Oh, Charlotte Allen–remember her? (I hadn’t, til I saw this on my Twitter feed from PZ.) In case you’ve forgotten, she is the, um, journalist? who penned these deathless words last year re the popularity of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign amongst the gender female:
[I] wonder whether women — I should say, “we women,” of course — aren’t the weaker sex after all. Or even the stupid sex, our brains permanently occluded by random emotions, psychosomatic flailings and distraction by the superficial. Women “are only children of a larger growth,” wrote the 18th-century Earl of Chesterfield. Could he have been right?
Kyso did the takedown on all that here and here–as with Ann Coulter’s blatherings, I couldn’t be bothered myself–if you tell me you’re stupid, psychosomatic, superficial, etc, I’m not gonna argue with you, and I’m certainly not going to bother my pretty little head about anything you might have to say subsequently to you informing me of that.
And amazingly enough, she’s at it again! This time her preferred target isn’t the gender female–it’s Teh Atheist! If you read it, it becomes rapidly clear that she’s never actually really read anything any atheist has ever written past the title of the works, but hell, people never let that stop them from cranking out detailed critiques, do they..? 
Much like with the misogyny essay and resultant Q&A, I can’t be bothered to deconstruct it; I choose to let better minds than mine do that. Check out PZ’s LA Times’ letter instead–it rocks.
I thought that name sounded familiar! Allen also wrote a 1998 book called “The Human Christ: the Search for the Historical Jesus,” which consisted largely of whining about “snide” Christian scholars who didn’t think the Bible is historically accurate. It was sloppy about factual accuracy in many respects. Maybe her latest outburst will give me reason to write a blog post about her; I’m on vacation now, so I’ll have time.
But as an atheist, I am bothered by the ignorance of many of my fellows. Atheism isn’t like Christianity — it’s not enough to say “I don’t believe!” and then Cthulhu will take you to his bosom. Atheism is not, in itself, a rational position: that depends on your reasons for being an atheist and how you think from there. So I’m in a tricky position. (Sort of like dealing with gay Christians: if I point out their misrepresentations, they accuse me of being a fundamentalist homophobe, when I’m a gay atheist.)
I’m not impressed by PZ Myers either. He threw a small hissyfit when J. K. Rowling said that Dumbledore was gay, and he’s said some dumb things about science too. (See the link in my website field.) Just being a scientist, even a good one, doesn’t make one an authority on what science is or how it works.
Duncan, I think WordPress ate the link in your website field. Well, after a quick bit of internet stalking, here’s the PZ-bashing Dumbledore post in question.
As well as being absolutely right about PZ Myers’s curious desire to keep Dumbledore in the closet, it’s of course true that Atheists who choose to fight religion by criticizing it directly had better get their facts straight. It’s perfectly fine for you to criticize them in these cases– that’s peer review, right? Makes the next generation of Atheists stronger!
But, though Atheism may not, in itself, be a rational position, it is certainly possible for anyone to be a rational Atheist without becoming a biblical scholar in the process.
Oh, thanks for introducing me to drapetomania! I never knew.
P.S. Just curious– don’t really read the guy, but I’ve stopped there a few times and been entertained– what has PZ Myers written about science that you took issue with?
Thanks, Quin, for finding that link, which I guess did get eaten.
It’s true, you don’t need to be a biblical scholar to be a rational atheist. (Though I’m not a biblical scholar, just an interested amateur.) But atheists who make public pronouncements had better be rational (unless they present themselves as irrational atheists) and make some effort to know what they’re/we’re talking about.
I guess the link to my complaint about Myers on science also got lost. Here it is:
http://thisislikesogay.blogspot.com/2008/01/they-laughed-when-i-sat-down-at.html
I also recall a time when Myers got all puffed up about the repression of women by religion. Which of course is something to get all puffed up about, but science as a profession and a worldview doesn’t have a very good record with respect to women either, to put it gently. David F. Noble’s A World Without Women: The Christian Clerical Culture of Western Science is good to read on this.
Yeah, Myers is entertaining — sometimes unintentionally so, as in the post on Dumbledore. But for entertainment, I prefer the (late, alas) Paul Feyerabend, one of the antichrist figures in contemporary scientism.