Comment

Comment by Rosemary LYNDALL WEMM on March 22, 2009 at 3:03am

Agreed! I have been trying, unsuccessfully, to get this message through to some fellow atheists lately. I think you may have more success than I.

Comment by Casey Wollberg on February 19, 2009 at 6:58pm

"Eluding" should be "alluding." Sorry.

Comment by Casey Wollberg on February 16, 2009 at 10:25pm

Memome! Haha. Hey, I also had that same experience with a mosquito, by the way.

Well done! Entertaining and insightful. I'll be thinking about that last point you made about empowering the religious to ultimately reject their beliefs. I happen to be doing some writing about my experiences de-converting from a cult. A careful study of that process could illuminate some of the kinds of strategies you are eluding to.

One of the things that has struck me as odd is this argument over whether the New Atheists are really convincing anyone, or is it necessary instead to make peaceful inroads with moderates. I think this is a false dilemma. Why not both? Others may indeed require a more gentle approach, but in my own experience of de-conversion, the strong, unflinching arguments of folks like Dawkins and Hitchens were extremely useful. In fact, that approach felt (to me) like the kind of empowerment you mentioned, probably because it had been the rational elements of my former belief system that appealed to me most. More emotionally driven people won't necessarily be convinced by rational argumentation, and so a different approach must be used to empower them. But the point is, as you say, to empower believers to become non-believers. Brilliant.