I'm an Atheist, BUT --

-- I know that doesn't guarantee that I'm bright.

-- it's no excuse for me to be a jerk.

-- I DO care if you're insulted.

-- everything about religion all added up together is not as important to me as our friendship.

-- I cringe every time I hear Dawkins or Harris or Stephen Fry or Maher talk about religion.

-- I hope there's a Heaven and that it's great and that we'll all go there forever and ever.

-- I'm not Islamophobic.

-- I'm not blind to the kind acts done all around me every day in the name of some religion or other.

-- most of my friends are religious believers.

-- my experiences with New Atheists have been so horrible that now, when I hear that someone is an atheist, my first reaction is to cringe.

-- it's possible to have polite and pleasant conversations with me about all sorts of religious topics.

-- I don't judge a religion based on the dumbest, most hateful adherents of it whom I can find.

-- I see absolutely no reason to compare Dawkins or Harris or Hitch to Russell or Sartre or Nietzsche or Twain. (The latter group: I LIKE those guys.)

-- I now completely understand atheists who deny they're atheists. Completely.

My Glorious Career As a Brilliant Provocateur

I have a vivid imagination. Some would say, if they knew its full proportions, an over-active imagination. I have a healthy self-confidence in the quality of my writing. For example, when I write about receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature, although I usually attempt to do so in a humourous way, I'm not joking. I imagine it all the time, and I imagine my blog blowing up -- almost constantly. (For the benefit of readers my age and older and/or with a native language other then English who may possibly be unfamiliar with the idiom: "to blow up" means "to very suddenly become extremely popular." I'm not talking about stuff literally splodin'.) I have a lot of healthy self-confidence: time after time, I finish a blog post and think to myself: This one will be a big hit.

And time after time that post is not a hit at all, but I keep my chin up and keep plugging away.

But so far, the single most clicked-on post in my 8 years of blogging is at best a medium-sized hit. Although it has several times more pageviews than anything else on this blog, I'm careful not to call it my most-read blog post, because it's clear than many of those who've commented on it, positively as well as negatively, haven't read it very carefully at all. Maybe my average post isn't any more carefully-read, on average, than my one medium-sized-or-smaller hit, maybe my average post is much more carefully-read. It's just that in the case of the hit, I know for sure that many haven't read it carefully because there are so many comments on it, on this blog and elsewhere, which completely miss its main points, such as that I am an atheist and am not sure whether or not Jesus existed.

Some time after I noticed this widespread incautious readership, I also noticed how often I myself will just read a headline or the first paragraph of something before I move on. So I see that it wouldn't be right for me to complain too much about people treating my work the same way. However, I have tried to refrain from expressing overly-emphatic opinions about written works, whether short articles or multi-volume studies, which I know only from reading a part of them.

Anyway, yesterday I wrote a post about the Volksbühne Berlin and its upcoming change in leadership, and naturally I hope that it will be the one which finally makes me a huge glorious superstar -- it, or this one, or the one linked above could get a big second wind, or another post I wrote days or years ago could blow up. As if I care how I become a huge success -- and it's gotten some reaction, both positive and negative, somewhere else on the Internet, not here on the blog itself.

And the negative reaction -- disappointingly, so far there has been only one negative reaction -- referred to Americans blabbing away without a clue. And this is interesting in more than one way. I can't really tell whether the person making the comment has read the entire blog post. If not, it would be an ironic although hardly unusual example of someone accusing a writer of not having a clue based on work they hadn't read. If the entire post was read, however -- it's not particularly long -- then, well -- I mean, I did make it particularly clear in the post, I think, that I was viewing the controversy over the Volksbühne from a long way away, and that I knew that I actually knew very little about it. But my critic did not merely blame me for speaking up without a clue, but blamed Americans for doing so and inferred that I was a typical American and that we -- Americans -- generally stink. Which, unconsciously or not, ironically or deliberately, would seem to reinforce my point about the opposition to the change in leadership of the Volksbühne having a element of xenophobia about it.

Yesterday's blog post about the Volksbühne is not particularly substantial, I freely admit that here, just as I admitted it there. However, I can see how it's possible that it could become quite widely clicked-upon -- I'm fastidiously avoiding saying "widely-read" -- because, like my medium-sized hit about Paulkovich, it deals with a topic about which people have strong opinions. And so, like my medium-sized hit, it could conceivably serve as a place for people to gather and verbally abuse each other. The wily fame-seeking provokateur writes on subjects about which people are already provoked. Yesterday's post was actually less about the Volksbühne than about some people's extremely-passionate reactions against the incoming new leader of the company, so passionate that, even without knowing many of the details or the players involved, it is difficult for me to believe that these reactions make sense.

In essence, many of my essays are about me. Many essays, from the time that Montaigne invented the genre, have been primarily about their authors. Some may see this as arrogance, I see it as honesty. The only subject one can describe with full authority is oneself. It can actually be modesty: I was going to write about Julius Caesar, but I eventually had to face the fact that I'm not competent to write an article about Julius Caesar which would be of any use to any expert; and so instead I'm writing an essay about my failure to rise to the level of a scholar of the subject of Caesar. The self is also guaranteed to be a unique subject for every author.

Bin Ich Ein Noch Groesserer Genie, Als Ich Schon Ahnte?

Ist solches moeglich?

Bin ich denn wirklich der Erste, der je den beruehmteste und vielleicht bloedeste Spruch des ollen Langweiligers Cicero --

"O TEMPORA O MORES!"

Ins Deutsche als

"Ach die Zeiten, ach die Sitten!"

uebersetzt hat?

Meine Version, finde ich, rettet die ganze Bloedheit, Steifheit, Ahnungslosigkeit, Unhoeflichkeit und Laecherlichkeit des Originals in die deutsche Sprache.

WO BLEIBT MEIN VERFICKTER NOBEL, IHR ESEL?!

Naja. Gelassen bleiben. Wo ist Musils Nobel? Joyces? Prousts? Twains? Tolstojs?

Reactions To The Award To His Bobness

I've calmed down a little bit since yesterday, when I was vowing to cut off contact with any of my friends who dared to mock Bob Dylan. I've calmed down, and realized that it's not as if I have too many friends. (After I win the Nobel and phony friends start coming out of the woodwork -- THEN I can start hastily cutting people off.)

The number and stature of people who have praised the awarding of the Nobel to Dylan has also calmed me down. It may be just a coincidence that I ran into a bunch of the h8ers first thing yesterday morning -- or maybe it was no coincidence. Maybe the h8ers were more in a hurry to express themselves than the Dylan fans.

