Monday, October 15, 2007

Defending atheism from... Lee Siegel?

When talking philosophy with my students or with nonphilosophers, it's really useful to see their facial expressions, so I can get a sense for when they've gotten what I'm trying to say, and when I need to keep explaining things. One of the things that makes philosophy blogging in nonphilosophical places so challenging is that I can't see the faces of my audience as I write, and I don't have as good a sense for how much explaining to do.

I may have overexplained a little bit in my latest post at Ezra Klein's blog, which responds to some really bad arguments against atheism that came up in an LA Times op-ed. Other than that, I'm quite happy with the post.

(Backstory: Lee Siegel, the author of the op-ed, is a really weird guy -- he had to leave The New Republic when it was discovered that he was dishonestly using aliases to defend himself in comments. In his time at TNR, he took some mean swipes at Ezra, so I'm not especially well-disposed towards him.)