I hoped this was a sly atheist commentary on the season, but I think I see Jesus glowing under there. But it does give me an idea for a nativity scene.
Goddamn, this is tiresome, just this headline:
Why “new atheists” are ignorant about God
That’s like a headline that says, “Why ‘new skeptics’ are ignorant about unicorns.”
It’s an interview with theologian John Haught about how new atheists haven’t earned the right to be atheists or something, because I dunno, they didn’t martyr themselves by swimming in religion before deciding it’s crap. Which, to my mind, is a sign of progress. I shouldn’t have to sink myself neck-deep in nonsense to have the right to call it nonsense. Do I have to study unicorn lore up and down before I get to say unicorns don’t exist?
Your forthcoming book, “God and the New Atheism,” is a critique of Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris. You claim that they are pale imitations of great atheists like Nietzsche, Camus and Sartre. What are they missing?
The only thing new in the so-called new atheism is the sense that we should not tolerate faith because, by doing so, we open people’s minds to any crazy idea — including dangerous ideas like those that led to 9/11. In every other respect, this atheism is similar to the secular humanism of the modern period, which said that faith is incompatible with science, that religion and belief in God are bad for morality, and that theology should be purged from culture and academic life. These are not new ideas. But there were atheists in the past who were much more theologically educated than these. My chief objection to the new atheists is that they are almost completely ignorant of what’s going on in the world of theology. They talk about the most fundamentalist and extremist versions of faith, and they hold these up as though they’re the normative, central core of faith. And they miss so many things. They miss the moral core of Judaism and Christianity — the theme of social justice, which takes those who are marginalized and brings them to the center of society. They give us an extreme caricature of faith and religion.
You know why critics of religion were awash in religion in the past? They didn’t have a choice. The fact that atheism is a relatively new thing in Western history speaks volumes about the levels of control the church had over human thought and discourse, the amount of punishment a person would face for speaking up about their doubts. If the unicorn cabal had nearly the same power and authority, we’d all be chastened day in and day out this day about how it’s “intolerant” not to nod condescendingly at the pitiful unicorn believers rather than state openly that it’s all nonsense. The right to criticize the church boldly, and without having to caveat it to death by “earning” the right is a victory for freedom and tolerance and all that great progressive stuff.
To point to a handful of liberal churches that exist in the here and now and ignore the fact that people were literally scared for their lives, their freedom, and their careers to speak out against the great racket that is faith for the past couple thousands of years is to commit the sin of historical ignorance that he’s accusing the “new atheists” of. The dichotomy between fundamentalist and non-fundamentalist only exists now because religion has lost so much power and control over people. Liberal churches are the ones that have reached a compromise position—they cede the right to certain amounts of political power in order to be acceptable enough in an enlightened, secular society to continue existing. As people have increasing amounts of power to vote against churches with their feet, the liberal churches are making more and more concessions. I agree that new atheists could spend more time analyzing this phenomenon and theorizing if the end game for the liberal church phenomenon is to concede itself out of existence, or if there will always be a shell of a church to satisfy basic ritualistic needs of a community.
But I’m sick to death of the whine about new atheists pointing to the fundamentalists. It’s actually quite simple why the fundamentalists are important, and it’s because they were quite likely an inevitable result of the increasing loss of church power to secularism. Fundamentalists are disgusted with liberal churches, who they see as a bunch of pussies who have given up what’s really important about religion (power) in a bid to continue existing. Which strikes the fundamentalists as no different than running up the white flag. What’s the point of religion, if not to have an unquestionable, unproveable authority to invoke to force your will on everyone else? The great offense of the new atheists in focusing on fundamentalists is that they’re saying, in essence, the fundies have a point. The heavy fist of the great patriarchal god of the Jews, the Christians, and the Muslims ceases to make sense if you’re not willing to put it to use for political purposes. The reason that a lot of us are suspicious of the “moderates” of these monotheistic traditions is that they’re merely distancing themselves away from the central theme of their various religions, but they haven’t abandoned it completely. Sure, they’re amendable to the realities of a secular society by and large, but can they be trusted to always put freedom and tolerance before their religion? Considering how many liberal Christians whine about the need for the Democrats to relinquish their investment in protecting women’s reproductive rights or investing in the growing pro-gay voting bloc, the answer is all too often a big, fat “No.”
Now, I think there’s a reasonable criticism to be aimed at the “new atheists” for a failure of imagination. It’s possible, for instance, that some Eastern religions have been compatible with modern society in a way that the big monotheistic three have not. It doesn’t hurt that some of these traditions are basically atheistic or at least have a different view of gods and power. Learning about the diversity of religions out there might temper some “new atheist” arguments, at least when it comes to imagining what would be required for a truly secular and progressive society to exist. But that point is basically beside the point of this whine about Nietzsche, Camus, and Sartre, who were arguing in the same monotheistic framework as Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens.*
By the way, my point about how the atheists that Haught admires lived in a world where there were social pressures against atheism that have faded to a large extent makes this quote really creepy:
Yes, they did. And they thought it would take tremendous courage to be an atheist. Sartre himself said atheism is an extremely cruel affair. He was implying that most people wouldn’t be able to look it squarely in the face. And my own belief is they themselves didn’t either.
The longing for a time when atheism was scary is no joke. Haught’s trying to convince himself that atheists in the past were maybe a little more mealy-mouthed because they “knew” deep down in their colons that god is very pissy at the atheists, but I’d say that the more visceral understandings that people in the past had of church power and the way it could destroy—and their thorough understanding of the past penalties of death and torture for heresy—probably had a lot to do with it. It’s true that if you think long and hard about what would happen to heretics if the churches weren’t kept in check by secular society, it would put a little fear into your heart. I wouldn’t conflate that with fear of god, but more the fear of those who don’t like having their beliefs questioned. I bet if Haught wanted to find himself some modern atheists that express the proper levels of fear, he’d have some luck rooting around a theocratic nation like Iran.
Nietzsche, Sartre and Camus eventually realized that nihilism is not a space within which we can live our lives.
Oh, two can play at that game. I’d say religion is far more nihilistic than atheism. Atheists believe that humans are enough, that our lives are worth something by themselves and that we have the power and freedom to invest value in ourselves and others. Religious people think humans are fundamentally small and weak and have no ability to invest in themselves and others without making up a Sky Fairy to pass out those judgments. It’s clear that the latter view—that humans are inconsequential without a make believe third party to render value onto us—is by far the more nihilistic.
*—shudder—-
321 Responses to “Nuh-uh, you’re the nihilist!”
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Methinks that the so-called “new atheists” (translation: atheists who don’t indulge in suitably grovelling deferene to faith) are starting to get under the skin of theists. A good sign that the uppity peasants are starting to actually bother the aristocracy is when the latter gets more dismissive and tense in its language.
Of course, Haught can’t hold a candle to the great Christians of the nineteenth century, either.
And if I have to know everything about Christianity to be an atheist, should Haught have to know everything about Islam to be a Christian?
They can’t help themselves. Slinging bullshit is all they know how to do, and it isn’t like reason is a theist’s best weapon.
I don’t think the “skeptic/unicorn” analogy is the most apt. I think this is more of a Zeus situation. Why should anyone believe in Christian mythology if they haven’t first immersed themselves in Greek mythology? Why monotheism instead of polytheism? The fact is, I never understood why monotheists always crowed about how their mythology was so much better and made so much more sense than polytheism. There’s this attitude of “Wow, when they finally realized there was one mythical god instead of many mythical gods, it was so brilliant!” It makes no sense at all.
No, these new religionists don’t deserve to be monotheistic until they have sacrificed a cock to Asclepius.
Got this from PZ:
Churchgoers should look at themselves first before asking others to act with dignity and civility - Briggs
The best bit:
“The good news for religious groups: People who go to church regularly were less likely to be prejudiced, Pyle said. The bad news is people with no religious affiliation were also much less likely to be prejudiced than individuals showing modest levels of commitment to their faith, those who attend services monthly or less.”
Exactly how are we ignorant of religion when they admit themselves to being exactly what we say they are - bigots.
A good post, Amanda, and it produces a number of thoughts.
..>> I think that DBK is spot on with the mono/poly analogy.
..>> If one concedes the notion that we are living in an era of struggle between secularism and atheism then it is easy to see why the so-called moderate monotheists are not exceptionally liked or respected by either side. Both sides see them at best as useful idiots for the opposition and at worst as quislings.
…>> Anybody who follows a faith wherein a god will on His Judgment Day destroy everything and everyone of all his creations, good or evil, ugly or beautiful (just to say “I WIN!”, after all) is in no position to call anybody else nihilist.
The term “New Atheist” was coined by some fucking asshole as a way to make it sound like our disbelief is just some rebellious phase, like Sophmore Lesbians or some such shit.
And for the record, some of us “New” Atheists have studied religion. I spent years reading every book I could get my hands on, trying to find a form that would allow me to express my faith. It took me years to realize I didn’t actually have any and was essentially looking for a matching third shoe to fit my nonexistent foot.
I’ve had conversations with a Franciscan monk who is a friend of my wife’s family in which he was impressed that I, an atheist, knew more about Catholic theology and iconography than my wife’s catholic family. Yet, I haven’t studied enough religion to be able to reject it?
And like this asshole’s lack of scientific knowledge has ever stopped him form pontificating about evolution.
My favorite complaint is the one about how ‘new atheists’ don’t have the proper knowledge of theology. This is something Dawkins actually addressed in his book, I’m wondering if they were listening: We don’t need to have knowledge of your sophisticated theology, because the most sophisticated, complex theology in the world is still made the fuck up!
I mean, they just make this crap up out of thin air, and we’re supposed to waste brain space on it? I actually get along great with my religious friends, mostly because they aren’t telling me all the things I need to know before I can disagree with them.
Haught says: “The new atheists don’t want to think out the implications of a complete absence of deity.”
Ah, but for the new atheists, there’s no point to dwelling on the “implications” because it’s just life. I mean, I don’t need to waste time thinking about why chocolate isn’t blue–it just isn’t, it never has been, and it never will be. Missing the blueness has no point. (And the analogy’s not so great because there aren’t millions of people devoted to chocolate’s blueness–but in my life, blue chocolate and a deity are equally relevant.)
Haught seems to think atheists live in a world without hope. Hey, I have hope. Sometimes those hopes are dashed–will the U.S. and China really get cracking on the fight against global warming before it’s too late? But I have hope that human beings are innately good enough that, you know, atheists won’t slap me for sport. Haught sells people short if he thinks god is the only sensible reason to have any hope.
Keith, I think you might be an Old Atheist.
This whole “study the faith(s)” nonsense is just the theists’ transparent attempt to shift the argument from ground where they do not want to be and are terrified to be (”okay, prove that your god exists, or, in the alternative, provide me with some, any evidence that he does”) to ground where they need to be (”you don’t get to criticize or even question me because you haven’t passed your test on
The Lord of the Rings, no,The Complete Works of Jackie Collinsthe Bible! yet. So I Win!”).
Actually, atheists spend a good deal of time pondering that. Atheism implies growing up, no longer seeking answers from a mythical father figure. For lack of a better summary, atheism is the acceptance of the core fact of existence: Responsibility, a responsibility that can’t be buck-passed to a mythology. “[A]theists don’t want to think out the implications…”? Please. We’re the ones doing most of the thinking about ‘em. Theists spend much of their time assuming that He Will Make Things Right eventually.*cough* This fellow may want to make sure that his own side knows their theology before whining that other people don’t know it. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’ve noticed an awful lot of Christians, in particular, who have never actually read that whole book.
“The term “New Atheist” was coined by some fucking asshole as a way to make it sound like our disbelief is just some rebellious phase, like Sophmore Lesbians or some such shit.”
I imagine there is some difference between someone who arrived at their atheism after having gone through a religious phase and someone who is essentially naive to the idea that people ought to go around believing complex things about entities whose existence can’t be demonstrably proven.
For instance, the former will probably just look at a deeply religious person as if they’re being rather silly, while the latter will likely be tempted to recommend that they seek mental help as soon as possible.
Hmmm…if atheists aren’t getting their ideas of what religion is from studying theology, then where are they getting them from? Could it be possibly…observing the self-described pious practitioners of said religions and how they interact with the world?
No wonder atheism is on the rise. Practice what you preach or contribute to your own irrelevance.
Plus I like how the author implies that the old atheists that he professes to admire were actually full-of-shit closeted believers, ‘cause it’s too scaaaaary not to believe in god.
I’m less annoyed by the idea that believers think I’m going to burn in hell than I am by the weird belief they seem to have that atheists aren’t ACTUALLY atheists and are just trying to be rebellious or something. Believe it or not, we REALLY, HONESTLY, TRULY do not think there’s a higher power.
“What’s the point of religion, if not to have an unquestionable, unproveable authority to invoke to force your will on everyone else?”
I think it is important to distinguish between Christianity and Jesus here. True, the Christian church as an institution is guilty of some of the worst crimes of human history. But Jesus, whenever questioned about the “unquestionable” authority of the law would tell a parable that took neither side, much to the chagrin of the “religious” leaders of the day. This is the revolutionary side of Christ…the part that the right never emphasizes.
I consider myself to be a Christian Atheist. I don’t believe ANY of the supernatural (walking on water, Noah’s ark, etc.) events of the Bible (or any other book) actually happened. I doubt that there is a heaven or a hell in the conventional sense. But that doesn’t mean that they are useless. THese stories speak to the nature of humanity. I am a Christian because the message of hope over despair that Jesus taught is the guiding principal of my life.
The fundamentalists think that faith is meaningless unless one believes the Bible is an actual account of actual events. Some of my sister and brother atheists also feel that if the Bible is not a journalistic and scientific account of history than religion is meaningless. We often hear that something is a “myth,” meaning it is a silly story that has no consequence. I would argue that the myths that we human beings have created and told each other for thousands of years are what make us human. Religion and faith, at least for me, are not about belief in the supernatural. They are about how we can see the world in meaningful ways.
I may have missed this, but I think the “New Atheists” are so called because there was a very large and kinda organized expansion of “Free Thought” back in the 19th century. See Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism for some of the history of atheism in America. It’s a fascinating read and gives a good perspective on how close we came to continuing the Enlightenment ideals of the founders before being derailed, particularly by the fear of “godless” Communism. Much of the power of American churches came in with the fear of distinguishing ourselves from the commies. If they were without god, by god we’d be all about god.
The other element I want to perhaps nuance is the quote from Sartre:
Not having the crutch of a god to take credit for anything or a devil to take the blame IS frightening. Not having a god showing you the way means you have to make it all up yourself. Way too scary for many people to face.
This is my first time posting here but I’ve been reading your site faithfully ever since I first found it. I love the different perspectives on events and ideas that I don’t get elsewhere. I’ve found myself agreeing with most of what this site has said but this time I would like to respectfully disagree with some of the points raised here.
In the interest of full disclosure I view myself as religious although I have always questioned certain points of theology. I believe in a God, but I also don’t go around proselytizing and I’m most definitely not a wingnut (I don’t believe in hell, I believe in evolution, female preachers are the norm in my church, etc.) All this is basically leading up to say that if someone wants to try to convince me that my religion is not real, I would prefer that they at least understand my beliefs first. This stems from when I was younger and was confronted by people who disagreed with my pacifist stance but didn’t understand anything about it. If I engaged with them, I wasted more time explaining that their concept of pacifism was wrong than I did actually debating the issues.
I don’t know much about Haught and I have never heard the “new atheist” term before, but if any type of atheist wants to debate with me, they better respect me enough to know what I believe beforehand.
