But, as usual, we should not be surprised if the debate comes to a screeching dogmatic halt… unless, of course, we abandon general labels for a motley crowd, and instead criticize specific individual thinkers and accuse them of holding specific propositions.

Take the trope, “The new atheists don’t appreciate the diversity of religion.” Now look at Dawkins. In The God Delusion, Dawkins sets up a working definition of religion that is meant, for his own narrow purposes, to deal with theistic religions (excluding atheistic ones, which he suggests don’t really have much in common with the rest of the lot). These working definitions do not exhaust all uses of the kind, “religion”, and yet we hear that he condemns the Buddhists / Taoists with the Christians and Muslims. Not so.

Moreover, in his section on Einstein, he considers himself an ally with Spinozan pantheists, against both the deists and the theists. If this is who he regards as a friend, then what work are we supposed to think the word “atheist” is really doing in his philosophy? It is central, sure, but we might call him instead a “secular activist” and have the label be just as helpful.

So really at this point I would need you to say more for me to give an articulate and considered reply.

But one can be an activist for secularism without taking or even endorsing the “new atheist” approach of caricaturing religious believers. Heck, one can do that without even being an atheist, as Ed Brayton from Dispatches From the Culture Wars does.

But to answer your question: I can’t think of a third alternative that’s realistic, no. Well, sure, we can always postulate that M/K are confused and don’t quite know what they want. This is possible, but it’s not very charitable.

Since M/K persist in empty chiding of the New Atheist Blogosphere, one can only suppose that they’re either framing themselves as the political enemies of secular activism as a lifestyle choice, or they have compelling evidence that secular activists like Myers have alienated bible-belt America.

Falsely dichotomize much?

Since M/K persist in empty chiding of the New Atheist Blogosphere, one can only suppose that they’re either framing themselves as the political enemies of secular activism as a lifestyle choice, or they have compelling evidence that secular activists like Myers have alienated bible-belt America.

Among the paltry evidence in UA (if we want to call it evidence) was testimony from a loonie Republican politician. From my vantage point, there’s the distinct possibility that the Republicans are doing everything they can to alienate the Democrats from their own organizational base. So they adopt a “clutched pearls” attitude to threaten the loss of possible reconciliation and bipartisanship, and appeal to the “good guys and girls” ethos that already exists in a reasonable populace. If you get tempted by this deal with the devil, as the Ben Nelson (D-Neb) sort do, then you weaken your ties to the base. You alienate yourself from your own spine.

In this scenario, your competitor is all the while waiting to perform the bait-and-switch, as they are covertly amassing their own very unfriendly forces to take over. (Among those unfriendly forces, it is worth noting that Bill Nelson, a member of the Christian wirepulling sleaze lobby called “The Family”. And for the record — I am not casting aspersions on her character — but Bill Nelson was Sheril’s old boss, which should at least tell you something about the direction which conventional wisdom travels.) The amassing of the nut wing involves creating a sense of victimization, etc., and will surely involve outright lying and distorting opposing figures like Myers for their own scapegoating purposes. But they’re going to do that no matter what happens, no matter who says what, which is why it’s so pointless for science-friendly types to so harshly and emptily condemn activists like Myers on those grounds. But what’s even more significant for my point here is that if you pull the trust away from the activists, you pass up the opportunity to build your own community, your own base. So long as both parties have strong bases, the game will be zero-sum, with no clear winners or losers. But when the clutched-pearls crowd distance themselves from their own base, the system slips out of their grasp; as if it were a game of table-tennis, and the table were tolerably tilted in the other direction.

Pointless turns to counter-productive quite frequently when it comes to antagonism. Whatever proposed usefulness the macho proponents of antagonism come up with is at least matched with potential for it to be turned on their side. When an unpopular group turns to antagonism they should count on it being used by their opponents because history shows that’s the side that often gets the better of it.

Pity about the ragtime. ;> What kind of students do you teach?

Although Dewey abandoned the view that antagonism had any charm, he maintained his view that conflict had historical functions. The take-home lesson, from that article on Dewey, is that we can observe conflict in retrospect, but ought not anticipate its inevitability, as it might take hold of the mind in an unhealthy way. In other words: it is inevitable over time, but not in any particular instance, and is only made worse if you expect it.

So hooray. But what if they were both mistaken in some contexts? How would we know? To find out, shouldn’t we get out of our armchairs and actually start looking around in the world?

We do need a sociologist to look at the issues you’ve been raising for weeks. I admit that the best I can do is to provide anecdotal evidence. As for Ken’s recent remarks, I endorse them completely (BTW, I think Ken was being a bit sarcastic in his The New York Times letter, but that still works for me.).