There’s nothing like a few minutes with another stale, shallow, pseudo-profound, cliché-ridden essay bashing thenewatheists to remind me that harassers aren’t the only assholes out there. This time it’s one by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, via Jesus and Mo. Same old thing – new atheists don’t get it; whither the so much better atheists of yesteryear; religion isn’t scripture it’s meaning; they just don’t get it; foundations of European civilization; materialism and ruthlessness; bankers; fundamentalists; will to power.

Future intellectual historians will look back with wonder at the strange phenomenon of seemingly intelligent secularists in the 21st century believing that if they could show that the first chapters of Genesis are not literally true, that the universe is more than 6,000 years old and there might be other explanations for rainbows than as a sign of God’s covenant after the flood, the whole of humanity’s religious beliefs would come tumbling down like a house of cards and we would be left with a serene world of rational non-believers getting on famously with one another. [Read more…]