Vlog: On New Atheism

Reza Aslan responds to the aftermath of his article for the Washington Post on New Atheism. With these kinds of responses, who's the fundamentalist now?

http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/guestvoices/2010/07/harris_hitchen...

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Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• Reza Aslan
• Atheism
• fundamentalism
• religion
• Islam
• Christianity
• Judiasm
• Washington Post
• debate
• society
• war
• conflict

[IslamRocksMySocks]

I agree with you 100% Mr. Aslan. Fundamentalism isn't exclusive to religion, but to any ideology. There are Republican fundamentalist, Democrat fundamentalists, Constitutional fundamentalists, etc, all of these groups strive for a strict adherence to the "fundamental" values/goals/rules etc that they were based on. Anything can turn into or produce fundamentalists, not just religion.

[23021955]

Although Stalin, Hitler & Mao never claimed immortaility, they did claim inerrancy.

For all practical purposes, that makes them religious leaders...

[virtuousvandal]

awesome! I've been saying this for years because back before everyone left myspace for facebook, I used to run into these anti-theists all the time in philosophy groups as well as the largest Muslim Group and some of the Baha'i groups where they would seriously preach something that sounded strikingly like evangelical Christians that want to save my soul; only the term they would use is that they wanted to "de-program" me and others from our indoctrinations

[synergyzer07]

I liked very much the video. I'm a christian and I received a comment in my channel from an atheist saying "I'll murder your ass"... I erased it, but I think I should first have recorded it someway and denounced the guy for youtube to cancel his account, but now it's not possible anymore... Only argumentation is valid, for sure!

[NinjaScenester]

@NinjaScenester Again, sorry if I don't make sense haha.

[NinjaScenester]

Upvoted, although I'm atheist, I understand where you're coming from. I have a migrane right now, so I'm sorry if you've been obvious with saying this already, but not all atheists are assholes :/. I only come out of my shell with my beliefs and get peeved off when an xtian or other religious person is blatantly berating other religions or non-religions, or shoving their beliefs down other's throats. It's good to know theres other people out there who see both sides of this thing.

[bayreuth79]

I agree with Reza Aslan on this. In my dissertation I had a section dealing with the similarites between the religious fundamentalists and the secular fundamentalists. Professor David Ford (Cambridge) has rightly described the new atheists as mirror opposite fundamenatlists, in that they share the same basic assumptions as religious fundamentalists. The Bible contains scientific information, religion and science are incompatible, etcetera. Both are unsophisticated and naive.

[wildhias]

if you say that Communism, Nazism, Nationalism are Religions, than you also have to say not all ppl. who belive in god are religious

it is that totalitarinism - which many (but surly not all) religious ppl. have that is worrysome - and which can transform it self to a totalitarian praxis - like nazism and communism - it is not the belief in a god in itself - if you define it as practice you could even with lesser extent then call new atheism as a religion - which is more then just disbelif in g

[TimdeVisser86]

I find that new atheists make metaphysical claims just as theists do, and cannot avoid doing so. This is why I alternately call myself an Atheist, Agnostic, or Ignostic. Anti-theists can exhibit gruesome intolerance and advocate indiscriminate violence (although Nazism is so incoherent that its atheism is in question) in the name of fighting religion. Whether or not that makes them fundamentalists is moot: it makes them bad people. I don't think the term is helpful.

[las933]

I think what atheists do is that they use science as a religion , what if science proves that the world has a creator, what will the atheists do , I think you know ,they have their religion !

[las933]

We are continually trying to keep up with this world around us with science “science is a tool” and the universe will continue to surprise us with marvels, theories of today are nullified tomorrow e.g “Newton Laws “. And I don’t think evolution is against the existence of God , I mean Darwin himself was a believer of God.

[hashpuppy101]

@IslamRocksMySocks :by saying that, you are admitting that religion is nothing but a theory and may I say that you are suggesting that this is entirely man made. im not sure how the believers would respond to that let alone the fundamentalists. peace.