The beginning of an article in the New York Times, the part showing on the Google News page was so cheesy -- "Now, Mr. Dylan, the poet laureate of the rock era, has been rewarded with the Nobel Prize in Literature, an honor that elevates him into the ..." -- that I had to click and see who had written it -- Nat Hentoff, maybe? No, it wasn't Hentoff, it was several people I'd never heard of. In the first paragraph I read:

Some prominent writers celebrated Mr. Dylan’s literary achievements, including Stephen King, Joyce Carol Oates and Salman Rushdie, who called Mr. Dylan [...]

-- and I didn't want to read much more. This is a great example of why I hate the New York Times so much: mentioning a great writer like Salman Rushdie, who I hope wins the Nobel soon, in the same sentence with someone like Stephen King. That literally made me nauseous, Times. Thnx a lot!

But of course, the Times can do much worse still: check out Why Bob Dylan Shouldn't Have Gotten a Nobel by someone named Anna North if you want to read something so inept that it's hilarious:

Yes, Mr. Dylan is a brilliant lyricist. Yes, he has written a book of prose poetry and an autobiography. Yes, it is possible to analyze his lyrics as poetry. But Mr. Dylan’s writing is inseparable from his music. He is great because he is a great musician, and when the Nobel committee gives the literature prize to a musician, it misses the opportunity to honor a writer.

As reading declines around the world, literary prizes are more important than ever [...]

CBS News reports: Writers divided on Bob Dylan's Nobel honor. They cite a bunch of heavyweight writers expressing approval of the award, a few silly twits being silly ("A musician won the Nobel! Does this mean I have a chance at a Grammy?" Not if you can't write better than that.), the Vatican newspaper disapproving -- does this mean that Francis also disapproves, or that Francis needs to clean house at his newspaper as he's cleaned house elsewhere? -- and the truly amazing pile of bile over the award spewed by Irvine Welsh, the guy who wrote Trainspotting. (What, did Welsh think HE might've gotten it this year? Hahahahahaha...) No, seriously, what Welsh has said about the Nobel going to Dylan is profoundly disgusting. I don't want to quote it, you can find it easily if you want to with Google.

More unintentionally funny anger over the prize ("I get it: writing books is hard.") has been collected by the New York Post under the headline "Bitter critics slam Bob Dylan's Nobel Prize."

In my opinion, in all seriousness, if the giving of an award, any award, to someone -- anyone -- makes you bitter, you should go see a doctor right now, because that bug up your ass has grown dangerously large and your life is dangerously devoid of depth and joy. An award can be an occasion for joy. If it's an occasion for bitterness, yr doin it wrong. I looked at the Amazon sales ranks for Irvine Welsh and Anna North, and wow, I can understand them being bitter, but it's not Bob Dylan's fault that their stuff isn't selling. Bob Dylan's books are selling a little better than they did yesterday -- and significantly better than Welsh' and North's -- but also nothing spectacular. His records, though -- wow. Surely this must be a big boost from the news of the Nobel. If his records have been selling as well as this, day in and day out, year in and year out, then the $900,000 from the Nobel wouldn't amount to a week's pay for him, maybe not even a day's pay. But surely, the current situation represents a big bump from the Nobel. (Another illustration of the Tom Petty Its-Ab-So-Lute-Ly-Bass-Ack-Wards Law of Microeconomics.)

Nuggets

We're in that awkward in-between time of the year, those few days between when the MacArthur Foundation has disappointed me again and when the Nobel Committee, most likely, will disappointment me again. Get it together guys, this is getting old, and so am I.

I've tried to just take it easy today, because it seemed like I should. Taking it easy is not something which comes naturally to me. I'm always struggling to help the world break on through: past Trump, past two-party systems, past the GOP, past petroleum, past capitalism... Past silly notions that I somehow don't deserve the Mac and the Nobel.

I almost took it so easy today that I didn't blog at all, but I couldn't quite.

Past nationalism, I almost forgot to add. I struggle to get people past the notion that there's something wrong with someone being from somewhere else, the notion that someone should automatically be distrusted because he or she is from somewhere else.

We haven't quite yet gotten to the point where the general public has really faced the fact that capitalism is anti-social, that it calls for sociopaths. Those times when Trump ripped off those he did business with, because he could, and when he and Mitt paid no taxes, because they could, and when that AIDS medication douchebag almost got away with those price hikes -- they were all just being good capitalists. When someone gives someone a break, for that moment they're not being business-savvy. The public has sort of halfway faced these things when they acknowledge that it's dog-eat-dog in the business world.

Anyway. One step at a time: past Trump. Past two-party systems. Past big oil. Keep on strugglin' against that big bad ol' entropy. Get me that damn Nobel...

Have yrselves a nice evening, pardners and cowgirls. A nice lunch, cobbers. A nice every other part of the day or night, every other part of the big spinning blue marble. Don't shoot! Be nice! Play with a kitten, or a doggie or a baby elephant or a human whom you happen to adore and the feeling's mutual, ya lucky cobber!

You see: when I write "mee r munkee. mee luv yu" on this blog, I'm striving. I don't love everybody all the time with the unconditional love you sometime get from well-treated animals. But I admire being able to love like that. I know, monkeys aren't always nice. Sometimes in real life a chimp will rip a person's face off, or so I've heard. On the other hand, sometimes monkeys and people can be nice.

I Am Not Guilty Of Tsundoku!

At openculture.com, Jonathan Crow informs us that

The Japanese word tsundoku [...] means buying books and letting them pile up unread. The word dates back to the very beginning of modern Japan, the Meiji era (1868-1912) and has its origins in a pun. Tsundoku, which literally means reading pile, is written in Japanese as 積ん読. Tsunde oku means to let something pile up and is written 積んでおく. Some wag around the turn of the century swapped out that oku (おく) in tsunde oku for doku (読) – meaning to read. Then since tsunde doku is hard to say, the word got mushed together to form tsundoku.

I repeatedly had to try to convince my mother that I was not guilty of tsundoku: "I've read some of them all the way through, I've read at least a part of all of them, and each and every one of them may prove to be very crucial at any moment for reference! If they weren't I'd get rid of them!"

And it was all true! Ask some of the local used-book dealers if I haven't sold a few books to them!

And because she was a great Mom, she either tried to understand or tried to seem like she didn't think I was full of it on the subject of the books when she was around me, or both. She and I loved each other very much, but we were also very different in many ways. I'm sure she and other non-tsundoku would get together and commiserate about their tsundoku friends and relatives --

-- except that I, as I said, am not tsundoku! Maybe some people somewhere actually are, but not me! I'm making intensive use of all of this stuff! Don't try to change me! Get away from my books! No, I do NOT want a Kindle, thankyouverymuch! I'll gladly take a MacArthur or a Nobel, though!

