Yasmin Alibhai-Brown has a regular column in the Independent newspaper. This week, it was titled: What Do These Atheists Understand Of Religion? I must say, after reading it, and counting to ten several times over, that I really think the title should have been reversed. Ms. Alibhai-Brown seems to have no understanding of what atheism is, and constructs a series of strawmen in an attempt to prove her case. And I do get tired of ad hominem attacks of Dawkins when it is seems clear that the attackers, such as Alibhai-Brown, appear either not to have read his books or continually mis-state his positions. I felt like banging my head on my keyboard when I read the climax of her piece with yet another appearance of the nonsense trope: "Fundamentalist atheists want to replace old religions with their own".
Her nonsense has been thoroughly dissected by the comments here. I particularly like this one – a measured response to Alibhai-Brown’s fevered rhetoric. And of course, the ever-dependable Ophelia Benson has comments of her own on the piece. I do like her summary of one of Alibhai-Brown’s more stupid propositions as a piece of kack. A good old-fashioned slang word correctly used to describe the argument as the great big steaming pile of ordure that it is.
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