I believe in football. I believe in playing until the whistle, and then maybe a little more. I believe in the Hail Mary pass, the tuck rule, good defense, and a little luck. I believe the Patriots played like ass today, in such a piss-poor manner that they do not deserve to be called New England Patriots, even though they got the win. I believe that it is extremely hard to write about what you really believe when push comes to shove. Which is just my extremely roundabout manner of trying to talk about the article I've been thinking about for weeks. The November Wired had "The New Atheism" as the cover story, which caught my eye and got my $5. I've been an atheist for a long time, though my mother always tries to convince me that I'm an agnostic. I'm not.
As I'm sitting here, taking notes on this article (yes, I make notes for my blog -- shut it), a preview comes on for The Nativity Story. Seriously. And I'm struggling to formulate my thoughts on this article and its subject. The people interviewed for the piece -- Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, and others -- seem like fundamentalist atheists (or at least Gary Wolf portrays them that way), and I've always been a much more live and let live kind of non-believer. I see their point about being more strident when religious fundamentalists are not being tolerant, and I sure as hell can't fathom the notion of creationism being taught as any kind of valid scientific theory, but I can't quite go as far as this: "The New Atheists will not let us off the hook simply because we are not doctrinaire believers. They condemn not just belief in God but respect for belief in God. Religion is not only wrong; it's evil."
Read the whole thing yourself, and question what it is you believe. I'm sticking with the basics.
No comments:
Post a Comment