More Thoughts on the “Odd Confluence”

Start your day with TPM.
Sign up for the Morning Memo newsletter

I’m getting a bunch of interesting responses to the post below. So I’m going to post some of the more thought-provoking ones (to me at least) below the fold in this post.

From TPM Reader WB

It took me a couple of reads to figure out what you were trying to say in your post on the odd confluence of interests between “radical secularists” and religious radicals.

I think it would be helpful if you pointed out in the post that Hitchens and Harris are opposed to the community center/mosque. One can see this by clicking on your hyperlinks, but your post would be more clear if you stated outright that like many fundamentalist Christians, they do not believe the people behind this project should have a right to build a place of worship in this location.

I think also calling Hitchens and Harris “radical secularists” might be a bit problematic. Perhaps a better term is “radical atheists”? Typically, secularists are not opposed to worship per se, but as you point out in your post believe in a pluralistic society in which people are free to worship as they see fit. But Hitchens and Harris are not really secularists in any sense I am familiar with, they are atheists who are totally devoted to proving that the practice of religion (any religion) is inherently irrational, unnecessary, and opposed to the greater good for mankind. As such, they do not believe that religious practices (any religious practices) are worthy of protection under the law. It is not what one might call a “tolerant” attitude.

But the “odd confluence” as you put it, may not be as strange as it appears on first blush. Truly devoted atheists like Hitchens practice a faith just as surely as any Catholic, Jew or Muslim. Believing absolutely and without room for doubt that there is no God requires just as much of a leap of faith as the belief that Jesus will come back tomorrow and smite the wicked and reward the righteous. In other words, the kind of radical atheism that they practice is in many ways just as inflexible, fundamentalist and intolerant in nature as the fundamentalist practice of any other religion.

A few readers have asked. So for what it’s worth, I don’t believe that convinced atheism is the same as practicing a faith. I’ve been one, I know.

Latest Editors' Blog
Masthead Masthead
Founder & Editor-in-Chief:
Executive Editor:
Managing Editor:
Associate Editor:
Editor at Large:
General Counsel:
Publisher:
Head of Product:
Director of Technology:
Associate Publisher:
Front End Developer:
Senior Designer: