our lives have nothing to explain, nothing canada goose outlet belgium to account for, while those of us who value convictions based on evidence, canada goose shop uk reasoned solutions, canada goose stockists uk and rules for living deriving from consensus must ceaselessly justify ourselves and genuflect apologetically for voicing disagreement. cheap Canada Goose
canada goose store Beneath this unstated premise lies another more insidious notion: that there are two kinds of truth religious and otherwise. That, say, the assertion that God created the earth in six days and rested on the seventh might not be literally true, but it merits respect as “religious truth” (or, as Reza Aslan puts it, “sacred history”), as canada goose vest outlet a metaphor for some ethereal verity, one canada goose clothing uk so transcendental that boneheaded rationalists obsessed with superfluities like evidence cannot grasp it. canada goose store
canadian goose jacket This is sophistry of the most contemptible variety. By such canada goose outlet in montreal unscrupulous subterfuge the faithful (and their apologists) canada goose outlet london commit treason against reason, betray honest discourse, and hope to render their (preposterous) dogmas immune to disproof and open to limitless interpretation, canada goose outlet 80 off depending on their needs of the moment. Either an objective proposition (say, that Jesus was the son of God, or that the Prophet Muhammad flew to heaven on a winged horse) is true or it is untrue. It cannot be whatever the one advancing it says it is; much less, canada goose outlet vancouver true for some, but not for others. canadian goose jacket
uk canada goose O’Reilly himself clings to this New Age idea that we all have a right to our personal, customized truths. In his 2006 interview with Richard Dawkins, O’Reilly admits that he’s “not positive that Jesus was God,” but he’s “throwin’ in with Jesus, rather than throwin’ in with you guys [atheists], because you guys can’t tell me how it all got here.” A minute or so later, he announces that he’s “stickin’ with Judeo Christian philosophy and my religion, Roman Catholicism, because it helps me as a person.” uk canada goose
uk canada goose outlet That doesn’t mean it’s true, replies Dawkins. uk canada goose outlet
“Well, it’s true for me,” says O’Reilly. “See, I believe it.”
Canada Goose Jackets “You mean true for you is different from true for anybody else?… Something’s either got to be true or not.” Canada Goose Jackets
buy canada goose jacket cheap O’Reilly’s “reasoning” would fail to pass muster in a canada goose outlet jackets nursery school yard, yet he presents it shamelessly to an adult audience on national television. He knows most people tend to avoid outright expression of disbelief (and certainly suppress belly laughs) when others begin disclosing their religious beliefs. It is between rationalists who seek canada goose outlet shop to live in ways they reason canada goose outlet in new york to be best, and the faithful cleaving to fatuous fables and Paleolithic preachments inscribed in ancient books that should be pulped, or http://www.canadagoosesalesus.com at best preserved as exhibits canada goose outlet edmonton for future students majoring in anthropology, with minors in mental derangement. buy canada goose jacket cheap
canada goose coats Indeed. Tayler aligns himself firmly with New Atheism by adhering to what I see as its defining trait: the view that science itself, aligned with secular philosophy, is our main intellectual weapon against religion. There are not two different ways of knowing about the universe. There is only one, canada goose outlet and that the scientific way, for science is the only reliable way to learn aboutreality. I would say that the insights of science were no threat to faith because science and religion are “different ways of knowing” and are not in conflict because they are trying to answer different questions. Science focuses on “how” the world came to be, and religion addresses the question of “why” we are here. I was dead wrong. There are not different ways of knowing. There is knowing and not knowing, and those are the only two options in this world. canada goose coats
There not much to add to that. of acquiring knowledge, because there are different sources of knowledge. Naturalists accept perception, introspection, memory, reason, and testimony as genuine sources of knowledge, but they are divided regarding the question of the possibility of synthetic a priori knowledge (based on nothing but pure reason or thought). The (scientific) empiricists among them answer this question in the negative.
Canada Goose online Supernaturalists assert that additional epistemic sources are available to us, such as mystical apprehension or divine canada goose outlet near me revelation. Canada Goose online
canada goose uk shop of knowing as commonly used implies that the facts can change with your viewpoint. Not just used by religiosos, but also by the New Agey moral relativists of the Trendy Left. Nonsense, IMO. canada goose uk shop
Canada Goose Online of coming to know implies that there are different ways to approach the same canada goose outlet locations in toronto set canada goose outlet paypal of facts, or maybe different viewpoints on the same facts. That seems quite possible to me (For example I can try to learn French by studying the grammar, where someone else might try by learning Canada Goose Online
canada goose uk outlet Of course I don know what special meaning the Catlickers might attribute to the phrase. canada goose uk outlet
canada goose factory sale Maybe to compare his war on atheist phrase to the war on drugs was not apples and apples but you know how we simply folks in America love wars wars we can lose. canada goose factory sale
canada goose uk black friday Many of us in the atheist world kind of do think of the push up on the religious as a kind of war. If you read what they do at ffrf it looks like hundreds of mini wars going on all the time. Maybe to women needing an abortion and living in Texas it looks like a war. Anyway, I don want to lose this one, whatever we call it. I also kind of think people like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and PPC see it as worthwhile struggle. canada goose uk black friday
Because every one of her hate filled tomes is promoted on Fox. O who after all has the most popular current events show on cable, gives her regular interviews. She on the (even worse) Hannity even more often. She makes appearances on some others too. Their viewers lap up her type of book, and thus each is a guaranteed success.
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