New Atheism: Because Thinking Is Hard

75 years ago, the most prominent exponents of atheism were Sigmund Freud, Bertrand Russell and Jean-Paul Sartre. Today it's Richard Dawkins and the late Christopher Hitchens. Then, English-speaking atheists watched No Exit and read The Stranger, or at least pretended to have read it; today, New Atheists repeat Hitchens' would-be bonmot "religion poisons everything" and think of ways to insult religious believers with Facebook memes, and pay for billboards which are basically identical to those memes.

I suppose it's risky to actually try to understand people with whom one disagrees. What if one eventually understands so well that one no longer disagrees and becomes one of them? Why look at good things which some religious people do in the name of religion, when it could make things look more complicated than the memes showing clergy who are thieves and child molesters, and congregations who are blind, fearful, obedient, fleeced sheep? Yes, there are some clergy and some congregations who are like that. But others are somewhat different. Some New Atheists definitely do not want to talk about religious believers who do not fit their favorite stereotype, whether it's Christian congregations who actually use most of the collection-plate money for charity work instead of Super Fly lifestyles for the clergy; or Muslims who actually are peaceful and opposed to terrorism; or Muslims who do not advocate subservient roles for women, and actually don't torture, misfigure or kill women who are assertive; or whatever doesn't fit their pet stereotypes.

I agree with the New Atheists that belief in God or multiple gods is mistaken. I agree that this belief can have many negative effects. But I also think that New Atheism is having many negative effects. I don't think we're going to overcome religion by sneering at it. I don't think "We're all atheists -- I just believe in one less God than you do." is brilliant; on the contrary, everytime I see it on a sign someone's holding at a rally or on a billboard or a meme I just go: Uhhhhhhh, (That was a sound of disgust) that again? I really cannot imagine a Christian or a Muslim finding it clever, much less convincing. And of course Hindus and other polytheists are liable to feel both disgusted and slighted, treated as if they don't exist or don't matter.

How many minds are actually being changed by simpleminded garbage like that, or like holding up a sign next to someone holding up a sign with a religious message saying "FUCK THIS GUY", or a meme showing a collection plate and a caption comparing Christianity to a family of children paying their abusive father not to punish them, or the popular message "YOU KNOW IT'S NOT TRUE", etc? It all seems to me like a lot of people agreeing with each other and slapping each other on the back.

Eh. Maybe that's what they need, if they come from abusive fundamentalist backgrounds and have never before felt safe expressing disbelief, and never before met others who don't believe. Maybe they have a lot of hurt to get out of their systems, and need a place where they're allowed to vent.

See what I did there? I made an attempt to understand people whom I loathe for the constant stream of nonsense they produce. Because if we never understand them, how are we ever going to have any clue about how to interact with them in any way which is at all productive?

And, on the off-chance that someone is reading this who was one of those atheists who badly needed to know that there were others, who needed to escape from an abusive religious home; but now agrees with some of my critique of the New Atheist scene, which is beginning to annoy him or her, and wants to get a bit deeper -- welcome. There are a few others like us: atheists disenchanted with the New Atheists. I don't know whether we yet have a name, which we can use to distinguish ourselves from the New Atheists, to make it clear that we're not with them, that we realize "religion poisons everything" is a bit of an oversimplification, etc. I have suggested the name Steven Bollinger Can Haz Nobel Atheists.

Haggi, Schoepfer des Hartmuts

Hartmut Klotzbücher (siit Bilt)

ist drei Monate juenger als ich und ein Monat juenger als der Praesident der Vereinigten Staaten. Comicgarten Leipzig sagt von ihm, er habe "eigenwillige Ortografih." Und das find ich vernuenftig. Die Ortografih, meine ich. Das Alter ist auch ganz gescheit, aber ich und Hartmut Klotzbücher und Praedient Obama und Nastassia Kinski und Bono koennen eigentlich nichts dafuer, dass wir alle so ueberwaeltigend brillant und sexy sind. Wir hatten alle bloss das Glueck, zur richtigen Zeit geboren zu sein.

Ich bin nicht hierher gekommon um Caesar zu preisen sondern um noch einen Post in meinem Blog zu veroeffentlichen. Weil ich reich und beruehmt werden moechte, und weil man nie weiss, was fuer einen Quatsch von Blog-Post zum Renner werden wird. (Einmal schrieb ich, "Mehr ist nicht unbedingt besser, aber es ist mehr," und die Zeile schien eingen Leuten gut zu gefallen. Aber es scheint dass von dem Standpunkt des Reich-und-behuehmt-durch-Quatsch-Bloggens aus gesehen, mehr tatsaechlich auch besser ist. Hoffen wir.)

Und auch weil ich Haggi-Comics mag. Aber wie Ihr sieht, hab ich eigentlich nichts gescheites darueber zu sagen. Ich schrie ganz unverschaemt "HAGGI!" um Leser hierher zu locken, und jetzt hoffe ich dass mein Quatschen Euch lustig genug ist dass einige von Euch mir nicht uebel nehmen werdet dass ich "HAGGI!" geschriehen habe. Haggi ist nicht hier Thema sondern, wie zumeist in meinem Blog, ich. (Wie ein intelligenter Mann mir mal sagte, "Deine Posts kreisen primaer um deine Befindlichkeit." Nein, ich denke nicht, dass er das als Lob meinte. Aber ich bin was ich bin. Ich kann nicht ploetzlich der Mann werden, der mir dies sagte.)

Mam weiss nie -- nanu: ich weiss nie. Vielleicht koennen Andere es sehr genau voraussagen -- was fuer einen Blog-Post zum Renner werden wird. Wisst Ihr, welcher Post von diesem Blog dreimal soviele Pageviews hat als der zweitpopulaeste? Dieser, in welchem ich einen Author, und eine Zeitschrift die ihn veroeffentlicht hatte, grob schimpfte, weil ich hoerte, dass er ein Buch veroeffentlicht hatte, in welchem er behauptete, dass es seltsam waere, wenn Jesus existiert haette, dass 126 antike Geschichtsschreiber nichts von ihm geschrieben hatten. Den naechsten Tage sahe ich, dass mein Blog gelesen und kommentiert und gelinkt wird wie nie zuvor, dieses einen Posts wegen. Auch der naechste Tage schrieb ich einen zweiten Beitrag zum selben Thema. Ich hatte naemlich inzwischen die Liste von 126 angeblichen "Historikern" gefunden, von welchen dieser Hanswurst behauptet hatte, dass es seltsam waere, wenn es Jesus gegeben haeete, dass sie alle 126 nichts von ihn berichtete. Ich hatte die Liste gefunden, und in den zweiten Post zum Thema zerriss ich die Liste.

