#PZMyers and the #Pharyngulacs: religious idiots too

Earlier this week, partly in response to blogger P.Z. Myers, aka Pharyngula, laughably claiming that Sam Harris, author of "The IMmoral Landscape," was not a conservative, I wrote a post calling him a political idiot.

Well, he has a new post up attacking the idea of atheists working with interfaith groups, which show there's religious idiocy in the air too.

What started it all? An attack on non-Gnu Atheist Chris Steadman, specifically a blog post of his on working with interfaith groups, including the pejorative that he was a "faithiest."

Well, one Pharyngulac, early on, claimed to see crosses all over Chris' blog page.

The reality? As I posted on Pharyngula:

What's funny/paranoid ... Chris' rows of plus signs breaking up posts, or subthoughts within posts, being called "crosses." Some of you people see what you want to see.

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Ohh, I'm typing "crosses." I must be a "faithiest."

But, apparently sarcasm is OK only when you're dishing it out in-group.

I followed with a more serious comment:

More seriously, folks like PZ and his (self-?)brainwashed "cadre" seem to to think that a member of the wingnut fundamentalist Church of Christ can be lumped in the same gropuing as a member of the semi-unitarian United Church of Christ.

Of course, that's totally wrong.

OTOH, many nonatheists would do the same with atheism, trying to lump all secular humanists with deliberately combative Gnus.

That's why I tend to use the word atheist less and less these days.

And at least one Pharyngulacs got more than a bit touchy.

Ahh, yes, the descent to four-letter words and pejoratives. It's self-perpetuating.

In a follow-up, to tie in with the politics angle, I noted that Sam Harris lumps all Muslims together in the same way, which gets back to the post I linked up top, about Myers' political idiocy.

The "idiot" part is where he claims Sam Harris isn't a conservative, not even on his Islamophobia. Well since he quotes a prominent "dhimmitude" neocon and apparent Zionist and references her more than one in "The IMmoral Landscape," you're flat wrong, P.Z.

The author I'm referring to is Bat Ye'or (that's a pseudonym for "Daughter of the Nile"), author of "Eurabia." (Sidebar: Bat Ye'Or blaming Egypt for the problems of Jews in Cairo after the Suez war is disingenuous at least in part. One scholar of her work, Joel Beinin gets it right with saying: "Bat Ye'or exemplifies the 'neo-lachrymose' perspective on Egyptian Jewish history."

So, on mixing religion and politics and getting both wrong, Harris cites as support for his Islamophobia a Zionist neocon.

Finally, while I do not believe atheism is a religion, Gnu Atheists of P.Z. and the Pharyngulac ilk certainly act like the Tar Baby equivalents of religious fundamentalists.

Here's a checklist:
1. Black-and-white thinking;
2. Rigid in-group vs. out-group;
3. Doctrine/dogma ... as exemplified in the post linked above, on how to think about "faithiests," "accomodationists" and others;
4. A concept of "heresy," arguably ... people like those in point 3 aren't real atheists; ditto on the political side, where P.Z. hints that he believes political conservatives aren't real atheists.

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That said, the Gnus DO have a partial point. Right now I am reading "The World as It Is" by Chris Hedges. I 110 percent agree politically/socially with Chris, a truly liberal, as in third-party supporting liberal, person. (P.Z., you need to be listening!) He's also religiously liberal, and a Harvard Divinity grad.

BUT! ... He has vehemently excoriated atheists in previous writings. As in egregiously so. I'm not saying he's highly representative of liberal Xns or liberal ppl of faith in general ... but I don't think he's a total outlier, either. And, I don't think his stereotyping is primarily due to Gnu Atheists.

On the third hand, though, some of Hedges mischaracterizations/straw men, at least when applied to Gnu Atheists, aren't totally disconnected from reality.

I think Hedges, in part, in his book, conflated atheism and Kurzweil-type futurism. Blame a Michael Shermer for that.

OTOH, if one looks at Sam Harris, rabid in his Islamophobia and "informed" by neocons, one could argue that Harris is also influenced by Pop Evolutionary Psychology to some degree.

Second, not all atheists are "Gnu Atheists." Gnu Atheism does, speaking as a non-gnu who rarely uses the word atheist in part due to them, have quasi-religious aspects at times — not "beliefs," but "praxis" and organization. I think Hedges' debate with Hitchens, plus the mindset of many Pharyngulacs, Coyneheads (Jerry Coyne), etc., show that same "sociology of religion" stamp of a secularist fundamentalism.

That said, even the most strident Gnus, like P.Z., aren't the straw man Hedges makes out.

And, certainly, non-gnus aren't. And, Hedges, possessor of a Harvard Div degree, was intellectually lazy in not making better distinctions.

At the same time, Hedges' beliefs are so mushy — even more, the real-world application of whatever he may believe religiously — that I don't know why he calls himself religious.

As for his debate with Hitchens ... he is right on the