Paul Crowley (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ciphergoth) wrote2010-09-22 07:12 pm
ciphergoth) wrote2010-09-22 07:12 pm
On speaking of non-religious beliefs in religious terms
I stopped reading Beware of pushing Catholics out of the progressive club at the point where I reached the phrase "atheist deity, Richard Dawkins".
What makes this sort of talk a total waste of everyone's time is that you can say this about anything. Creationists love to talk about the priesthood of Darwinism, or global warming denialists the acolytes of Al Gore enforcing orthodoxy. By the same standards, Phil Plait counts as some sort of Pope of heliocentrism. It requires absolutely no thought or imagination to speak of a belief you don't like in this way; it shares absolutely no insight into what problems that belief might have. As a form of commentary, or as a form of humour, I therefore have to rank it below sarcasm, below puns, and somewhere just above repeating what the other person said in a high-pitched girly voice.
What makes this sort of talk a total waste of everyone's time is that you can say this about anything. Creationists love to talk about the priesthood of Darwinism, or global warming denialists the acolytes of Al Gore enforcing orthodoxy. By the same standards, Phil Plait counts as some sort of Pope of heliocentrism. It requires absolutely no thought or imagination to speak of a belief you don't like in this way; it shares absolutely no insight into what problems that belief might have. As a form of commentary, or as a form of humour, I therefore have to rank it below sarcasm, below puns, and somewhere just above repeating what the other person said in a high-pitched girly voice.
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