Once More, and Again on the Bankruptcy of "New Atheism"

Here is a rather amusing conversation I had with a bunch of "New Atheist" hacks on youtube. It went like this.

ComradeRemus: It strikes me as odd to describe statism as a religion. Are we all clear on the actual meaning of the word religion?

Quq Balam: No, we're not. Even Chomsky is kind of playing with the very loose term of "religion" that Hitchens and Harris use. I mean, these are the same ignoramuses that call Marxism, or at least offshoots of it like Maoism, religions despite being atheistic ideologies that oppose religions. One wonders why is it that their own atheistic ideologies don't count as religions as well.

Richard Fennimore: You appear not to know what the term religion means. There is nothing loose about the term. It’s pretty straight forward really. A religion is a system of faith (belief without evidence) and worship of a superhuman controlling power, normally in the form of a personal God (theism). I hate to break it to you pal, but atheism is simply a rejection of theism, so it cannot be defined as either an ideology or a religion.

Michael Gregory: I agree completely with Quq Balam. I think the problem is the definition of religion is stretched so thin (by Harris and Hitchens before Chomsky) that it is perfectly reasonable to say that about Harris. Harris, Hitchens, Bill Maher and others sided with the U.S. against the Soviets during the Cold War and China, North Korea and others today. China, North Korea are atheist and the former Soviet Union was atheist and America is largely Christian. When the Soviet Union fell the Imperialists not only waged an ideological offensive against Communism but also atheism as the Soviet Union was very much a bastion of world atheism. The common thread between this and sided with the U.S. against Muslim countries IS NOT secular values but an allegiance to U.S. Imperialism. Rather than own that fact they come with this convoluted argument that Communism is a religion. Chomsky really is just using their own line of reasoning against them.

Richard Fennimore: Japan, the Czech Republic, France, Australia, and Iceland are all majority atheist countries too. This has nothing at all to do with whether they are communist, socialist, or capitalist. Your comments are complete babble. No coherent argument in there anywhere.

ComradeRemus: +Michael Gregory I've heard hitchens talk, and I don't think he ever called communism a religion. He just insisted that the USSR manipulated the eastern orthadox church and employed aspects of religion to help control the citizenry.

Richard Fennimore: +ComradeRemus You are correct sir. While Hitchens did jokingly refer to North Korea’s former supreme leader Kim Il-sung and his son Kim Jong-il as “one short of a trinity” (i.e. “the father, the son, and the ??” - because the North Korean people worshipped them as if they were Gods), neither he nor any of the other "new atheists" have ever referred to communism as a religion.

Michael Gregory: Richard Fennimore, you seemed to have dodged all of my points. As for the countries you have listed, not all countries have been affected equally. Religion is very much on the rise of the U.S. One place that has been most affected is the Middle East. The Middle East used to b largely secular nationalists and Communists, now it is largely Islamic fundamentalist. ComradeRemus I watch Bill Maher's show on regular basis and he HAS so unless Hitchens was in fundamental disagreement with Maher then my point still stands. They a both part of the "New Atheist" movement and their views are virtually identical.

Michael Gregory: The fact is capitalism relies on religion to provide artificial happiness for the oppressed when preaching unquestioning obedience to authority. Religion itself is caused by deprivation and capitalism inevitably breeds poverty and oppression. As longer as the social conditions exist for religion exist, it will prop up now matter how many times it is debunked ideologically. Harris, Hitchens and Co.'s support is almost exclusively amoung well to do able-bodied, neuorotypical, white men precisely because it provides NOTHING for the oppressed. Most atheist who are female, non-white, poor and disabled hate Maher, Richard Dawkins, Harris and Hitchens.

Richard Fennimore: Michael Gregory, I didn’t dodge your points, I ignored them. There is a big difference. I am sorry sir, but with as much respect as I can muster, there is no other way to say that it’s impossible to have an intelligent conversation when your arguments are nothing but babble and drivel. I rest my case.

ComradeRemus: Michael your only comment towards me was to say that you heard Bill Maher say something, and it follows that Christopher Hitchens has to have believed it as well. Did you really think through that poppycock before you shit it out of your keyboard?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zt9QCAUPPeY

They managed to dodge really all of my points but still managed to pat themselves on that back. Perhaps someone should explain to these erudite Ivy League frat boys that in order to rest one's case one must first make a case and defend that case. Interesting how I point out most female, non-white and disabled hate them and that they have nothing to offer such people and they reply that it is "impossible" to "have an intelligent conversation with me". Perhaps they find it "impossible" to "have and intelligent conversation" with women, non-whites and disabled. Nothing racist, misogynist or ablest about that. Since they are unwilling to actually answer me, lets just say I won by forfeit. They really strike as similar to Donald Trump and George W. Bush in that they manage to imbeciles but also see themselves as they smartest guys in the room.

