God-Talk as Betrayal

ERIC MAISEL post

Douglas Murray wrote, “Anyone can be a bigot. But divine bigots must count as the most intractable; the most infuriatingly impervious to reason.” Indeed, one of the joys of belief and one of the primary reasons for believing is that a bigot’s bigotry is made impervious through god-talk. I argue in The Atheist’s Way that god-talk is a betrayal of our common humanity and that we must not permit it, not by outlawing belief but by repeatedly asserting that god-talk is exactly that sort of betrayal. If enough people point out this betrayal often enough, maybe we can turn the corner on this particularly odious use of language, using made-up gods to justify any piece of bigotry.

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