Last time, Keith Kloor was wrong when he accused New Atheists of having litmus tests (in his defense, I can say, he had read Pharyngula, and it is true that whole place is filled with hate, litmus tests and paranoia about white men and privilege… and is written by a deluded privileged white man; but I digress).
Now, Kloor did it again, and goes after Dr. Jerry Coyne:
This tweet and blog post headline is really something:
Islam Apparently behind Boston bombing
It’s from Jerry Coyne, the evolutionary biologist who apparently would blame environmentalism for Ted Kaczynski. I know Coyne doesn’t like it when atheists are accused of being anti-Muslim, but he’s a whisker from being no better than Pam Geller, the queen of Islamophobia.
I’m no fan of religion myself, but I’m also no fan of fundamentalist atheism, especially the kind that paints religious faiths with a broad brush.
I’m sorry, but there’s no such thing as “fundamentalist atheism”, just like there’s no fundamentalist a-unicornism or a-leprechaunism!
“Fundamentalism” demands you adhere to a theological, fundamental book – there’s no such book for negative claims, such as atheism.
And there’s no such thing as “Islamophobia”, either: First of all, a phobia is an irrational fear – there’s no irrationality in being afraid of superstition; we’ve seen what it can do!
Second of all, ‘islamophobia’ it’s a term coined by (actual) fundamentalists who deem questioning Islam should be as socially rejected as racism… the thing is we’re judging a set of ideas, not people! And freethinking (another word familiar to this debate) is at the core of the attitude of not holding any ideas sacred or unchallengable!
It’s all too bad Kloor chooses to throw his fellow Atheists under the bus and his poor choice of words! Jerry Coyne’s post, as Kloor quoted, says Islam apparently would be behind the Boston bombings. Are we supposed to ignore the religion of two terrorists, or pretend they didn’t really belong to that religion?
What was Coyne supposed to do when this showed up on his news feed from CNN?
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev indicated his older brother, Tamerlan, was the driving force behind the attacks and wanted to defend Islam from attack, the source said.
Was he supposed to ignore this? What would have been the rational reaction, according to Kloor? Are we to ignore the fact that Islam is one of the few ideologies that is defended with terrorist attacks to the date? Why would anyone would do that?
The best way to address any kind of problem is to act based on the evidence. Should we ignore the evidence, and be politically correct, just to avoid someone from taking offense? How is that going to help? I like the way Kloor engages in environmental issues, always relying on the evidence – I find it hard to believe he will dismiss the evidence when it comes to religion and how it poisons everything.
