It seems to me that any time Christians (or theists) are critical of the nasty side of atheism we get shouted down as hypocrites. How can we pick on Dawkins, for how can we caricature them all on account of his vitriol when we had George W Bush as the public face of Christianity justifying unpopular wars with terribly out of context Bible passages? Or indeed or the televangelists et al who are a public bastardisation of the Christian message.
Is this a log v speck issue? Should we be trying to clear up the Christian brand (ie what the public think Christianity is) before we go charging at the bastion of angry atheism – namely Richard Dawkins and co.
Probably. Those loony fringes of Christianity are much better at garnering publicity than the mainstream evangelical orthodoxy. Like the woman in the US who kidnapped her kid because he has cancer and the State wanted to force him to undergo life saving medical treatment.
So long as that’s the public understanding of “Christianity” pushed by the media we’re going to have troubles criticising atheism because the public understanding of atheism is angry intellectual criticism of religious belief.
I actually started writing this post because there’s been a pretty angry response to that article in the LA Times the other day – and I wanted to talk about how angry atheists are, and how Dawkins seems to epitomise atheism, rather than being at its fringe.
That is all. For now.
