
I’ve already exposed one fundamental flaw of the New Atheism (also-called Anti-Theism): their failure to appreciate the fact that the entity they call Religion (with a capital R) is an incredibly diverse phenomenon.
If you want to argue (as evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne vehemently does) that ALL RELIGIONS ought to disappear, you cannot just rely on mean values and point out that secular folks are better off on average.
NO, you should consider every specific denomination and compare its own performance and problems with respect to science,sexism, racism or homophobia.
It is silly to say to a liberal Methodist defending Gay marriage: “Get out of here hateful bigot!” just because he’s an American Christian, and American Christians have on average a low view of homosexuals.
No, for the SAKE OF JUSTICE we ought to judge persons and denominations individually.
I’m glad to see that former fundamentalist Jonny Scaramanga (whom I interviewed a while ago) went in that direction in one of his responses to Jerry Coyne.

(What follows is his post I quoted while emphasising certain sentences).
Jerry Coyne says I am wrong about creationism, misogyny and homophobia
Jerry Coyne, author of Why Evolution is True (both blog and book) didn’t like my recent posts about the link between creationism, sexism, and homophobia. In a recent post, he argues that I have made a logical fallacy and risk miring the battle against creationism in the ‘atheist wars’ over feminism.
Jerry introduced the post by saying some nice things about me, so I’ll return the compliment: I owe Jerry a great deal. Until I read his book, despite having not been to church in eight years I still thought it made sense to say “evolution is only a theory”. Although at that point I thought evolution was probably right, I had no idea how much evidence there is, nor why my understanding of the term ‘theory’ was wrong-headed. Thanks to him I entered the world of evolutionary science, and my life is the richer for it. And, as Jerry himself points out, he’s been a frequent supporter of my writing and I wouldn’t be as successful a blogger as I am without that patronage.
I sort of appreciate the sentiment of Jerry’s opening sentence—”It’s never a pleasure to criticize the views of someone I admire”—but actually I see no reason why this should be an unpleasant enterprise. One of the best things about my post-church life is that I now feel free to disagree with people without automatically making them my enemies. It’s also possible that I am mistaken about this, in which case I should be glad he’s pointed it out.
The title of Jerry’s post is “Does creationism matter more because it’s connected with misogyny and homophobia?” When you phrase the question like that, I struggle to see how the answer can be anything other than “yes”. Misogyny and homophobia, Jerry and I agree, are unqualified ills. If you take something that’s already bad and add misogyny and homophobia, you make it even worse. I didn’t say (and I do not believe) that if creationism were not homophobic or misogynistic there would be insufficient reason to oppose it. I did argue that the homophobia and misogyny that creationism involves are more pressing matters, and it seems Jerry agrees on this point. Near the end of the post, he writes “In fact, oppression of women and of gays are matters of greater import than is the teaching of creationism, and if I could wave a magic wand I’d make the first two disappear before the third”, which might leave some readers wondering where exactly he and I differ.
Jerry says I’ve made a logical fallacy, which is always a handy shortcut making your opponent look bad. If I’ve made a logical fallacy, I am objectively wrong. This is no mere difference of opinion, or difference of values, which might take longer to sort out or even be irreconcilable. I have made a fallacy, and I am a phallus.
Except that I don’t think I have. Jerry says it’s the underlying cause of all three that we need to oppose, and that was exactly my point in “Why creationism matters“. Possibly I didn’t make this sufficiently clear, in which case I’m glad for the opportunity to do so. We must be tough on creationism and tough on the causes of creationism. Jerry is right. Sort of.
The underlying cause of creationism, homophobia, and misogyny, says Jerry, is religion, and it is religion we must oppose. And here, I suspect, it is Jerry whose logic is flawed. Clearly, not all religion is all of these things, although much (perhaps most) of it is. Some religious people are among the most vocal opponents of creationism, and for some their faith is an extra reason to oppose the subjugation of women and gay people. Some of those people are among this blog’s most vocal supporters. So we’re going to need a different reason to oppose all religion, because this one is not fit for purpose.
Biblical literalism, on the other hand, is a root cause of all three of the problems at hand. The problem is the way creationists read the Bible. It promotes not just creationism, patriarchy, and gay-bashing, but also the denial of history, the enthusiastic acceptance of immorality, and an irrational rejection of opposing evidence. It is an intellectual black hole. But not all religion is Biblical literalism. I am (if you’ll forgive the term) agnostic on the question of whether the world would be better off if there were no religion at all. My hunch is that it probably would, but there isn’t enough data to be sure. Anyone who claims with certainty that religion must be annihilated for the good of humanity is taking a faith position. Which is somewhat ironic.
