Something to believe in.

The 'New Atheist' movement - Dawkins, Hitchens, assorted others - is thoroughly detestable. Using all the insight that they acquired in Smug School, they blandly condemn religious beliefs, and religious believers, without considering the reasons why such belief might exist. Well, sometimes they do consider why, but the shit they come up with is less than pathetic. Hitchens blames the ever shifting sequence of rituals, the Notre Dame cathedral on "our idiot monkey brains".

Atheism is not a mirror image of religious belief - not believing in that which cannot be proved is not the same in believing in that which cannot be proved. However, New Atheism can be hilariously similar to an extremist religious belief. Common to all religions is the notion that the evil that exists in the world is due to erroneous belief, which leads to sinful action. At the core of the particular criticisms of religion put forward by the New Atheists, is the idea that bad things are caused by religious belief - terrorism, war etc. - and that these would disappear if religious belief was exorcised, and rationality reigned.

Dawkins departs us before our next stop, but Hitchens' New Atheism has a millenium - 9/11 provided the pretext for an overtly religious war - and Hitchens argues for the destruction of religious believers - describing cluster bombs used against the people of Afghanistan as having a "heartening effect". But of course, the 'anti-theist' beliefs of Hitchens, are in no way comparable to those of Abu Hamza. They are rational, if fucking insane - scientific, if profoundly anti-human.

As such, I enjoy people sticking the boot into these idealist swines. So, Brendan O'Neill, flaying Bill Mayer's terrible-sounding film Religulous, and, more skilfully, John Molyneux mapping the Marxist response to religion.