Sam Harris's and Bill Maher's Islamaphobia has Nothing to Do with Secular Values

I was recently reading this rather turgid tract by Sam Harris where he rants about Chomsky. The whole tract is basically claiming that violence by Muslims and middle "proof" that they are savages. But when first world Imperialist countries like America kill people they have "good intentions". He apologizes for the war in Iraq which killed about a million people, the US sanctions on Iraq which killed 1.5 million people (including 300,000 to 400,000) children and even the Vietnam War which killed 3 million people. He even tries to paint the Mai Lai massacre as "a few bad apples". When dark skin people kill, their savages, when whitey does it, they're "well intentioned". He even suggest some cultures (read: the west) are more civilized than others (read: Muslims and the third world).

I certainly have disagreements with Chomsky over the Bolsheviks, the October Revolution, Kronstadt and Nester Mahkno etc. but on this issue he doesn't have the vitriolic, "the only good Muslim is a dead one" mentality.

I watch Bill Maher regularly. He rants about Islamists being worse than Nazis, the KKK, Skinheads, "Right to Life" terrorist and right-wing militias because the latter don't "threaten America" (read: the American ruling class and U.S. imperialism). He is hostile to the U.S.S.R., China, North Korea, Vietnam and Laos which are all atheist. America is predominantly Christian. So his (and probably Richard Dawkin's and Sam Harris's) hatred for Islam has nothing to do with "secular values" and everything to do with allegiance to U.S. Imperialism (or in Dawkins's case British Imperialism).

It seems that Sam Harris have stooped to uncritically interviewing a hard-core apologist for Pope Pius XII, who collaborated with the Nazis and refused to condemn the holocaust. Basically Sam Harris and Mark Riebling white-wash Pope Pius XII and regurgitate the Catholic heirarchy's talking points. He has taken his insistence that his "the west is a good and the Muslim world is evil" narrative to it's logical conclusion. For years I have insisted that Sam Harris's (and Bill Maher's and Richard Dawkin's) anti-Muslim bigotry and everything to do with their allegience to Western Imperialism. This rather grotesque article make's my point for me. Sam Harris and other "New Atheists" seek to discredit atheism in the eyes of workers, leftists and the oppressed. Sam Harris's atheism IS NOT my atheism. At this point I have no clue why any atheist would give him the time of day.

Harris and Riebling conveniently leave out that it was the Soviet Union that smashed the Nazi war machine (a fact that most serious historians, such as Oliver Stone, acknowledge) but instead proceeds to bash Communism and the U.S.S.R. and argues that "free thinking atheists" would fair better than in a religion (Nazi Germany perhaps) than a under Communism.

This is no accident, Riebling is, according to Sam Harris, "architect of post-9/11 “intelligence-driven policing,” co-founding and serving as research director for the Center for Policing Terrorism" (read: Washington shill). By the 50s at the latests, all of the former Nazi commanders and capitalists who supported Hilter were released from prison and were restored, by the U.S., to their former positions in U.S. occupied West Germany. During the tearing down of the Berlin Wall, U.S. President Ronald Reagan and West Germany's Chancellor visited a Nazi war memorial to pay respect to Nazi war dead. What the Catholic heirarchy and the U.S. have in common is BOTH are Nazi collaborators and both seek to whitewash their own histories. And Sam Harris is more than willing to assist them in doing so.

It is worth nothing that Sam Harris has stated the, “The people who speak most sensibly about the threat that Islam poses to Europe are actually fascists.”“The people who speak most sensibly about the threat that Islam poses to Europe are actually fascists.” He even goes as far at to make grotesque apologies to the crusades!

Their atheism is not my atheism!

See also: http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/rethinking-hitlers-pope

Hitler's Pope by John Cornwall

http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/the-limits-of-discourse/

http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/the-limits-of-discourse/

http://www.salon.com/2015/12/09/siding_with_christian_fanatics_like_ben_carson_over_noam_chomsky_sam_harris_exposes_inherent_conservatism_of_new_atheism/

http://www.salon.com/2015/12/28/sam_harriss_detestable_crusade_how_his_latest_anti_islam_tract_reveals_the_bankruptcy_of_his_ideas/

http://www.salon.com/2015/12/28/sam_harriss_detestable_crusade_how_his_latest_anti_islam_tract_reveals_the_bankruptcy_of_his_ideas/

http://articles.latimes.com/2006/sep/18/opinion/oe-harris18/2

http://www.salon.com/topic/sam_harris/