My Problem with the New Atheist Movement and why it could be better

[AtheistCrusader]

6. He did? Where is he?

Scapegoating is morally repugnant. It unfairly injures the 'goat' and makes the people unloading their 'sins' no better.

I have never understood why people would willingly accept a deal on such a proposition.

"Rebellion? I'm sorry you call it that," said Ivan earnestly. "One can hardly live in rebellion, and I want to live. Tell me yourself, I challenge you -- answer. Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last, but that it was essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature -- that little child beating its breast with its fist, for instance -- and to found that edifice on its unavenged tears, would you consent to bet the architect on those conditions? Tell me, and tell the truth."

If I could be cajoled into believing, I still would not accept the proposition. I would, as Dostoyevsky's Ivan character, 'seek to return the price of the ticket'. (Given Dostoyevsky was a Christian, that book was an ever-still more amazing body of work, of honest introspection.)