Dear (New) Atheists, Meet Zizek and Paglia

I am writing beneath about 200 pages of final papers I have to read and grade, so this week will be mostly videos and a special something I have planned for the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

I plan on going into some depth on this subject later, so consider this a primer of sorts. Many atheists on Twitter (and some at the Patheos atheist channel) seem to rely on rather narrow governing assumptions about what atheism is. Most of them replicate lots of the insults, and some of the substance, of Hitch, Dawkins, and Harris. The so-called New Atheists.

It needn’t be so. There are several well known and outspoken atheists who abhor New Atheism. Here are two of them:

Slavoj Zizek, “Why Only an Atheist Can Beleive ,” in 9 parts. (notes: arduous and very long, but rewarding)

Camille Paglia, in a talk about her new book on art. (notes: accessible, not too long, and very fun)

I’ll return to this later. Feel free to leave comments on what you’re interested in regarding atheism.