Is It True?

It's so cute when the freakazoids think they've found the fatal weakness in atheism, and they run around excitedly pointing and yelling "See? See? Now you have to worship our invisible sky wizard!"

Sigh. They never get it. But they don't really want to get it. So they keep throwing up ever-dumber strawmen.

Thankfully, we have PZ Myers to keep knocking the strawmen down, setting them on fire and pissing on the ashes:

It's the cardboard cutout tactic — it turns out that cardboard versions of us put up much less of a fight than the real thing.

I'm afraid Stephen Asma has committed the same error. He has written a long, meandering essay that accuses the New Atheists of having a narrow worldview because, he thinks, all we know about is Christianity and Islam. What about Buddhism, he asks, or animism? And then he does tell us some interesting things about Buddhism and animism, but they're all entirely irrelevant, because he has completely missed the point.

SNIP

Gnu atheism is not simply about what isn't .... I have one simple question you can ask of any religion, whether it's animism or Catholicism, that will allow you to determine the Gnu Atheist position on it.

Is it true?

I've told people this many times. The Gnu Atheism is a positive movement that emphasizes the truth of a claim as paramount; it is our number one value .... A scientific truth is more complex than a colloquial truth, it's requirements being that it is free of contradiction with logic and reality and supported by reason and evidence.

Asma's big mistake is assuming that our central question is, "Is it good for us?", which leads him into all these pointless anecdotes about how praying makes him feel better, and how animism helps impoverished people cope with their circumstances. I don't care if religion makes someone feel better. Stacking illusions over a grim reality does not turn it sweet .... I do not lie to myself, and other people lying to me under the delusion that it will make me happier I find unconscionable.

Seriously, it's worse than that. I despise people who try to swaddle truth with lies in the name of consolation. It kills ambition, the striving to make the world better in the future, and it can allow evil to lurk unchecked. Those child-raping priests persisted because people lied to themselves, telling themselves that no man of god could do something so heinous…and even when finally exposed and removed, they continued to live in denial, reassuring each other that the institution that protected those vipers really was a force for good, overall.

SNIP

He could show me a religion that is nothing but sweetness and light, happiness and good thoughts and equality for all, and it wouldn't matter: the one question I would ask is, "Is it true?" It wouldn't matter if he could show empirically that adopting this hypothetical faith leads to world peace, the voluntary abolishment of crime, the disappearance of dental caries, and that every child on the planet would get their very own pony — I'd still battle it with every fierce and angry word I could speak and type if it wasn't also shown to be a true and accurate description of the world. Some of us, at least, will refuse to drink the Kool-Aid, no matter how much sugar they put in it.

SNIP

Asma concludes with a typical unsupported plea; atheism's "proponents need to have a more nuanced and global understanding of religion." No, we don't. Show us that it's true, first, and then we can talk about nuance, and implementation, and consequences. Telling us how it makes some people feel good doesn't even begin to address our core objections.

Read the whole thing.