Comments on: Religious Toxicity

By: Baduin

Baduin — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 00:13:47 +0000

There must be something right with this methodology, because the results look sensible. I suspect this is the violence part — you need to be strong in order to be violent, and strong religions are certainly what he considers most dangerous.

Belief in miracles is also a good way to distinguish between true religions and various deisms.

Also, I wonder whether there will ever be a coalition between Amish, French monarchists, and militant rational atheists? There is something very appealing about all those groups, and when added together they could possibly achieve something — certainly something very strange.

By: Isegoria

Isegoria — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 16:56:26 +0000

I know ESR is anti-Communist. I assume he doesn’t consider them part of his one true atheist tribe but rather an irrational and violent apostate splinter group.

By: Isegoria

Isegoria — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 16:54:25 +0000

The principles he does explicitly set out are rationality and non-violence (in the libertarian sense of not initiating physical violence or threatening to do so to coerce others). Is that no better than whining, "Why do people have to be so mean?"

By: Isegoria

Isegoria — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 16:51:57 +0000

I suspect that both sides of any such conflict see their own crazies as a tiny minority within an otherwise sane group and the other side’s crazies as the true core of a destructive movement that hides behind a mask of moderation and good intentions.

By: Joseph Fouche

Joseph Fouche — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 06:00:28 +0000

My rejection of ESRism is motivated by specific features of ESRistic religion. Two, in particular, stand out: (a) past evangelizing of Perl, and (b) past use of Perl.

ESR is the Tom Paine of the open source/free/libre software revolution. Like Paine he had one moment in the sun with his “Common Sense”/”American Crisis” in “The Cathedral and the Bazaar” and then jumped the shark.

I’ve gotten to the point that I respect RMS more than ESR. Even though you don’t want to stand downwind from RMS, he at least has real achievements in the original GCC and assorted GNU utilities. I’d say more but ESR has convinced me that, though I’m wildly irrational in my beliefs, at least I’m not violent. I suspect ESR will only achieve coherence about the time Perl 6 ships in 2150.

By: Red

Red — Sun, 13 Mar 2011 21:59:19 +0000

Odd how atheists never mention all the slaughter done by their fellow atheists. It’s almost like they are projecting onto religions what they themselves have done in such abundance in the last couple of centuries.

By: Bruce G Charlton

Bruce G Charlton — Sun, 13 Mar 2011 18:29:45 +0000

I thought he might go on to mention what this set of principles and values might be — but apparently not.

Vague gestures at that brief historical fad among a handful of intellectuals self-styled ‘the enlightenment’, and consisting of a gigantic wish-list, doesn’t really count as a set of principles and values any more than a beauty queen saying, “Why do people have to be so mean? Why can’t everyone be happy and healthy and kind and just get along, huh?”

By: Erik

Erik — Sun, 13 Mar 2011 15:53:48 +0000

He is right that “modern atheism is not simply against religion”; modern atheism is against Christianity. The fever-swamps of the left that he mentions dominate modern atheism far more than unnamed extremely powerful fundamentalist groups dominate the discourse inside Christianity.