I picked up Vox Day’s Irrational Atheist at the library with hopeful expectations. I like Dennett and Dawkins and don’t know the other authors Vox writes about. But, if Day dislikes them, I’m inclined to read them.
Vox Day claims to be rational, but he is anything but. He talks of the unholy trinity of authors, but of course there are four. He creates straw men that are only be based on his imagination and then shoots them down. Proving only that if you create something so that it’s easy to prove them wrong, that it is easy to prove them wrong. This is rational?
Day takes all of Karl Popper’s theories and proves them all wrong in a paragraph, or thinks he does. He defines what science is in another paragraph so that he can show that scientists are easy targets. He makes fun of people and attacks the people and not their theories.
The thing is he has some good points mixed in with the horrible points. He says that Dawkins points out that atheists are disproportionately absent from prisons. Day points out that Dawkins was not counting all the people who marked no religion. Good point. But then Day claims that all those who say no religion are atheists. Huh? I’ll have to reread Dawkins to see if he actually states it as Day claims — dubious at best. But for Day to obviously commit the error he claims Dawkins does is frankly unforgivable.
This book gets an F from me.
