Compassionate Secularism

Many secularists are profoundly intolerant, but not self-professed unbeliever Norman Geras:

I therefore return to asking myself from time to time why some of the argumentative postures that can go with attacking religion get up my nose. If the words of [Richard] Dawkins and Steve Jones are accurately reported in this piece, I've just come across a good reminder. It's the move you'll see exemplified in what the two of them say from thinking that the beliefs are unfounded, wrong, etc to being willing to assert that people holding or propagating these beliefs are 'evil' (sometimes it's softer -- like merely 'stupid'), or that if you hold mistaken beliefs which have as a knock-on consequence that other people may behave badly, then you are not to be engaged with in too friendly a way, even in the case that your mistaken beliefs don't lead you to behave badly yourself and may, as often happens, influence you for the better. It's the easy conflation of legitimate argumentation over truth and belief, with judgements about moral character - and in a way, it should be said, that picks out only religious belief for this treatment, when it is plain that the partisans of other belief systems don't have an altogether pristine record.

Which is why Geras remains my favorite lefty blogger.