Given the way in which Pindar manages to completely fail not only Analogy 101, but also Reading Comprehension:
Comparing Evangelical Christians to Gottfried Leibniz, a man of the highest intellectual ability is absolutely absurd. Evangelical Christians, on the whole, along with the “New Atheists” have absolutely no intellectual weight to go along with their arguments in comparison to Leibniz. So Vox and Sam Harris and other mental lightweights are Leibniz and Spinoza now? Wow. How standards have changed. When has Beale and Dawkins et. al are equally unlearned in each other’s fields, equally arrogant and equally ignorant of history. The history of science, the history of religion. Comparing yourself to Leibniz is like comparing Britney Spears to Maria Callas.
People wonder at times why I constantly mock the reading comprehension of many of my critics, when the answer is pretty obvious. Some of these critics are just rather stupid and therefore incapable of understanding anything that lacks pictures, of course, but the majority of them are simply so eager to go on the attack that they start scribbling madly before stopping to confirm that they indeed read what they thought they read.
Pindar likely falls in the latter category, as he manages to not only miss the point but also gets the analogy precisely backward. I didn’t compare any individual to any other historical individual, nor compare myself to Newton, (much less Leibniz), but rather noted that the intellectual motivation and fundamental worldview which fuels the New Atheists’ evangelism is the same optimistic materialist spirit that inspired Leibniz, whereas Newton’s essential pessimism and eschatonic expectations are clearly recognizable in modern evangelical Christians.
(To make it very simple for Pindar: I compared the Christians to NEWTON, as everyone but you understood. Now, go brush up on Dick and Jane and leave the adults to their discussion.)
The most important difference between Newton and Leibniz is not that one’s calculus is geometric and the other’s theoretical, but rather the latter’s belief in the improvability of Man and the former’s skepticism regarding the same. It’s interesting to note that this basic difference may have informed their approach to the calculus, as Newton’s approach – like the Christian’s approach to Man – is essentially empirical, whereas the Leibnizian/New Atheist arguments are primarily theory-based.
Where the analogy fails, of course, is that Leibniz’s theories corresponded very well indeed with Newtown’s geometric empiricism, whereas New Atheist theory – or New Natural Philosopher theory as it would be more properly named – is contradicted by the observable evidence at nearly every turn.
Even their simplest, most well-known claims are easily dismissed. Some of them I have already publicly dismantled, others will be addressed in the book. But the key is to understand that the New Atheists are not scientists and that they have no genuine interest in or commitment to scientage or scientody in their own rights.