Author: VD

Vox’s First Law: Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from insanity.

I do enjoy PZ’s little jabs, he’s such a coward that he’ll go on and on about my opinions while pointedly trying to ignore that I’ve published a book that cuts the heart out of his atheist icons. Now he’s afraid to even directly link to the very article he’s complaining about, which is why there’s not a single reference to Title IX in either his post or what he amusingly calls Mark Chu-Carroll’s “evisceration” of the column.

How does one “eviscerate” an argument when one fails to even mention, let alone refute, its central point? That word does not mean what he thinks it means.

As for the commenter’s question about why Sam Harris would respond to me? Probably because unlike these fourth-raters, he is capable of recognizing a superior intellect that is demonstrably capable of dismantling his arguments. If he wants to improve those arguments, then it is in his direct interest to pay attention any criticism that is relevant regardless of the source. One doesn’t have to be bestest buddies with one’s critics in order to benefit from their input. I don’t mind that PZ takes shots at me, I merely regret that his criticism is so lightweight.

RK writes to inform us of a tale of two emails:

I got two EMails from Amazon today.

1. My order was cancelled for not acknowledging the delay. (Which I was never asked about).

2. My book was shipped.

Wonder what happens next?

Does RK’s book exist or not? The question is beyond my ability to answer, perhaps a Dark Vaporist could utilize his miraculous powers of observation to let us know.

A few days ago, during the discussion about the existence or non-existence of dark matter and dark energy, I wrote: “Scientists and science fetishists may hate it that a part-time rebel scientist such as myself should so confidently express contempt for the current consensus, but you don’t need impressive scientific credentials or even to make use the scientific method to recognize when a group of people are attempting to BS everyone else, you simply need to keep your eyes open and possess sufficient experience with human nature.”

So it was a happy coincidence that I discovered, in the process of trying and failing to straighten out my office for the Nth time in six months, an unread 24 September 2007 issue of New Scientist. Naturally, I abandoned the effort and kicked back in The Comfy Chair, and was promptly rewarded with the very amusing sight of a headline that read “Dimmer outlook for dark matter” on page 12:

Dimmer outlook for dark matter

Though we can’t see it, dark matter is supposed to make up 22 per cent of the universe. Now it turns out it might not exist at all. Earlier this year, the discovery of a ring-like astronomical feature, invisible except for the way its gravity distorts background galaxies, was hailed as proof for the existence of dark matter and the death knell for a rival theory known as modified Newtonian dynamics (MOND)…. Jee’s team dismissed the MOND explanation because they thought it predicts that there should be no enhanced gravity without visible matter to do the enhancing. “This is a common misconception,” says Milgrom. “In fact, in MOND there does not necessarily have to be visible matter there to boost gravity – it is naturally boosted in the transition region.” No one knows what physics may underpin such a transition.

“I am interested to hear that the transition between the Newtonian and MONDian regime also gives rise to a ring,” says Jee. “In general, I am happy whenever there comes a theory which is simpler but can explain more observations.”

Stronger evidence may be found in three dwarf galaxies which were formed in galactic collisions near the galaxy NGC 5291, discovered this year by a team led by Frederic Bournaud of the French Atomic Energy Commission in Paris. “The collision should have stripped the galaxies of all their dark matter yet they still have enhanced gravity,” says Milgrom. “MOND explains things naturally whereas dark matter proponents have to propose the existence of yet another type of dark matter – cold molecular gas.”

Yes, I did laugh out loud upon reading that, less at the inevitable discomfiture of Bad Astronomy and his space fetish crew than the thought of a momentary flicker of despair flashing through Scott Hatfield’s mind about the ultimate fate of another consensus theory of which I am similarly skeptical. May I propose the term Dark Vapor to accompany its fellows Dark Matter and Dark Energy to complete the unobservable trilogy of Dark Mystery? It seems rather fitting. As I have previously written, the more one has to weld epicycles and epiphenomena to one’s theory in order to make it work, the less likely it is to stand up over time. And it doesn’t take a complete understanding of a theory to recognize when such furious retro-fitting is being done to it.