In my follow up post, “Creationism is inherently homophobic and misogynistic“, I made a somewhat stronger claim, but I still don’t think I made a logical fallacy. The argument here was this: the Biblical creation myths themselves contain verses which are anti-women and anti-gay. Now I’m not going to say there’s only one possible interpretation of those verses, because only fundamentalists think that way. But I did argue that if you interpret those verses using the same hermeneutic that creationists use to interpret the surrounding text, then you reach nasty conclusions. And I backed this up by empirically showing that those are, indeed, the very conclusions that creationists often come to.
The most trenchant criticism of that post, funnily enough, came from a Christian. Regular reader and commenter Kevin Long pointed out that I was expecting logical consistency from a group of people who have black belts in holding internally contradictory beliefs.
You’re thinking too logically here. Religion is not particularly logical. People are not particularly logical or theoretical about these things. People don’t usually haul out their beliefs and inspect them item by item. Most people are handed a set of beliefs early on in life, and then they just run with them, accepting the whole thing, but adapting bits when they need to. Most of these beliefs are rather fuzzy. Your gay Creationist friend is an example of that, and that type of thinking is, and has always been, the majority. This is actually an encouraging thing: people who are adaptable always outweigh people who are strictly inflexible.
That’s hardly a defence of creationism or of religion, but it does mean I could be more optimistic about the possibility of equality-affirming creationists. Of course, the problem, which Kevin’s post hints at, is that creationist beliefs actually rest on church traditions and authority, despite the fundamentalist insistence that they come purely from a plain reading of the Bible. Those church traditions are usually patriarchal and exclusionary. Kevin also pointed out that there are creationists who are not literalists with regard to other aspects of the Bible; my argument obviously wouldn’t hold in those cases. Our thread on the subject is worth a read.
I think the most important reason Jerry Coyne didn’t like my posts is that they failed the SJW sniff-test. And yes, at this point I must reveal (if it was not already clear) that I am one of those pesky feminist atheists threatening to divide the ‘movement’ with concerns over misogyny. Because what happens in this life matters more to me than what people think is going to happen after we die, I care more about equality, access to education, and social justice than I do about the nonexistence of gods.
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Here follows my response to this post.
Coyne actually says:
“I think the problem with this logic is obvious. Yes, of course the same people who accept creationism by and large favor a secondary role for women and promote discrimination against gays. But that doesn’t make creationism any worse than it already is; all that means is that it’s a symptom of a larger syndrome.
That syndrome is called religion, and its instantiation in this case is fundamentalist Christianity and much of Orthodox Judaism. But just because creationism is linked to these other symptoms doesn’t make it matter more. What matters is the underlying cause of all three conditions, and that is religion. The Biblical connection between these three forms of bigotry and ignorance means that we should fight harder against religion, not fight harder against creationism. If we prohibit the teaching of creationism in schools, will that efface the homophobia and misogyny of its adherents? I don’t think so.”
What Coyne is focusing on is the linkage Jonny raised between creationism, misogyny, and homophobia. In this context, he criticizes Jonny for selecting creationism as the root for the other two whereas Coyne disagrees and calls this selection treating a symptom.
Coyne does not mean that all misogyny is caused only by religion or that all homophobia is cause only by religion. That’s not the context of his post, not the meaning of his use of the wording. And we know this because that meaning doesn’t fit the structure of the paragraph in which these words are cherry picked. His context is about the linkage and responding to it by placing responsibility where it belongs: with religion itself and not from its isolated expressions like creationism.
A. There are 2 kinds of religion:
1) religion is mans attempt to get to God or a god.
2) true or pure religion is taking care of widows and orphans.
B. There are two kinds of Christianity:
1) those who think they are Christians based on their religion (see A.1 above).
2) those who believe they are Christians based on their relationship with the triune God through their fellowship with Jesus Christ by the ministry and power of the Holy Spirit as revealed in the Holy Bible.
A.1, A.2 and B.1 are what is talked about in the world and the media.
Those of us in B.2 are the mostly evangelical part of the 4 groups. We are the smallest group as well. Our hope is “based on nothing less than Jesus Christ and His Righteousness. Although all of our group are capable of any sin, our desire is to serve God and bring Him glory, praise and honor.
Tony
true or pure religion is taking care of widows and orphans.
It’s nice to see so many atheists taking care of widows and orphans and all meeting all kinds of human needs. Amazing – not to mention convenient only for you – how well their actions fit so neatly into being ‘religious’ by your definition. The difference, of course, is motivation: whereas atheists do this for the benefit of widows and orphans and others in need, the religious do it to earn brownie points with their Overlord. It’s the difference between a child mature enough to do things because they are the right things to do (based on good reasons that stand on their own merit) rather than the eternal child doing things only because they are told to do so by some authority figure.
I definitely believe in the existence of righteous atheists honouring God:
https://lotharlorraine.wordpress.com/2015/05/29/are-all-atheists-wicked-fools-hurtling-towards-hell/
It is true that religion sometimes makes us behave like animals towards each other.
But without religion we would probably be behaving like animals all the time.