Go Back to Nietzsche You Damn, Dirty Atheists!

A piece of an interesting interview with John Haught,

You're saying older atheists like Nietzsche and Camus had a more sophisticated critique of religion?
Yes. They wanted us to think out completely and thoroughly, and with unrelenting logic, what the world would look like if the transcendent is wiped away from the horizon. Nietzsche, Sartre and Camus would have cringed at "the new atheism" because they would see it as dropping God like Santa Claus, and going on with the same old values. The new atheists don't want to think out the implications of a complete absence of deity. Nietzsche, as well as Sartre and Camus, all expressed it quite correctly. The implications should be nihilism.

Let me strip this down and examine what he’s really saying:
You're saying older atheists like Nietzsche and Camus had a more sophisticated critique of religion?

Yes. We’re familiar with the lame and somewhat nonsensical arguments of these guys and have our refutations all ready to go. By changing the game and moving pasted these limited philosophies, atheists aren’t playing very fair. Regular Joes think they’re being lied to when atheists use words like “Nietzsche” and “Ubermenchen” and think about that dumb guy in a “Fish Called Wanda”. This works to our advantage because it makes atheists sound like pompous geeks. But they’re all familiar with Santa Claus and there is no real rhetorical counterpunch to the argument that god is like Santa except to say, in the most indignant tones, “Don’t MOCK GOD!!!”, and then flee the field. Atheists need to move backwards to the defeated arguments like nihilism so we don’t have to try and come up with anything new. Stop it guys! Stop it now! DON’T MOCK GOD!!!

The implications of atheism are not nihilism, they're responsibility. If you stop pushing the responsibility for your actions, and the credit, to made up devils and gods, and start owning them like an adult, you get up off your knees and start building a better place to live.

It's a pretty interesting article all in all, with a lot of points I agree with. But like many of these types of things, Haught mixes elements of truth with seculations of faith and tries to sell it as a package, a "if you agree with some, you much agree with all" kind of deal. No thanks.