Tim,
I find it supremely ironic that in using two of the quotes I had in mind about the flat earth from Coyne and Dennett, that this to you somehow proves your points instead that the New Atheists do not rhetorically link the things I said they linked? Bold. My points on the New Atheists were passing ones about the more fundamental historical and rhetorical associations in the history of evolution, creationism/YEC, and the flat earth, in literature expounding the warfare thesis. Since you have kindly proven that this rhetorical link does indeed exist in two of the so-called New Atheists as I said, I most appreciate your efforts to hunt them down. Both of these quotes are also in my book on the warfare thesis, as it happens. And I’m happy not to have to type them out again. It does not matter at all if Dennett’s is hypothetical (and that is only one way of interpreting it). You find the quote less than credible? The quote that just proved the very point I was making? That you yourself found and cited? Ok. Well I suppose when one wants to create their own alternate realities ex nihilo, there is not much I can do about it.
Thank you for the invitation, but no, I’d prefer not to discuss this further with you. Forgive me, but you have displayed the tendency I loathe of taking minor and beside the point issues and holding them up victoriously as if they somehow have feedback on the main points at hand, points you studiously and rather frenetically avoided. No thanks, I’m not interested. For what its worth I quite admire atheist philosophers and scientists (a wonderful Ph.D. advisor and external reader of mine having been just that), just not the horsemen (back in those halcyon days when they were all the rage, I took classes with at least one of them-Peter Boghossian, and we went out to lunch several times to discuss all sorts of topics related to religion. I know them well in their works and their persons. Nice enough gents, until religion comes up and then all bets are off). We are lacking the Nietzsches of old, though at least we have a few honorable atheists writing like Ruse, Nagel, Eagleton, Gray, and several others.
Thanks again for the quotes. Most helpful.