We’re breaking Hoffmann


He’s melting down fast.

So I wrote this piece criticizing R. Joseph Hoffmann’s weird praise of martyrs, and today I wondered if maybe he had notice, so I checked his blog. I think he noticed. His response is ironic and unreflective, however…and amusing.

I wrote that we ought to reject the whole concepty of martyrdom, and that it isn’t just gods we should reject, but also these peculiar notions of the agonizing death as a virtue that are really born out of an Iron Age morality. Hoffmann’s latest comment is a rant about atheist tantrums, calls the New Atheists “negative,” “abrasive,” “unsophisticated,” and “philistines,” and singles me out as a “super-jerk”.

Hmmm. Speaking of tantrums…somebody give that man a mirror.

By the way, it’s a minor point, but has anyone else noticed that R. Joseph Hoffman never links to anyone else? Besides being something he has in common with creationists, it also suggests that he doesn’t understand the medium he’s using.


Here’s another good sally against New Oxonian foolishness, from Advocatus Atheist.