Wenn Du schon ein wenig von antiken Geschichte kennst, hast Du Dich vielleicht schon gefragt, ob wir ueberhaupt zur Zeit Geschriebenes von 126 antike griechischen und roemischen Geschichtsschreibern besitzen. Ich glaube, es ist weniger als 126.

Von 47 der 126 Personen auf dieser Liste besitzten wir zur Zeit gar nichts Geschriebenes. 4 aber erwaehnen Jesus tatsaechlich. Vielleicht 10 koennten irgendwie Historiker gennant werden. Usw. dies Liste ist erataeunlicher Quatsch, zumal wenn man erwaegt, dass die Zeitschrift, welche sie veroeffentlicht hat, Free Inquiry ist -- vor Jahrzehnten noch eine diskutable Zeitschrift, heute die Flagship der New Atheists. Und dieser zweiten Post ist naemlich der zweitpopulaerste Post dieses Blogs. Und hat rund 10mal soviele Pageviews wie der drittpopulaerste.

Ich selbst bin gar nicht sicher, dass es einen historischen Jesus gegeben hat. Aber mir was klar, dass dieser Mann einen ungewoehnlich glatten Wahnsinn veroeffentlicht hat, in einer nicht ganz unbekannten Zeitschrift. (Letzteres war ein grosses Teil davon, was mich rasend machte. Wenn es nichts als noch ein unsinniges Blog-Post gewesen waere, von einem Nobody verfasst, waere es ja gar nichts Ungewoehnliches gewesen.)

Diese 2 Beitraege postete ich in diesem Blog den 29. und 30. September 2014. Ich dachte in Oktober 2014, ich waere vielleicht im Begriff, reich und beruehmt zu werden. Aber nein. (Ich dachte, Free Inquiry wuerde vielleicht zugeben, dass sie Quatsch veroeffentlich haben. Auch das nicht. Im Gegenteil, sie foerderten den Beitrag von Print-Ausgabe-only zu ihrer Website. Dies ist es, was die New Atheists von uns anderen Atheisten unterscheidet: sie reden unaufhoerlich ueber historischen Themen, ohne sich einen Dreck zu scheren, ob das was sie sagen Sinn macht.)

Reich und beruehmt bin ich noch nicht, aber jetzt bin ich vor allem wegen dieser zwei Beitraegen beruehmter als bevor dem 29. September 2014. Ihr glaubt es nicht? Michael Paulkovich heiss der Esel, der diese Liste von 126 Name verfasste. Googlet mal bollinger paulkovich.

Nee, aber Haggi ist grosse Klasse. Ehrlich. Sorry.

It Sure Would Be Nice If I Suddenly Received $18 Billion Somehow

I'm not sure exactly how to make this happen. I honestly don't know if I could do it all by myself. I think I would need help.

Maybe that sounds un-American to you. Maybe all the people who've said that there are some self-made millionaires but no self-made billionaires, and not even actually very many self-made millionaires, that we're mostly talking about rich kids here -- maybe they all sound un-American to you.

If a very beautiful, very nice and extremely wealthy woman fell madly in love with me, and I with her, and she insisted on marrying me without a pre-nup and that we share everything, and she had a net worth of $36 billion, then, bam, I think I'd be done, and it'd be all like, "Okay, now I HAVE $18 billion. Now what? What do I DO with it?!" What if I was actually too in love to even care about all those wheelbarrows and trucks full of cash -- wouldn't that be ironic?

If Larry King and Oprah and Rachel Maddow and Harold Bloom and Thomas Pynchon and Quentin Tarantino and Jennifer Lawrence and Neil deGrasse Tyson and Martin Scorsese and Adele and David Letterman and Salman Rushdie and Stephen Hawking all starting following me on Twitter and re-tweeting all my links to my blog posts and speaking and writing about how awesome my blog is, that would be awesome. That would very likely lead to some very lucrative book deals. But $18 billion worth of lucrative? I don't know. Don't get me wrong: if all of those people, plus Pamela Anderson and Conan O'Brien and Barack and Michelle Obama and Hillary and Bill Clinton and Alec Baldwin and Chris Matthews and every single living Nobel Literature laureate and Kanye West and Bob Dylan and Ringo Starr and T Bone Burnett and Sir Anthony Hopkins all started talking me up in a very big way all at once, that would be very nice. That would be a very great encouragement.

How big of a gold nugget would I have to find in order for it to be worth $18 billion? About 500 tons, if I'm figuring accurately. How big is the biggest gold nugget ever found so far? A little over 150 pounds, it seems, if you measure only the gold content.

Hmm. How about the biggest platinum nugget? Seems that platinum nuggets as large as 1/4 ounce are extremely rare. On the other hand, it's often found alloyed with other valuable metals, and that is nice.

On the other hand, I don't own a mine of any kind.

This isn't exactly easy!

On the subject of gold and platinum: as far as I know, the heaviest wristwatch made is the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Offshore, 18k gold case and band, just about exactly one pound. Platinum is heavier than gold, but that 18k Audemars Piguet is the heaviest wristwatch I've been able to find. The heaviest watch of any kind I've ever heard of -- and believe me, I've done a bit of web-surfing on the subject -- is the Patek Philippe Calibre 89, released in 1989, an enormous pocket watch, 89 millimeters in diameter (it's been described as hockey-puck-sized) made in both gold and platinum, which weighs 1100 grams, around 2 1/2 pounds. But they only made 4 of them, and I'm not surely that any of those 4 is what you'd call for sale. Maybe for around $6 million. Or maybe not. (A newer pocket watch, the Vacheron Constantin Reference 57260, has surpassed the Calibre 89 as the world's most complicated watch, but it barely breaks the 2-pound mark. Pheh!)

In conclusion: no man is an island.

How I Can Tell Whether I'll Like A Book

CAUTION! Just because I like a book doesn't mean you'll like it too. Although if you like my writing, there may be a greater chance that you'll share some of my reading tastes than if you find my blog ill-written -- in which case I sincerely hope you find reading material which pleases you better, and recommend Stephen King and John Grisham, reckoning strictly from statistics.

The only way to know for sure, of course, is to read some of it. But there are so many books. How do I decide which ones to try? Here are some of the ways.

-- If a book is written in Latin and I haven't heard of it, I will be intrigued. (If I have heard of, there's a chance I already either have a copy or have decided I'm not interested. Life is to short for Cicero and Seneca.) Being intrigued at first glance is not always the same, of course, as eventually liking a book. But I've got this thing about Latin, seeing as how it's been in use in our civilization for thousands of years and was used by Caesar and Columbus and Milton and Spinoza, besides all of those kings and queens and Popes.

