Saving Atheists from the New Atheism

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/nov/30/we-can-save-atheism-from-the-new-atheists?

Why are the New Atheists such jerks? Case in point: Richard Dawkins’ continuing pursuit of Ahmed Mohamed, the Texas 14-year-old humiliated in school after authorities mistook his homemade clock for a bomb.

Jeff Sparrow

The new atheists are jerks because being a jerk sells better than rational argument. P.Z. Meyers had a good science blog that was lost in blog space until he started bashing Creationism and atheist women.  At that point views and ad revenues went up to the point that he left science blogging entirely to create "Freethought Blogs" which was anything but free thinking space.  Not that bashing Creationism and Ken Ham is a bad idea, but being a jerk about it accomplishes nothing except creating an us vs them religious point of view that should be anathema to atheism, or at least humanism which should be the basis for atheism.  

As most here know J'Carlin under various usernames on beliefnet© was a host of the Atheism Debate board and moderator of several Science and Religion boards including "Origins of Life" the forum for discussions of Creationism.  Origins was my first experience having to deal with belief based thinking directly.  It was with great dismay that I found that the culture of belief based thinking and misogyny had permeated Western culture to the extent that even atheists were falling into the cultural miasma.  One would have hoped for better thinking from the freethinkers.

There always was a rift in the atheist community between the Skeptics (note Cap) and the atheists.  But the New Atheists created a new rift between dogmatic atheists (There is no God. Period.) and more flexible atheists who could discuss God beliefs without rancor although the satire was frequently confused with rancor by the believers.  An amusing example of the rift can be found in the following 200+ post thread.  I have quoted my OP as a hook.   

 http://community.beliefnet.com/go/thread/view/43851/19072101/Dawkins_Trashy_Tract?post_id=492793193#492793193

I did indeed READ Dawkins' trashy tract

in its entirety ...teilhard

I too have read Dawkins’ trashy tract.  Although not yet in its entirety.  It is sitting beside the loo where I can try to get through the last few pages while I am in an appropriate place not to notice the stink.    

Dawkins makes the same mistake of all fundies in seeing the world in black and white.  He for instance insists that indoctrinating children in anything that he doesn’t believe in is child abuse.  He has a whole chapter (9) in which he suggests that some of the worst cases of abuse, the lead one dating from 1858 stand for all indoctrination of children in religious doctrine.  Dawkins seems to believe that indoctrinating children in the beliefs of the child’s parents, and the society in which hesh will live is somehow abuse if they are not beliefs that Dawkins shares.    

I think Dawkins like PZ Meyers has completely discredited a lot of valuable evolutionary education material with their virulent anti-God tracts.  I greatly enjoyed and used Dawkins early books, particularly the Blind Watchmaker and Climbing Mount Improbable to help people understand how evolution “gets there” although of course there is no there there for evolution.  I can no longer do so, since Dawkins with his self-immolation as fundie has been thoroughly discredited as a reasonable scientist.  

(12.26.15)Until very recently there were no atheists. Or at least those who lived through admitting it. Deists, those "Endowed by their Creator." and those who "believed" in a personal God which may or may not have had any resemblance to any existing supreme being including the freemasons' one. An out atheist is probably a later development than an out homosexual. If you liked having friends and associates in fraternal organizations you went along with the rituals whatever they might have been.