I don’t actually care whether Dark Vapor exists or not. For all I know, it does. Having no capacity for making a judgment based on the empirical data myself, I merely run what I’m informed through the logic machine, and anyhow, my attitude towards most of these things tends to be rather similar to that of Sherlock Holmes. But due partly to my belief in the need for science reform, and partly to my fundamental character flaws, I do so enjoy seeing their unmitigated faith in scientific snapshots landing the stupidly arrogant scientific faithful on their asses yet again. What passes for science these days is beginning to sound like a Monty Python skit:

“Dark Matter and Dark Energy…Dark Matter and Dark Energy…. Our two explanations are Dark Matter and Dark Energy…and Dark Vapor…. Our three explanations are Dark Matter, and Dark Energy, and Dark Vapor…and an almost fanatical devotion to Karl Popper…. Our four…no… Amongst our explanations are such elements as Dark Matter, Dark Energy…. I’ll come in again.”

Kelly kicks things off with her review of the first chapter of The Irrational Atheist:

I am going to be going through this book one chapter at a time in order to keep the posts relatively short and still allow for a detailed analysis. I mentioned that plan to Vox Day, who kindly provided me with a complimentary copy of this book, and his suggestion was to read the entire book first before beginning. After getting about half-way through it, I didn’t see anything that necessitated that, but just as an FYI, if any of my points of contention are dealt with in later chapters, I’ll note that in later posts.

The first thing I noticed about this book is that Day’s writing style is quite humorous, and if I may, even endearing. This is troublesome as many readers will fall into the trap of getting caught up in the seemingly personable style and disregarding critical inquiry of the content. Day comes off as the friendly but mischievous antagonist in what he terms “an intellectual deathmatch” (p. 3) between himself and the “Unholy Trinity” of Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens. I must also note a point of agreement before I continue into the actual substance of the book: I appreciate Day’s regard for the autodidactic learner and his insistence that one not be swayed by degrees and credentials as they don’t necessarily make one’s arguments more or less valid. (p. 3) This is a point far too often missed by the pseudo-intellectual crowd who seem to desire a type of hegemonious rule over knowledge itself with authority to speak on a subject deemed only by universities.

Read the entire thing over at her place. I’ll post my response both here and in the TIA forum in the next day or two. This isn’t going to be a proper debate per se, but it should be an interesting back-and-forth since unlike other would-be chapter-by-chapter reviewers, Kelly is clearly doing her best to comprehend what is actually written and go after the weak points she perceives rather than seeing only what she wishes to see and then crying strawman.

And if she happens to take a cheap shot or two along the way, hey, so much the better. It’s not like I’m in any position to complain about that, and let’s face it, I’m far more inclined to applaud an amusing one than get upset anyhow.

Laura Mckenna explains the appeal of the Lizard Queen:

Taking a grudge to an empty voting booth may be passive aggressive, but that’s sometimes how we work.

Notice how part of the bitterness stems from realizing that there’s a gap between academic achievement and actual achievement.

“We’re sailing through school work, out pacing men in the classroom. It’s only when the hard realities of family and work hit that women understand that they get the short end of the stick.”

And then notice that in this woman’s fevered imagination, reality = “soft sexism”.

1. When you wrote the Red State/Blue State argument quoted by Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion, were you aware that the electoral data for the various counties in which the various cities mentioned are located was available? If you were not, are you willing to concede that the more accurate county data supports a conclusion that is the precise opposite of the one you reached in Letter to a Christian Nation?

I haven’t seen the electoral data you mentioned. Feel free to send a link, if you have one.

Shockingly careless, but much better than the alternative of intentional misrepresentation. It will be interesting to see if he retracts the argument now that he is aware of the relevant facts, although one can’t reasonably expect him to verify the data until after he completes his dissertation. Of course, Dawkins will need to revise future editions of The God Delusion as well….

2. Are you willing to admit that religion is not the explicit cause of more than 90 percent of the war throughout recorded human history? Are you also willing to admit that religious faith is not a significant aspect of military strategy, tactics, recruitment or discipline?

