yglesias comments on the “hawkishness” and “new atheism” piece mentioned earlier. again, i reject the premise that dawkins is actually hawkish. N=2 does not a trend make (hitchens and harris). but this seems onto to something:
Thus, much as right-wing Christians and right-wing Muslims can simultaneously loathe each other and have structurally similar views, so, too, can “new atheists” join the party. Elsewhere you have a liberal ethic adhered to by people who identify with different spiritual traditions and also by what I think are “normal” atheists, just people who don’t identify with a religious tradition, rather than people who want to construct a self-conscious atheist identity and go to battle over it.
on a personal level when i was involved in the “freethought” movement the ex-hardcore-religionists were the most bizarre and annoying people in their hardcore-atheist phase. their beliefs had changed, but their underlying psychology was invariant. islam isn’t the only group with “crazy converts.” on a more abstract level alister mcgrath’s contention that atheists struggle with the post-modern pluralism of the present has some truth to it. the more deductive someone’s atheism is the easier i find it to box-them into agreeing with my own anti-multiculturalism sentiments. a distaste for contradiction is easy to leverage.
