Advocatus Atheist

Christopher Hitchens passed away on Thursday, December 15. He was 62.  Of all the Gnu atheists I perhaps feel closest to Hitchens. I found his radicalism, his advocacy, and his contrarian outlook reminiscent of my own. Admittedly, however, his intellect far surpassed mine and his words were far more eloquent than anything I could ever possibly muster at a whims notice. His oration skills were second to none, in fact, I would go as far as to say he was the Ingersoll of our day. His whit was sharp, and his commentary always had a touch of that wry Anglo-American humor. Hitchens contained a sophisticated blend of cultural insights and bravado lending to a keen mind perfectly suited for his chosen profession as a journalist tackling the headline issues of his day. Even with all this going for him, most people found Christopher Hitchens polarizing. You either loved him or hated him--strangely enough, usually for the same reasons. I for one admired the guy greatly. Perhaps...

R. Joseph Hoffmann Needs to Apologize to Atheists R. Joseph Hoffmann is a religious historian I admire for his profound knowledge of religious history, nevertheless he seems to be too caught up in his own misguided view of what atheists ought to be (or at least aspire to) instead of what atheists are. His confusion probably stems from the fact that he views himself as an atheist (more or less) but is certainly still extremely sympathetic to the religious position (more or less). There is nothing wrong with being sympathetic toward the religious or with regard to religion, but it’s not a prerequisite of atheism. Much of Hoffmann’s blog, the New Oxonian , is devoted to regularly bashing and ridiculing atheists with the zealousness of a religionist gone mad with sanctimonious certitude in his own self righteousness, and he constantly defends those poor dimwitted religionists, because as everybody well knows, they couldn’t possibly defend themselves against those cunning, cold as a nucle...

The New Atheists What Are They Good For? “We are settlers in a cosmic wilderness. The world was not put here for us, and not all of it will ever prove amenable to us or to our scales of meaning. But we must carve out a moral space where our culture and civilization can live. We are part of Chaos, and we begin, little by little, to impose our own order and meaning upon it. There is no already-determined meaning somewhere else, in the mind of some God viewed as a kind of heavenly Bureau of Weights and Standards. Where else could meaning be but in the eye of the beholder? And that is in you. That is in me.” –Robert M. Price M any religious thinkers perceive disagreement as a denunciation of their beliefs. A brief survey of the backlash of Christians, and religious folk in general, to the New Atheist authors such as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Dan Dennett, and Victor Stenger reveals an overreaction disproportionate to the alleged offense of religious intoleranc...