FUSsa-talk Mailing List: Fwd: More on the New Atheism issues

[Robert Tapp (tappx001]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Robert Tapp <tappx001 [at] umn.edu>
> Date: November 6, 2009 5:46:09 PM CST
> To: Humanist Institute Discussion List <hidisc [at] humanistinstitute.org>
>
> Start with Karen Armstrong's Foreign Policy article
>
>         http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/10/19/god_0?page=0,1
>
> Then Brian Davis sharp critique of her fuzzy apologetics in Religion  
> Dispatches
>         
>         http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/rdbook/1930/
>
> Then read Lisa Armstrong's Newsweek qualifier
>
>         http://www.newsweek.com/id/219009
>
> Then Eric Reitan's commentary on Collision
>         
>         http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/mediaculture/1986/
>
> Then Meg White's nicely-nuanced critique for BuzzFlash
>
>         http://blog.buzzflash.com/analysis/937
>
> In all this media excitement, humanists should be making their case  
> more insistently that the real issue is in value conflicts -- where  
> religions certainly make impacts but are so varied internally that  
> they can only be decisive for their own particular devotees. That's  
> where the humanist insistence upon reasoned discussion and empirical  
> evaluation of consequences comes in. And it's where umbrella  
> categories such as Religion, Christianity, Islam reveal themselves  
> as meaningless. Try stem-cells and abortion, or pre-emptive war, or  
> contraception, or climate, or freedom of conscience!
>
> Bob