TAKE TWO: ACCOMMODATIONISM AND ATHEISM

by Scott F. Aikin and Robert B. Talisse

To our surprise, our February 3 Quarks Daily post has generated a good deal of comment from those who identify as New (or “Gnu”) Atheists, nearly all of it critical.  It’s not that we don’t like criticism-- we are philosophers, and criticism is our business.  Our surprise rather derives from the way in which much of the criticism has been targeted.  In fact, it seems to us that much of the criticism is mistargeted.  Criticism that misses its mark is not a kind of criticism; it’s no criticism at all.  And we’re happy to be criticized.  So we’d like to clarify.

Our post began with a statement of fact.  Reasonable Atheism is not yet available, yet we have been charged with accommodationism.  What we failed to note is that shortly after Prometheus Books distributed a catalog announcing the publication of Reasonable Atheism, we received a handful of emails decrying our forthcoming book as accommodationist drivel.  The author of one email characterized accommodationism as consisting in the very thought that religious believers are owed respect.  In the first paragraph of our original post, we encapsulated the charge of accommodationism as it was brought in these emails.  These provided the occasion for thinking about the charge of accommodationism.

We have been criticized for not citing our sources.  For the record, most of the emails we received came from people who did not include surnames.  Who are these people?  We have no idea.  And we’d like not to encourage them.  Yet some critics have assumed that if we have been charged with accommodationism, and then have sought to respond to that particular way of wielding the charge, it must be that we believe that New Atheists are in some sense guilty of... well... something.

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