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Warren Stupidity

(48,181 posts)
1. "the “new atheist” discourse of believers as oppressive and coercive per se is part of his problem"
Thu Feb 12, 2015, 08:54 AM
Feb 2015

Where are the new atheists advocating killing the religious for being religious? Please provide the documentation for that implication.

Where is the new atheist leader who issued a call to murder an author, for example, for writing a book critical of atheism?

Craig Hicks was an atheist. Craig Hicks disliked religion and described himself as an anti-theist - a person opposed to religion. What he didn't do is describe himself as a person who "hated all muslims" or thought that people should be killed because of their beliefs. Terrorism is violence for political motivation against civilians. You can use the word to mean lots of other things, and it is frequently misused that way. Until the evidence appears demonstrating that Hicks was in fact acting against these people explicitly for their religious beliefs and in order to promote his agenda of a world free of religion, terrorism does not apply to the horrible crimes he committed.

The rush to ascribe Hicks actions as caused by "new atheism" is amazing. Again - where are the atheist leaders arguing for violence against those opposed to atheism?

Actually it isn't amazing. Given the endless stream of explicitly religiously motivated terrorism by groups and individuals, and the endless apologies about how none of it has anything to do with religion, it is quite understandable that the religious would jump at the opportunity to pin this awful crime on "new atheism'. Shameless, opportunistic, but understandable.


Michael Nam points to a parking space in the Finley Forest condominium complex in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. It doesn't look like much - a stretch of pavement and a stone marker with the word "reserved" in faded white letters. Two squashed pinecones are lying on the ground.

It meant something to Craig Stephen Hicks, though. Once when Nam parked his car there, Hicks came out of his apartment with a gun holstered on his hip. It was at about four on a November afternoon.

"I was like, 'Is this for real?'" Nam says. "I'm not afraid of your gun, but why the hell did you bring it out?"

They argued over the parking space. Hicks, who is 46, took out his mobile phone and showed him a map of the condominium complex, pointing to the places where people are allowed to park - and which places are reserved.


http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-31395467

Michale Nam, not a muslim.
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