-- If a book is written by a Nobel laureate in literature, the chances are over 85% that I will like it very much. Other prizes aren't nearly so strong an indicator for me, but the Nobel folks and I seem to be on a similar wavelength. Except that they've given it to too many Scandinavian writers. Astonishingly, they managed to avoid giving it either to Ibsen or Strindberg, and still gave it to way way too many Scandinavians. Aside from 85% or so of the Nobel Literature laureates, authors whom I like generally are good guides to other authors I will like.

One notable exception is Thomas Pynchon's rave for Tom Robbins, nota bene, that's Tom Robbins, the novelist, not Tim Robbins, the tall, thin actor who supports the Democratic Party and used to be married to Susan Sarandon. I'm not saying Robbins is a bad writer, he's just -- well, for me personally, he's not nearly in the same class as Pynchon. Your mileage may vary, as Germans say. (They say that in English, about books or movies or whatever. It's weird.)

-- Lots of books have many blurbs on their covers. Sometimes these blurbs are attributed to a publication. For example, "Brilliant and deft." -- The New York Times Book Review. or "A pulse-pounding page-turner." -- Publishers Weekly. By and large, these anonymous blurbs mean less to me than ones attributed to specific people. Especially if they're attributed to Nobel Literature laureates or other writers I like. If King or Grisham recommends it, it's probably not for me. There are some exceptions to this: I cannot recall seeing a single blurb attributed to an individual rather than to a publication on the cover or first pages of any volume by Gore Vidal, although plenty of writers of whom I thought highly, thought highly of Gore. Strange. Perhaps when a writer produces big blockbusting bestsellers, and Vidal certainly did, publishers prefer anonymous blurbs. I don't know.

Nietzsche's reactions to authors are amazingly predictive of mine. The 1st half of p 65 of the insel taschenbuch-edition of Goetzen-Daemmerung (ISBN 3-458-34380-6) could almost have been written by me. Nietzsche compares Carlyle to puke -- nailed it. I hadn't read read any Carlyle before I read Goetzen-Daemmerung -- why didn't I listen about Carlyle? Well, anyway, I found for myself that I too find him absolutely disgusting, and now here I am warning you. Sorry to bring up something so unpleasant as puke, but, assuming my advice is as accurate for you as Nietzsche's is for me, I'm warning you.

-- If I've really liked one book by an author, I'm very rarely disappointed in others of his or her books. I'm not counting unfinished books which have been published posthumously, because, duh, they're unfinished. The biggest exception to my rule about non-posthumous books is the novel Ravelstein by Saul Bellow. That one had me shaking my head all the way through and muttering curses at Allan Bloom, neocon monster, Bellow's close friend, the author of The Closing of the American Mind and clearly the real-life inspiration for the title figure Ravelstein.

-- Different publishers go about their business in different ways. A book published by Oxford or Farrar, Straus and Giroux is more likely to be my kind of book than one published by Simon & Schuster, although here again, there may be exceptions published by Simon & Schuster or other lowest-common-denominator, their-books-are-in-grocery-stores-and-Wal-Mart's publisher. Those exceptions, those glorious exceptions are those few authors like Gore Vidal and Norman Mailer and John Cheever who are both popular and good.

None Of This Has Happened Yet

But of course it could start happening at any moment: I might notice that I have a flurry of new e-mails. Each one of them might inform me of one of a flurry of donations to my blog. I might look at the blog statistics and see a huge number of them for today and wonder Hmm, I wonder how that happened?

And then I see that my name is among a list of trending topics somewhere. Curious, I click on it and see that a distinguished member of the literati has discovered my blog, loved it and given it a rave review under the headline "YES HE KAN HAZ NOBEL!!!" The emails start pouring in, notifying me of more donations, but also emails from people who know me, but also some emails from people who don't know me, how did they get my email address? Suddenly many many comments are awaiting moderation on my blog, some of them from literary agents who want to be my agent. Some of the emails from people who don't know me yet are also from agents. The New Yorker wants to publish a lot of my blog posts. Book publishers want to publish collections of my posts, they're not waiting until I have an agent to get in touch, and now they've also started to hear that I've completed 2 novels and started some more and they're definitely interested in all of those.

I turn on the TV and see still photographs of my big ugly mug on CNN and MSNBC. And speaking of the news, here they come, there are several TV-news vans parked right outside. It's a narrow street and the news vans are starting to block it. I go outside and plead with the journalists to have some compassion for my neighbors who ordinarily drive on a regular basis. The news vans don't budge. Then I have the idea to give 10-minute exclusives to 1 reporter at a time, if the reporters promise to go away right after the exclusive and stay away for a week. So now there are interviews with me all over TV and the Internet -- and it works, after a little while my neighbors can actually drive past my house again.

A week later I'm no longer living at the same place, but at a hotel which very kindly offers to keep the press out for me, though it snarls their traffic now.

A week after that I'm living in an apartment in lower Manhattan, and in NYC they're used to celebs so I'm not being mobbed as much.

This could all start happening at any time. Any moment now...

I Just Encountered Someone Who Called Himself A Post-Theist

As always, when I meet an atheist like this one who calls him- or herself something other than an atheist -- non-believer, skeptic, post-theist or what have you -- I wonder whether he or she has chosen the exotic self-identification in order to distance him- or herself from the New Atheists.

Assuming that this is indeed the case, I sympathize with the motive -- I rarely let a chance go by to distance myself from the New Atheists -- but I disagree with the tactic. I do not wish to surrender the name "atheist" to the New Atheists.

Before they came along, the most famous atheists were people like Schopenhauer, Marx, Nietzsche, Twain, Russell and Sartre. I am one of the intellectual heirs of those earlier atheists. The non-believers, skeptic, post-theists and what have you may or may not also be among their heirs and worthy successors. The New Atheists most assuredly are not.

Because those earlier atheists were more than just atheists. After they had told you that they were atheists, they still had interesting things to say. They weren't one-issue people, declaring all atheists to be good and all religion to be bad. They all realized that things are much, much more complicated than that.

One of the few things upon which New Atheists and I agree, and upon which I and all of the non-believers, skeptic, post-theists disagree, is that the term "atheist" denotes someone who does not believe in the existence of God or gods, and that it means nothing more or less than that.

