There's a Ruse Loose Aboot this Hoose

Michael 'rhymes with goose' Ruse has written a tragic bit of hyperbole over at the Chronicle of Higher Education: New Atheism: A Disaster Comparable to the Tea Party.

What's this? A disaster comparable to the Tea Party?

Do the New Atheists deny science, like Tea Party-ists? Er no.

Do the New Atheists have racist views, like Tea Party-ists? Er, no.

Are they organised in a way designed to achieve political office, like the Tea Party movement, to impose their anti-science, bigoted, libertarian views on the rest of their society? Er, no

So how are they "a disaster comparable to the Tea Party"?

... because they won’t make any effort to think seriously about why they hold their positions about the conflict between science and religion.

That's it? No bodies buried in concrete? No Stalin-like accusations? It seems an oddly esoteric concern with which to brow-beat them. And he backs this assertion up with... nothing; but a vague accusation:

I think if you want to show that science and religion are inherently in contradiction, then you should show why people like Kuhn (and indeed Foucault) are wrong about the nature of science. That I think is morally wrong, namely taking positions with major political and social implications, without doing your serious homework. Just mentioning Galileo’s troubles with the Church or Thomas Henry Huxley’s debate with the Bishop of Oxford is no true substitute for hard thinking.

He doesn't make explicit here his criticism, but perhaps it's that a defining feature of the New Atheists is that they haven't thought through the implications of scientific contingency as it affects the science and religion conflict; that, presumably something rather relativistic must allow that science and religion are ideas competing in the ocean of human ideas, and one cannot be given primacy over the other.

Richard Dawkins has written The God Delusion to counter popular ideas of God and The Greatest Show on Earth to combat creationist misrepresentations of evolution. This doesn't seem like the actions of someone who hasn't thought seriously about why he holds his position on the conflict between science and religion.

Daniel Dennett wrote Darwin's Dangerous Idea, examining the implications for religion of the science of Evolution. This doesn't seem like the actions of someone who hasn't thought seriously about why he holds his position on the conflict between science and religion.

Sam Harris has written The Moral Landscape, looking at a scientific approach to morality. This doesn't seem like the actions of someone who hasn't thought seriously about why he holds his position on the conflict between science and religion.

Christopher Hitchens wrote God is Not Great, looking at the problems religion has caused, and its supposed justifications. This doesn't seem like the actions of someone who hasn't thought seriously about why he holds his position on the conflict between science and religion.

Victor Stenger wrote God: The Failed Hypothesis, detailing how science shows that God does not exist. This doesn't seem like the actions of someone who hasn't thought seriously about why he holds his position on the conflict between science and religion.

Jerry Coyne has started many threads on the compatibility of science and religion. This doesn't seem like the actions of someone who hasn't thought seriously about why he holds his position on the conflict between science and religion.

Ophelia Benson has hosted numerous threads and articles on The Conflict Thesis. This doesn't seem like the actions of someone who hasn't thought seriously about why she holds her position on the conflict between science and religion.

Now they all may be wrong (although I agree with them). But it is simply untrue that they haven't 'thought seriously' about the conflict between science and religion.

So first he compares the New Atheists to a genuinely harmful political movement, when they are plainly not causing the same harms as that movement, and then his reason for doing so is a straw man of positively Edward Woodward proportions.

No wonder most atheists consider his views worthless.