The Loser Letters

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National Review Online starts a series of pieces on "The New Atheism.":

The Loser Letters
A Former Christian converts to atheism.
by Mary Eberstadt

Editor’s note: Christianity has been taking a beating for years now, with one tony atheist tome after another rolling off the presses — and still no end in sight.

And so far — with the exception of a Michael Novak here and a Dinesh D’Souza there — believers have largely turned the other cheek.

Now, finally, comes the payback — with THE LOSER LETTERS, a Screwtape for our screwed-up time.

Both a hilarious and edgy send-up of today’s atheism and a serious work of Christian apologetics, THE LOSER LETTERS will have the believers cheering — and the atheists wondering what hit them.

In the latest round over God, it’s KO time on National Review Online with Mary Eberstadt . . .

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An open letter to those spokesmen for the New Atheism who have labored mightily these last few years to sweep aside religion’s paralytic webs of superstition and prejudice, and to liberate the rest of our Species via Science and Enlightenment:
...

I am not familiar with National Review Online, but their standards, both intellectual and literary, appear to be quite low.

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Index to all of the Loser letters by Loser author Mary Eberstadt

[rpcarnell]

If the Loser Letters are as smart as Ben Stein's Expelled, every atheist should be hiding under his bed.

[jap88]

So basically just a 4-page ad hom?

I would hardly concern myself with such stupidity.

[Doubtdispelled]

to sweep aside religion’s paralytic webs of superstition and prejudice

I wonder if they have any idea how ironic that sarcasm is?

[Answer]

Most of what the author is saying is just opinionated stereotyping and judgmental bias. I see no direct correlation to what she is saying and the actuality of the situation. Is it not true that Atheism and Christianity seek the same end? Both seek Enlightenment (of sorts), one through faith and one through facts. The author questions the amount of converts to atheism compared to that of Christianity. There are already 4 billion of them and everyone can essentially agree that truth hurts more than lies, faith is easier than fact.

Which is why all of what she is saying is pretty much Ad Hom as jap88 said.

[RaspK]

to sweep aside religion’s paralytic webs of superstition and prejudice

I wonder if they have any idea how ironic that sarcasm is?

I find it infinitely worse when people act so high and mighty about the term apologetics...

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Is it not true that Atheism and Christianity seek the same end? Both seek Enlightenment (of sorts), one through faith and one through facts.

It is not true. Christians seek salvation, not enlightenment.

[S.Rassi]

If the Loser Letters are as smart as Ben Stein's Expelled, every atheist should be hiding under his bed.

If they're on par with Expelled, then every atheist should be reaching of their oxygen bottles, lest they pass out from laughing so hard.

[Answer]

Is it not true that Atheism and Christianity seek the same end? Both seek Enlightenment (of sorts), one through faith and one through facts.

It is not true. Christians seek salvation, not enlightenment.

I appreciate the correction.

[Elderito]

National Review Online starts a series of pieces on "The New Atheism.":

[I am not familiar with National Review Online, but their standards, both intellectual and literary, appear to be quite low.

Ding-Ding you win the prize!

Yes they are low, and the slant is extremely right wing. Not quite Ann Coulter bat-shit, about on par with Bill O'Reilly in his screaming moments. They would in turn, defend the Iraq invasion, Nixon, Rev. Hagee, all conservative pundits, and Dick Cheney. One of the few "secular" publications to give a glowing review to Expelled.

I read about half the letter. I can only take so much.

[SQuinn]

to sweep aside religion’s paralytic webs of superstition and prejudice

I wonder if they have any idea how ironic that sarcasm is?

I find it infinitely worse when people act so high and mighty about the term apologetics...

The word "apologetics" is like an elephant in the living room nobody wants to mention. It is the shamless whine of the religionist, begging for their stories to be accepted as true, though it's plain they utterly defy logic and ethics.

Honestly shared information rarely requires an apology (let alone an entire discipline devoted to said apologies).

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Loser Letter #2:

Some Little Contradictions and How They Grew
by Mary Eberstadt

It lives up to the standard set by the first letter.

[RaspK]

to sweep aside religion’s paralytic webs of superstition and prejudice

I wonder if they have any idea how ironic that sarcasm is?

I find it infinitely worse when people act so high and mighty about the term apologetics...

The word "apologetics" is like an elephant in the living room nobody wants to mention. It is the shamless whine of the religionist, begging for their stories to be accepted as true, though it's plain they utterly defy logic and ethics.

Honestly shared information rarely requires an apology (let alone an entire discipline devoted to said apologies).

Loser Letter #2:

Some Little Contradictions and How They Grew
by Mary Eberstadt

It lives up to the standard set by the first letter.

So much drivel, so much innuendo, so little substance...

[TheManhattanProject]

It's amazing how people can have such scorn and hatred towards people who simply don't believe in supernatural sky spirits, particularly since many at National Review probably don't believe in Zeus, Hera, Shiva etc....

[quork]

So much drivel, so much innuendo, so little substance...

All that, and Pascal's wager! All while the author is discussing logic and reason. I wonder if she knows what an argumentum ad populum is.

[michael^3]

.

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To address some of the actual content of Loser Letter #2 by Loser author Mary Eberstadt:

Another problem with learning a bit of logic was this: just as it helped in locating where a real contradiction might be skulking, so did it illuminate other claims as being not contradictory, valid, invalid, and so on. And here again, atheism lost some points in my book for a while.

Why is it that illogical people always claim to be logical when they screw up big time?

Take what some Brights have been making of the fact that there are lots of different religions in the world saying plenty of different things. Many of You have been right out front, going on and on about how all this religious diversity somehow “proves” that not one of those religions can be correct. But of course this is what’s called a fallacious inference. The presence of other religions doesn’t affect the truth value of any one of them — any more than having twelve answers to a math problem tells you which one is right, say, or having ten pairs of Manolo Blahniks tells you which ones to wear with a cheetah leather skirt.