Usually, theologians have favored, and atheists have rejected, terms which obfuscate rather than explain. Unfortunately, these atheists who insist they're not atheists have picked up a bad habit from the theologians. And it doesn't make atheism look any better when onlookers finally figure out that non-believer, skeptic, post-theist and all those other terms which some atheists these days choose to identify themselves as atheists while avoiding the term "atheist" -- that what all of those other terms really mean is "atheist," no more and no less. If we have to choose another term, then let's do like the New Atheists, and choose a term which leaves the term "atheist" in it, and call ourselves, for example, Steven Bollinger Can Haz Nobel Atheists.

(Sartre won a Nobel and gave it back. I'm sitting here thinking how rich I would have to be to follow suit. Sartre was stinking rich when he turned the Nobel down.)

The Only Answer, And The Truth

"The only answer is true hair gel." "The only answer is true vegan diets." "The only answer is true Islam." "The only answer is true Christianity." "The only answer is true pilates." "The only answer is true atheism." "The only answer is true hemp -- not weed, not the stuff potheads smoke, but hemp, the kind George Washington make rope out of. It's a miracle plant and only it can save the planet." "The only answer is true switchgrass." "The only answer is true love." "The only answer is true heart change." "The only answer is a true heart transplant." "The only answer is true pacifism." "The only answer is true equality." "The only answer is true education." "The only answer is true two way communication." "The only answer is True Detective." "The only answer is true survivalist stockpiling diversity." "The only answer is true sexuality." "The only answer is true chastity." "The only answer is true Parmigiano Reggiano -- not that junk they sell at the supermarket." "The only answer is true peanut butter -- not that junk they sell at the supermarket." "The only answer is true heroin -- not that junk they sell at the supermarket." "The only answer is true high-powered hollow-point ammunition -- not that junk they sell at the supermarket." "The only answer is true change in Washington." "The only answer is true marital fidelity." "The only answer is true commitment to polygamy." "The only answer is true innovation." "The only answer is true preservation of tradition." "The only answer is true yoga -- not that junk they sell at the supermarket."

Perhaps you've begun to suspect that I don't actually believe that there is only one true answer.

But you're wrong.

I

am the only true answer! I must become extremely rich and famous, extremely soon -- for the good of the entire planet! Surely you can see that! Some might claim that I'm being greedy and selfish, but no, when you think about it, it's actually quite a noble sacrifice on my part. It's civic-mindedness by a conscientious citizen of Earth. It sort of brings tears to your eyes.

And time's a wastin'. I'm still not sure exactly how the nomination procedure for the Nobel Prize in Literature works, but I read something somewhere about each country sending names of candidates to the Nobel committee in February, which is right around the corner, and I still haven't been published in the New Yorker once!

The word must go forth at last! From billboards, bumperstickers, TV and Internet and print ads, on T-shirts and on the seats of snug sweatpants won by especially attractive people. The topic must trend, it must be on all lips and in all minds:

The only true answer is The Wrong Monkey!

Dream Log: Steven Saul Bollinger Berenson Of The Wrong Homeland Monkey

I dreamed that I, Steven Bollinger, also known as The Wrong Monkey, author of this blog and perenniel contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature, was also, to a certain extent, the fictional Saul Berenson, big CIA muckety-muck portrayed by Mandy Patinkin on the TV series "Homeland." I wrote this blog and was myself, but I also had a huge magnificent beard like Saul's, and I worked at CIA headquarters in Langley. Working on this blog was my job at the CIA. No-one seemed to have any doubt that success on the blog, high readership and my professional success as a writer, equaled a good job done for the CIA and better security for the US.

However, at the moment my methods were unpopular. I was working on a computer program which, I was convinced, would bring more traffic to the blog and greater safety to the world. However, my colleagues -- young punks, most of them -- had very little if any confidence in my abilities as a programmer. It seemed clear to me that my program was working, but mysteriously, no one else seemed to notice that traffic on my blog had sharply increased.

A man who resembled Dar Adal, the fictional colleague of the fictional Berenson on "Homeland," came to invite me to have some waffles for brunch with him. I'd recently started jogging and didn't feel the need for all of that syrup and butter, but Dar was very insistent.

Everything seemed connected: the blog, espionage, jogging, waffles -- it all seemed like one seamless thing.

Walking to the restaurant which Dar had recently discovered to get our waffle brunch, the topic of conversation gradually turned from Dar raving about the waffles at this place, which Dar assured me would blow my mind, to Dar complaining about Carrie Mathison (the fictional character portrayed by Claire Danes on "Homeland," Saul's protégé and friend). Carrie was convinced that some vital intelligence was being passed at dog shows, and was spending a lot of time among the people who showed dogs, despite the CIA director threatening her with suspension or worse if she didn't stop this line of inquiry. Carrie herself had gotten a dog for the first time in her life and was bonding with it. As usual, many people seemed to think that Carrie had finally gone permanently insane, and very few people besides me/Saul could see that she was continuing to function at genius level.

The neighborhood we were walking through on our way to the restaurant was beautiful: full of high-end shops, with broad sidewalks which had recently been paved with tiles in dark earth-tones. Many trees lined both sides of the street, it was a pleasantly brisk autumn morning, there were a few leafs in various bright colors on the sidewalks, the laughter of schoolchildren on recess was faintly aubible. The whole area was like an embodiment of the very principles of prosperity, calm, good health and other good things.

But before we reached the restaurant, the dispute about Carrie had become so heated that Dar began to grab and push me in anger, and I turned around and headed back to the office rather than risk getting into an actual fistfight with Dar, who was also a friend as well as a colleague.

Everything seemed connected in my mind: the blog, the CIA, computer programs, jogging and eating healthy, waffles, the beautiful neighborhood, the laughter of children, dogs -- everything. As I walked back to the office I felt very frustrated, because I thought that Carrie could understand such connections much more clearly than I. I wanted to talk to her and ask her to explain the connectedness, or at least try to make it more comprehensible to me. But at the moment she was undercover with the show-dog people, and very hard to reach.

At the office I checked the stats for the traffic on my blog, and it seemed as clear as could be that my programming had increased the traffic tremendously.

Then it occurred to me that no-one else had looked at the stats on the terminal in my office. The blog stats were classified and encrypted and tightly controlled, I couldn't access them on a phone, and neither could anyone else, unless they were an excellent hacker, or had some kind of clearance which I didn't know for sure that anyone had.

Otherwise, the blog stats were only accessible on the terminals at Langley and a few other CIA offices around the world. I had assumed that my snot-nosed young colleagues, who had remained so strangely unimpressed by my program and its effect on the blog's traffic, had been looking at the same data as I -- but now it occurred to me that perhaps an enemy hacker had separated my terminal from the others, so that either I was looking at falsified stats about the blog, or everyone else was, or maybe even both.

