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Dinesh D'Souza's anti-atheist bigotry

Dinesh D'Souza trots out Nietzsche to argue that atheists who reject Peter Singer's view on the killing of infants, etc. are just lying to themselves:

Why haven't the atheists embraced Peter Singer? I suspect it is because they fear that his unpalatable views will discredit the cause of atheism. What they haven't considered, however, is whether Singer, virtually alone among their numbers, is uncompromisingly working out the implications of living in a truly secular society, one completely purged of Christian and transcendental foundations. In Singer, we may be witnessing someone both horrifying and yet somehow refreshing: an intellectually honest atheist.

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Permalink Reply by Pirate Bard on March 19, 2009 at 2:41pm

Why haven't the christians embraced the Westboro Baptist Church? I suspect it is because they fear that their unpalatable views will discredit the cause of Christianity. What they haven't considered, however, is whether the Westboro Baptists, virtually alone among their numbers, are uncompromisingly working out the implications of living in a truly Christian society, one completely purged of reason and logical foundations. In the Westboro Baptists, we may be witnessing something both horrifying and yet somehow refreshing: an intellectually honest Christian church.

Then again, even the Westboro Baptists don't go quite far enough in their support of biblical teachings. After all, they don't stone disrespectful children, they don't force rape victims to marry their assailants, they don't kill every "witch" they meet, and I'm fairly certain I saw one of them wearing what looked like a cotton-poly blend shirt on one of the videos.
D'Souza is as intellectually dishonest as christians get. I'd love to see someone fully examine what our society would be like if we followed every rule set down in the bible... I'm guessing it wouldn't be to far removed from what we see in Iran or Saudi Arabia or any other strict theocracy that follows some ridiculously old book written by sadistic and power-hungry HUMANS.

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Permalink Reply by faithlessgod on March 20, 2009 at 2:42am

Well he is misrepresenting Singer. There is nothing horrifying in has arguments over terminating severely and irredeemably ill and unsaveable babies, he is arguing to relieve them of avoidable suffering that is currently prevented by religious-type of "moral" reasoning as in D'Souza. How about D'Souza rises to the standards he wishes to apply to Singer, what we do not have in D'Souza is an intellectually honest theist, that he is so popular is not refreshing and horrifying.

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Permalink Reply by FreeThinker on March 20, 2009 at 6:01am

Two things:

1) Atheism is simply the lack of belief in a deity. It says nothing of moral values, positive or negative. You can follow any moral system and still be an atheist if you do not believe there is a god.

2) How do we determine what the Christian and "transcendental" foundations of society are? Just because it says "thou shalt not kill" in the Bible doesn't mean the concept that killing is wrong originated with Judeo-Christian principles. In fact, all of the Ten Commandments, with the exceptions of the first four, which pertain to God, can be found in the Code of Hammurabi, which predates the Old Testament. I'd challenge D'Souza to name anything deriving from Christianity that is almost universally accepted as a good idea that couldn't have been brought about by secular means.

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Permalink Reply by Carol Smith on November 10, 2011 at 11:46am

D'Souza's anti-atheist propaganda is being promoted at Huron H.S., Ann Arbor, as recently as April. http://humanities-notes.blogspot.com/2011/04/why-hate.html