Jag har alltid haft svårt att förstå varför så många framträdande ateister i USA också är libertarianer, en del till och med objektivister. Politisk-ekonomiska doktriner nästan lika världsfrånvända och fantasibaserade som religioner. Ian Murphy tar tag i saken och reder ut begreppen i en lika rolig som elak artikel i Salon, Five atheist who ruin it for everyone else. De fem är Sam Harris, Bill Maher, Penn Jillette, Ayan Hirsi Ali och S.E. Cupp.
”Many notable atheists believe in some powerfully stupid stuff—likely owing their prominence to these same benighted beliefs, lending an air of scientific credibility to the myths corporate media seeks to highlight, and thereby eroding the credibility of all atheists in the long-term. In other words: The crap always rises to the top.”
”Harris represents a disturbing anti-Muslim confluence between atheists and neoconservatives in this here post-9/11 ‘Murka. While it’s fine to ridicule Islam, for the oppression of women, or say, the ridiculous story about Muhammad (PB&J) flying to Jerusalem on a Buraq (a winged and inexplicably shame-ridden horse with a dude’s face), it’s quite another thing to defend torture and racial profiling.”
”Bill Maher has to either stop booking half-bright libertarians who rhetorically roll his uninformed ass, or he needs to start reading books.”
”While vast ignorance is a valid reason to be an economic libertarian, not knowing things is not a good reason to be an atheist. Jillette’s profoundly illogical explanation defies deconstruction:”
”Hirsi Ali consistently demonstrates both galling hypocrisy and a stupefying lack of self-awareness. Like Rand, she’s traded one form of totalitarian dogma for another—openly contending that reason must be shunted when confronting an irrational enemy. Mission accomplished.”
”Like Jillette, she’s chummy with Glenn Beck because idiotic atheists and idiotic Mormons have a natural alliance. Cupp’s self-loathing-token-atheist-in-the-conservative-media routine seems so geared toward delegitimizing atheism, and selling books to fundie Fox types, that is strains credulity.”
Ouch!