On the wtf is up with Damon Linker?

This is the article: http://www.tnr.com/blog/damon-linker/another-kind-atheism

A) I’m not sure why one wouldn’t conflate truth and goodness

B) Atheism is a neutral, it’s morality that is positive or negative, and atheism doesn’t create a set of moral values

C) I still haven’t heard a cogent definition for what a “New Atheist” is as compared to a plain old normal atheist

D) What exactly is there to be sad about not being religious, what do you lose that you’d want to keep?

E) I’m not sure why someone needs to deeply try to understand Christianity in order to reject it outright.  I don’t need to understand Greek mythology all that well to ignore it

F) Why is it the atheist’s job to disprove a religion and not their job to prove it?

G) There are many examples of the struggle to get out of their faith by so-called new atheists.  They all address how difficult it is to leave, they just all think it is better to not be religious

H) Do they think that someone born and raised atheist feels a profound lack in their life?

I) There is a difference between allowing people to be free and allowing people to take advantage of, abuse, mislead, lie and steal from people.  Simply exposing ideas for what they are and providing information isn’t illiberal it’s common decency

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On the wtf is up with Damon Linker?
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3 thoughts on “On the wtf is up with Damon Linker?

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    A) In theory … or, perhaps I should say, in unproven hypothesis … truth is a moral neutral. It just is or it isn’t true, there’s no value judgment associated with whether it’s true or not. But “good” is a value judgment. So it’s true that terrorists exist, but it’s not a good thing.

    skipping ahead …

    D) I assume people lose the sense of community when they actually leave the church, and that might be part of it. I’m sure my atheism was helped by my lack of finding community in any church, or in any religion for that matter, but finding a community of like minds online in the atheist spheres.

    On a slightly different note, after listening to Dawkins’ “The Greatest Show on Earth” on tape, I have a new favorite insult for all those creationists who like to scream that evolution is just a theory. “Yeah? Well, your intelligent design is just an unproven hypothesis!”

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      I guess I just would like to see a reason that truth, which is usually considered a good, especially by Christians, would not be considered a good by a Christian. The fact that terrorists exists isn’t good, but isn’t knowing about them better than not? I dunno, it’s just an argument from a philosophical viewpoint that I’m seeing no description of in his work.

      Well, I think he’s getting at that we should feel profoundly alone or sad that we don’t have God in our lives any more. As though we either had God in our lives to begin with or feel lost without a concept we don’t believe in. Which I don’t think most atheists feel. There is some loss of community, except who wants to be in a community with a bunch of deluded people? I think I just found church boring and uninsightful, so it was never that appealing. So there wasn’t a sense of loss when I thought “Wow, this is all bullshit, moving on.”

      And yeah, the internet is such that you lose a group of people you don’t agree with and join a group of people who are interested in rational thought and discussion.

      Isn’t intelligent design and unprovable hypothesis?

      1. I don’t think intelligent design is even a hypothesis really. It’s more like a soundbite taken out of context, but it’s not even that, really. I was just making fun of the whole “Evolution is *only* a theory” thing, when a scientific theory is different from a colloquial theory.

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