Tuesday, July 02, 2013

A. C. Grayling: Another atheist with taxonomic issues

A. C. Grayling's new entry into the atheist sweepstakes is called The God Argument: The Case Against Religion and for Humanism, a title which I find rather amusing. Why do the people who call themselves "humanists" see themselves as somehow inherently opposed religion, since humanism has always been an important aspect of religious thought and indeed real humanism is impossible outside some kind of theistic world view?

Humanism is related to theism as species to genus. Are horses inherently opposed to the idea of mammals? Are daisies out there outraged at the concept of organisms? Is there a rebellious pigeon somewhere who repudiates the idea of being a bird?

I guess it's just one more instance of the branches calling the tree into doubt.

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