In light of your expanded criticism of the apparent bigotry of my original post, which I very much appreciated hearing, I have written a detailed response to most of the points you have raised to date. Please go read this and feel free to continue the discussion on that thread. Again, I do appreciate your answer to my question, and I felt I could do no less than to address your criticisms as best I could.

All the best,
Jared

Jared: Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and others are well-known advocates of this type of worldview. This is what we’re talking about.
They can speak for themselves, they do not represent my own or most “atheists” I know views. Of course their arguments against god are correct but not original to them. As for their polemics well that is their opinion, nothing more nor less. And anyway even if I disagree with them on those points it does not alter the fact that whatever they have said is far far less severe and more honest than what is repeatedly said in the past and present against “atheists”.

Jared:Simply saying “I don’t believe God exists” may strictly qualify the speaker as an atheist, but that doesn’t leave a whole lot of room for discussion about the issues involved.
For once you are quite correct! And this is the whole point. If you had written your article condemning the “New Atheists” which would include anyone who wholeheartedly agrees with them - not me for one - then this whole thread would have been quite different. You made the equivocation/obfuscation can you now retract your original post and update it in the light of your modification as to whom you are condemning?

Jared:Can we please get past that now? The Dali Lama is an atheist, to the best of my knowledge, but that’s not the class of atheism we’re discussing.
In order to get past that it is beholden on you to clarify what you said in your original post as I just noted above. If you do that then we can get past that and still have an interesting and lively discussion.

I have asked one question here and I will repeat it “You made the equivocation/obfuscation can you now retract your original post and update it in the light of your modification as to whom you are condemning?” I have done you the courtesy of answering your question in my previous comment. Can you please do the same to at least this question (although I have not forgotten the 15 odd other questions this is the critical one in relation to your post and this thread!)

Well this thread has been busy whilst I have been… busy. I will try and be brief.

@Jared: Martin, I am going to ask you one, simple, and direct question. I will repost my original paragraph that you took exception to, and I entreat you to explain, in a simple and concise manner, what immoral bigotry is contained within my statement.
Fine I will but can you reciprocate and do me the courtesy of answering the 15 or so question I have asked you.

First what is bigotry? It is taking an aspect of a person and assigning them as a member of a group (whether they agree with this, chose this or not), then negatively and inaccurately describe an aspect of this group and irrationally asserting that any member, as one has decided, has this characteristic and condemns them, or worse, for it.

OK lets look at this paragraph:
@JaredThe fact is that it’s impossible to live as a true atheist, and the honest atheists who understand the basic tenants of philosophy understand this.
First here you are describing a nominal group for which you have determined that anyone who has no belief in god is a member of and then you make two false claims of this group.
a) It is impossible to live as a true atheist
b) Honest atheists understand this - implying that anyone who denies this is dishonest
Well the only identifying characteristic of “atheists” as you present them are a lack of belief in god and there is nothing else. You cannot from this one data item determine anyone’s politics, economics, worldview, philosophy or morality. To say it is impossible to live as a “true atheist” is blatantly and trivially false and enough people here have more than asserted and so do I. As for (b) in particular although I do not use the label “atheist”, I do not believe in god because it is the best and only honest and ethical position I can take on the matter. Whilst I am not alone in this viewpoint, I cannot assume that all others in this nominal group come from the same point of view. Still this alone refutes (b). Both claims (a) and (b) are false if you can show one person in your nominal group that does not have that characteristic and there are more here. You might respond in terms of an average but you are equivocating, sort of, over atheists and atheist - you are are specifying that no-one who is a member of your nominal group has certain characteristics and this has been repeatedly refuted by myself and others here.

@Jared:True atheism realizes that the concept of morality is completely meaningless in a universe devoid of supernatural origin, mind over matter, and ultimate purpose.
This “true” qualifier is a weasel term and a form of condemnation - anyone who denies this is not a true atheist. This is blatantly false. Different atheists have differing moral views most of which are vastly superior to your morality - which was fatally disproved 2500 years ago - and is one of the worst type of moral systems imaginable. The mere fact that you are coming up with these falsehoods is further evidence of the immoral grounds of your worldview.

@jared Therefore, a true atheist has to say that reality is one way while simultaneously living as if reality is another way.
Ridiculously false since atheism is not a wordlview. All these “atheists” have in common is a lack of a god factor in their worldview, that in their worldview god is not relevant and that is it. If you want to know what a particular atheists worldview is then yo need to ask them.

