That well is empty
Oh, gawd, here’s a book no one needs: The Four Horsemen: The Conversation That Sparked an Atheist Revolution.
Noooooooooo no no no please no.
But it’s too late, it already exists.
This meandering, unmoderated discussion among Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, and Dennett, a group dubbed the New Atheists, presents their unique positions in provocative but underdeveloped arguments. Composed mainly of transcriptions of a conversation among the four that was posted to YouTube in 2007, the book opens with introductory essays highlighting key points from the three surviving thinkers (Hitchens died in 2011).
I saw it via a tweet from CFI.
Today is the U.S. release of "The Four Horsemen: The Discussion that Sparked an Atheist Revolution," with new essays by @RichardDawkins @danieldennett @SamHarrisOrg and a foreword by the one and only @stephenfry. Proceeds from the book benefit the Center for Inquiry. pic.twitter.com/PUBY5FqeGZ
— Center for Inquiry (@center4inquiry) March 19, 2019
Oh hell yes, step right up and buy this book of a conversation that happened 12 years ago among four men, two of whom have gone on to become droning narrow seers of Angry Dude Twitter.
No thank you.
I recall watching that video back when it was first posted. It was… fine. Sort of interesting to flesh out the different approaches of the four of them — Hitchens and Harris focused on what they saw as the ill consequences of religion, Dennett fascinated by the causes, and Dawkins just irritated that it’s not true damnit. But that’s about all I could say for it.
It certainly didn’t “spark” anything. Posted in 2007, it was long after the Gnu Atheism boom was up and running, after the backlash to Gnu Atheism, and with the rebuttal to the backlash already well underway.
But I guess nobody’s getting hurt if CFI gets some extra cash from the truly hardcore fanboys (or fangi…. hah, who am I kidding) willing to shell out for a transcript.
I don’t do Twitter, and I know Hitchens is regrettably no longer with us. So that leaves three.
Of the remainder to my knowledge, the only one, OB, that you have not crossed swords, keyboards or whatever with is Dennett.
Thus my guess is……………………………………………………………. Harris and Dawkins!!!
So: 1. Do I get a prize? and 2. Where will the formal presentation ceremony take place?
;-)
They had me at “meandering” and “underdeveloped”.
Where do I order it?
@Omar:
Dennet has always been more thoughtful, observant and downright genteel than the rest of that group. I got the impression that he was the only one who was rather embarrassed about the four horsemen business while the others (secretly if not openly) loved it. I think he was mainly caught up in it all because of his friendship with Dawkins.
As Screechy says, that video was…. fine. As I recall it was unremarkable (at the time, I don’t doubt that I’d find much wrong with it now). It was never the content I found exasperating, it was the hero worship and gleeful assumption by so many people (and especially themselves) that they spoke for all atheists.
Oh yes. Dennett is in another category altogether – he doesn’t do Twitter, for one thing: I think he has an account, to flag up writings & stuff, but he doesn’t use it to whine about SJWs from dawn to dusk the way Dawkins and Harris do. For another thing as far as I know he doesn’t share their array of florid character flaws – he hasn’t for instance founded institutions named after himself which BOTH the other two have. In short he doesn’t carry on like some pathetic rock star-wannabe.
I sort of “met” him at a CFI conference a few years back – that is, I was chatting with PZ in the bar area among some others and Dennett joined PZ on the other side, and then we were in the same pattern at the dinner the next day. I can at least say he has a much more approachable, decent, “normal” vibe than either Harris or Dawkins. You don’t feel you’re entering a humming force field of vanity and ego.
Great phrase. I may have to borrow it some day. There are way too many people to whom it applies.
Still, there is a benefit to that. The force field will repeal all those of us who are less worthy, and most of us prefer not to be around that sort of people anyway.
Well, except it seems to draw in a great many who are less worthy, to worship at their feet. To be fair – or at least truthful – I used to admire Dawkins myself; I liked his waspishness and his refusal to nod politely at bullshit. I think that means I must have turned a blind eye to at least rudeness if not worse.
I still don’t really think negatively of Dawkins. I mean mostly I don’t think of him at all, which I think says a lot about how late this book is in coming.
My view is – good luck to them on selling it, but out of the figures in it, the only really one who’s still really relevant is Harris, and that’s not in a good way. I shudder to think what would have happened with Hitchens if he was still alive.
And none of them were really leaders in the New Atheist movement, they were press appointed spokespeople. The actual leaders of the movement were bloggers and YouTubers, it was more centered around new media.
I think it would be more interesting to get those voices together in a book, or alternatively how about this:
Host a discussion between Sarah Haider, Gita Sahgal, Annie Laurie Gaylor and Debbie Goddard, and release that as a book. Wouldn’t that discussion be more interesting?
So long as we’re stuck with the old four horsemen we can’t progress, we can’t grow because we’re stuck looking backwards, lets get some high profile voices together that present what really is a different take, for a different decade.