They miss the moral core of Judaism and Christianity — the theme of social justice, which takes those who are marginalized and brings them to the center of society. They give us an extreme caricature of faith and religion.
Actually, I applaud him for this very succinct description of the most prominent and visible religious leaders of the day.
Thanks for this post, Amanda. I came here straight from Salon because I was getting a headache from rolling my eyes so much reading this Haugh guy (and I only made it though the first page!). I was hoping you and the commenters would have the antidote, and you didn’t disappoint.
“It’s an interview with theologian John Haught about how new atheists haven’t earned the right to be atheists or something, because I dunno, they didn’t martyr themselves by swimming in religion before deciding it’s crap. Which, to my mind, is a sign of progress. I shouldn’t have to sink myself neck-deep in nonsense to have the right to call it nonsense. Do I have to study unicorn lore up and down before I get to say unicorns don’t exist?”
So, is it okay with John Haught that I did “swim” in religion for many years before deciding it was all bunk and rejecting it? Or does he have some other weaselly way to discount my views (and other people like me) in favor of plunging me back into the mindless voodoo of religion?
I’ve always looked at the difference between needing religion and accepting the non-existence of god(s) as being similar to the difference between being a child and an adult.
A child assumes someone will fix their problems if they are unable to do so. An adult may seek the help of others, but ultimately takes responsibility for their own life (as much as possible). A child is comforted by the (possible) existence of Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny, the Great Pumpkin, etc. An adult sees the acceptance of reality as being far more important than the maintenance of (comforting?) fantasies. A child cannot ultimately be held responsible for their actions because they are incapable of true understanding. An adult accepts the responsibility for their actions, good or bad, and suffers the consequences as they arise.
Being an adult is not necessarily fun. There is often a great deal of pain and heartache in the knowledge that you must ultimately depend on yourself and other (flawed) humans for “salvation”, and not pretend some supernatural being(s) is manipulating your life and relieving you of all responsibility.
Likewise, when shitty things happen to you and people you know and love, there’s no satan, or some other embodiment of evil to blame. Shitty things just happen.
All in all, I would much rather accept the reality of existence, warts and all, then engage in an illogical, unreasoned, self-contradictory, and hallucinatory belief in the supernatural.
But that’s just me…
argh.
as a feminist, i come to feminist blogs expecting a higher level of discourse, and not this nonsense. so disappointing.
first off, the salon headline is “the atheist delusion,” which is a clever pun on dawkins’ book.
secondly, the subheadline asks why “new atheists” are “ignorant about RELIGION.” this is not the same thing as God, phenomenologically speaking, even linguistically speaking. anyone who has done reading in philosophy of religion (you know, by those no-names, like Kant, Hume, Hegel, etc.) knows that when you hit the beginning of modern theology in Schleiermacher’s ON RELIGION, there comes a discursive centering on religion and not God. these are not the same things.
Also, ever since the mid-20th century, the studies of theology and religion are not the same things either. Religious studies is an inter-disciplinary filed involving history, literature, sociology, anthropology, philosophy and more. one would think such distinguished academics and intellectuals would know something of the academy.
Now, it is for damn sure that you don’t need to enter into a 5-year long seminar on christian theology to be an atheist. this is an orientation of belief that requires no adherence to theological inquiry. even considering that one should engage in such a project implies that christianity has an objective view on God or some such, which is hugely problematic.
However, if one is going to write about RELIGION, as a social, cultural, political, discursive and aesthetic phenomenon… it probably would help to know something about what you’re writing… about. i mean, right? doesn’t this seem obvious? dawkins, harris, hitchens and dennet have no academic background in what they’re attacking. it’s absurd that you’re taking them seriously.
Now, if they provide reasonable arguments about belief in God as a purely (il)logical move, then fine.
But they are not critics of religion if they know jack shit about it.
Not to enter into a detailed critique, but suffice it to say that they, methodologically speaking, have bought into the (christian) fundamentalist program of “biblical faith” and scriptural literalism and inerrancy. this methodological approach is as problematic for the believers as it is for the atheists. they totally ignore the importance of the interpretive community. THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT FOR FEMINISM, the communal interpretation of texts.
What they write, it’s actually offensive in its simplicity and stupidity. they think that texts speak for themselves and no religions have changed since the time of the Bible. this claim in itself is just stupid. when was the bible redacted? who put it together? what sort of political claims did they have in mind? how are the texts used today? how is the world different now from then?
none of these questions are asked by the “nu-atheists.”
And this is their problem.
I don’t ask them (or you, Amanda) to know Xian theology (esp. since I am a Jew), since clearly it cannot provide objective info on God (biased claim!), but they should know something about how to study religion. then they should actually study religion. THEN they should write about it.
“Not having the crutch of a god to take credit for anything or a devil to take the blame IS frightening. Not having a god showing you the way means you have to make it all up yourself. Way too scary for many people to face.”
It’s really not accurate to state this as a universal truth.
I think this can be true for some, but I wouldn’t say it’s generally true for atheists. For people in transition, those who have felt there is a god or a devil it might be frightening to let go of that. But for people who were raised atheist or those who never felt that to be true in the first place it’s a non issue. Personally, I find it liberating. As a child the idea that there was a god watching every move I made was much more terrifying.
also, what is disturbing to me is the seeming knee-jerk embrace of these white men, who, almost to a T, subscribe to a classically liberal (read: libertarian) political program.
you know what was my favorite part of “the end of faith?”
the part at the end when harris defended the use of torture, especially against brown muslims.
how tolerant!
what a free thinker!
the “Free-Thinkers” are part and parcel with a political/philosophical program that seeks to champion the Enlightenment and reject the revolutionary critiques of the postmoderns.
and as a generally 3rd wave feminist site, i am especially surprised that this move is replicated here.
1) Believe what you want. Or don’t believe what you want.
2) Shut up about it.
3) Don’t pick low-hanging fruit.
4) Happy Holidays.
Cool. When do we take off our clothes?I’d say that the more visceral understandings that people in the past had of church power and the way it could destroy—and their thorough understanding of the past penalties of death and torture for heresy—probably had a lot to do with it.
In Nietzsche’s time, and to a much greater extent in Camus’s and Sartre’s, the threat was much more like what it is today: That of social ostracism and eviction from formal political processes. Which kind of brings up the one potentially healthy by-product (or, maybe, unspoken reason for the existence) of religion: social cohesion. Unfortunately, the overwhelming tendency in the “big three” abrahamic monotheist religions that dominate Western civilization (tho much less so in Judaism) is toward cohesion through obedience to powerful and unaccountable leaders. Let’s face it: Germany had some real social cohesion too between, say, 1937 and 1943.
What was even more frightening to Sartre and Nietzsche was the social stigma that came with being an atheist in their time. Public Atheists like Voltaire were sentenced to house arrest. Nietzsche was considered a rascal and a corrupting influence. Sartre was someone to be feared because he might contaminate you with weird, French ideas about Being and Nothing. Hell, they killed Socrates because he wouldn’t sacrifice in the temple like a good little Greek.
Up until about 30 years ago, being a publicly avowed atheist meant becoming a social pariah at best. Before the seventeenth century, it was a death sentence. So yeah, maybe some of the old school Atheists were a tad weary, but only because there was always the concern that Theists would string them up and light them on fire.
And my point about “New” Atheism was that it isn’t new. Some of us looked into religion for a while before realizing it was all fairy tales and wishful thinking, others went with their intuition and rejected it at face value, saving themselves the time and mental gymnastics required to parse some of the more surreal theology out there.
But the overall point remains the same, however you get there: once you are outside of the religious mindset, it all looks like Scientology.
There is a world of difference between having not an academic background in something and knowing “jack shit” about it, invisible_hand. One can be knowledgeable — even damn-near omniscient — about a topic without having gone near a Ph.D. review committee. Your argument about these critics of religion is pretty much a parallel to the article at issue, in that it rests on the false premise of “you didn’t study X the way you Should Have! No opinion allowed for you! Nyah-nyah nyah-nyah nyaaaaah-nyaaaah!”.There are quite a few academics who post here and I don’t think any of them have been so paralytically stupid as to assert that the lack of a specific academic focus on a given topic is synonymous with being ignorant on the topic.
I tend to be a bit critical of Dawkins, Harris, and particularly Hitchens. That said, I think the complaint that atheists don’t know theology is just silly. I’d similarly say that Damon Linker over at TNR has a better critique of Htichens et al but also overreaches.
Specifically, I think this statement by Linker is bull:
So promoting your beliefs to others is illiberal now? That’s nuts.
Regardless, those critiques are a transparent attempt to establish myself as not a concern troll when I ask this question:
How open are you to alliances with liberal churches willing to treat atheists (and women and homosexuals) with respect? That is to say, those that condemn the Romney speech and other slurs against the moral character of those who reject faith. I don’t see anything in the above entry that rejects the possibility of such an alliance. However, I tend to read Harris and Hitchens as rejecting the possibility of such an alliance as they view liberal churches as enablers of fundamentalists. (Obviously you have many breaks with Hitchens, I’m just wondering if this is one of the areas where you break).
invisble_hand siad:
dawkins, harris, hitchens and dennet have no academic background in what they’re attacking. it’s absurd that you’re taking them seriously.
Now, if they provide reasonable arguments about belief in God as a purely (il)logical move, then fine.
But they are not critics of religion if they know jack shit about it.
Have you read any of the books by these authors? I’m guessing not, since if you had you’d have read the parts of their books were they address these exact claims and shoot them the fuck down.
Dawkins’ book, as an example, is called The God Delusion, not the Religion Delusion. He systematically confronts the belief in God and says very little about religion. But when he does talk about these systems of belief, he does so from the perspective of a secular academic, citing sources and backing up his argument with the latest available data and research.
And if you’re upset that all these books were written by people with penises, write your own! I’m sure a feminist critique of Theism would be interesting. However, dismissing ideas simply because the authors are male is merely reactionary.
I think the problem may be that parents and larger society are no longer indoctrinating children on the same massive scale they once were. This results in kids rejecting the God thing wholesale before they can have a chance to be scared witless by visions of hell.
In other words, they lost their non-compete agreement. The sky fairy thing has no cred with da kids anymore.
Speaking of unicorns…“There are quite a few academics who post here and I don’t think any of them have been so paralytically stupid as to assert that the lack of a specific academic focus on a given topic is synonymous with being ignorant on the topic.”
How come there’s no respect for the autodidact? Especially when it comes to religion?
Given the paucity of actual information generally available to the common believer (who is usually just told what to believe and think), self-study is about the only way you can ever get at the real core of most religious belief systems…
Seeker wrote:
“If one concedes the notion that we are living in an era of struggle between secularism and atheism then it is easy to see why the so-called moderate monotheists are not exceptionally liked or respected by either side. Both sides see them at best as useful idiots for the opposition and at worst as quislings.”
As an atheist, I see the religious believers who don’t want to legislate their beliefs and don’t go around proselytizing me as…well…people. If they let live, then I don’t view them through the prism of their religious beliefs at all. I see your point about “an era of struggle”, which makes your statement more valid, but religious believers are far more likely to believe we are engaged in such a struggle than atheists, who are generally far less inclined to engage in wars of any kind, be it a War on Christmas or a War of Religion v Secularism or any of that stuff.
And to add to what Keith said about his own studies, I took a theology class for each of four years while in high school and also had five years of Hebrew school as a child and studied Buddhism in college. I hope that qualifies me to be an “old atheist”. I’d hate to lose my atheist street cred. And I hope John Haught gave Zeus and Hera and Athena and Apollo and company a good deal of consideration or he’s just one of these “new theists” and therefore not worthy of the title of “theist” at all.
Well that settles it, other than the many cases in which it doesn’t. Trust me, trust me trust me trust me, there are oodles upon oodles of believers out there, myself included, who follow the Big 4 I have listed above, who can separate spiritual from pragmatic as easy as making a sandwich. Truly, our God is not one of any state, for whom only a singular relationship is the key to any relevant degree of spirituality. I mean, they were to make Jesus a king and he told them to shove that crown somewhere else. That’s evidence enough for me that my own God bidness has no bidness with anyone else.
I go to church because it reminds me to care for people who have less, to be fortunate for the things I have, and to apologize to myself and to the world for my shortcomings. That I need religion for this makes me a unicorn-loving dumn dumn, I guess. I can live with that, as long as the ends are the ends.
Seeker6079:
Okay, I’ll back that up to church-goers. Probably no real church fully respects any other church let alone atheists.
Think a little bit harder about the sociology of atheism before saying things like this. “The peasants” in this case are disproportionately affluent, educated white men. I’m not denying that atheists are discriminated against in some spheres, particularly politics, but the discrimination is not very systematic. People who work in the national media and financial establishments are almost entirely atheist or at least indifferent to religion. Atheists lack political power, but as a group we have, on average, an enormous amount of cultural capital.
Regarding the substance of the post, you don’t need to understand religion to reject the truth of its foundational claims, but you do in order to make blanket pronouncements about its sociology. You can’t just say “The point of religion is political control,” full stop.
Best line of the day.In the event that Haught might need my credentials: I was raised a Roman Catholic. In Italy. I think that’s enough swimming in religion to grant me the privilege of deciding that it’s all bullshit.
I’m an atheist and I have been an atheist since I was 14. I almost went through an exorcism because of my stated lack of belief in god. Fortunately, the priest my family dragged me to determined that while, yes, I was possessed by some demon, he really couldn’t do anything about it.
Do I need to fill out a form to prove I don’t believe in god? Take a lie detector test? Truth serum? Possibly a little torture?
The new atheists don’t want to think out the implications of a complete absence of deity.
On the contrary, sir, I have much pondered such an implication. Humans are in control of their own destiny, and our grand purpose it to live on this tiny grain of dust we call Earth. The Universe is immense, wonderful, and mysterious, and we can never hope to understand it all. What we can do is live. Live well, be happy, find some form of fulfillment. That’s all there is to it, and I much prefer it to a big bearded nanny in the sky magnanimously giving me life so I could worship him.
As an atheist who WAS neck deep in shit for 20+ years, I don’t recommend it to anyone.
I married an atheist. Huge Dawkins fan. Went a half-year quoting The God Delusion to me.
Neighhhh.
seeker6079: (”you don’t get to criticize or even question me because you haven’t passed your test on
The Lord of the Rings, no,The Complete Works of Jackie Collinsthe Bible! yet. So I Win!”).Good point. What that shift does is to move the debate from the religious sphere to one of art criticism.
I have to admit that people judging the literary merits or the lack thereof of books that they know nothing about peeves me. So everyone wishing to debate whether the Bible is great literature or just hackwork by a bunch of Gilgamesh epos fanboys that make the Harmonians look sane should better have read that Bible.
But that’s a completely different discussion than if it is true, or relevant. The most awfully written 4th grader’s “What I did on my holiday” can be completely true, while, say, “Don Quixote” is completly fictionous. And you do not have to actually read the book to know whether it’s truth, lies or fiction.
preying mantis: I imagine there is some difference between someone who arrived at their atheism after having gone through a religious phase and someone who is essentially naive to the idea that people ought to go around believing complex things about entities whose existence can’t be demonstrably proven.
I grew up knowing that people used to travel on horseback and believe in God, but that these days we had cars and trains and knew where the world was coming from — but just as riding was fun, telling stories about what god did was fun.
I still haven’t fully groked that there are people who really believe. Deep down I still feel that they are just method acting.
