"The Irrational Atheist", by Vox Day.
Someone sent me a free e-copy of this yesterday.
Spent 4 hours half reading, half skimming it.
Was hoping for some morbid chuckles.
It didn't disappoint.
What a nasty piece of shit.
My atheism is stronger because of it.
Basically, the gist is this.
Atheists are irrational (the bulk of the book is nitpicky bitchy reasons as to why) but ultimately, they're irrational, because humans are fundamentally irrational, therefore all beliefs are bullshit, so pick your bullshit wisely.
Oh, and the bullshit you should of course pick is some religion, preferably Christianity, since the worst thing to be is an Atheist.
The deeper gist is, since humans are irrational, rationality is irrational.
Well, ain't that nice and hopeless?
Batshit, bullshit, and horseshit.
Vox Day claims to be a Libertarian, yet somehow he squares this political ideology with the radically fatalistic view that people need to be herded like sheep with superstitious nonsense.
Don't see much liberty in that.
Oh, right, I'm trying to be too rational....
Oh, and Vox Day is a failed game designer.
As if I didn't already have a bleak estimation of that profession...
Anyhoo, zero out of 5 stars, avoid.
Blecch.
Head still swirling with the nasty thoughts this piece of bleak hopeless garbage put there.
Maybe some Sagan will help.
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6 comments:
Very well put, sir.
Nicely summed up in that creatively concise way that only you possess.
Thanks for taking one for the team.
Sharon
Vox Day claims to be a libertarian, yet somehow he squares this political ideology with the radically fatalistic view that people need to be herded like sheep with superstitious nonsense.
Don't see much liberty in that. .
To echo Sharon, "well said, Sir." This is one of the 'flea' books I haven't read yet, and frankly, after reading this, and Steve Zara's review, I'm quite happy for that to remain the case...
To go back to your Sagan post, I've sometimes thought that, if I ever had the time and/or energy, I'd go through books like this and annotate every sentence with whichever fallacy from the 'nonsense detector' chapter of The Demon Haunted World applied...
Mark_W
"Spent 4 hours half reading, half skimming it."
Is this your way of saying that you haven't actually read the book?
Oh well...
Nope, I devoured the man points quite heartily.
There was a lot of wasted pages between chapters.
And a lot of skip-able filler.
Mostly the vitriol.
And the reams of tedious data attacking an argument that was never made.
Mark_W-
I stuck in for as long as I did, because Vox had some genuine new tricks up his sleeve that I hadn't heard any of the RD.net trolls try, so there was that sense of "oh, finally something new!".
But...no, when I finally got to the points he was slowly rambling towards, it was the same old christian-right bile.
Stalin, Hitler, stealthy commie plots, Satan, Robespierre, "enlightenment a failed experiment", fatalism, yadda yadda.
If Vox is the brightest of the fleas, there's nothing whatever to worry about.
Richard Morgan-
You've got a lot of nerve showing your online presence, given your recent twisted and pathetic attempts at manipulation.
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