On 7/3/07, Richard Levins <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Yes. We have to deal with the dual nature of science,
> as part of a generic unfolding of understanding of the
> world, and as a commodity reflecting the needs of
> the owners of the knowledge industry.Therefore there
> is a two-sided struggle, against the pre-modern,
> pre-capitalist  critique of science (holistic, static,
> hierarchical, romantic, ahistorical and decontextualized)
> and against the scientism and instrumentalism of
> capitalist technocracy,  from a post-capitalist, dynamic
> holism (dialectics). In places like India and Texas the
> pre-capitalist fundamentalisms seem to pose the
> immediate threat while in most of the colonial world
> scientism is more directly the main oppressor, but in
> all cases we have to reject both....But why the
> adjective "dogmatic"  in referring to atheism?
> Like any other intellectual current, some of us are
> dogmatic and others quite flexible and open minded.
> The critique of religion also has been an important
> part of the resistance to obscurantism. In the
>  broad anti-imperialist coalitions there is room for
> believers and atheists and the need to respect both,
> while both atheists and believers are also found in
> the ranks of scientism.

I believe so, too.  By dogmatic atheists I meant to refer only to
those who, like the so-called New Atheists, draw a wrong political
line, between the religious and the irreligious, rather than building
a coalition of the religious and the irreligious against the empire of
capitalism.

That said, I think we who are irreligious can go a step further, with
regard to Islam, and do what many of us have already done for
Christianity through our interaction with liberation theologians: to
think of certain kinds of religious practice not only as compatible
with historical materialism in political practice but also recognize
them as sources of strength for the religious -- in other words, to
see the religious who can and do stand in (direct or indirect)
solidarity with us as our allies not "despite" their religion but
_because of_ their religion.
-- 
Yoshie