Against generalizations of the religious

The title of Christopher Hitchens' book is God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. Though I have yet to read the book, and I will, I find this title to be a really bad generalization, one that effectively serves to shoot the secular person in his or her own foot. Case in point: most of us are likely well aware of Ken Ham and his Creation Museum down in Kentucky. I will have plenty to say about creationism and Intelligent Design theory - pet peeves of mine - in this blog, but that's for later. Mr. Ham's web site is called Answers in Genesis.

But, hey - has anyone heard of a little site called Answers in Creation?

Sure, it sounds as scary as AiG at first, but a closer look reveals that these people are Christians who accept the concept of an old earth. They're allies (shudder) to science.

Most unfortunately, however, they're still Christians, and Christianity's a religion, and religion poisons everything, so whatever. Way to go, Mr. Hitchens and all the secular people who are too mad at religion to be rational! I couldn't blame the admins of AiC one bit if one day they just got sick of the hatred coming from both of the extremes (Apostates! X-tian morons!) and decided to just go back to a young-earth standpoint. What's their reason for maintaining their site and their stance when they're taking hostile fire from the very people they are agreeing with (secular advocates of real science), simply on the basis that they are still religious? It makes no sense to alienate them when they are on our side in terms of advocating legitimate science.

This is one of the inconsistencies about what's going on with this New Atheism that I'm still awaiting an explanation for. I'm not holding my breath.