I wouldn’t be able to quantify this, but I freely admit that religion is not the only explicit cause of war and it probably is not the main cause. I would say that tribalism generally is the cause, and religious tribalism is a subset. Still, I think religion creates the most energetic and pathological forms of tribalism, and it is the form I am most worried about in the future. The other forms are showing clear signs of evaporating (racism, nationalism, etc.). Religion is the only one that has very good defenses against modernity.

He’s essentially conceding the point here, although again it’s clear that he hasn’t considered the relevant information. However, even setting aside the obvious fact that he wasn’t attacking tribalism in his two books, but religious faith, as it happens he’s incorrect about tribalism as well. Harris would do rather better to look at economics, geography and individual ambition. Moreover, nationalism is again on the rise in direct reaction to the success of the global political elites in imposing multiculturalism and supranational governmental frameworks around the world. I have some serious doubts about the evaporation of racism, too, considering the voting results in Mississippi yesterday, where Obama won the black vote, 91% to 9%, and Clinton won the white vote, 72% to 27%. I suspect that even if Arthur C. Clarke’s science fiction vision of one unified irreligious brown species was ever achieved, Man would promptly create distinctions based on height, weight or foot size.

3. Were you aware that the professional historians’ estimated bodycount of the most deadly Inquisition, the Spanish, was less than 3,000 deaths over 345 years when you described the inquisition as one of the two “darkest episodes in the history of faith”? I’d also be interested in knowing your understanding of the inquisition’s lethality at the time you wrote that.

I wrote about the Inquisition as a whole (not just the Spanish). Here is what I said in The End of Faith (p.87) Witches,in all likelihood, did not even exist, and those murdered in their stead numbered perhaps 40,000 to 50,000 over three hundred years of persecution;19 Along with the associated endnote (p. 255). 19 R. Briggs, Witches and Neighbors: The Social and Cultural Context of European Witchcraft(New York:Viking,1996), has this to say on the
subject:

“On the wilder shores of the feminist and witch-cult movements a potent myth has become established, to the effect that 9 million women were burned as witches in Europe; gendercide rather than genocide. This is an overestimate by a factor of up to 200, for the most reasonable modern estimates suggest perhaps 100,000 trials between 1450 and 1750, with something between 40,000 and 50,000 executions, of which 20 to 25 percent were men.”

Such a revaluation of numbers does little to mitigate the horror and injustice of this period. Even to read of the Salem witch trials, which resulted in the hanging of “only” nineteen people, is to be brought face to face with the seemingly boundless evil that is apt to fill the voids in our understanding of the world.

Several errors here. The most obvious and significant one is that the European and American witch burnings had no relation to any of the four inquisitions. Second, in The End of Faith, Harris refers to “the Inquisition” as a singular institution and a specific “episode”, one of the two darkest in the history of faith, and refers to certain devices used only by the Spanish and Portuguese inquisitions as well as devices never used by any of the four. This is another indication of his characteristic carelessness and happens to directly conflict with his subsequent assertion that the evils of Communism can somehow be tied to faith.

By his own estimation, the European witch-burnings amounted to 166/year out of a population of 70 million in 1600, which is roughly similar to the number of annual bike deaths… in California (141/year, population 36.5 million). However absurd one might consider witch-burning to be, I’d be curious to know why it is any less necessary than bicycle riding. Indeed, one could easily make a Darwinian case that witch-burning is preferable to bike-riding, since the former harmlessly eliminates the old and weak while the latter removes the young and healthy from the population. So, perhaps it would help if everyone would think of witch-burning as a precursor to modern euthanasia.

Anyhow, without witch-burnings we wouldn’t have had that classic scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I don’t know about you, but based on a happiness-suffering metric, I’d say the trade-off was well worth it. What is the screaming death of thousands over centuries when compared to the laughter of millions over decades?

4. How does your long-term vision of world government differ from Bertrand Russell’s? Why are you opposed to American national sovereignty?

