I suspect that, on these 4 criteria, listed in your post of 3/22, Parenti
> would still be considered a new atheist in terms of points 2 and 3.
>
> 2. Parenti examines the god constructed by the religious right and finds
> that god mean, vengeful, jealous, etc.
>
That was part of my point there. The other was that his writing, down to the wording, was comically reminiscent of Dawkins. (I'm tempted to say that he veered dangerously close to plagiarism, but it's been so long since I actually heard plagiarism defined, I'm really not sure. And for all I know, this passage may have had a footnote, although I can't imagine why he wouldn't just quote Dawkins and be done with it.)
> 3. I'm still a little unclear about point three, but thinking about it,
> yeah Parenti appears to be a horse's ass (on your terms) when he writes
> about religious intolerance in Afghanistan:
>
I'm not sure what you imagine my point here to have been, but it was that Parenti was wrong - and given his previous writing on the topic, I can only believe consciously so - to claim that occupied Afghanistan is something other than a theocracy, when cleanly it is not. My apologies if something unclear in my wording led you to believe I meant the opposite.
-- "Hige sceal þe heardra, heorte þe cenre, mod sceal þe mare, þe ure mægen lytlað."