Mailvox: convinced by clowns

WT is most impressed by the New Atheist luminaries:

You cringe at Harris’s opening in The End of Faith where he says, “one can easily guess the young man’s religion.” I began your article interested in any commentary you might have on the role religion has played and does play in the world. When you began defiling perhaps three of today’s most insightful intellectuals, it was “painfully easy” to guess that you were another mind grabbed too young to see the trap. What a waste. I live in Egypt and the society is absolutely intellectually stifled by Islam just as you have been stifled by your irrational beliefs. Somehow, it looks as if you’ve managed to sidetrack all the contradictions and manage to (with a straight face) challenge a trio of men that are pointing you do your escape route. Just as Letter to a Christian Nation will not make many converts, so do I doubt that you will find your way out. I wish you luck.

One can’t defile that which is already foul. I didn’t make Harris’ factual and logical errors, I merely pointed them out. One can almost see the alarm on WT’s face as he realizes that I’m not content to play defense and attempt to defend something that does not need my help to defend itself, but rather taking the weapon that “today’s most insightful intellectuals” wrongly claim as their own and turning it upon them and their incompetent arguments for atheism.

The vast majority of atheists come to their lack of belief by emotion, not reason. One can see this in the passion, sometimes anguished, that lurks behind their angriest questions. While this does not mean that many don’t have genuine and rational reason for doubt, it means that their lack of faith is usually built on a shaky foundation which is prone to undermining by applying reason to their own emotional assumptions.

Attacking error-prone critics such as the trinity of clowns does not defend God or Christianity, of course, except in the inoculation it offers to their specious attacks that the insufficiently contemplative find convincing. You’ll note that WT does not even attempt to defend Harris or question any of my points but instead contents himself with irrelevant and baseless statements; no wonder he is impressed by Harris and his method of argument.