Invisible hand, what the hell are you talking about?
Oh, well. Never mind. Your posts were kind of unorganized and tl;dr, so I didn’t try to make sense of them. I’ll just disagree now.
I wrote a long and winding rant about being an ass and defending religion from one of the poor pathetic believers, but it turned into something half apologia, half personal credo, and half crap, since I don’t get enough sleep these days. If you really wanna read it, it’s going to my blog.
Just to sum up, I agree with rmj at Adventus, that many atheists are attacking parodies of religion and theology, rather than addressing the substance. There may be a refusal to admit there’s any substance there. I’ll sorta kinda talk about that at my place, too.
I don’t ask that you share my faith. I don’t ask that you “respect my beliefs”(empty phrase that it is). I ask that you respect me as a human being enough to not be an ass about my having them. That’s all I really have to say.
Oh, and PS, at least one liberal Christian would raise holy hell if the Dems threw the gays or the women under the bus. Just sayin’.
invisible_hand: you know what was my favorite part of “the end of faith?”
the part at the end when harris defended the use of torture, especially against brown muslims.
Just because someone is an atheist doesn’t mean they can’t be an asshole.
Yikes. This might be the distinguishin feature of “new atheism,” that it’s wrapped up in this nasty materialist-rationalist idea of Progress.
Scott the obscure: many atheists are attacking parodies of religion and theology, rather than addressing the substance
Many vocal religious leaders promote a parody of religion and theology.
Amanda, your comment reminds me of a British comedy program I saw once when I was vacationing in Europe. The comedian said something like this: “There are two approaches you can take to the Bible. You can study it carefully, and pronounce it crap. Or you can not study it, and pronounce it crap anyway. I’ve chosen the second course. Saves a lot of time.” After I stopped laughing, I was amazed. I couldn’t imagine such a sentiment being expressed on TV in the U.S., where religion must always be treated respectfully, and atheists are treated as nuts. If you don’t believe that you have an invisible friend, you’re crazy!
Brendan, that it’s wrapped up in this nasty materialist-rationalist idea of Progress.
When you walk to school every day past the place where the duchess used to have women burned as witches, you develop a tendency to see rationalism as a Very Good Thing.
Brendan, your argument about just how common and influential atheists are in the USA would be more believable if you, in your turn, had ceased lecturing me for a minute and noticed that actually admitting you are an atheist is the kiss of death for a career in elected office. (There is, what, one currently admitted atheist in the entire US Congress?) I would argue that any viewpoint so reviled in political discourse as to render any candidate terrified to even admit subscribing to it cannot be considered culturally or sociologically dominant in any way.
And, sociologically speaking, when was the last time you heard a person of faith have to show deference and courtesy to the concept of atheism when discussing faith? That never happens, but the opposite is certainly true. Indeed, in a society where the starting point on secularism vs. theism is that the secularists and atheists have to do a verbal kowtow to the worthiness of their opponents’ belief without being entitled to one in return pretty much knocks your cultural capital argument for six. (Further, in a country like America — where cultural power is intimately tied into political power — your notion that being culturally in charge [which we are not] when theists hold all the reins of political power is a non-starter.)
And by the way:
You wanna back that one up?The problem with Theology in general is that it is not complex, it is generally based on very simple principles. The reason that the religious claim it is complex is the same reason that your average stoner thinks that his poetry is deep, because of an altered state of mind.
Any time I have pointed out problems with religious philosophies, I have been told that I just need to have faith… that means that I need to enter into a religious mindset and alter my perceptions through the use of religion in order to understand it.
This is something that I, Dawkins, Hitchzo the clown, and all the other “New” Atheists are not willing to do, very simply because it makes no sense.
But my poetry totally kicks ass.
As a sweeping statement, I find that a bit absurd, and more, it really reinforces the whole point of the thread.
Disclaimer: I am not an atheist.
I would agree that if someone is going to write a more or less scholarly piece (or even have stated opinons) trying to pick apart specific theological points, then it behooves them to know what they are talking about.
That’s the whole straw man idea - inventing something you decide someone else believes, then arguing against the made up stuff rather than against their actual beliefs.
It is entirely another thing - and Amanda’s primary point, if I got it right, to say that the entire discussion is pointless because you don’t believe in any of it. People saying that have no responsibility whatsoever to study the material.
It is the difference between, say, diving into the argument over whether Kirk or Picard was a better starship captain, and saying that you have no opinion because you don’t care to watch Star Trek.
Insisting on discussion atheism in terms of theoligical points is absurd on its face, for exactly the same reason that quoting the Bible in an argument for Biblical literalcy is absurd.
Religious people need to deal with the fact that the justification for that ended with the Inquisition and its ability to just burn the non-believers. They have to learn to stop treating atheists like heretics. It is not heretical to disagree from the outside. It is just disagreeing. And it puts the responsibility for proof back where it belongs - with the believer
It’s very simple.
If it looks like shit, smells like shit, and tastes like shit, it’s shit. I decided a long time ago to stop asking for the sampler platter.
Scott the Obscure: I don’t ask that you share my faith. I don’t ask that you “respect my beliefs”(empty phrase that it is). I ask that you respect me as a human being enough to not be an ass about my having them. That’s all I really have to say.
Sweet pea, as long as you respect me enough not to use your religion to legislate my rights as a human being, I have no problem with that.
I don’t think it’s others’ beliefs that are a problem for most of us–just those who want to make their beliefs everyone’s beliefs, to the detriment of rationality and freedom. For instance, say, trying to change education credentials in a very large state..? That’s where a helpful belief and comforting idea becomes a huge dangerous weapon.
For a (believing, one assumes) theologian to be complaining that atheists aren’t engaged with the details of christian theology seems to me a little bit like a convenant-marriage advocate complaining that lesbians don’t spend all their time reading up on men. From a theological/philosophical point of view, it just makes no sense: if there ain’t no god, then no spiritual/philosophical purpose is going to be served by studying all the myths people have made up about him/her/it.
I think this is actually an important trend: atheists who haven’t left any church/temple/whatever, but who have never had one in the first place. There’s a certain loss (you wouldn’t have The Amber Spyglass if Pullman weren’t a Church of England atheist) but also a tremendous gain in an atheism that’s (relatively) free from reaction.
The stuff about ethics and moderate churches and so forth is interesting from a sociological/psychological point of view, but Haught is stupid to make that argument as a theologist. Atheists have never argued that god doesn’t exist because people claiming to be disciples of god have acted like thoroughgoing assholes throughout history. That’s an argument against certain churches, not against the existence of a deity.
I’ve always looked at the difference between needing religion and accepting the non-existence of god(s) as being similar to the difference between being a child and an adult.
Then you’ve obviously never familiarized yourself with god concepts in which the believer asks for help growing up and taking responsibility for his/herself. Or god concepts which posit the “higher power” as more of a “collective higher mind” than a “sky fairy.”
I’m not, mind you, saying everyone needs this, not even close. And I think the concept of the original article — that no one has the “right” to be an atheist unless they’ve done an are-you-there-god-it’s-me-margaret type of “spiritual search” — is just as stupid as saying nobody could possibly be gay unless they’ve slept with the opposite sex first to make sure they didn’t like it. Salon just likes to bait people and get as many page hits as possible anymore; I figure “a blushing defense of the John Birch Society” isn’t far down the road for them.
But as a 12-stepper who would probably be out on the street somewhere if not for her program — which does include asking a Higher Power for guidance, since “my own best thinking” was what got me to rock frigging bottom — I completely object to this idea that only atheists are adults and anyone who believes in any kind of higher power is a helpless child waiting to be “rescued.” If I still believed that, if I refused to get any kind of help lest I be taunted by the kind of smug atheists who would roast me on a spit for “refusing to grow up” when I desperately wanted to do so and simply did not know how, I’d never have changed in any material way. Everyone’s got their own path, you know? I would never, ever expect anyone to follow mine, because it’s mine. It’s not all black or white, it just isn’t.
P.S. I’m a Jew. And I wouldn’t belong to any church or temple (synagogues seem to have been forgotten in all of this) that didn’t respect nonbelievers, gays or feminists. Not for a nanosecond.
Yes, Meowser. As you said, your Higher Power is as YOU define it, and you don’t GET to tell other people in the group how to define theirs. It’s always “God as we understood him”, not “do it this way or you’ll burn burn burn”.
Like I said above, I, as an atheist, have no problem with believers unless they want to TELL ME what to do (or change laws that protect my freedom).
I think that’s part of the “adults and children” concept; you’re an adult who’s letting others choose their own way. There are believers out there who are still children and want to tattle and say “Ooooh, you’re gonna get it….”
MikeEss, I would argue that the autodidact is becoming a less and less respected species. It always amuses me to read the stories of 19th century amateur explorers and scientists who added countless libraries worth of knowledge to our culture. Many (most?) of them were autodidacts. Today, of course, the universities in question would send back their materials with a snippy little note, an application form to their undergraduate program and a demand for a $175 application fee.
I got a real laugh some years ago when I applied for admission to an MA program in history (on “advanced standing”) to a Canadian university. The admissions committee decided that my law degree, eleven years of practice, and thirty years of independent study in history (to the point where one respected professor candidly admitted that I could walk in and teach a class on my area of specialization) were worth exactly one year of undergraduate study as far as the U. was concerned. What made it very funny was that I had predicted exactly that result.
In many ways religions suffer from one of the key illnesses of universities: they cease to be about knowledge and start to morph into guilds. Religions add the rather poisonous flourish of only being about knowledge (or the Search for same) when they seek to highlight their own worth. If it is applied as a tool or weapon against them then the concept of knowledge and the Search are instantly dismissed and derided.
seeker,
Here is a CUNY study on religious demographics in America: http://www.gc.cuny.edu/faculty/research_briefs/aris/key_findings.htm It is not ideal for this discussion because it does not ask about atheism but about “outlook,” which may be secular or religious,and correlates it with ethnicity but not income. Interestingly, Asians are more likely than whites to identify as secular; if most of them would identify as atheists, then I was wrong to that extent. African-Americans comprise the least secular group; though of course race is not a perfect proxy for income, African-Americans have a significantly lower average income than white Americans.
You could probably arrive at better data if you combed through everything available at the U.S. census website. Notably, the about.com site on atheism concedes the point: http://atheism.about.com/od/excusingantiatheistbigotry/a/Privileged.htm I’m assuming that guy did his homework, because that site is huge.
The fact that atheists are, on average, socially privileged is not, of course, a criticism of atheism, but it is evidence that discrimination against atheists is not particularly systemic or widespread structurally.
Damn it, I could have sworn there was an ümläüt there. Now I have to return all these “System of a Down” CDs.
I can’t speak to the rest of the authors (Harris is dead to me since he fell for the ticking time bomb meme, Hitchens is dead to me since he thought the Iraq war was a damn fine idea, and I haven’t gotten around to reading anything by Dennett), but the central point of Dawkins’ writings isn’t that religion is bad, but rather that it’s wrong.Religion is fandom. If you imagine it that way, it makes a lot more sense. You have a small body of canon, a larger work of fanon, and tons of rabid adherents. While I don’t think anyone’s ever gotten stabbed over the everlasting “Kirk vs. Picard” debate, the idea is the same. Criticism can be pronounced on a fandom without reaching the same level of initiation into its mysteries as its most devout members. Criticism can most definitely be pronounced on the truth or falsity of the canon without becoming a fan in the first place.
This smells to me like a retread of the initial criticisms against The God Delusion–that Dawkins couldn’t possibly make a pronouncement on the likelihood of religious belief being true, because he didn’t know a heap of theology. The claim has apparently retreated into one that Dawkins can’t criticize the institution of religion unless he joins the cult himself. It’s still roughly as stupid.
I can do no better than to quote PZ Myers :
It is politically stupid to be an atheist without some understanding of the cultures of religions. Consider it “opposition research” if you will, but you simply won’t have a clue about the mindset of fellow Americans if you don’t bother to ascertain the outlines of what they believe, why they believe it, and how their religion functions in their lives.
You don’t have to LIKE their beliefs. You do have to take their beliefs into account when talking with them. And I am not just talking about the esoterica of theology, which really is secondary. I am talking about the developmental and cognitive psychology of religious believers. Are they authoritarian followers? Are they questioners who admit they don’t have all the answers? Are they the rare peaceful and accepting types who don’t try to dominate or have their surrogates (priests, God) dominate the lives of others? There’s a world of difference between a Jerry Falwell and an Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
Google Robert Altemeyer, “The Authoritarians”, for a free ebook on authoritarian psychology.
Google James Fowler, “The Stages of Faith”, for a summary of that book, frequently assigned in liberal seminaries, discussing styles and development of faith.
For analysis of right-wing religion trends, see www.talk2action.org .
If you want to read a fine history of American atheism, try Susan Jacoby, The Freethinkers.
Or skip the whole thing, if you aren’t interested in talking with or understanding people different from yourselves. It’s fine to be a subculturist who doesn’t have time for general-info reading.
I work hard for a raise. My God doesn’t care what I make.
My football team will win if they score more points. God doesn’t care about my football team.
Well that’s easy enough. Those who don’t provide a moving target, well, they don’t exist. Those who do, well, deserve our far-off mockery. In the meantiem, let’s talk to Ted Haggard for six hours. Win freakin win freakin win, baby.
Mercy me. What we’re saying here is, you know that ridiculous stereotype? Well it’s TRUE! And it’s TEH FUNNY! Yes, very enlightening, much in the same ways a Jonah Goldberg column is…”enlightening.”
Richard Dawkins is the Kansas State football of this general argument. A mind is a terrible thing to waste, but golly, that loooow-hanging peach over there is just…a peach.
er, “meantime.”
Only because those wussy pricks at the security desk keep taking my d’k tahg away. I tell them it’s for religious purposes but they never listen. Oppressive secularist bastards.
Huh?More generally, this Haught’s “atheism leads inevitably to despair” argument is just a different version of the “atheism leads inevitably to immorality” argument. In other words, wishful thinking on the part of believers, which is definitely not borne out by experience.
AMANDA:
This question assumes that moderates see freedom and tolerance as separate from and subordinate to their religious convictions. For some of them, freedom and tolerance are integral parts of their belief system.
They pay respect to their ancestors and use the ancient religious writings as a starting point for their understanding of God, but they don’t see religion as a static institution incapable of keeping pace with modern understanding.
The fundamentalists want for religion to be an unchanging establishment, but it isn’t. Even as Christianity followed from Judaism, and Islam from a combination of the two older faiths, so too will new belief systems evolve in the face of a greater understanding about our origins.
That isn’t a “watering down” of the older faiths; it’s evolution.
SEEKER:
I would have to agree with you.
“And they miss so many things. They miss the moral core of Judaism and Christianity — the theme of social justice, which takes those who are marginalized and brings them to the center of society. They give us an extreme caricature of faith and religion.”
This would be because they’re looking at the logical core of Judaism and Christianity - “Believe In The Big Sky Fairy Because Someone 2000 Years Ago Wrote A Book” - and finding it wanting.
No problems with social justice. Big problems with Big Sky Fairy.
Bitter Scribe- Kansas State football made a name for itself in the late-90s by playing an absolutely atrocious out-of-conference schedule. Not a new strategy, sure, but KSU proved that you can go from a horrible football program to one of the nation’s best based pretty much just on picking the right teams to play.
I don’t deny Dawkins has his points. In the fight against fundamentalism I’ll share the sword with him.
However, what he also has a lot of is skillfully-picked opponents. So that the fundamentalist shills get ample airtime, the ones in the middle get a few snide remarks, and the rest of us- for whom faith is nothing more than a means of loving and caring for the Earth and its inhabitants- get a load of nothing. Except for the occasional broad swipe that misses the mark on its way to self-congrats.
I too have a problem with “Big Sky Fairy.” But as a believer who questions, I’m a non-person to Dawkins.
“I shouldn’t have to sink myself neck-deep in nonsense to have the right to call it nonsense. Do I have to study unicorn lore up and down before I get to say unicorns don’t exist? ”
If you study the unicorn lore long enough it becomes apparent that they do, in fact, exist- just in a much less pretty and more rhino-like form than the cartoons show. I can’t fault anyone for being a non-beliver, and even as a kid I couldn’t take the Bible as 100% literal truth, but I’m not willing to say, for myself, that it is not descibing, however badly, a real thing.
I just don’t understand. It’s not as though the bible contains all sorts of profound wisdom. Seriously. And it’s not as though it’s actually, you know, plausible, especially if you’re willing to reject equally implausible stories from other religions. There’s really no good reason to accept it.
Truth value? Very little, if any.
Oh, I don’t think a cranky Brit is your biggest problem. You’re a non-person to the vast majority of faithy types in this country; perhaps you’d like to start criticizing people for praying for a raise, or for that weird mole not to be cancer, or for victory for their favorite team, since these are all caricatures of your oh-so-modern faith that do nothing but make you the target of ridicule-by-association, right?Oh trust me. I do.
Is there any reason- any reason whatsoever- why the debate over faith has to be peppered with this sort of mockery? What point does this serve?
Those who aim to incorrectly ridicule by association should be held at fault for their error. Ain’t my bag.
I don’t think that’s what critics crying that Dawkins doesn’t share their fandom are complaining about. (I read The Authoritarians, by the way–good stuff.) Learning that all fundamentalisms seem to share certain traits (unchanging doctrine, contempt for women) doesn’t have much to do with learning the very important differences between the number of thorns on Jesus’s crown as described by the Reformation of 1811 and the Reformation of 1824.Of course it’s important to learn about religion, about why people believe what they do. One might wish that Christians would do the same for atheists, even. But, I say again, the criticism that is made against the current wave of atheist writers is of the defensive sort, claiming either that you can’t touch me unless you reach level fifty in my fandom, safe zone times infinity, or that my faith isn’t like the cartoon version you’re describing. (More about that when I reply to D.N. Nation.)
(intermission)
also, what is disturbing to me is the seeming knee-jerk embrace of these white men, who, almost to a T, subscribe to a classically liberal (read: libertarian) political program
This strikes me as classic all-or-nothing thinking:
Amanda’s post criticized the concept of the “new atheist” particularly as it compared them the “old atheists” who were too scared to say anything. She complains that theologians insist on controlling the terms of the debate between theism and atheism, and says that this is unreasonable.
She doesn’t actually argue in support of those white men, and in fact points out what she considers reasonable criticisms of them. She objected to the form of the critique, which is completely different from supporting the people who were critiqued.
But in the oh-so-typical good/bad, us/them, black/white thought patterns of monotheists, anyone who isn’t 100% for us is automatically 100% against us and therefore 100% for our enemies. /snark
Yes, I’m exagerrating there, but that mindset is what gives us public discourse along the lines of “If you don’t want to torture people, then you support the terrorists!” And, honestly, as a recovering Cathoholic, I’ve seen that mindset do horrendous damage to people and lead people to do horrendous harm to others.
I’m a militant atheist who doesn’t care much for Dawkins, but D.N., I don’t think you understand the arguments.
There’s one line of argument that says religion has been the vehicle for a great deal of suffering and continues to be. Now, you might say that YOUR religion is a good one that doesn’t cause suffering. Great. The problem, though, is that faith-claims are uniquely impervious to argument. The justifications for the religious believer’s actions, whether good or bad, are unintelligible.
So if I say that, today, I am going to fight for justice because God Wants it, we can all be thankful for my choice. But if tomorrow I say that God Wants me to hate gays or blow up a building, we’re terrified. But, and here’s the important part, the justification is the same.
Atheists don’t care that your religion is “good” or kind or loving. It’s accidental as far as anyone can tell because your justification, God Wants, is immune to reasoned discourse.
The other line of argument is that the arguments for the existence of this God fellow all fail. I’ll spare us all rehashing them, but atheists wouldn’t be atheists if we thought they worked.
The upshot of all of this is that it doesn’t matter which theistic religion is criticized if they share–as they necessarily do–an acceptance of faith claims as justifications and believe in God.
We get that some religions preach that God Wants the whole cabinet of progressive virtues. Nobody is claiming that religious people can’t be liberals
We just think they have terrible and unreliable justifications for it, just like conservatives, invoking the exact same justifications, have terrible reasons for hating gays.
Your god isn’t the same one that a lot of people also calling themselves Christians worship. One might even say a majority of Christians. We don’t have to guess about this–there are statistics. (Apparently most folks’ god doesn’t answer prayers for little stuff, but only for the really important things.) It would be a cheap shot if it weren’t the case, as I pointed out before, that your point of view is an insignificant minority, and therefore not particularly representative of modern Christian belief. So, you’re saying that the concept of people praying as though it’s a magic slot machine in the sky is a stereotype, and that it’s not representative of the way the faith is practiced. Again, this is manifestly not the case. It also seems that nobody, in this sort of discussion, cops to the Sky Fairy view, and berates people for being so gosh-darned mean.It seems that the conclusion one could draw from this is that the vast majority of Christians treat god as a Sky Fairy when nobody’s looking, but fall back to the Ineffable Symbol of Love or what-have-you when a critical eye is turned. Now, I’m not saying that you do (though it’s possible); I’m saying that the view I’ve described seems to legitimately represent the overwhelming majority of members of the faith to which you’ve tacked yourself. If it doesn’t describe you, then fine, have a cookie. I’m not arguing against you personally, but against the institution you’ve chosen to represent.
This is like pro-lifers claiming that they’re not misogynist. Sure, if you squint like mad, there’s probably one or two out there. (I think Hugo Schwyzer had some kind of reasoning that was reasonably well-accepted by folks around here, but I could be wrong.) But the movement as a whole is driven by the kind of juvenile hatred of women that pro-lifers rabidly deny. This isn’t really a matter that’s up for debate–there are charts, and all.
Interesting, because what I’m getting from the “stuffy white guys” is something along the lines of “you Muslims just won’t criticize the terrorists on your side!”.
Moronic thinking seeps everywhere, I fear.
MAJEFF:
Actually, there’s all kinds of great stuff in the Bible – and you don’t even have to look very hard for it. Take the Book of Ruth, for example: it’s the tale of two widows, one of whom left her homeland to join her impoverished mother-in-law on a journey back to Bethlehem. 3000 years ago, when these events (or some approximation of them) were supposed to have taken place, widows without living sons were among the most helpless and invisible members of society.
The Book of Ruth contains, among other things, an outright condemnation of racism; a mandate to provide practical help for the poor; and a rebuttal to the tribalism condoned elsewhere in the Old Testament. Considering its age, that’s pretty damned amazing.
And there are other areas in which the Bible is unique in the kind of wisdom it offers.
The earliest Biblical legal codes were on par with other statutes held throughout the ancient Near and Middle East, except that the limitations on revenge were a bit unusual: “An eye for an eye” was one of the first statements around that counseled proportional justice.
Another example: The six-day work-week, which barred masters from forcing their servants to work seven days a week, was a direct result of the Genesis story.
GRENDEL:
If I were tacitly condoning something as stupid as “ridicule-by-association”, I wouldn’t be as smug as you are.
“(intermission)”
…why does the damn intermission music have to be so boring? And why does intermission last so long?…
So that’s it, eh? That’s the alpha and omega? Well, it’s definitively an argument-stopper, so I have only this to add:
I’ll always side with you anyway.
More like “you Muslims claim to be the same religion as the terrorists when you’re sucking up to them, and claim to be a completely unrelated group when you’re not”. The central point here is that you claim to be a Christian, but your concept of Christianity is alien to the vast majority of Christians in this country. You want to be Christian enough that you don’t offend anyone, but not so Christian that you have to be an intolerant jerk. But in doing so, you’re explicitly providing cover for the intolerant jerk contingent.Talk about a modern reading. It can’t contain an explicit condemnation of racism because the concept of race didn’t exist.
“Actually, there’s all kinds of great stuff in the Bible – and you don’t even have to look very hard for it.”
But what is in the jewish/christian bible that is truly unique? Virtually everything in there is available from other sources. If the bible had never existed, we would still have access to - and be influenced by - the philosophical underpinnings for everything “great” found in the bible…
we all believe things that aren’t true.
we ALL do.
and they’re things that cause us to harm others.
that’s what being a human being is all about, along with dealing with the fear of death by pretending it doesn’t exist, etc. etc.
the point of the matter is - how rigorously do we question everything we believe is true, every single day? every moment that we with great surety say “i know what’s true!” - do we honestly examine, “what personal stake to i hold in this being true? what if it wasn’t true? what would happen if i let go of needing it to be true?”
few of us can do this, or if we can, can do this consistently.
on tuesdays i’m an atheist. on thursdays i’m a gnostic. and the rest of the time, i just don’t fuckin’ know. and i’ve read a whole lot of books, man. a whole fuckin’ lot of books.
here’s what i do know:
other people are the only thing that matters. THAT should be enough religion for anyone. and if you tell yourself that, or if a voice in your head tells you that, it all amounts to the same thing.
my theology is fairly summed up by camus’ “The Plague”, in which an atheist and a man of the cloth fight side by side against evil and despair, and their faith or lack thereof didn’t matter.
keep fighting that good fight my friends -
See, MAJeff, this is why pointing out the good parts of the Bible misses the point. I don’t care if it preaches flowers and kittens for nine-tenths of its length. It’s still treated as absolutely capital-t True revelation, hardened by tradition and served with the voice of authority. This means the bad parts as well as the good.While you can claim that the Bible is all about hugs and tolerance, and that the haters are Doing It Wrong, they can claim with equal (possibly better) authority that you are Doing It Wrong. The real problem, in any case, is relying on tradition, authority and revelation as the greatest paths to truth.
I’m not condoning it. I’m pointing out that D.N. Nation has taken the label of Christian, despite practicing Christianity in a manner contrary to the vast majority of folks today. Ridiculing that practice of the vast majority is bound to get some ridicule on people who take up the same name. That’s not my problem; it’s Nation’s.Do I seem smug? Could you point out the points where I displayed what you perceive as smugness, so I can try to decrease my level of smug in the future?
Now you have gone too far! I find it easy to be an atheist, even here in Oklahoma. But no Unicorns? You break my heart. Just because you don’t see them doesn’t prove they don’t exist. Maybe we have just brainwashed ourselves so we can no longer see them; just like we did with the monsters under the bed.
Cheers and keep up the good work.
What, is somebody standing beside Jonah Goldberg?No. But unless you’re able to monitor every living thing on every habitable planet in the universe and examine each one to confirm that none of them are unicorns, it’s jumping the gun to say that unicorns don’t exist. You’re still just guessing.
That’s why I’m agnostic instead of atheist. There is simply no way to know anything for an absolute certainty.
Honestly? It is intolerant. Let them believe whatever the hell they want until they start telling you what to believe. Otherwise you’re just sticking your nose in where it isn’t wanted and harassing people who haven’t done anything to you.
Some of the nicest people I’ve met have been Christians, and they were nothing like the religious right in the States. They really did adhere to that “judge not lest ye be judged” thing, they never protested at abortion clinics or proselytized to gay people and they certainly never threatened anybody with eternal damnation if they didn’t straighten up and fly right. Which is not to say that I have never met any infuriating Christians who were all judgmental and angry at how everybody seemed to be against them; I have. I told those ones off, but that’s because they were acting like jerkoffs. Believing something does not make you a bad person, or a person deserving of scorn, if those beliefs don’t affect your actions negatively (by “negatively”, I mean that if somebody helps me out or treats me well because they’ve been taught to believe in the Golden Rule, I honestly couldn’t care less whether they’re treating me well because of religion or not as long as they’re being helpful instead of hurtful).
Would you have wondered the same thing about JFK? A lot of people did, and IIRC it turned out that they had nothing to worry about.
But who does like having their beliefs questioned? You believe there is no God. At the beginning of this comment I told you that it was impossible to know one way or the other. Did you like that? If you say yes, I’m going to fall off my chair in shock (and there’s no point in saying “yes” just because you want me to fall down, for I have surrounded myself with mattresses).
Anyway, if you tell somebody that what they believe is a pile of crap, it will not be well-received. Even if you phrase it much more diplomatically, it will not be well-received. They don’t have a right to be thugs, but they do have a right to be pissed off if somebody walks up to them and tells them that they’re gullible and might as well also believe in unicorns and the tooth fairy and Santa Claus.
So stating that I have faith of some variety is akin to sucking up to Jerry Falwell? Despite my deep-seeded disgust of all things fundamentalist, despite a lifetime of progressive views and progressive politics, all it takes (to flip the saying) for you to kick me out of the foxhole is that I pray?
No I didn’t. Spiritual, yes. Go to church for the sake of reminding myself to be a good person, yes. Christian in the sense of fanboi-dom, absolutely not.
An absolute load of baloney. I answer only to myself.
Nice try, but
Dissing the structure of an argument =/= Dissing faith.
The Book of Ruth contains, among other things, an outright condemnation of racism
The Book of Joshua contains, among other things, happy support for genocide. YMMV.
JackGoff, where the hell have you been? Did Amanda pull the welcome mat or something?…
:)
But unless you’re able to monitor every living thing on every habitable planet in the universe and examine each one to confirm that none of them are unicorns, it’s jumping the gun to say that unicorns don’t exist.
Not particularly, as there is no reason scientifically to assume a conclusion based on evidence we do not have. Concurrent to the best available evidence, unicorns do not exist, or their existence has not been proven. Saying the existence of unicorns has not been disproven means nothing scientifically, as the proposition itself is not parsimonious.
Hey, Mike! Just been lurking mostly, but I’ve been around.
D.N. As near as I can tell, yes. Certainly you don’t expect atheists–even if they like the conclusion–to accept God Wants as a justification, not believing in the existence of God and all. But the point of that was that your criticism of Dawkins selecting easy targets misses that whether the religion is liberal or conservative is irrelevant.
I mean, it’s great that you’ll always be on our side, no doubt, but look at it from our perspective: you’ll always be on our side because that’s what a supernatural being whose existence we find laughable wants you to be. We’re glad you’re here, but it doesn’t inspire confidence.
Oh good, a sanctimonious agnostic poo poos us all.
Unless you believe in god, you’re an atheist. You can try to sit on the fence, but it remains just as imaginary as your unicorn that you also don’t believe in.
I’m going to have to disagree with you, there. The Old Testament spoke a lot about the different “nations” and “peoples”. The authors may not have always used a term exactly equivalent to race, but they definitely recognized the existence of that concept – often enough to condemn intermarriage.
Here is but one example:
This passage is especially interesting since the title character in the Book of Ruth was a Moabite.
During the times when those books were written, they were plenty unique. For one thing, the Israelite law codes forbade idol worship, and that included the worship of the so-called God king that existed in other cultures (though, alas, some passages in the Bible were used to justify the doctrine of “divine right.”) They were unique in this way, as well as in the ways I mentioned earlier.
We can’t look back on these books now, thousands of years later, and claim our society would still have access to the modern equivalents of Biblical law and wisdom had this compilation – “the Bible” - never existed and had it never so profoundly influenced early Western thought.
If you could kindly point out where I “kick[ed you] out of the foxhole”, it would be much appreciated. Who are you talking to? You’re apparently Christian enough that when I described Christianity (accurately, I might add), you jumped in and claimed that I wasn’t representing you properly. How am I supposed to interpret this as something other than you identifying as Christian? And yet you’re willing to go to great rhetorical lengths in defense of Christianity in this country. You’re hardly an island. If you don’t want to be tarred with the “Christian” brush, then don’t pretend that I’m talking about you when I talk about Christians. If you do label yourself as Christian, and take all the privilege that comes along, then own up to it.“No. But unless you’re able to monitor every living thing on every habitable planet in the universe and examine each one to confirm that none of them are unicorns, it’s jumping the gun to say that unicorns don’t exist. You’re still just guessing.”
Even if there would be, by freakish coincidence, a horse shaped organism with a pointy projection of its head shaped backside on the other side of the galaxy, it wouldn’t make unicorn spotters right.
Same thing with supernatural entities and the religious. But I really shouldn’t bother when someone claims that the inability to have an absolute certainty on anything is actually meaningful. Damn nihilists.
How much do you really have to know about something to reject it, anyway? Do I have to study the biology of mushrooms before I decide they taste icky? If I try on a pair of pants that don’t fit, must I study the designer and learn the business practices of the maker before I put them back on the shelf?
Surely deep study should be reserved for subjects that do interest you. I know enough of Christianity (and other religions) to reject them, and not feel like I’m missing anything, and that is sufficient. The rest is just someone else’s delusion, and I don’t have time or patience for it.
Saying the existence of unicorns has not been disproven means nothing scientifically, as the proposition itself is not parsimonious.
To put this another way, Decartes’ Demon/Evil Genius hasn’t been disproven either.
Why “alas”? Are some parts of the Bible right and some others wrong? Why do you bother with picking out the good parts, and in doing so, aren’t you just making it a mirror for your own feelings of right and wrong rather than taking instruction from it, and if that’s the case, what’s the point of having it around in the first place?influential =/= good.
And I have no idea what the modern equivalents of Biblical law means. Do you mean theocracy? Modern interpretation of the Bible? Or that our legal system is rooted in Biblical law?
In the case of the latter…eh. Not really. The structure and content of modern Western democracies comes primarily from the Enlightenment with a little Renaissance thrown in, much of which was a rejection of the legal structures that had gone before. It’d be foolish to say the Bible had no influence, but given the new ways of thinking about law, citizens, and government that prompted the revolutions, our law is no more Biblical than our continent Pangean.
Camus’ a nihilist now? On what planet? Anyone who reads The Plague and thinks that was written by a nihilist is completely missing the point.
I expect you not to give a rat’s patoot about it, to be honest.
As long as your atheism provides the ends I’ll fight for (as opposed to Randroid ramblings), then it is what it is. And it’s not my place to rake you over the coals for it.
Well, I’m glad the big tent has a little corner for me. And Martin Luther King.
Just finished up a History of Religion course, and I came out as I went in: an agnostic.
In other words: who the fuck knows?
Same point I was at when I left Catholicism at 12, only now better informed as to how all religions move the goal posts from something sometimes sensible by their founders (or at least somewhat reasonably tied to their time and place) to the ridiculous, dangerous, and/or totally in contradiction to their founding fathers, saint, prophets, what have you.
The only improvements usually a move away from human sacrifice, and perhaps, ritual for the sake of ritual.
The more secular a society, the more sensible, usually (with the obvious exception of Nazis or dictator worship within Communism) but with theocracies inevitably horror shows.
But I could see how a true study of religion would tend to create atheists.
These are all distinct concepts. You might want to claim it contains a condemnation of distinctions based in difference, but that’s not race.
This viewpoint veers a little too close to solipsism for my taste. There are an infinite number of things we can’t disprove. This does not make them likely. We routinely bet our lives on things we can’t disprove (”that bridge up ahead is not a hologram that will vanish when I drive over it”, “no one has replaced my tap water with undetectable poison”, “there is no undetectable transmitter in my teeth which is reporting my every move to The Conspiracy”, “there is no invisible levitating heatless intangible dragon in my garage”); while you may not be able to disprove any of these, it’s a bit silly to go around as though they might be true. There are a vast array of worked examples for you to peruse to get this point, ranging from the Flying Spaghetti Monster to the Invisible Pink Unicorn, all the way back to Russell’s Teapot.The difference in theory between “I believe the existence and nonexistence of god are equiprobable” and “I believe god might exist, but it’s very, very unlikely” is smaller than the difference between “I believe god might exist, but it’s very, very unlikely” and “I believe god does not exist”–but in practice, it’s the other way ’round. You’re defining the second pair as representing the agnostic/atheist divide; I’m defining the first pair as doing so.
There are also two different definitions of atheism: strong atheism (”I believe there is no god”) and weak atheism (”I do not believe there is a god”). The difference is so subtle as to not really matter in a practical sense, and it seems a little silly to make the distinction.
Grendel:
My defense was in religiousness. My own. Not Christianity.
And by the way, progressivism to me is all about non-conformity and looking for truth in the cracks of the mainstream. Not lumping people in for easy classification.
I think it’s a distinction without a difference. They may have used different dividers for their arbitrary tribalism, but it’s still the same basic thing–and it adapts very, very nicely to represent racism in the modern world.Wait, wait: MikeEss:
there’s no Tooth Fairy?
Crap.
Well that shoots my whole belief system all to hell. Guess that makes me a nu-too-atheist.
JACK:
Yup, and that would be totally relevant if I were claiming that the Bible contains nothing but wisdom – that all precepts and precedents in it are wise and good and worth following. My argument isn’t that, at all.
On a somewhat related topic, here’s a cookie. Welcome back.
GRENDEL:
MaJeff said the Bible didn’t contain any unique wisdom, and I offered some counter-examples. I never said squat about sunshine and kittens and all that other nonsense. I also never accused the die-hard fundies of “doing it wrong” merely because their religion is too hard-nosed.
I think the die-hard fundies are wrong, but not because their views contradict the Bible. I think they’re wrong because certain of their views contradict the facts: The world is not merely 6000 years old, for example; and nor has there ever been a global flood.
That said, however, I get a great deal of wisdom and (dare I say it?) pleasure from reading the Bible – especially the Old Testament. It’s one thing to claim that certain things in the Bible are more fable than fact, but quite another in my opinion to characterize all 66 books as simplistic or fact-free or devoid of any unique thought or philosophy.
MAJEFF:
Fair enough. My original point about its uniqueness stands, though.
There is an argument to be made that Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia were, in fact, secular theocracies.Damnit. Here’s your cookie, Jack: www.therighttobewrong.net/addictedtohate.pdf
Not all of you; just the ones who would be introduced to a Christian and immediately say “You know that your religion is complete bullshit, right? Wow, you must be stupid to believe this stuff.”
I don’t care what people believe in or don’t believe in, so long as they leave one another alone. If somebody attacks somebody else, verbally or physically, when the attackee is just minding their own business, I will have contempt for the attacker. The attacker is being an asshole, and is doing nothing to improve the state of the world.
Bill Maher has said that the big failing of priests is that they’re not willing to say “I don’t know.” They act like they know everything.
Socrates said “all I know is I know nothing.” He got it. He realized he didn’t know everything.
Remember that it’s science, not religion, that has been the source of real progress throughout history. Good scientists never assume that they know how an experiment will turn out. They have a hypothesis, which they then test to prove or disprove. If it’s impossible to test their hypothesis, they don’t claim to know one way or the other.
There are many things that irk me from this. For starters, why should atheists invest any time in theological considerations? It’s not like we’re going to preach our beliefs to the world and thus need some firm theorical background to base our arguments in. I’m an atheist because I refuse to believe and I refuse anybody to thrust his beliefs down my thtoat. How much theology do I need for that?
(That said, I could consider myself one of those “old-school” atheists, provided my catholic background, and I’ve read the Bible and know enough about religion to find its inconsistencies by myself. But I don’t find it to be a compulsory requisite for being an atheist).
Then there’s the thing about the religions’ moral cores and their commitment to social justice. Hello? I can aknowledge the role some churches have played in some social movements, but they’re not the only ones. And the fact that they need an external source for their ethics, that they will assume the moral rules not because they genuinely believe it’s the right thing to do, but because some guy in the sky told them to do so, that’s not something I would be proud of. It is, indeed, the reason why I stopped believing in God.
Grendelkhan, you are clearly on solid footing with in yourself when it comes to this topic. I am not within me. So until we’re on equal footing, if it ever comes, I’ll wave the white flag on the Big God Debate.
All I ask is that you let me be, and if the qualification between those sloughing through the big questions and those who damn the ones who came up with the wrong answers exists only in your mind, and not in your words, I’m fine as long as it’s there.
Be good. And if you need some help with putting down Christianity’s weaknesses, give me a holler.
Myself, I’ve come to be deeply, deeply apatheist, namely that I firmly believe that a belief or disbelief in God is neither relevant to human affairs nor worth considering in common areas of understanding. It is only when we allow our belief to justify unethical behavior that the question becomes relevant, so in our current society, much is made about the concept. In my own understanding, God is boring, trivial, and not worth an ounce of my thought. Ethics, however, are worth studying.
If there’s one thing that I’ve learned from the army, it’s never ignore a poo poo!Cara:
Cool, on the liberal church-goer side that works for me. Just going off the discussion here it seems like there’s going to be a reasonable amount of snark, distrust, and wounded feelings but not so much as to prevent liberal cooperation.
Grendelkhan:
I’d agree and disagree with this a bit. Basically, being Christian gets you into the club of generic American religiosity. I think in some ways being Jewish might get you in more than being a Mormon, in other ways the opposite, but that’s a different debate.
So I think it’s fair that atheists call on people in that club to get them in. I’m trying to do my part by speaking out whenever I hear “atheists can’t be moral” bunk, but I don’t expect any credit for that until I get some victories. So in that sense, it is fair to lump all Christians together.
In another sense, I think it’s worth treating us as denominational blocks for political, not theological reasons. Mainline Protestants, Catholics, Evangelicals, Pentecostals, and Mormons all tend to have rather different behavior and voting patterns. (There’s other ways to divide it up, my way isn’t best, but I think it’s defensible).
There isn’t a single common pool of Christian money or votes. Many denominations have their own lobbying groups and some of those groups work hard for international aid and are just fine with contraception. Heck the Episcopal church has moved fairly strongly in support of gay marriage, to the degree that it schismed with a lot of intolerant jerks leaving to follow an arch-bishop in Nigeria.
In short, I think it’s worth following the money and the votes. That says a lot about the practical impact of our affiliations.
“Well, I’m glad the big tent has a little corner for me. And Martin Luther King.”
The point is not that atheists don’t want religious people on their side (whatever that means), it’s that religion has nothing to do with it. Everyone here could list both good and bad people to whom religion was important and the list would go on for days. Religion is not an indicator of anything.
Your actions will tell us whether we feel you’re “on our side,” not your declaration that your religion tells you it’s right. I respect Martin Luther King because of his actions, not his faith.
If it’s impossible to test their hypothesis, they don’t claim to know one way or the other.
You’re mistaking falsifiability with parsimony. The claim “There is an evil genius controlling my perception of the world” is just as falsifiable as “There is a unicorn existing on some distant planet I cannot reach in order to observe said unicorn”. Parsimony consigns us to not have any scientific basis to care about either proposition until given reason to, and someone coming up with a hypothesis that either propositions are true does not constitute a need for us to wonder whether they are, in fact, true.
What’s wrong with solipsism?
That’s true, and if there were a way to find out once and for all whether there were unicorns or unicorn-like creatures and you bet me a hundred bucks that they would turn out to be mythical, I wouldn’t take the bet. I don’t think they exist either. But I’m reluctant to say I know.
Nah, not really. It’s a bit silly to go around worrying about how things like that might be true and being reluctant to drink tap water, or drive over a bridge, or whatever. If you just accept that anything is possible, which I do, and then not really think about it beyond that, it doesn’t really affect how you go about your day to day business and doesn’t cause you any stress.
I just want to make sure I have this right: is atheism the belief that god might exist, but that it’s extremely unlikely? If so, I’ve misunderstood the definition of atheism.
If the haters claim that you’re Doing It Wrong by being a good, compassionate person, they’re full of shit. They can claim what they want, and so long as they don’t persuade good, compassionate people to goose-step along with them and persecute the non-believers, those good and compassionate people deserve praise, not scorn.
YES!!!
Another forum has spoiled me by giving me a smilie of a guy applauding, which I would use here if I had it. Instead I just say: I applaud you and your statement!
My argument isn’t that, at all.
I didn’t say it was, and my comment was very relevant to the topic at hand (and not meant as a refutation of your comment on the Book of Ruth), hence “Your Mileage May Vary”. The Bible has beautiful passages in it, no doubt. My rejoinder was a point saying it has evil in it too. Maybe not necessary, but certainly a true statement.
Here’s your cookie, Jack:
Thanks. I’ll read it.
Whups. That first line is supposed to be a quote from DN.
We’re in agreement.
I think Jack Goff is wrong that belief is mostly irrelevant to human affairs, but he has a crucial point. Why is it that those who think that the existence of a deity is an uninteresting question need to identify ourselves by that label? I’m also an athaumaturgeist and an amartianist, but no one has ever asked me about those. (Note, btw, that the common question about belief in UFOs is very like the question about belief in god — there’s a very specific entity that people are talking about, even if the question seems to allow a wide range.)
Religion without authoritarianism (let’s call it liberal theism) reminds me a lot of what marriage is when progressives/feminists participate in it. It’s a vestigial organ, a remnant of right-wing authoritarianism that has no more social function. There is no religious declaration that is of any use to progressives that isn’t utterly banal. And marriage, when stripped of its patriarchal economic signification, is also nothing more than a ghost of an outdated institution. The only critique we really have about these things is that they give legitimacy to those who want to bring back the old archaic authoritarian institutions (which is what Dawkins and the ‘new atheists’ touch upon in their work).
See, the problem is- you’re viewing my way of thinking as an argument outside the realization of the self. And it’s not.
Boiling it down to its simplicity: Spirituality makes me a better, more thoughtful person because I make it make me so. If you need more persuasion than that, I can’t offer any. And it’s not within your right to demand it.
Why is it that those who think that the existence of a deity is an uninteresting question need to identify ourselves by that label?
I suppose you have a point in that by the very fact that I am having to assign myself a label in order to describe my belief system gives lie to the notion that the concept is irrelevant to human affairs.
I do think we should, instead of worrying about what other people believe in terms of deities or what have you, we should look at their ethical system and see what type of behavior is justified by their own ethical system, be it Divine Command Theory or other ethical systems.
So I should stop thinking the way I think.
Got it.
I’m going to go hang out alone, thanks.
“Boiling it down to its simplicity: Spirituality makes me a better, more thoughtful person because I make it make me so.”
D.N. Nation, I would guess that most of us here at Pandagon are “spiritual” - i.e. we are concerned with our progress as individuals, how we relate to others, our ethics, our morality, etc. - but we’re not always religiously inclined.
While “spirituality” is often connected to “religiosity”, there is no requirement that they be connected. It is quite easy to have one without the other…
Atheism is bullshit.
Actually, the problem is that the term ‘theism” is bullshit, just so much gibberish, so anything that identifies itself as NOT being that is de-facto gibberish. This, by the way, is in no way the fault of atheists, either new or old, or atheism or anything like that. This is strictly the way religious folks have arranged it and want it.
Answer me this. What is God? What’s the definition? In terms of a society as a whole, we think of a “God” as being Zeus. Jupiter. Whatever. Man in the clouds wearing a toga looking over anything. But there’s something truly in the closet.
Not everybody who claims to be a theist has that as their definition of god. In fact, what I’m finding out more and more is that people who identify as theists often times do not believe in this. They see god more as a mutual spirit that they feel inside of them. Not something that speaks, but offers gentle pushes.
In short, their god is a fucking emotion.
And that’s fine. You know? We ALL have that emotion. I’ll dare say we all have some sort of group or organization to feed that emotion. It’s just that not all of us identify that as god. But as a society, we have not yet, and probably won’t ever come to terms with that fact. God, in terms of the common definition, is by and large dead.
It’s not the same religion. It’s not the same faith. It’s just not. That religious folks CHOOSE to put all of them in the same basket doesn’t mean that it’s true.
In short, Atrios is dead right. The state of discourse about faith and religion in our society is next to nonexistent, using terms that not everybody believes, and never stopping to discuss those differences.
My big beef with the “new atheists”, is not realizing these points. But it’s not something I blame them for.
That’s blaming the victim, to be honest.
I’m sorry it came to that, D.N. I haven’t read all of your posts, but from what I have read you seem all right and I hate that might feel unwelcome or uncomfortable here because how your religion is viewed by certain parties.>
It’s useless.Well, it’s good for fascinating shroomy discussions, but apart from that, it’s useless.
No. Weak atheism is not believing that god exists. Strong atheism is believing that god does not exist. So, believing that it’s possible, just not likely, is quite compatible with weak atheism. (The only example of strong atheism I’ve ever seen was a “This I Believe” segment by Penn Jillette; it mostly seems to be a strawman for apologists to attack.)This all reminds me of angels-on-a-pin arguments. On a more practical level, you’ve pretty much summed up Richard Dawkins’ position, and he’s pretty much the current canonical example of an atheist. So, from a theoretical standpoint, it depends on how you like your language mangled; from a practical standpoint, it puts you in the same camp as the most prominent of the “New Atheists”, though you’re by no means obligated to call yourself one. You should just be aware that plenty of self-identified atheists take the same viewpoint that you describe.
D.N. Nation:
So stating that I have faith of some variety is akin to sucking up to Jerry Falwell?
Yes, it is. For better or worse, so long as you self identify as a Christian, you’re wearing an “I’m with Stupid” T-shirt with an arrow pointing right at Jerry Falwell.
In the Wide World of media attention,w e all get portioned off with our respective demographics. It sucks, but that’s life.
You may disagree with Falwell on everything except God, Jesus and the magic wafer but in that relationship, he’s the big mouth with all the power and you’re just someone on the Internet. No one pays attention to you and hangs on Jerry’s every utterance and the man doesn’t fart without it pertaining to God, somehow.
But don’t worry. We Atheists have to deal with being on Christopher Hitchens’ side, so it’s no real picnic over here, either.
Just a quibble here:
It’s about as “new” as greek philosophy.
And if these guys actually bothered to read the periodicals published by secular humanist organizations such as The Humanist and Free Inquiry, they would find not quite that much axe-grinding about religion, and a lot of very rich debates. The topics range from education policy, (not just evolution in school but the need for a post-industrial education system), health care policy, medical ethics, foreign policy, the death penalty and racism to just name a smattering of topics off the top of my head.
Just to clear things up in case there was any ambiguity: I have absolutely no problem with this, and if I’ve written something that makes it seem like I’m ragging on your personal beliefs, the fault lies with me. What you believe is entirely your own business; I may argue with you about how you describe it or how you act, but that’s quite separate.Karmakin:
My big beef with the “new atheists”, is not realizing these points. But it’s not something I blame them for.
Many of us do realize this but we aren’t unified enough as an idealogical bloc (thank god!) to come up with a new name for ourselves. Bright, schmight.
So, following the example of our LGBT friends, we claim Atheism as our own.
We’re here! We’re an unaffiliated bunch of free thinkers! Get Used to It!
or something to that effect.
the ones who would be introduced to a Christian and immediately say “You know that your religion is complete bullshit, right? Wow, you must be stupid to believe this stuff.”
Please. You don’t have to be a rude asshole for someone to be offended by your atheism. Writing books or blog posts about atheism is usually enough to get you death threats, because the mere fact that you don’t believe and haven’t been struck by lightning makes a lot of people feel kind of stupid.
Then avoid being rude. Avoid being offensive. Many fewer people will be angry at you.
There’s a big honkin’ difference between saying “this is what I believe and this is what I don’t” and saying “I’m right and you’re wrong, and you believe in fairy tales.” You can disagree with somebody without mocking them or their beliefs.
Also: thanks for explaining, Grendel.
And of course, this discussion wouldn’t be complete without some well-meaning but ignorant yobbo who identifies his/her self as an “agnostic” and proceeds to lecture everyone else about the 20th century problem of epistemology.
Rob: Been there, done that, got the T-shirt. Go home, get laid, spend the next few months reading some Russel, Huxley, Dewey, Sagan, Dawkins and Gould. Then perhaps you can get back on your high horse and lecture us about problems that most of us have considered settled for most of the last generation.
Or you can just read the short argument: No I can’t fucking prove the non-existence of God. That doesn’t mean I have to waste glucose believing in God.
D.N. Nation: Interesting, because what I’m getting from the “stuffy white guys” is something along the lines of “you Muslims just won’t criticize the terrorists on your side!”.
It’s probably not the case with the posters here, but– considering how many of the “new atheist” authors are just neocons who quickly rebranded themselves when the whole “Bush Administration” thing didn’t work out– in some cases that is exactly the argument.
My favorite complaint is the one about how ‘new atheists’ don’t have the proper knowledge of theology. This is something Dawkins actually addressed in his book, I’m wondering if they were listening: We don’t need to have knowledge of your sophisticated theology, because the most sophisticated, complex theology in the world is still made the fuck up!
Well, this is the problem, as I see it. A lot of the arguments the Dawkinsists I encounter make wind up being nonsense when you look at them for more than ten seconds, and the reason why usually turns out to be that the critic didn’t bother learning anything about the thing he was criticizing before opening his mouth. And the stupid thing here is, the arguments in question are invariably completely unnecessary! As you point out, the burden of proof is not on Richard Dawkins to learn about every religion ever invented and exhaustively refute each one. The burden of proof is on religion to demonstrate itself worthwhile.
The thing is, though, that doesn’t make the arguments any less bad. Straw man arguments don’t become honest just because they’re made in service of some argument that works for other reasons. Intellectual dishonesty doesn’t become okay just because you’re right. The “new atheist” apologists, if you spend more than ten minutes around them, invariably wind up pulling the same stupid gish-gallop goalpost-moving as the theists they think they’re arguing against– demanding you overlook nonsensical or just plain wrong arguments because there’s a greater truth lurking in here somewhere, really, never mind I can’t seem to find it right now. Sorry, things don’t work that way. Bad arguments are bad arguments. If you have better ones then fricking use those instead.
Or, to put it another way: If someone is going to insist they shouldn’t have to learn anything about the content of theology, then it’s reasonable to demand they limit themselves to arguments which don’t depend on making positive statements about what that content is. “It’s all made up”, as you put it, for example, is a criticism that doesn’t depend on the content of theology; it’s just pointing out that the theists have not produced any evidence their theology has basis in facts. On the other hand, if one is going to issue a criticism that religion is based around an “unquestionable, unproveable authority to invoke to force your will on everyone else”, well, that’s different– since this criticism actually makes a specific, factual claim, the factual claim that if you go and look up the documented content of the theology you’ll find such and such a thing. Once you say a thing like that all of a sudden the “I don’t need to understand it to criticize it” defense doesn’t apply anymore, because suddenly you’re the one making positive claims and the burden of proof has shifted to you, to demonstrate at least to some reasonable degree that all religions really do incorporate such an unquestionable authority. (And that’s not really going to work, because counterexamples there are really not hard to find…)
Of course, the hilarious thing here is Haught seems to be doing the same darn thing he’s accusing the “new atheists” of; nothing I see here indicates Haught understands the thing he’s attacking. I don’t like new atheism, but nor can I recognize it in the description Haught gives of it. He’s attacking a straw man version of an argument which was itself primarily based in straw men, by leveling the accusation that his straw man of new atheism uses straw man arguments. Lovely.
This scientists feels the need to correct you somewhat: a good scientist is aware that the probabilities of a hypothesis being correct and incorrect are not necessarily equal. Examples abound of arguments to make this point. You may talk all you want about what a “good scientist” must consider, but I think that you have missed the point of what empirical inquiry is all about. A good scientist is aware that negative proof is impossible, and therefore completely irrelevant to the pursuit of knowledge. We can make any untestable claim we damn well please, but that doesn’t mean that we need to take any of them seriously.
I’d also like to point the silliness of claiming that you neither believe nor disbelieve in a god. Believe me, I was there once. I started calling myself an atheist when I realized that I didn’t need to prove the non-existence of god in order to simply not have any belief in the existence of such a being. Agnosticism is an intellectual fantasy world. Belief is an on/off condition. Do you believe, or don’t you? That’s the question. There’s no need for to play intellectual games with it.
Sam Harris specifically addresses this point in “The End of Faith” and in several speeches available on his website, samharris.org, and on google video. He himself spent several years learning to meditate and studying eastern philosophy. He does speak of spiritualism and mysticism entirely separate from concepts of religion and gods. He most certainly treats non-personal-god “religions” (more like philosophies) differently than theist beliefs.
Oh, but they DO know about the diversity of world religions. In fact, it’s one of the strongest arguments Harris et. al, and all atheists have: the existence of hundreds of thousands, if not millions of theisms throughout the history of human time are their own disproof of divine truth, as none are more able than any other to provide evidence for the existence of their deities and the divine revelation uttered by them. Basically, religions are their own worst enemies. The assertion by a congregationlist that his god and his interpretation of that god’s word is the foil to all franciscan catholics saying the same thing, as they are the foil to all orthodox jews saying the same thing, and so on.
I’m not sure what you mean by “temper[ing]” their arguments to imagine what is necessary for a secular society to exist. You mean, how do we need to incorporate religion(s) into a progressive political model? If that’s what you’re proposing I think it’s a valid discussion topic. Every religious liberal and skeptic accepts that people should believe as they want, so long as they don’t try to force their beliefs on others. And it sounds great and progressive and it’s a wonderful statement, but it’s much easier said than done. There are lots of religious folk who are able to cherry-pick their religious beliefs or interpret them in a way that reinforces their progressive values who are quite capable of separating the text of Genesis from what’s in their mind when they walk into a voting booth; unfortunately, there are a lot of other religious folk who not only won’t do that, but consider it an insult to their beliefs to even consider it. How secularists can persuade people who hate secularism to put their mythology aside when they’re acting politically is a major, difficult uphill battle we don’t have a plan to win and it’s hurting us.
Unrelated, a lot of people assume that atheism is this big monolith and atheists all agree on points of theory. Well, we don’t. Not all atheists believe science and religion are on a collision course. It so happens that three of the four Big Atheists do (I’m not sure about Dennett). Lots of atheists believe science is neutral in regard to religion, as it is a wholly different means of understanding reality. (A better one, but I digress.)
The best thing the New Atheists have to say is that religion is not the only game in town to understanding this world or attempting to comprehend or marvel at the amazing universe we live in. Profundity and contemplation are not the sole provinces of religion and PCP. This idea that atheism is abound of “nothingness” and moral uncertainty - that both religious liberals like Al Sharpton and religious conservatives like Pat Robertson like to assert - is a fundamental lie: there is nothing moral or good or noble about embracing faith in the unknown and the values that system of faith divines are just. And no one has to be an expert in the million different ways people could have embraced a faith because the inherent claim that one offers more truth than any other is without evidence and wholly subjective.
It’s tough to talk to religious liberals about why I’m an atheist without sounding condescending or threatening in some way. It’s almost inherent in the conversation. I say I don’t believe in what there’s no evidence for, a religious person interprets that to mean I think they see ghosts and fairies and that they’re dumb, and they immediately shrink back into a vanilla-deism-god-is-love defense and try to project their own questioning of faith into me just not being “open” enough.
I hear a lot of chatter about how a person’s religion is what *makes* them a liberal and I don’t like that either. There are a shitload of really good reasons to support gay marriage without having to say you interpreted the holy book of your deity to believe it’s the right thing to do. Religion isn’t inherently self-enlightening. It doesn’t even enlighten us. We enlighten it.
But I can’t control other people, so the best thing I can do is work with every religious liberal I can find. I won’t walk on eggshells for them but I trust if they’re liberals they’re smart enough to put on a thicker skin when the topic of religion comes up and will focus on the political and social goals we have in common.
Those who don’t provide a moving target, well, they don’t exist.
It’s especially frustrating to talk to theists who can only offer “I’m not like the rest of them” as an argument. We get that you don’t really want to have this discussion. We can see that you don’t have an argument for your theism that’s going to satisfy us, or even yourself on a level other than “Belief makes me feel good.” So why continue the conversation? What are you getting out of it? Do you think you can get other people to stop talking about this? Because if the only contribution you can make to a discussion is to suggest that it not happen, I would suggest you find a more fulfilling way to spend your time and stop slowing other people’s conversations down.
I didn’t say you did, as you’d realize if you spent less time being a dick (or “yobbo”, if you prefer) and paid attention to what was being said.
Rob,
“There’s a big honkin’ difference between saying “this is what I believe and this is what I don’t” and saying “I’m right and you’re wrong, and you believe in fairy tales.” You can disagree with somebody without mocking them or their beliefs.”
Not to interrupt your constant lecturing, but this is so much bullshit, just a little less bullshit than your strawman brutal atheist who goes through churches shoving people around.
On no other subject do people insist that people be absolutely neutral in stating their opinion, like you do now. Telling someone you think they’re wrong isn’t a grievous insult, and calling a religion a fairy tale isn’t a gratuitous rudeness, it’s an explanation.
So yes, there’s a difference between both statements, but while I don’t volunteer my atheism to people I don’t know without being asked, nor do I shove priests into the mud, I wouldn’t be caught dead playing “fair and balanced” as you expect me to.
It’s offensive of you to suggest that I do.
Then avoid being rude. Avoid being offensive. Many fewer people will be angry at you.
Uh, I’m not talking about my being rude or offensive, and I don’t care who’s angry at me. I’m talking about people who talk honestly and politely about atheism and raise the hackles of theists. You’re making it sound like the atheists who really piss off believers are the ones who spit in their faces about how stupid they are. That’s simply not the case. It’s people who can calmly and rationally expose theists’ beliefs for what they are who get them the angriest.
I don’t know whether there is or isn’t a God. I don’t need to pick one or the other and say “that’s what I’m going with.” If it helps you classify me, I live my life as though there isn’t one.
Good point.
Numad & junk science: I was referring to the original post, not either of you.
Also, Numad, telling me (albeit not in so many words) to “shut up” is very O’Reilly-esque of you.
I don’t buy it. I don’t believe you. You don’t believe that the bridge is a hologram and that you’ll drive off into the water. And you don’t believe that there is undetectable poison in your tap water. After all, if these things were true, the consequences would be very severe and well worth worrying about. But you’re not worrying about it. And it’s not because worrying is a silly waste of time, it’s because you just plain don’t believe that things are true. Why is it, then, that you need to pretend that the possibility exists when your behavior says otherwise?
“Also, Numad, telling me (albeit not in so many words) to ’shut up’ is very O’Reilly-esque of you.”
I like the little “not in so many words” thrown in there. I don’t think it can divert attention from the fact that I didn’t tell you to shut up. I basically gave ‘advice’ of the same nature that the one that you generously volunteer over and over and over and over again.
But thanks for the gratuitous insult. Always a pleasure dealing with the faux civil and apathetic.
I’ve got Christopher Hitchens, and now I’m drawing a blank. Who else?Yes, I think the bridge is solid. No, I don’t think the water is poisonous. But for all I know, I could be totally wrong.
Given that Hitch just ripped into Huckabee and implied a dislike for Romney, I wonder if the honeymoon is over between him and the neocons.
OK then, the exact quote is: “Not to interrupt your constant lecturing, but this is so much bullshit…”
The message seems clear: “stop lecturing and stop spouting bullshit.”
Shouldn’t be surprising to you that I took it the way I did.
There’s a big honkin’ difference between saying “this is what I believe and this is what I don’t” and saying “I’m right and you’re wrong, and you believe in fairy tales.” You can disagree with somebody without mocking them or their beliefs.
So basically you’re saying it’s okay to think someone is wrong, as long as you don’t tell them so?
I mean, I’m not sure what it is you’re saying here. I don’t see what’s “mocking” about telling someone they’re wrong. Sometimes people are wrong. Some things actually are fairy tales, and it is a statement of fact to say it is one. It might be impolite, or inappropriate, to actually point this out, and maybe that’s what you’re saying– there’s something to be said for the “a statement of fact cannot be insolent” philosophy, but at the same time even if it is factually accurate that someone is fat you still shouldn’t walk up to them out of the blue and tell them so. This isn’t to say, though, that it’s NEVER okay to point out that someone is fat. Where do we draw the line?
The thing is that “Then avoid being rude. Avoid being offensive. Many fewer people will be angry at you.” is good advice. But sometimes it’s just not avoidable. Some people are going to be offended nearly no matter WHAT you do. There are some people who find it offensive merely that people don’t share their religion. The only way NOT to offend these people and still be an atheist is to closet oneself. The way you’re wording this “mocking them and their beliefs” thing, one could reasonably take it as a request to closet oneself. What if you actually sincerely believe that someone is wrong, or that such and such is a fairy tale? When is it okay to say so? To their face? To their face when they bring the subject up? On a personal blog? Whispered to the darkness in the middle of the night? Never?
On the other hand:
You’re making it sound like the atheists who really piss off believers are the ones who spit in their faces about how stupid they are. That’s simply not the case. It’s people who can calmly and rationally expose theists’ beliefs for what they are who get them the angriest.
How about this: There exist believers who only get upset at those atheists who go out of their way to spit in their faces.
Why write these people off just because the thin-skinned ones exist also?
I’ve got Christopher Hitchens, and now I’m drawing a blank. Who else?
Sam Harris.
(I wasn’t thinking of anyone else beyond that, at least not anyone that you’d heard of. But I do consider two a significantly large number when we’re working from a pool of between three and five.)
But for all I know, I could be totally wrong.
But you being wrong could entail potentially fatal consequences. That one time you believed wrong could be the death of you. Surely, that must give you pause to consider whether you wish to carry out your potentially fatal experiment?
/snarkb
“OK then, the exact quote is: ‘Not to interrupt your constant lecturing, but this is so much bullshit…’
The message seems clear: ’stop lecturing and stop spouting bullshit.’
Shouldn’t be surprising to you that I took it the way I did.”
The correct reading is “this is lecturing and this is bullshit.”
The added “stops” are all yours. This might not be my first language, but to preface a comment with “not to interrupt” is a figure of style that I’ve come across before, and I’ve never read it as an order to put a permanent stop to what one’s interrupting, but rather as a way to simulate cutting into something for a moment to get a word in. On second thought, I don’t see how it can be read otherwise. It’s a cliché, even.
Of course, the fact that I think that your lecture is bullshit implies that I think everyone would be better off without it, but that doesn’t translate into a wish that your ability to express yourself would be terminated. Again, that’s all yours.
And I was surprised that you’d misread it that way, but it seems obvious now, in hindsight.
Not so much. As much rational and enlightened as they were, the greek were an extremely religious people. And, although you can find one Socrates -who was in the end accused of disbelieving in the gods- there are loads oh philosophers who embedded the idea of some kind of divinity in their ontologies. Take Plato’s demiurge, for example, or Heraclitus’ logos.
There exist believers who only get upset at those atheists who go out of their way to spit in their faces.
In my experience, the ones who go out of their way to spit in my face, telling me that I am going to hell, drastically outweigh those atheists who attack back.
mcc either lives in a rough but well-read neighborhood, or hangs out with strawmen a lot.
Who are these face-spitting, ultra confrontational atheists? And don’t give me the usual suspects of Dawkins et. al. If you’re invited onto a show or to give a lecture on your Atheist manifesto, then people expect you to talk on that topic and to do so with gusto is not being rude.
But who are the atheists that are so mean and rude that they spit in your eye rather than shake your hand? Cus that sounds unlikely.
Right.
Well, there’s Amanda’s comparison to unicorns, her statement that religion is crap, calling God a “Sky Fairy”, etc.
Whenever Pat Robertson or anybody like him wants to tell his sheep about how there’s all this hostility towards Christians and they need to take back a country that should be rightfully theirs, all he needs to do is point to a post like this one and say “See? There’s your proof! Look at how this liberal, feminist blogger mocks what we believe! Look at how all these other liberals agree with her! They think that we’re jokes, they don’t care about us or how we feel. They want us to be second class citizens. They think we’re the enemy. So we have to fight them.”
This is spitting in their face and starting a fight that might not even take place otherwise. Not just this lone post, but every single one like it as well, cumulatively. This isn’t a private joke about Christians that’s told when they aren’t around, it’s a public post that anybody can read and anybody can be offended by or take as an insult. Already there’ve been people here who’ve taken exception to it.
If Amanda wants to be somebody who just writes down exactly what she feels without thinking about how it might sound, and says “fuck anybody who doesn’t agree with me exactly, I don’t need them on my side anyway,” then there’s no problem. If Amanda wants to win over as many people as possible and get the help of as many people as possible in making the world a better place instead, then it’s not really advisable to alienate everybody who doesn’t agree with her exactly, because she needs all the help she can get.
Right?
In some ways, the atheistic political organizing except around those few issues such as school prayer/creationism that directly impact people who lack faith is contrary to the entire point. Your preferred solution for dealing with the United States health care crisis is going to depend on a mess of values that have little to do with the presence or lack of religous faith.
Not so much.
Epicurus (more agnostic, albeit, but still)? Democritus? Diagoras?
Heraclitus’ logos was a different sort of beast from the Greek Gods and he got in loads of trouble for suggesting it as an alternative to sacrificing animals to Zeus, you can be sure.
The Greek gods were known for being petty and malicious. That’s why they demanded sacrifices, after all. Heraclitus’ logos was a rational quasi-entity, sort of like the mamby pamby new Agey “God is Love” kind of God moderate Christians try so hard to convince everyone they believe in. A god who is as light as a summer breeze and about as meaningful.
Not to shit all over the Greeks. They invented democracy and logic so they’re tops in my book but still, they fell back into a lot of primitive anthropomorphic ideas and praising them for being spiritual when they were really just superstitious is doing no one a service.
Its kind of ridiculous to start an argument about “new atheists” and compare great writers/philosophers like Sartre and Camus to a talking head pundit like Hitchens. It’s sort of like complaining about modern art and talking about Mickey Mouse in relation to Manet.
Plus the dialogue around atheism has changed radically since Sartre’ time. Right after WW2 the existence of God was still a serious intellectual discussion taken up by great writers like Camus or great artists like Ingmar Bergman. With the advent of post-structuralism, the philosophical and cultural dialogue moved on to other things. The question of the existence of god in those new contexts is much more complex and rooted in discussions about power establishments like the patriarchy and western cultural dominance. Or easier put the question went from “Does God exist?” to “Whose God are you talking about exactly?”
Rob: Those people of (Christian) faith of have a clue about these things, know that Christianity has been the 800 lb gorilla of American politics, and are understanding of the very-well justified anger that this engenders.
“Well, there’s Amanda’s comparison to unicorns, her statement that religion is crap, calling God a “Sky Fairy”, etc.”
A little sensitive, aren’t we? Most christians would be at least as dismissive of any non-christian religion, the more exotic the more mocking the tone will be. ‘Taint new…
“Whenever Pat Robertson or anybody like him wants to tell his sheep about how there’s all this hostility towards Christians and they need to take back a country that should be rightfully theirs, all he needs to do is point to a post like this one and say “See? There’s your proof! Look at how this liberal, feminist blogger mocks what we believe! Look at how all these other liberals agree with her! They think that we’re jokes, they don’t care about us or how we feel. They want us to be second class citizens. They think we’re the enemy. So we have to fight them.””
The fundnuts believe anybody who doesn’t think exactly like they do is either a future believer who just hasn’t heard THEIR spiel yet, or a godless enemy bent on the destruction of all christians.
It really doesn’t take anything from Amanda to bring that out. They believed that when I was a child (long before the internet and blogs), and they’ll believe it until they draw their final breath.
Not much any of us can do about it…
CBrachyrhynchos: maybe you’re giving them too much credit, and I don’t see what there is to get justifiably angry about. I don’t see how a politician pandering to them is different than a politician pandering to any other particular group.
I get angry if somebody calling themselves Christian tries to stop stem cell research.
I get angry if somebody calling themselves Christian says “This was founded as a Christian nation, so what we want should come first.”
I get angry if somebody calling themselves Christian tells a woman that no matter how bad her pregnancy might get, she has to suffer through it and give birth.
But I’m angry at those specific Christians, not Christians as a whole, because guess what? They aren’t all bad! And if somebody goes and disses their religion I’m going to defend them the same as I would if somebody dissed Islam or if somebody dissed “the gay lifestyle.”
Some beliefs that have been expressed, without irony, in this thread:
1) The American pragmatists decisively solved all of epistemology and metaphysics.
2) The Greeks invented logic.
There is a reason that postmodern critics believe that the Enlightenment language of progress and modernity is an instrument of violent social control and imperialism. You may disagree, but you should at least admit the possibility that the “new atheists” can be harshly criticized from the left, and that people who do so are not secret Falwell sympathizers.
So why throw fuel on the fire?
Rob, Christians ARE a joke. I don’t know about Amanda, but I have about as much time to spend trying to accomodate them in my political actions than I had to accomodate the guy who only showed up at our open anarchist/anti-cap meetings to say we should be spending our time trying to blow wide open the story about the government’s top intelligence agencies’ secret deals with the ‘Greys’ (aliens, UFOs) for control of the Earth.
But I’m pretty sure that the fight against Pat Robertson and co. transcends the mere fact that he believes in sky pixies while we don’t… If Pat Robertson was an atheist, I’m pretty sure he’d still be a patriarchal asshole. And so would his flock.
Brendan: 1) The American pragmatists decisively solved all of epistemology and metaphysics.
Who made this claim?
My point is that Rob the ignorant yobbo pulled a classic example of agnostic posturing against an atheistic strawman that has not been characteristic of humanistic thought since the 20th century, and even a casual reading of what atheists have been writing lately would have shown him wrong.
mcc either lives in a rough but well-read neighborhood, or hangs out with strawmen a lot.
I hang out in the scienceblogs comments section, is what I do.
“So why throw fuel on the fire?”
If you consider my mere existence as a non-believer to be throwing “fuel on the fire”, then I guess there’s not much I can do.
This sounds a lot like the argument that gay people should “just shut up about their orientation” and leave everybody alone. You can eliminate all the Gay Pride parades, pretend to be straight, keep as low a profile as possible, but your existence still freaks many people out.
I don’t go around bragging about being an atheist, I don’t spit in peoples faces, I don’t demand every reference to “god” be removed from the government, etc. But I do exist, and I don’t believe.
I will not believe. I won’t be swayed by the latest tactic into believing. And there are people for whom that is enough justification for hate…
While you’re at it, call Jews a joke. You might as well go all in, since you’re being prejudiced on the basis of religion instead of looking at individuals.
So why throw fuel on the fire?
Because, Rob, well behaved Atheists, fearful of ruffling feathers is how we got into our current predicament: sixteen candidates for President and all of them Christian of some denomination and shade, ranging from barely practicing to full blown Theocrats. And the Theocrats are winning.
Shutting up and staying marginalized is no longer an option for atheists, free thinkers, agnostics or the nebulously spiritual but non committed believer. Because these groups, added together make up at least half the populace but still America is sliding towards becoming a Christian version of Iran, only with the nukes.
staying polite just so as not to offend the moderates who are letting the Theocrats win by their inaction is just going to make everyone’s lives worse. So yes, we need to speak out, be impolite and tell people who believe patently false things to stick it in their ear.
Rob: But I’m angry at those specific Christians, not Christians as a whole, because guess what? They aren’t all bad! And if somebody goes and disses their religion I’m going to defend them the same as I would if somebody dissed Islam or if somebody dissed “the gay lifestyle.”
I’m not angry with Christians as a whole. I am angry with a large quantity of them, and I am disdainful of the religion itself. Much like with Islam. I’m sure there are beautiful parts to the religion, but a silver lining is not the bulk of a dark cloud.
There is no gay lifestyle (no book, no religion, no tenets of faith), so being angry with the gay lifestyle is a false comparison and silly to boot.
2) The Greeks invented logic.
Who said that?
Who’s telling you to stop existing? Who’s demanding that you believe? Not me, certainly.
Believe what you want, and let others believe what they want, and everybody will get along fine. It’s when one group of people start talking about how stupid another group of people is that you end up with conflict, which I don’t think is any good.
“This sounds a lot like the argument that gay people should ‘just shut up about their orientation’ and leave everybody alone.”
It doesn’t just sound a lot like, I think it’s the exact same thing. They believe that they have a right to hegemony on the question of deities like they believe that they have a right to hegemony on sexuality.
To believe that to accomodate one of those imaginary hegemonies isn’t encouraging every other is foolish.
Yeah, I know. That’s why I put quotes around it, because it’s a term that gets tossed around a lot by people who go after gays in the media.
Rob, (verb)er of (noun)s: What’s wrong with solipsism?
grendelkhan: It’s useless.
Typical bloody haters - always seeking to force their opinions on us solipsists. I’ve got an urge to form some sort of union or anti-defamation league…
More seriously:
i, CBrachyrhynchos: And of course, this discussion wouldn’t be complete without some well-meaning but ignorant yobbo who identifies his/her self as an “agnostic” and proceeds to lecture everyone else about the 20th century problem of epistemology.
I’m a sceptical agnostic, not a “weak atheist”, thank you. Functionally they’re the same, but the first expresses my view better. And I have read up on the subject to a sufficient extent - but I’m not going to bother arguing epistemology as I’ll sson be overstepping my limits.
Thanks very much.
ii, I’m culturally Catholic. You can take the religion out of the boy, but it leaves its marks.
iii, Rab (again): Well, there’s Amanda’s comparison to unicorns, her statement that religion is crap, calling God a “Sky Fairy”, etc.