I’ve forgotten what BR said about world government. And my brief comments on the subject were made with the full knowledge that it is unlikely to be desirable or practical any time soon. In the meantime, I am not opposed to American sovereignty. I’m opposed to nationalism (because it is idiotic), but I am not opposed to safeguarding civilization. For what it’s worth, I think we need to put even more resources into our military than we do.

To refresh everyone’s memory, Bertrand Russell wrote that a science-based dictatorship willing to engage in Communist-style mass horror was necessary in order for the human race to establish a utopian world government of the sort that Sam Harris desires. The fact that Harris accepts American sovereignty now doesn’t explain why he opposes it in the future. As for the idiocy of nationalism, I fear that we will all soon be reminded that nationalism is necessary for safeguarding civilization. Certainly history suggests that given the fate of civilizations which abandon nationalism – both the Roman Empire and the Ming Dynasty spring to mind – the concept is less idiotic than vital.

5. Are there other forms of “unjustified belief” or “an absence of rationality” than religious faith?

Of course.

This admission of the obvious proves my point related to his attempt to construct a No True Atheist argument in order to disassociate atheism from the bloodshed committed by the dozens of atheist Communist leaders. One cannot substitute the set for the subset. See TIA pages 128-131.

6. Did you forget that you had defined Buddhism as not being a religion of faith when you compared the societal health of the U.S.A. t
o that of “the least religious states”?

But I said that most Buddhists don’t realize this and practice Buddhism like a religion.

A very nice example of the common atheist dance. Buddhism is atheism… except when it’s not useful for Buddhism to be atheism, in which case it isn’t. Come on. If one accepts this line of reasoning, one must go on to admit that most atheists practice atheism like a religion. The High Church atheists do, anyhow.

7. If the world is genuinely imperiled by nuclear weaponry in the hands of religious individuals, isn’t it true that science is as much to blame as religion? And if the peril is both imminent and genuine, wouldn’t it be more practical and far less costly in terms of human life to end science rather than religion?

You are committing a genetic fallacy here. The problem with Nazis, for instance, was not the railroads and ovens. The problem was their beliefs (and subsequent actions). Blaming the technology (or its source in science) misses the point. That said, I believe that certain types of scientific information should not be published (and there may be some that should not be sought in the first place) — things like the recipe for synthesizing the smallpox virus, etc.

Oh dear. I am doing no such thing. Sam apparently hasn’t properly understood the genetic fallacy, which is a logical fallacy wherein “a conclusion is suggested based solely on something or someone’s origin rather than its current meaning or context.” Sam’s mistake is to conclude that the danger in his Extinction Equation stems solely from the scientific origins of today’s lethal weaponry, but that is manifestly not the case at all. The danger from nuclear weaponry and other science-related evils stem from both their scientific origins and science in its current context, therefore I cannot possibly have committed a genetic fallacy when pointing out that it is not the potential motive of Faith that is the danger facing man, but rather the current means of Science.

If Sam waved a wand and magically caused all religion to disappear, the threat to the species would remain in its entirety, indeed, one can make a case that it might actually increase since religion has been a mitigating factor as well as an exacerbating one in human conflict. If, however, every scientist was taken out and shot, the knowledge base was suppressed and the method was suppressed, then weapons development would be severely hampered, the risk of biological and super-colliders going awry would be eliminated, and over time, the weapons themselves would decay and become unrepairable as the knowledge of how to maintain them died out. Indeed, I tend to suspect that this is a notion that the utopians supported by Sam Harris have in mind for the future; it’s what I would do, anyhow, if I wanted to preserve a status quo in which I already ruled the world. Science is an existing threat in itself, it is not merely the origin of the threat.

While I’m at it, on a tangential note, less sophisticated thinkers than Sam have attempted to criticize the case against science by using a “guns don’t kill people” argument. The obvious problem with this is that science is not an inanimate object, an aspect of it specifically incorporates people. While a gun cannot be held responsible for its actions or forseeing how it will be used, a scientist most certainly can and should be held responsible for what he is doing and how his work will be used. In any event, this defense – which I hasten to point out that Sam Harris is not foolish enough to make – has little relevance to the extinction equation, because a gun requires a person in order to kill. As I have proved in my chapters on war, Science does not require Faith in order to do likewise. It should perhaps be kept in mind that my purpose in pointing this out was not to blame Science, but rather to exonerate Faith from a responsibility it was errantly and illogically assigned in Sam Harris’s thesis. IF we accept the extinction equation that Science+Faith=Human Extinction, THEN we must logically conclude that the only rational response is to end science.

David Mamet belatedly wakes up to the fact that giving people a monopoly on force and the power to tax does not make them inherently good:

What about the role of government? Well, in the abstract, coming from my time and background, I thought it was a rather good thing, but tallying up the ledger in those things which affect me and in those things I observe, I am hard-pressed to see an instance where the intervention of the government led to much beyond sorrow.

Liberalism, in the American sense, is little more than a failure to pay attention to history, human nature, and what is going on around you. It requires an astounding degree of obtuseness to look upon the past and present actions of government and conclude that government action is likely to improve any situation. Sadly, much of what passes for current “conservative” thought suffers from the same observational failure.

One of these days, women are going to figure out that it’s not at all ironic that they have a great education and a great job, but their romantic options are limited. The latter actually follows naturally from the former.

Blue-eyes, blonde hair, and most importantly on a salary considerably lower than her boyfriend or husband. These are key attributes that define the perfect woman, if the latest survey if to be believed. According to recent poll of 66,000 men, their idea of the ideal female would also weigh a slim nine-and-a-half stones, live on her own and occasionally wear glasses. The research, carried out by the online dating site ukdating.com, also found that 54 per cent of males would not date anyone who earns more than £25,000 a year.

The only thing that surprises me is the ideal weight. 133 pounds? Not unless she’s 6’2″. The truth is that most men want a woman who will be a wife first and a mother second. We already have friends who share far more of our interests than you ever will, and the only guys who specifically prefer a high-income earner are either self-centered evolutionary dead-ends, lazy gigolos, or artists incapable of supporting themselves. If that sounds appealing, then hey, go for it, that’s your business. The important thing is to realize that it’s a trade-off and that being a high flier will be significantly reduce your appeal to the greater part of the opposite sex.

This demand-side issue is exacerbated from the supply side too, because few high-flying women are willing to marry down. It happens, of course, but either way, you’re looking at a minority on one side and a minority on the other. Better make sure you’re really into that prospective career before embarking upon it… or at the very least capable of being genuinely enthusiastic about sharing your life with Moggy, Sox, and Mr. Tiddles.

As anyone who has read TIA knows, I’m not exactly what you would call respectful of Sam Harris’s performance in The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation. But to his great credit, he’s not afraid to answer substantive and very specific questions about his work. We even discussed the possibility of a debate in Europe, but while he’s open to the idea, he’s understandably busy completing his dissertation now, so perhaps we’ll do it next year.

Here are his responses, I’ll let you chew on them today and will post my take on them tomorrow:

1. When you wrote the Red State/Blue State argument quoted by Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion, were you aware that the electoral data for the various counties in which the various cities mentioned are located was available? If you were not, are you willing to concede that the more accurate county data supports a conclusion that is the precise opposite of the one you reached in Letter to a Christian Nation?

I haven’t seen the electoral data you mentioned. Feel free to send a link, if you have one.

2. Are you willing to admit that religion is not the explicit cause of more than 90 percent of the war throughout recorded human history? Are you also willing to admit that religious faith is not a significant aspect of military strategy, tactics, recruitment or discipline?

I wouldn’t be able to quantify this, but I freely admit that religion is not the only explicit cause of war and it probably is not the main cause. I would say that tribalism generally is the cause, and religious tribalism is a subset. Still, I think religion creates the most energetic and pathological forms of tribalism, and it is the form I am most worried about in the future. The other forms are showing clear signs of evaporating (racism, nationalism, etc.). Religion is the only one that has very good defenses against modernity.