Then I woke up.

"It's better to have no religion at all, just Jesus, himself, alone." -- ACTUAL QUOTE

Actual quote from a real person:

"It's better to have no religion at all, just Jesus, himself, alone."

My fellow atheists, this is a perfect example of why many of you are way too excited about all those polls claiming that "religion is in decline." Someone tells the pollster they're not religious, but what you don't see when you read the poll results is them saying, "I don't need religion -- just Jesus!"

But you should sense it, because quotes like the one above are now so common that nobody but me remarks upon them. Once again, I have to do everything by myself. (A perfect example of why I deserve the Nobel Prize in Literature.) It's the people who often call themselves SBNR or "spiritual but not religious," whom I often call "religious but in denial about it" or "the disorganized religious." And of course, these people who don't call themselves religious are finding each other and organizing into groups that they don't call churches or temples, led by people they don't call clergy -- place where they get together and talk about how great God is and discuss His plan.

Similar to religion? Gee, ya think?

Yes, it's identical to religion. Identical to early Protestantism in most cases: people leave their churches because the churches are "doin' it wrong," and start their own, more self-righteous and Bible-obsessed groups.

At the very least, those doofuses taking the polls should become aware of all this, and adjust their polls to distinguish between atheists and the disorganized religious -- but as I've said before, sociologists aren't the sharpest knives in the drawer either.

Stupid disorganized religious, stupid atheists, stupid pollsters -- I'm surrounded by idiots! And no, this doesn't make me feel smart. Not at all -- I've allowed a bunch of idiots to surround me!

Comment To Support A Petition To Award Me The Nobel Prize In Literature!

Just comment saying "Yes!" in order to support the petition.

Or, if you feel strongly enough that I must NOT be given the Nobel, comment and say "No!"

Feel free to include your reasons for or against in your comment.

Many thanks to the douchebags who started the petition to get Phil Collins to stop recording music, for giving me the idea. And for making me laugh and laugh and laugh, at the thought that they think they can do anything to Collins. And also, yesterday, when I found out about those douchebags and their petition, I researched "Take Me Home," a record I always liked, although I never had a clue what the lyrics were about -- and I found out that "Take Me Home" is a protest song, protesting the incarceration of people in mental institutions. So now I like it even more. I like it so much now that it makes me cry.

So thanks for that too, douchebags!

What Bothers Me About "Progressive" Religious Believers

I write a lot on this blog about what bothers me about New Atheism. For a short time, when I first heard about New Atheism, I assumed that I was a New Atheist: I'm an atheist, and I'm fairly loud-mouthed. However, I very quickly learned that New Atheists are very deficient in their knowledge of what we in the English-speaking part of the world have agreed lately to call the humanities, and determined to stay that way.

That ain't me. Therefore, I am a Steven Bollinger Can Haz Nobel Atheist. And maybe you are too.

Hopefully it's fairly obvious, upon even slight acquaintance with me, what bothers me about religious fundamentalists.

What bothers me about "progressive" Christians and Muslims and observant Jews and Sikhs and Hindus and other "progressive" religious believers -- "progressive" always in quotation marks, because there is nothing progressive about this thing which annoys me -- is that they have exchanged one category of ignorance of history for another.

"Progressive" Christians no longer believe that Adam and Eve or Noah or Abraham existed, they don't all believe that Moses existed, they're willing to debate the accuracy of the Biblical accounts of the size of David and Solomon's kingdom.

Sometimes they readily acknowledge that Mary wasn't a virgin when Jesus was born, that there's no reason to believe he was born in Bethlehem or was related to David or walked on water or cured the blind or the lame or the insane or raose Lazarus from the dead or himself rose from the dead. So why exactly are they still Christians? That's a good question. It's a very good question. Do they think that living a lie is good for their children somehow? Are they just networking on Sunday mornings?

They are scientifically literate, they know that life on Earth is billions of years old and that the universe is billions of years older still. Some of them are very competent scientists. (Some fundamentalists are very competent scientists too, of course, but with the "progressive" believers, expertise in science involves far less cognitive dissonance.)

And all of that is great. What is not so great, what bothers me, is that "progressive" believers very often insist that members of their faiths centuries ago regarded their holy texts the same way they do. "Progressive" Christians say that fundamentalism, literalism, regarding the accounts of things in the Bible to be literally true, is a recent development, going back to the 19th century, perhaps as far back as the very late 18th century. But no further.

Which is sheer nonsense. That it is sheer nonsense is one of the things about which fundamentalist Christians and I agree. Just look for the phrase "word of God" in texts dating from before the 18th century -- look for it in the Bible, for instance.

I submit that what began to happen in the 18th century was that people could begin to write things which were openly NOT literalist without fear of being tortured and killed for it, for the first time, in Christian-controlled territory, in about 1400 years.

I further submit that this is obvious to anyone who's read a lot of things written in those Christian-controlled places during those 1400 years. The amount of stuff which you have to ignore or tell yourself is "just allegorical" in order not to see this is huge. The number of people imprisoned and/or killed for doing science, because their work seemed to some authorities to challenge a very rigid view of the Bible as the ultimate source of truth is huge. Roger Bacon, Giordano Bruno and Galileo are only the most famous cases. People aren't burnt alive because their laboratory experiments seem to conflict with allegories.

And yet this is what many, perhaps most Christian theologians and scholars of the Old and New Testament canon and apocrypha will tell you, often with mountains of mind-fogging jargon. (A mind has to be fogged to believe it.)

Christian theologians have not stopped writing straight-up bullshit. The "progressive" ones these days -- and a lot of Biblical scholars and Biblical archaeologists -- have merely started to write a different kind of straight-up bullshit.

This seems so obvious to me. It seems to me sometimes that very few people -- not even academic historians -- want to investigate history on even the most superficial level, if what they found would conflict with certain preconceived notions which they cherish. New Atheists don't want to check Paulkovich's list of 126 names -- the fact that he says he's an historian and that his conclusion pleases them is enough, why risk being displeased by checking the man's work? "Progressive" Biblical scholars want to believe that there was no fundamentalism in Medieval and Renaissance times -- why disturb that belief by honestly looking at what stares them in the face all day long every day in their jobs? (Perhaps including some very solid reasons to wonder whether or not Jesus existed?)

Nietzsche knew what I was talking about. Was it really syphilis which drove him mad -- or was it that every day, everywhere he looked, he clearly saw things which everyone else refused to look at or talk about?

