I liked atheist philosopher Michael Ruse the moment he said he was embarrassed to be an atheist because of Richard Dawkins. Ruse continues in this spirit in "Why God Is a Moral Issue." Ruse writes: The 'New Atheists' "are self-confident to a degree that seems designed to irritate. And they have an ignorance of anything beyond their fields to an extent remarkable even in modern academia." Correct. And, they have spawned even more ignorant offspring.
But then Ruse writes that, in his opinion, "in parts of the world where people are allowed and encouraged to take these things seriously and to think them through, people increasingly find that they can do without the God factor. It is in places where one is being indoctrinated from childhood and bullied in adulthood that people continue with God belief."
But... almost none of the atheists I have encountered can be said to have "thought things through." They are like mini-Dawkinses who display this "remarkable ignorance."
Ruse continues: "There is also a feeling that when people are given the chance to decide for themselves and still stay religious it is for the wrong reasons." Well, again, almost all the atheists I know are atheists for the wrong reasons (see, e.g., Paul Vitz here), or on the basis of irrational reasoning. Why would Ruse think that people mostly "take these things seriously" and "think things through?" (I am defining "thinking" as "critical thinking," the kind we teach in my logic classes.)
The collective IQ of atheism is rapidly decreasing. Needed: atheistic universities to train Dawkins' converts how to think. How embarrassing to think oneself now a "bright" when one cannot even use modus tollens and its inferential siblings.
And, "indoctrination" cuts both ways, as Dawkins' offspring prove. Ruse himself seems too Dawkinsian when he writes: It is hard not to see the hand of religion in things like this [Charlie Hebdo, e.g.] and to regret that people can be thus motivated to be so cruel to their fellow human beings. The sadism of shooting someone in the back so they will never walk again because they are a Catholic not a Protestant — or any such variation — is nauseating."
Just as nauseating as irreligious regimes trying to stamp out religion, right?
