Oh lordy. Again. I should just add a little sub-blog or something: Dawkinswatch.
This time he’s trying his hand at making authoritative pronouncements about religion versus atheism on Twitter, and…well, I cringed.
Some good people are religious. Some good people are atheists. All who fight stem cell research & evolution teaching are religious.
Some good people are religious. Some good people are atheists. All who bomb abortion clinics & all who mutilate clitorises are religious.
Some atheists are bad. But all stoners, hand-choppers, abortion clinic bombers, evolution deniers, gay-persecutors are religious.
Some atheists do good, some bad. But atheism drives nobody to do bad. Raligion drives some people to do bad because they think it’s good.
Oh gawd. Somebody stop him.
I think I know what he’s trying to say; I think he’s trying to make the point that religion supplies certain kinds of motivation that are absent from atheism. But those blurts are not that point! And they’re wrong.
And it does matter, because he’s taken to be an atheist authority figure by many many many people, atheists and non-atheists alike. As a mouthy atheist myself, I’m getting increasingly restless about being “represented” by crude slogans like the above.