3. Were you aware that the professional historians’ estimated bodycount of the most deadly Inquisition, the Spanish, was less than 3,000 deaths over 345 years when you described the inquisition as one of the two “darkest episodes in the history of faith”? I’d also be interested in knowing your understanding of the inquisition’s lethality at the time you wrote that.

I wrote about the Inquisition as a whole (not just the Spanish). Here is what I said in The End of Faith (p.87) Witches,in all likelihood, did not even exist, and those murdered in their stead numbered perhaps 40,000 to 50,000 over three hundred years of persecution;19 Along with the associated endnote (p. 255). 19 R. Briggs, Witches and Neighbors: The Social and Cultural Context of European Witchcraft(New York:Viking,1996), has this to say on the
subject:

“On the wilder shores of the feminist and witch-cult movements a potent myth has become established, to the effect that 9 million women were burned as witches in Europe; gendercide rather than genocide. This is an overestimate by a factor of up to 200, for the most reasonable modern estimates suggest perhaps 100,000 trials between 1450 and 1750, with something between 40,000 and 50,000 executions, of which 20 to 25 percent were men.”

Such a revaluation of numbers does little to mitigate the horror and injustice of this period. Even to read of the Salem witch trials, which resulted in the hanging of “only” nineteen people, is to be brought face to face with the seemingly boundless evil that is apt to fill the voids in our understanding of the world.

4. How does your long-term vision of world government differ from Bertrand Russell’s? Why are you opposed to American national sovereignty?

I’ve forgotten what BR said about world government. And my brief comments on the subject were made with the full knowledge that it is unlikely to be desirable or practical any time soon. In the meantime, I am not opposed to American sovereignty. I’m opposed to nationalism (because it is idiotic), but I am not opposed to safeguarding civilization. For what it’s worth, I think we need to put even more resources into our military than we do.

5. Are there other forms of “unjustified belief” or “an absence of rationality” than religious faith?

Of course.

6. Did you forget that you had defined Buddhism as not being a religion of faith when you compared the societal health of the U.S.A. to that of “the least religious states”?

But I said that most Buddhists don’t realize this and practice Buddhism like a religion.

7. If the world is genuinely imperiled by nuclear weaponry in the hands of religious individuals, isn’t it true that science is as much to blame as religion? And if the peril is both imminent and genuine, wouldn’t it be more practical and far less costly in terms of human life to end science rather than religion?

You are committing a genetic fallacy here. The problem with Nazis, for instance, was not the railroads and ovens. The problem was their beliefs (and subsequent actions). Blaming the technology (or its source in science) misses the point. That said, I believe that certain types of scientific information should not be published (and there may be some that should not be sought in the first place) — things like the recipe for synthesizing the smallpox virus, etc.

As I said, I’ll provide my take on these answers tomorrow, but they reveal two interesting things. First, I no longer suspect Sam Harris is intellectually dishonest, it’s pretty clear that he’s merely – let’s be polite – imprecise. It’s this imprecision which led to the various contrary definitions and tautologies as well as creating the occasional impression of duplicity in his writing; it also explains why he so frequently complains of being misunderstood. And he is correct, actually, because when he writes two inherently contradictory statements, the reader cannot correctly understand the one without being forced to misunderstand the other.

Second, his willingness to explain himself and take concrete positions leaves a lot of his defenders out to dry. They’re far less honest than he is and are wholly dependent upon being able to dance between one contradictory explanation and the next in order to cry strawman, so his answers tend to leave them pinned down and exposed.

Catkiller! thinks rather highly of TIA:

In recent years, the intellectual foundation has been laid for the cultural and political ascendence of the right. Forget all the electoral ups and downs of the GOP, for they are little more than the final death throes of the old struggle between two sides in a staged match. A change is coming because the curtain has been lifted and the Wizard is just now finishing his pleas to pay no attention to the man behind it.

