tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4464222071440015933.post8042019802670451370..comments2024-01-23T17:14:04.067-05:00Comments on Jaltcoh: What a good little atheist you've been!John Althouse Cohenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11703450281424023177noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4464222071440015933.post-90186460353502606332010-02-03T13:55:15.520-05:002010-02-03T13:55:15.520-05:00The racial makeup of the vocal atheists is not acc...<i>The racial makeup of the vocal atheists is not accidental or irrelevant. Black people on the whole have a very different experience of religion than Northern European whites.</i><br /><br />Just to be clear about my last paragraph, I wouldn't necessarily have a problem with that kind of analysis, if it had appeared in the article. I'm not saying race is irrelevant. My problem with Prothero's particular invocation of race is that it's done only in passing, as if the mere mention of the whiteness of the people he's criticizing is so devastating that no elaboration is needed. <br /><br /><br /><i>The view that religion has had a historically negative influence makes little sense in the context of the black experience.</i><br /><br />I think you mean that blacks have <i>additional</i> reasons to view religion as historically having a <i>positive</i> historical influence. That doesn't mean blacks are unable to make sense of the idea that religion has had negative historical influences. We shouldn't assume that blacks care only about themselves, or that they're necessarily unmoved by any arguments of any of the "new atheists." For instance, Sam Harris criticizes the Catholic church as complicit in the Holocaust, but you wouldn't say that this argument doesn't make sense to gentiles. Many writers criticize religions as patriarchal; men as well as women are able to appreciate this argument. And so on.<br /><br />Anyway, even if the discussion is just restricted to the black American experience, is it true that there are <i>no</i> black atheists who feel that, on the whole, Christianity has offered false hope to blacks and done more harm than good? I don't know. I don't know of enough black atheists to have an opinion on this question. But I wouldn't rule out that a black person could have this perspective. Hm, I just did a quick Google search and found <a href="http://theblackatheist.blogspot.com/2008/06/is-religion-dangerous.html" rel="nofollow">this example.</a>John Althouse Cohenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11703450281424023177noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4464222071440015933.post-18193717950314676752010-02-03T13:26:54.202-05:002010-02-03T13:26:54.202-05:00Purely in my opinion, there's a valid differen...Purely in my opinion, there's a valid difference in the way we perceive the hard-line atheists and the kinder, gentler atheists, and its *not* in their ideas but in their attitudes toward those who don't share their ideas. The Dawkins-style atheists are so intolerent and arrogant, with such a sense of superiority and in many cases such a narrow understanding of what religion is, that they cross the line from science into fanaticism. Yes, all atheists disbelieve in the divine, but that's not the point of the criticisms against some of them.<br /><br />The racial makeup of the vocal atheists is not accidental or irrelevant. Black people on the whole have a very different experience of religion than Northern European whites. The view that religion has had a historically negative influence makes little sense in the context of the black experience.Richard Lawrence Cohenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01951947957345891398noreply@blogger.com