HOPEFULLY, NOT THE NORM

Well, this is probably going to hurt someone's feelings, so I apologize in advance.

Right-wing WND columnist and oft-frequented blogger Vox Day (VD) has a book available on-line called 'The Irrational Atheist' in which he takes some of the most visible atheist writings of the last few years (Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens, etc.) to task for what he feels are their unsupportable arguments, errors in fact, etc.

Me? I read Vox's book partially, and I got bored with the snarky, self-indulgent prose. As I told Vox privately in email, he's got some good arguments in there, but he could've benefited from a good editor. That's just not VD's style, apparently, and it's not my style to regard such as this (a milder example) as suitable discourse:

"Richard Dawkins is wrong. Daniel Dennett is wrong. Christopher Hitchens is drunk, and he's wrong. Michel Onfray is French, and he's wrong. Sam Harris is so superlatively wrong that it will require the development of esoteric mathematics operating simultaneously in multiple dimensions to fully comprehend the order of magnitude of his wrongness."

I happen to think that these gentlemen don't get everything right, as well, but I don't see what is gained by exploiting their personal lives for a one-liner within the text. As the saying goes, it doesn't edify me. Your mileage may vary, though, and if you want to wade through all that, the link to VD's dartboard is given above.

Now, my understanding is some atheists, including VD's targets, have run away from VD's criticisms, fostering charges of cowardice. Ha! Color me unimpressed: if I was a public intellectual of the first rank, I wouldn't fence with an academic outsider like VD, either: it's a 'no-win' situation for them.

But happily for those who like debate, there are others, like Kelly of the Rational Response Squad, who have attempted to engage the book.

However those things turn out, if you can stomach it, you can follow along at the links given above. I'm not really all that interested in the substance of that debate, but I am a bit troubled over some posts by Norm Doering, who I have encountered more than once at PZ's place and elsewhere in the Innertubes. In the past, I've felt that Doering had some pretty trenchant and penetrating comments, and I always made sure to read what he had to say when I came across it. I am therefore disturbed to see name-calling and misplaced charges of lying. I went to Norm's site and left a comment. I remarked that I had enjoyed his posts previously, explained why I thought he was in error with respect to VD's book, and encouraged him to rethink his approach.

Since that time, the original post on Norm's site that VD took exception to has disappeared, without explanation.

So has this post, the one I left a comment on.

As if they never happened. Well, that disappoints me. This is not what I would've expected from the Norm Doering I've read previously, and I hope this is an aberration. Not only is Norm missing an opportunity to set things right, he's giving the cranks on VD's side more ammunition.

Sigh.