June 23, 2013

PZ, defending Hitchens, tells it like it is

An atheist apologist (a contradiction in terms, but the fellow doesn't know this) wrote dismissively about Christopher Hitchens. Apparently Hitchens didn't bow down sufficiently to religious nitwits. PZ dismisses the apologist with dispatch in a blog post today, and adds the following gem. He's speaking about religious apologists here:
It’s a red herring: when we ask for evidence of a god, the apologists point to a whole bunch of people wrangling at daunting length about the interpretation of holy writ and say, “See? There. They couldn’t possibly be arguing about nothing at all, now could they?” I wish this would sink in, that someone making an intricate paean to the ineffability of nothing is not evidence of anything other than the human brain’s immense capacity for masturbatory self-reference.
Hear, hear.

PS: Republished because I got my signals crossed. I thought I found this on Jerry Coyne's blog, but it was PZ's. Duh.

No comments: