Ran across this story about the Brooklyn College Sociology’s Department electing Timothy Shortell as its chair. Shortell has a number of defects, but the one I’m interested in here is that he is one of these annoying fundamentalist atheists that I’ve talked about previously.
The sound bite being repeated is that Shortell referred to religious people as “moral retards,” but that’s actually one of the least objectionable claims from his essay, Religion & Morality: A Contradiction Explained. Shortell appears to subscribe to the Madalyn Murray O’Hair school of atheism in professing religion not only to be wrong, but religion and religious people to be suspect if not downright evil.
For example, Shortell writes of Christians,
American Christians like to think that religious violence is a problem only for other faiths. In the heart of every Christian, though, is a tiny voice preaching self-righteousness, paranoia and hatred. Christians claim that theirs is a faith based on love, but they’ll just as soon kill you. For your own good, of course. Those who believe that they are acting out the divine plan are the most dangerous sort in the contemporary world. Make no mistake.
The paragraph just prior to that one includes the “moral retards” quote,
On a personal level, religiosity is merely annoying—like bad taste. This immaturity represents a significant social problem, however, because religious adherents fail to recognize their limitations. So, in the name of their faith, these moral retards are running around pointing fingers and doing real harm to others. One only has to read the newspaper to see the results of their handiwork. They discriminate, exclude and belittle. They make a virtue of closed-mindedness and virulent ignorance. They are an ugly, violent lot.
Presumably Shortell is dismayed by the successes enjoyed by “moral retards” such as Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr. who went around pointing their fingers at others and relying on their religious faith to inform their respective movements.
Ah, yes, America’s academic intelligensia at its finest.
Source:
Religion & Morality: A Contradiction Explained. Timothy Shortell, Anti-Naturals, Issue 19.
Oy, your idiocy scares me. I’d rather be called a “fundamentalist atheist” than be accepted for rejecting scientific facts, as well as being stubbornly ignorant and amazingly hypocritical. Try debating Christopher Hitchens. You’d lose.
Christopher Hitchens has never written anything as banally stupid as
Shortell’s essay. As far as I can tell, Hitchens himself has never
commented on the Shortell affair, but in a piece in
defense of Shortell, Katha Pollitt described Shortell’s piece as
“self-satisfied adolescent twaddle.”
It is interesting that you come here and write your own version of
adolescent twaddle such as,
As if there is anything about the original controversy or this brief
summary of it that involves scientific facts.
Finally, I’m not certain what point there would be in *my* debating
Christopher Hitchens. A debate should generally involve two people who
have some sort of disagreement over a particular issue. I wouldn’t
mind seeing him debate you, however, as he might actually teach you to
read for content and accuracy rather than jumping to conclusions
(doubt it, but it could happen).
It’s fascinating to watch these fundie, online Atheists engage in a pale rendition of Madalyn Murray O’Hair. The root cause of their bile seems to be derived from a queer mixture social retardation, and rampant egotism. This becomes all the more obvious when you compare the attitudes, and controversies of both O’Hair, and Brain “Sapient.” Obviously, people who exhibit such extremism cannot be trusted because their own interests can always be rationalized. Numerous acts of poor judgment are never far behind.
However, it’s nice to see the gradual self-destruction, and marginalization of these types. I think it’s been an important lesson, or at least an important reminder of how ineffective these attitudes are.
It seems like every generation produces a sampling of behavioral cliches that merely repeat the worst behavior of the generations before them.
I loved all of this… Welcome to planet Dichotomy & the Earth is really flat review! Playing shows in a city (please not near mine I hope) near you. Damn it!
Tards on or off of dope are still tards;) Nice one!
Its amazing how bad you can make something look if you quote mine and choose how you phrase things carefully terrible article