#PZMyers, political idiot

In two posts at his blog in the last week, Gnu Atheist P.Z. Myers first shows himself to be a political idiot, and then to be a craven one.

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 references her m ore 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. According to Beinin, this perspective has been "consecrated" as "the normative Zionist interpretation of the history of Jews in Egypt"

So, there you go; Harris is not only a neocon; he pals around with at least one Zionist.

The real reason P.Z. doesn't want to admit that Harris is a conservative (Hitchens isn't, contra the blogger to whom P.Z. is responding, he's just an oft-drunken muddle) is that he's already told his would-be "cadres" that he supports a purge of atheist conservatives from the real atheist movement.

So, to admit Sam Harris is a conservative would be to admit that he's ... well, a Trotskyite deviant compared to the Gnu Stalinist leadership of P.Z. Myers.

Oh, and Pharyngulacs appear to be quite sensitive about being accused of black-and-white thinking.

In this case, it's about being told that, in opposing atheists working with "interfaith" groups, they lump all Christians together as one. I said, on that post:

"(F)olks 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 [sic] as a member of the semi-unitarian United Church of Christ.

But, it's true!

In a follow-up, to tie in with the politics angle, I noted that Sam Harris lumps all Muslims together in the same way.

The "craven" part? Where he says that he guesses he'll have to vote "Obama/Biden." I guess he's too craven to consider third-party alternatives.

Or, despite pooh-poohing the War on Terra, too fear-stricken by our current Repubicrat president claims about how it could be worse.

Oh, and he and the cadre of Pharyngulacs are religious idiots, too.

Glad I delinked Pharyngula from my blogroll.

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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.

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Life is complex, including in the world of nonmetaphysical philosophy. Rather than "atheist," even "skeptic" with its pseudoskeptical problems, even "philosophical naturalist," maybe I'll just follow Hume and call myself an "empiricist."