Wading into the accomodationist arguments …

The post that technically started it all, the one that Josh Roseneau talked about, is here:

http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2011/01/30/a-confab-with-the-faithful/

I’m not sure if the charges of “Jerry Coyne’s becoming an accomodationist!” are fair, but I will highlight one thing:

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“Before I showed up I had resolved to keep pretty mum about my views on religion—after all, I was addressing twenty religious people who were kind enough to buy and discuss my book.”

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It seems to me that some accomodationists have been called out for essentially that:  for arguing that in some cases it isn’t important or necessary to bring up religion.  If they’d just talked about the book and about evolution, Coyne wouldn’t have brought it up or said anything against, say, theistic evolution.  When things like that were brought up, he did give his opinion and stuck to it, but he wasn’t going to mention it otherwise.

I think that if we can get the Gnu Atheists to accept that there are some cases where dragging the atheist/religious beliefs into the discussion isn’t a good thing to do, a lot of the animosity would go away.  Whether that’s “accomodationist” or not.