By ROBERT WRIGHT, HUFFINGTON POST
Added: Sun, 12 Jul 2009 23:00:00 UTC

Thanks to Matt for the link.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-wright/why-the-new-atheists-are_b_230448.html

It must strike progressive atheists as a stroke of bad luck that Christopher Hitchens, leading atheist spokesperson, happens to have hawkish views on foreign policy. After all, with atheists an overwhelmingly left-wing group, what were the chances that the loudest infidel in the western world would happen to be on the right?

Actually, the chances were pretty good. When it comes to foreign policy, a right-wing bias afflicts not just Hitchens's world view, but the whole ideology of "new atheism," especially as seen in the work of Hitchens allies Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins.

Atheism has little intrinsic ideological bent. (Karl Marx. Ayn Rand. I rest my case.) But things change when you add the key ingredient of the new atheism: the idea that religion is not just mistaken, but evil -- that it "poisons everything," as Hitchens has put it with characteristic nuance.

Consider Dawkins's assertion, in his book The God Delusion, that if there were no religion then there would be "no Israeli-Palestinian wars."

Continue reading:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-wright/why-the-new-atheists-are_b_230448.html

TAGGED: ATHEISM, COMMENTARY, MORALITY