skippy the bush kangaroo: circular firing squads of the left

Monday, April 24, 2006

circular firing squads of the left

now raw story has officially joined the lefty mutual-destruction society with melinda barton's rant against "atheist whackjobs."

as dr. myers points out, melinda does a fine job of providing examples of most of the logical fallacies available, including straw men, false dichotomies, and downright ignoring of one's premise in one's own proof.

the bottom line for melinda is that people who don't believe in religion are nutcases, and people who don't believe that other people should be allowed to believe in religion are dangerous.

the truth of the matter is, of course, that most atheists are not adamant about forcing their beliefs (or non-beliefs) down other people's throats; quite the opposite, they are adamant about refusing to let other people force their religious beliefs down everyone else's throats.

but that's not good enough for melinda. she sets up strawman after strawman, assigning various extreme positions to the atheistic left, and then using bizarro world logic, attacking said positions.

even more, she undercuts her own authority by attributing said "outrageous claims" to the "whackjob" atheists without any sourcing or citing (with the exception of one quote from the atheist foundation of australia and one from the international maniefesto for atheistic humanism. pardon us, but we don't know anybody who's read the international manifesto for atheistic humanism. and, in spite of our logo, we don't know anybody in the atheist foundation of australia).

dr. myers does a better job than we do of deconstructing melinda's "logic," as do several raw story readers in the article's comments section. our misgivings lay in the meta-position of lefties v. lefties...there's no progressive atheist organization that we know of which is calling for destruction of churches and organized religion. there are many that bemoan such institutions, but none that believe separation of church and state is the same as widespread forced eradication of personal belief systems, be they religious or otherwise.

melinda uses the same tactic that is a favorite of the hardly-ever-right wing: ascribe one's own pettiness to one's opposition, and then demonize the opposition for it.

what would jesus write, melinda?

posted by skippy at 9:14 AM |