Powerful books have been written recently that will change this country as they have in the past. Common Sense convinced American colonists, among other things, that one need not blindly follow a king to please God. Narratives on the Life of an American Slave showed the intellectuals of its day what one of their own had to go through in order to become one of them. Today, we see the blooming spring created by books such as Jim Powell’s FDR’s Folly and Amity Shlaes’ The Forgotten Man which have defintifively put to rest the notion that left-wing economics saved the United States from collapse. Philip Hamburger’s Separation of Church and State has dispelled the myth that today’s concept of ‘separation’ is rooted in the same idea of anti-establishment religious liberty that animated the Founding Fathers. And Jonah Goldberg is turning the conventional political spectrum on its ear with Liberal Facism. If we give weight to these books as they warrant, those of us on the right will never again lack for an ironclad historical basis form which to contend with the left.

I’m confident that Vox Day’s The Irrational Atheist: Dissecting the Unholy Trinity of Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens will take its place among this new canon as well.

Richarddawkins.netter Zarbi, on the other hand, seems to have been concerned enough about the book to lie about it, when he managed to even follow the arguments at all. Among many other things, he fails to understand that Richard Dawkins’s failure to properly define complexity can’t reasonably be blamed on me. The amazing thing isn’t that his self-refuting review manages to be almost entirely unrelated to the actual text of TIA despite its length, but the fact that some dim-witted atheists seriously consider it to be a substantive rebuttal.

I have to say that having read the book, it is still hard to determine what “dissect” is intended to mean. The best I can come up with is “try and show they are wrong about lots of stuff”. Well, fair enough. No-one should be surprised if three (or five?) atheist writers don’t make a mistake or two over the years. The problem for Day is that he is attempting to see dogma where there is none. You don’t score points by pointing out fallibility when there has been no claim of perfection, or by showing differences in the viewpoints of people who never claim any kind of unity. This kind of “straw man” approach is common in the book. But, anyway, how is this dissection attempted? Well, if one ignores the ad-hominem attacks that make up close to half the writing, it is by attempts to show that the Trinity are factually wrong in a considerable number of cases. In fact, a very large number of cases indeed. The book is apparently full of facts. There is no doubt that it has required a considerable amount of knowledge and research to write. The question is, is this mountain of facts relevant to the points being made? Well, much of the time, no. The facts are mostly used to very carefully take to pieces straw man arguments….

I feel I have dealt with sufficient chapters to reveal the nature of the book, and how the author’s case is put. There is much more to the book, but this is a review, not a full-length response. I shall leave that to others with more time and patience! I think the pattern here is clear. Day has attacked the “Trinity” with vigour, passion and energy. But his aim is poor, and he mostly puts considerable effort into dealing with positions that are clearly straw men, or that he seems to have simply misunderstood. There may be a book to be written about the phenomenon of the so-called “New Atheists” that deals with weaknesses in their arguments and their views. That book may well be useful, to help the debate about religion to proceed productively. “The Irrational Atheist” is certainly not such a book.

I’ve posted Zarbi’s review on the TIA forum, and below it I’ve also posted a list of 42 of the specific arguments addressed in the book, 12 of which were specifically made by Richard Dawkins – including the one Dawkins himself described as the central argument of The God Delusion – and 22 made by Sam Harris. I believe each argument is accurately and fairly described when it is not quoted in full, so I would be very interested in knowing precisely which of those 42 arguments Zarbi considers to be straw men. I tend to suspect that he doesn’t actually believe any of them are and that he is blatantly lying when he writes that I am “dealing with “positions that are clearly straw men”. Sam Harris’s forthright responses to my questions should suffice to prove that this is not even remotely close to being the case.

And since apparently it’s necessary for some of the dimmer brights, let me explain that by “dissect”, I mean to take apart, closely examine and adjudicate the factual and logical legitimacy of the arguments made by the three – no five – individuals. And for further clarification:

Unholy Trinity: Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens
New Atheists: Dawkins, Harris, Dennett
Four Horsemen of the Bukkakelypse: Dawkins, Harris, Dennett, Hitchens
Atheist Icons: Ingersoll, Russell, Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens, Dennett, Onfray