Telling which one is right - well, that's the problem, isn't it? If you have 2500 different religions*, you know at least 2499 of them are wrong. That's a one-way ticket to hell if you make the wrong choice, so why compare to something so inconsequential as choosing a pair of shoes?. (Not all religions offer a Hell, but since Eberstadt brings up Pascal's wager I'm going to make some assumptions.) And since none of them have a solid evidential basis, how do you choose between them? Most religions rely on the same "ways of knowing" (and I so hate that presumptuous phrase), scripture and revelation, which we know to be unreliable. So, to make the analogy more accurate, suppose you have a 2500 pair of Manolo Blahnik shoes, but 2499 of them have a hypodermic syringe filled with poison hidden in the toe. Wouldn't going barefoot make more sense?

Also, it is not true that "the presence of other religions doesn’t affect the truth value of any one of them." That tells us that no God exists who wishes to make his true identity and desires unambiguously known to all of humanity. Since many proposed gods allot salvation based on faith, and those gods do nothing to suppress all the false religions, these gods either cannot exist or cannot be as good as many of them are claimed to be.

And don't try the "free will" defense, it just doesn't work. Supposing that God actually valued man's free will so much that he let people choose to condemn themselves to an eternity - an eternity! - in Hell for making a wrong choice; that is no excuse for not even giving so many people a decent opportunity to make the correct choice by not giving them accurate information. If any God exists who allots salvation based on faith, then he doesn't particularly care for the eternal well-being of large numbers of his creatures.

* The Encyclopedia of Gods lists "over 2500 deities of the world." That is an underestimate of the number of religions, because some popular gods, e.g. Yahweh, have multiple incompatible religions dedicated to them.

[SQuinn]

suppose you have a 2500 pair of Manolo Blahnik shoes, but 2499 of them have a hypodermic syringe filled with poison hidden in the toe. Wouldn't going barefoot make more sense?

Beautiful!

[Grim Reaper]

Both a hilarious and edgy send-up of today’s atheism and a serious work of Christian apologetics, THE LOSER LETTERS will have the believers cheering — and the atheists wondering what hit them.

Well after skimming through most of that drivel I've come to the conclusion there are meanings to the word "hilarious" that I've yet to encounter.

[bamboospitfire]

Er, Poe?

[Elderito]

Er, Poe?

Well according to his law it it indistinguishable, however looking at the publisher. National Review , it is obviosly not a send up of christians. National Review is far right USA, and Christian fundies are bread and butter. Put it this way, if National Review had an alternate comic book format it would have G W Bush as a reader.

[Cynocephaly]

.

..

[Godfrey]

The opposite of "Bright" is not "Dull." "Dull" is the opposite of "Sharp." The opposite of "Bright" is "Dim." And this writer is one. And Russell aside, fear is not what motivates religion.

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It's Friday, and thus it's time for another "Loser Letter from Loser author Mary Eberstadt:

The Trouble with Good Works

She includes a repeat of the "Hitler was an atheist" lie. She cites David Berlinski as her authority.

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As in previous weeks, I will present and dissect one argument from Loser author Eberstadt's latest letter.

Now if You all just think for a minute, You’ll know as well as I do why this is so damaging for Us: because the actual evidence for claiming that atheism will do as much good in the world as Christianity and other religions is embarrassingly against us. As in, way.

I’m not even talking here about the tired charges made by the Other Side about what happens when atheists actually run the world — mass murder, genocide, concentration camps, and the rest of the 20th-century record. Of course plenty of people do want to rub Our noses in History, the twerps. Papal point man Michael Novak appears to have been running especially annoying defense lately. I mean, that crack of his last year about how Mr. Sam Harris tries to “explain away the horrors of the self-declared atheist regimes in modern history: Fascist in Italy, Nazi in Germany, and Communist in the Soviet Union”: Ouch! That one had to hurt, even if it was totally off the wall in any historic sense. As if any one of those governments could top the Inquisition in a body count! Right?

Equally annoying are the people who argue that the record doesn’t support Your claim that Nazis and Communists and whatnot were really somehow religious underneath — You know, as if Paula on American Idol is secretly a fat bald Male teetotaler whose skin is Naturally almost as tight as Hillary Clinton’s. If You ask me, that mathematician and non-believer David Berlinski gives the “secretly-religious” theory a real smack in his treacherous new attack on Us, The Devil’s Delusion:

What Hitler did not believe and what Stalin did not believe and what Mao did not believe and what the SS did not believe and what the Gestapo did not believe and what the NKVD did not believe and what the commissars, functionaries, swaggering executioners, Nazi doctors, Communist Party theoreticians, intellectuals, Brown Shirts, Black Shirts, gauleiters, and a thousand party hacks did not believe was that God was watching what they were doing.

In one sentence, too! What a pain Berlinski is. He might as well be working under the table for the Loser. I wouldn’t be surprised. (Idea: The next time You Guys want to burn something, let’s start with his book!)

First we have a quote from Novak claiming that Italian Fascism, German Nazism and Soviet Communism were atheistic. My count is 1 for 3, but passed on without serious criticism by Eberstadt. Then she drags in a quote from the profoundly dishonest David Berlinski, but it doesn't even back up her argument at all. The original argument was that Hitler and the Nazis were atheists. What the quote attempts to establish (and I won't claim that it is successful) is that Nazi misdeeds were not done in the name of religion. Even if we accepted that, it does not in any way show that the Nazis were atheists, or that their deeds were done in the name of atheism. The only way to even approach that would be a circular argument that if they did bad things, they couldn't really have been Christians. Could Eberstadt really be that stupid? The evidence seems to favor that conclusion.