5 Comments

Mike Melendez
March 26th, 2012 | 9:36 am

I guess the Reason Rally wasn’t about reason at all, but rather about all the things atheists are against. I can’t say this was unexpected, but I am still disappointed.

I also read Dawkin’s op-ed in the Washington Post on why the rally was needed. I found his style of argumentation, using pseudo-quotes as straw men, a little short on Reason.

David Nickol
March 26th, 2012 | 10:06 am

I confess that I find “militant” atheists annoying, and I have paid little attention to the Reason Rally. But I do have to wonder if a comparable “Religion Rally” would produce anything significantly more edifying.

I am reading Walter Isaacson’s extraordinary biography of Einstein, and I think it is generally known that Einstein did not believe in a personal God, and his conception of God would probably make him, in the eyes of most religious people, an atheist. (In addition to not believing in a personal God, he did not believe in free will.) And yet I think he would have had little use for “Reason Rallies” and other such displays of “militant” atheism. His attitude toward whatever powers there may be was one of extreme humility, which I find a lot more attractive than the attitudes of the “militant” atheists I am aware of.

Ye Olde Statistician
March 26th, 2012 | 2:37 pm

Rallies are not exactly conducive to reason. They are more aligned with boosterism, emotionalism, and chanting three-word slogans than they are with reasoned discourse. So there is a certain irony to a “rally” for “reason.”

Blake
March 26th, 2012 | 5:11 pm

But I do have to wonder if a comparable “Religion Rally” would produce anything significantly more edifying.

Do such things exist?

Ray Ingles
March 27th, 2012 | 8:26 am

Blake – It would seem so.

Mike Melendez – Even assuming Dawkins entirely guilty, he, er, wasn’t the only speaker.