Jared:In a sense, they live like theists while denying the merits of theism.
I see no merits in theism and anyway theism itself says not thing about morality or politics either! You cannot tell someone’s worldview from whether they believe in god or not. It is what else they believe that tells you this. In your case you have made it quite clear that you are basing your morality on a belief in god and we all know that such a morality cannot work in principle and in fact - it is a form moral subjectivism which you correctly condemn elsewhere whilst failing to see that you are victim to it yourself!

All in all this and the rest of your original post was implying that “It is is impossible to be moral without god” which is one of the most morally repugnant statements today and there is now no doubt - given your responses that you insist on holding this view despite all evidence to the contrary - that your post therefore is a statement of immoral bigotry and so it certainly refutes any claims of the claimer to be moral. One cannot both be moral and hold anything like such a position.

Now is that what you want us to believe or do you want an honest and ethical conversation with those who disagree with you - an opportunity to learn about different worldviews and how they work? This is your choice. You judge yourself by what you have and will say.

Now if you will do me the courtesy of answering my 15 of so questions…

It is also mine. This does not make me religious or my atheism a religion. Why is it so difficult for you to accept that atheism is not a religious stance? You certainly accept that atheism differs from theism in various other aspects. Perhaps you find it necessary to say such things in order to detract from the reality that atheism contains no elements whatsoever of a contrivance, as does Christianity, the core elements of which are demonstrably false. Christianity proposes such thigs as dead men returning to life, global floods, six–day creation, and people living for hundreds of years, all of which only the uneducated, the brainwashed, or the insane can really believe in. Atheism proposes nothing in an of itself and certainly hinges on no false assumptions.

You can believe what you like, Jared, and you can blog about it to your heart’s content. Just don’t expect that if you make wildly hypocritical, ignorant, deluded, or incoherent statements that people will not call you on it.

On a scale of 1 to 7, where 1 is certitude that God exists and 7 is certitude that God does not exist, Dawkins rates himself a 6: “I cannot know for certain but I think God is very improbable, and I live my life on the assumption that he is not there.”

That should be clear enough.

Also, you cannot generalize and then attack the generalization, this is a form of straw man argument. Either you refute the positions of people commenting here or your are trying to use fallacies to argue.

People arguing with you, do not argue against fundamentalist as such, they argue against the views you expressed in your main article. You on the other hand are attacking generalizations and “pop atheists”. For your information, most atheists, other than their lack of belief, have very little in common.

Look, we can quibble about the various nuances of the dictionary term “atheist” forever, but that doesn’t serve any purpose other than to confuse impartial observers. We could also argue about what constitutes a “fundamentalist” or a “zealot” or a “skeptic” or what have you, but it usually serves little purpose other than to ignore the larger issues. As far as this discussion goes, the atheism I’m talking about is the Western materialistic atheism of the aforementioned “New Atheists”. Is that clear enough?

What evidence or studies is there that suggest that there is a “commonly understood pop view of Western materialistic atheism?” There is no western atheism, or materialistic atheism, etc… There is only “atheism,” the position of not believing in the existence of a supernatural god or gods.

The term “Atheism” doesn’t encompass any beliefs one does hold, it only addresses the position of not believing in the existence of a supernatural god. You keep tacking on other labels and descriptions to the term atheism that is beyond its definition. If you want to talk about evolution, or naturalism, or materialism, or other issues, address the topics with those names, not atheism. Are you purposely trying to mislead your audience?

“There is no spirit-driven life force, no throbbing, heaving, pullulating, protoplasmic, mystic jelly. Life is just bytes and bytes and bytes or digital information.”

“We - and that means all living things - are survival machines programmed to propagate the digital database that did the programming.”

“This is one of the hardest lessons for humans to learn. We cannot admit that things might be neither good nor evil, neither cruel nor kind, but simply callous - indifferent to all suffering, lacking all purpose.”

“In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference.”

Richard Dawkins is an atheist who believes that there is no design, no purpose, no evil and no good at the bottom of the universe. That is his worldview. That is what he writes books about and speaks about at public seminars. Why are you trying to run from such philosophical statements?

the commonly understood “pop” view of Western materialistic atheism is a worldview that encompasses the logical conclusions derived from the opinion that there is no god/gods or supernatural order and therefore humans must create their own meaning for existence. Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and others are well-known advocates of this type of worldview

That is blatantly incorrect. Especially since Dawkins has before explained that his version of atheism is the same as the one I described (I don’t know enough about Harris)
This “pop atheism” that you are arguing against then is unveiled to be a strawman.