A Pulitzer Prize investigation: the New Atheism?

I note the number of comments on my short letter just questioning the political agenda of the New Atheism. To be sure, if the Ayn Rand cranks are prominent in the movement, the progressives have formed an unprincipled alliance.

Every socialist knows in his bones that you cannot begin to win the hearts and the minds of the common people- so necessary for REAL socialism- if you just scold them for being dupes of organized religion. And it is an effete and sophomoric atheism that wants to refight intellectual battles won by Science long ago. And no committed socialist would find it necessary to antagonize the world's major religions unless they have forged a sinister conspiracy with the ruling classes against the people.

It was the greatest mistake of the Russian Bolsheviks to make their state officially atheist. They should have copied America here-with its separation of Church and State. Any intelligent socialist would assume that public education with emphasis on basic science- biology, chemistry, physics- would free most young minds from what that IDEAL HUMANIST, astronomer, and popular science writer, Carl Sagan, called the "Demon Haunted World."

I link the crackpot atheist Ayn Rand, author of "The Virtue of Selfishness," and her bizarre cult, with HUMANIST Isaac Asimov's "Armies of the Night." They clearly worship MONEY!

I will try to reply to many of those comments on my blog http://radicalrons.blogspot.com/ But one question remains: How many of the New Atheists apply reason and logic to the everyday insanity of the capitalist way of life?

Submitted to: letters@providencejournal.com