Trying To Account For Differences Between Online And Offline Behavior

I'm an atheist, I've been an atheist for 40 years, I've never hidden it, and I've gotten along just fine with a lot of theists and rarely had any problems with them over differences in worldviews. That's been my meat-world experience. My cyber-experience of contact between atheists and theists could not be more starkly different. It has been mostly them fighting and being very rude to each other, and conversations on religious topics are constantly interrupted by verbal abuse from people on either side -- if, that is, there was anything resembling an attempt at discussion to begin with. I don't know what this means. Some possible explanations:

1) I may have been fortunate in the people I've met face-to-face over the course of my life.

2) I may have been unfortunate in the people I've met online over the course of the past 5 years who argue about religion.

3) The people I've met face-to-face and those I've met online may be very similar people, who behave very differently depending upon whether they're interacting face-to-face or in cyberspace.

I was raised by liberal Christians. There was never the slightest hint of my parents disowning me or wanting nothing more to do with me, because I was openly atheistic. A lot of the atheists I've met online were raised by fundamentalist Christians, and they have been disowned and shunned by their families. Over and over again this turns out to be the background of people supporting irreligious billboards and trying to have the 10 Commandments removed from public buildings, and other atheist efforts which I tend to find useless or worse. And these are the same atheists I see behaving very rudely online toward theists -- Christians, mostly -- who are behaving very rudely toward them. (Cousins, feudin' and fightin'?)

So it may just be that the people meet face to face are not those I meet online.

It may be that atheists who come from liberal backgrounds like mine are either hanging out in different places online than I am, or that they are not as vocal as I am about being atheists, or both.

Or it may be that many people's manners are much worse online than offline. Maybe the very same people I meet face-to-face, who seem to take my atheism so calmly in stride, are actually very upset with it, but hide their dismay from me, and take it to the Internet, where they unload in the manner I'm accustomed to seeing online.

Whatever the reasons, the contrast between the behavior I see offline and that I see online is very striking. Perhaps it's very autistic of me to find the difference striking, while the neurologically-typical see nothing strange about people behaving very differently in the 2 spheres.

Another Atheist Facebook Group I've Quit

Actually, it's a group for atheists and theists. There are relatively few groups which are actually for atheists only. Instead of "an atheist group," I should call something like this "a group where atheists and theists can get together, insult and verbally abuse each other, hurl simplistic slogans and strawmen, and not listen to each other."

So what am I saying? That such groups are not filled with the creme de la creme of atheist and theist intellect, and do not provide discourse of a high order?

Yes. I'm saying it. These groups are gathering places for idiots. There are a few intelligent people among the retards, to be sure, but the dumb ones are driving the smart ones away. (Case in point: me, right now.)

So this group I'm in. Lately atheists there having been making posts with pictures of starving or horribly disfigured children and asking, "Yeah! Where's yr perfect God now, hah?" Then just now I saw one with a disfigured baby, asking why religious people didn't donate to charity instead of just saying words like Amen.

That's right: this turnip was asking Why aren't there any religious charities?

Imagine the kind of bubble you need to live in not to know about the many religious charities in operation all around us. If you've spent time in some of these Facebook groups, you don't need to imagine anything, you've been there and you've heard it with your own eyes.

So I blocked the idiot who posted that, and I posted the remark that, C'mon now fr cryin out loud, ya don't have to believe in God in order to notice that there are religious charities!

And right away someone commented that it was the least the religious could do after all the harm they'd done over the course of thousands of years. And I didn't feel like trying for the thousandth time to explain why comments like that are asinine. And since he was an admin and I couldn't block him, I just quit the group and came here to complain instead.

This is what Michael Ruse is talking about when he says that the New Atheists are a bloody disaster.

Well. Keep calm and carry on. The search for intelligent life on Earth continues.

The Shape Of The Earth And Of New Atheism

"The world is a sphere can only be colored in so many ways."

Have you heard it colored this way? If the New Atheists were even slightly acquainted with Hebrew and Greek, they'd know that those Bible passages mentioning the shape of the Earth can be understood to refer to various shapes including spheres. In other words, although New Atheists love to insist that the authors of the Bible all believed that the Earth was flat, it's far from clear that this is the case. And that's one way -- one of many -- that we who are familiar with ancient languages and have gone round and round with Dawkins & Co on subjects like the Biblical descriptions of the Earth know that the New Atheists not only aren't familiar with ancient languages, they don't want to become familiar with them.

If they learned a little Hebrew and Greek and Latin and Coptic and Aramaic, they might learn some new things. And they definitely don't seem interested in learning new things when it comes to Judaism, Christianity and Islam and their holy books. They know everything they feel they need to know. They're set. They're done.

They're stupid.

Luke Savage knows what I'm talking about. Here are a few tidbits from his recent and delicious takedown of New Atheism's Islamophobia :

"[...]it is a crude, reductive, and highly selective critique[...]Its leading exponents wear a variety of ideological garbs, but their espoused politics range from those of right-leaning liberals to proto-fascist demagogues of the European far-right[...]The title of Hitchens’s bestselling book tells us something about the priorities and focus of the New Atheist movement ('God is Not Great' is clearly intended to be a facetious inversion of the common Arabic phrase Allahu Akbar, which translates as 'God is Great,' something which he no doubt thought was both hilarious and iconoclastic). Without exception, an overwhelming preoccupation with Islam infuses the whole discourse, even as it posits itself as a disinterested scientific critique of religion as such[...]Sam Harris’s much-discussed October appearance on 'Real Time with Bill Maher' — a crude spectacle in which he pigeonholed most Muslims as 'jihadists,' 'Islamists, or 'conservatives' — merely complements a lengthy record of Islamic demonology from him and other leading figures in the New Atheist movement[...]For the New Atheists, then, all religions are equally bad — but Islam is more equally bad[...]The excessive focus on Islam as something at once monolithic and exceptionally bad, whose backwards followers need to have their rights in democratic societies suppressed and their home countries subjected to a Western-led civilizing process, cannot be called anything other than racist[...]

I highly recommend the entire article. And I would just add that the crudity and ignorance which New Atheists apply to Islam, they apply to most of the rest of the world as well. (It's amazing to me that several of the leading New Atheists are competent or brilliant biologists -- how can they be so sensible, so informed, and so eager to learn about one scientific discipline, and about absolutely nothing else?)

I don't highly recommend this absurdly over-optimistic piece in the Spectator declaring that Richard Dawkins has lost. But if you despise the New Atheists and want to comfort yourself with a daydream that they're about to blow away like dry leaves, then by all means read it.

I, on the other hand, am cursed with an aversion to illusion. We're going to be dealing with these chumps for a while.

I also don't like that the Spectator refers to the atheists who are done with the New Atheists as New New Atheists, rather than Steven Bollinger Can Haz Nobel Atheists.