Not addressing the middle statement, bvt teh “unicorn” and “Sky Fairy” are succinct arguments about the epistemological basis for belief and the nature of the “God” symbol, respectively, as has already been mentioned on this thread. Arguments by analogy.
I notice that the people offended by these arguments never really offer a convincing counter, leading me to believe that it is not the crudity but the accuracy of the analogy that stings. Unicorns are symbols of purity and wisdom - why is it offensive to refer to them? Fairies have a long and honourable mythological history - why is it offensive to refer to them?
The closest we get is “My ‘God” symbol is not the normal ‘God’ symbol’, and argument which even if true does not actually address the truth value of that symbol. As has been mentioned, an attempt to evade discussion by presenting a moving target.
If Amanda said “religion is crap”, I disagree with her. Religion has a lot of crap in it and is built on foundations of mud, but is not necessarily crap all teh way through.
No, no, no.
There’s nothing wrong with talking about what you believe at all, for anybody. Free speech.
But you can talk about what you believe without saying “and furthermore, these people who believe this other thing are blah blah blah (insert criticism of other religion/belief system here).” It’s not illegal because, again, free speech. But you’ve gone from talking about what you believe to tearing others down, and I do not like anybody who tears other people down. It’s that simple.
Just live and let live. Fight back if somebody attacks you, fight back against that specific person without taking the fight to people like that person as well. Otherwise, don’t start any fights and be tolerant.
The Closet is just homosexuals and homophobes being civil and getting along.
Cause that’s working SO well in the political arena.
Rob: Yes, religious Jews are a joke (secular/ethnic Jews are another story), so are Muslims, Wiccans, Buddhists, Zoroastrians, Hindus, Sikhs, Asatru pagans, pagans in general, animists, ancestor worshippers, believers in ghosts, alien abductions, Satanic ritual abuse, 9/11 Truthers, Scientologists and Raelians. Is there anyone else I missed that you would feel slighted that I didn’t include?
I’m not too fond of the greeks myself, but I find them being superstitious very similar to any other religion. But that’s just my atheist self.
Anyway, even though they could “invent” some kind of rational entity, they still had a long way to go. They speculated about the nature of the divinity, but they didn’t outright question its existence. Epicurus believed gods should be a role model; Democritus’ mechanicism is a step beyond, and Diagoras can be labeled as plain atheist, they’re the few exceptions. It wasn’t until Descartes came with his Dubito, ergo cogito, ergo sum that we can find a philosopher raising a doubt to god’s existence, or at least a doubt that could influence the history of philosophy.
Here’s what she wrote, PiatoR:
“It’s an interview with theologian John Haught about how new atheists haven’t earned the right to be atheists or something, because I dunno, they didn’t martyr themselves by swimming in religion before deciding it’s crap. Which, to my mind, is a sign of progress. I shouldn’t have to sink myself neck-deep in nonsense to have the right to call it nonsense.”
and
“If the unicorn cabal had nearly the same power and authority, we’d all be chastened day in and day out this day about how it’s ‘intolerant’ not to nod condescendingly at the pitiful unicorn believers rather than state openly that it’s all nonsense.”
I wonder if somebody is going to start typing “Liar! She never said religion was crap! You’re twisting her words!”
Technically that’s true. That particular phrase isn’t there. But there is the mention of how certain atheists decided it was crap, her own statement that it’s nonsense (which is really just a synonym for “crap” in today’s parlance), and her statement that people who believe in unicorns–which to her is the same as believing in a god–are pitiful and believe in nonsense.
And that’s why I took it to mean “religion is crap”, which I’m pretty sure she’d agree with if somebody said it to her anyway.
There is the dude from Time Cube, BB.
“”Faced with proof that he did not, in fact, exist, God disappeared in a puff of logic.” Douglas Adams
JackGoff, if I start adding every idiosyncratic religious tradition that has or has had one member in its entire history, I might be here a while.
It would work fine if politicians focused more on cooperating and building consensus instead of going negative on one another’s asses and polarizing the nation, deep6.
Or, to put it another way, if we had somebody in office who was really a uniter instead of a divider instead of just claiming to be the former.
“Is there anyone else I missed that you would feel slighted that I didn’t include?”
Bushites, Cheneyites, and Randroids…
Rob,
This was my first response to you as a commenter here, and I’m starting to think it might be my last, if you keep doing this. You’re confusing two things.
“But you can talk about what you believe without saying ‘and furthermore, these people who believe this other thing are blah blah blah (insert criticism of other religion/belief system here).’”
What’s in the brackets and what’s before ‘blah blah blah’ doesn’t match at all. If you follow the former portion it evokes something like ‘people who believe this are stupid.’ If you follow the latter, it evokes ‘This belief is stupid for reason x.’ The latter doesn’t qualify as “tearing other people down,” so why did you splice to different type of model sentences together?
In case I’m not being clear, this is what the sentences fragment, when correctly separated and recontructed, could look like:
‘and furthermore, these people who believe this other thing are blah blah blah (insert insult of the other individual or group).’
‘and furthermore, to believe this other thing is wrong blah blah blah (insert insult of the other individual or group).’
Now, as before, I don’t think that “tearing people down” in relation to their beliefs is always inappropriate, especially when those beliefs have otherwise material consequences in the world. I don’t think it’s honest to pretend that Christians in the US have had an overwhelming tendency to mind their own business, and that when they aren’t they’re acting under legitimate provokation.
Careful, Ms Kate…next you’ll go on to try and prove that black is white and get killed at the next zebra crossing.
Epicurus believed gods should be a role model
And rejected that the gods, as his society presented them, were such role models. He wasn’t particularly atheist, but he did begin a large amount of questioning as to the validity of the belief in such deities.
Okay then, Bushites, Cheneyites, Randroids, Ron Paul’s squad of Internet flying monkeys, LaRouchians, and the entire Revolutionary Communist Party (all 6 of them).
JackGoff, if I start adding every idiosyncratic religious tradition that has or has had one member in its entire history, I might be here a while.
Heh, I was being tongue-in-cheek.
So what if she thinks religion is crap? It’s just a coarse way of saying what atheists believe, or else we wouldn’t be atheists.
If a person is religious and really believes they’re right, they shouldn’t be so threatened by someone’s belief that their religion is crap any more than I get personally offended by someone who thinks my favorite movie is crap. They might even think that I have bad taste for liking it. But unless I’m especially sensitive or insecure about my taste or I feel I have to justify my taste, I really don’t give a damn.
With the sentences you’re kind of nitpicking and I think you know what I meant, so I’m not gonna bother re-writing them. And with this, you’re right, a lot of overzealous Christians have not minded their own business.
So when they don’t mind their own business, push back, fight back, give as good as you get. But as soon as you start judging all of them for the actions of some, or even the actions of the majority, that’s prejudice, pure and simple.
Judge them for what they do, not what they think, because sometimes what they think does not cause them to take any specific action that negatively impacts you or anybody else.
Who said anything about action? I’m judging their beliefs. The religious beliefs don’t become unstupid just because they a) keep it to themselves or b) they contort them in a particular way that happens to result in the same political outlook as me.
In such deities, may I stress. Not in any deity at all. The thing is, if we could consider Epicurus as an atheist for not believing in some gods who, to his opinion, were inmoral, one could also call atheist the christians who refused to believe in the grecorroman gods. But none of them ever questioned the very existence of divinity, which is what an atheist actually does.For reasons that might be rational -There’s no phisical proof of the existence of god, therefore I choose not to believe - or moral - that man commited perjury against the gods and still he hasn’t been punished, so, what should I believe in the gods for?-, or whatever reasons may be.
Why do you think I’m talking about politicians? I’m talking about Joe Q Public, voter. Evangelicals are perfectly content to let you believe in your false gods… so long as you remember they’re in charge of the laws and you must live under the moral pretexts of their particular dogma (assuming even they can come to agree on what that is). They’re perfectly content to tolerate other religions, when they’re not trying to convert you. The problem is *NOT* solved when everybody just believes as they want. Twenty percent of the American population has a belief system that tells them that when they vote in the next election, they need to vote for someone who will uphold their religious beliefs in the common law. And that, to them, is not only okay, it’s EXPECTED. Because they cannot or will not intellectually separate their religious values from what they want to see as national policy applied to everybody who doesn’t believe as they do. So by your analysis, everything’s okay when people just believe as they want, when really it isn’t. The fundamental problem of breaking through the barrier of thought that protects religious motivations for government policy from being criticized will never be overcome so long as secularists and atheists try to shush each other into the false solution that being nice to people who want to destroy your civil rights is actually a winning strategy.
And the solution to voters not having a clear line between how their religion should motivate them at the polls, if at all, in a secular society is not likely to be found among politicians whose primary campaign strategy is to assert their religiosity as a hallmark of their character and qualifications to hold office. No.
And let’s not go on about unifying this country. I have no interest in compromising (or as the Democratic establishment does it, capitulating) to a wingnut conservative voting block that thinks torture is a moral good, and that women should be forced by the government to carry and birth children. No, thank you. I’m done with “bipartisan compromise”.
You’re stalling, BlackBloc. Finish the list.
BlackBloc
“Who said anything about action?”
I did.
Rob,
“With the sentences you’re kind of nitpicking and I think you know what I meant, so I’m not gonna bother re-writing them.”
1. Not a nit, which is my whole point
2. You need not bother re-writing, I already did it.
It’s not a nit because it’s been something consistent in your comments. You conflate being disrespectful to an idea or set of ideas to being disrespectful to a person or persons. You’ve done it in a very clean way this time so I took the opportunity to show the error.
Using the term ‘fairytale’ in analogy to a religion doesn’t constitute tearing anyone down. As Phoenician in a time of Romans pointed out, there’s nothing particularly insulting about the terms used by atheists in analogies. But, as PIATOR also articulated better than I did earlier, they’re part of pretty essential arguments about atheism.
Trading open expression of atheism for excessive respect to mere ideas isn’t a good deal.
“Judge them for what they do, not what they think, because sometimes what they think does not cause them to take any specific action that negatively impacts you or anybody else.”
But that’s not true. Religion isn’t incidental to what some religious people try to achieve, using the support (even in complacent inaction) of other religious people. Since the belief in a special (even central) status of religion in society is their objective, suscribing to the notion that religion, unlike other ideas, is sacrosanct isn’t really something people can afford to do. Since religion is used as the apparent basis to the authoritarian thought in question, then it becomes necessary to give an accurate account of atheistic thought on that religion.
But the distinction I keep making does cut both ways, to some degrees. Arguments against religion gain nothing and lose much by pushing the religious further toward the idea that their belief must encompass all or nothing.
A little off-topic, but can anyone point me to, or maybe just outline briefly, more about the critique of Dawkins et al from the Left? I’ve skimmed most of Dawkins and parts of Harris, and it does eventually read like alt.atheism or Slashdot after a while…it would be nice to see a new framing that is more progressive…
I don’t understand string theory, time-space relativity, quantum mechanics or the wave-particle duality of light, but I’m considered arrogant because I don’t waste time or effort believing one particular theory given to me with no supporting evidence.
Is saying, “There is no evidence for the existence of your deity” the same as dissing someone’s religion? If it is, then you do want atheists to shut up….again.
Technically, Sam Harris’ torture argument is that if inflicting “collateral damage” (dropping bombs that blow up the bad guy’s innocent neighbor along with the bad guy) is okay, then it’s okay to torture bad guys, because inflicting collateral damage is worse than torturing bad guys.
In other words, either we ought to be a lot more upset than we are about “collateral damage,” or we ought to be a lot less upset about torture.
Personally, I believe the strongest argument against torture as an interrogation technique is simply that it doesn’t work, because it just makes people tell you what you want to hear.
What IS ironic is that a large minority of so-called pious conservative Christian believers/ Bibliolatrists are ignorant of the TEXT ITSELF. There doesn’t seem to be an appreciation of context, literary form, history (actual, and as percieved by the ancient Hebrews). A well-educated atheist who has had one or two Bible as literature or comparative religion courses knows more about the Bible than these Christians with all their Sunday School and sermons.
This is acknowledged by a good many evangelicals.
Rob:
The fight’s already ON, kiddo. Where have you been? Look just a few posts back–”the Texas Board of Higher Education is considering accrediting the Texas Based Institute for Creation Research”. What does that tell you?
Judges appointed for their religious beliefs are systematically whittling down and placing restrictions on abortion rights. What does that tell you?
There is currently a government policy that allows discrimination against gay people marrying or serving in the military. What does that tell you?
Are you awake, at all? We’re not going to get people who support restricting our rights based on their religious beliefs ON OUR SIDE. Being nice and kind and gently explaining that they might want to leave the rest of us alone isn’t going to work.
If we point blank say the emperor has no clothes, maybe it will resonate with enough people who normally roll their eyes and say “whatever” (like I tend to do) that we can roll back the attempted takeover.
“Live and let live” works just fine if the other side’s willing to “let live”; that’s why I don’t tell my friend across the street that she’s fucking crazy for letting an imaginary sky fairy’s representatives on earth run her life, and she doesn’t tell me I’m going to hell for being a dirty heathen.
The difference is that I’m the one who’s right, and I’m not going to tell her to stop believing in the imaginary sky fairy if she wants to. On the other hand, her nutty controlling husband might be perfectly happy to tell ME that since I’m unmarried he’s decided I’m to be his own personal Offred (Ofbob, actually). That’s where I decline to live and let live and tell him he’s wrong.
1. Religious people of any flavor should never be allowed to pressure people of other flavors/no religion into belief or into taking actions based solely on religious belief without any other reason that can be argued/agreed upon.
2. Many atheists have never believed, and thus really don’t get what religious people get out of their belief. Fair enough, they shouldn’t have to. But the psychological/moral/whatever connection religious people feel to a belief system is quite real, and isn’t a simple delusion. It is, if nothing else, an attempt to find meaning in a universe that is, let’s face it, completely indifferent to whatever humanity does or doesn’t do. Which is why all the Sky Fairy stuff, while funny, is also painful. There is such a thing as sincere belief that doesn’t derive from the desire to have power over other people. It’s just not very loud and doesn’t tend to call attention to itself, unlike the other kind.
3. A lot of people who once believed often wish they still could, because the comfort it offered was real. Religion would hardly be so widespread if that weren’t true. This doesn’t mean there’s a god, as any good agnostic will tell you, just that religion seems to be an extremely effective and attractive mechanism for organizing and humanizing the lonely reality of consciousness.
first off, yay “nude” atheists! thanks for the smile, seeker6079. however, i was not arguing that only PhDs should talk about religion, just that they have not studied it really at all. their methodological approach is the same as christian fundies, which is hardly critical and scholarly.
) feminist i am today is through my judaism. the writings of women like judith hauptman, judith plaskow, phyllis trible, tikva frymer kensky, regina schwartz, susannah heschel and rachel adler have given me so much inspiration.
second, keith: yes i have read these books. sooooo… yeah.
however, you make a good point. dawkins does largely treat the idea of a god and not religion as a cultural etc. phenomenon. that having been said, he does dip his toe in, etc.
also, all ideas we have about god are informed by some sort of cultural production or artefact, so… you really can’t separate the two completely, you know?
the problem i have with dawkins is his biological reductionism. his perspective makes cultural studies etc. outside the bounds of serious study. mark taylor’s new book “after god” makes a great point: biological and cultural spheres are coemergent. they affect each other. a great (feminist) example is the body. body types are hugely influenced by the culture surrounding them. the trajectory of influence does not only run from biology to culture.
also, keith, you’re totally right about a non-partiarchal critique of “thesim.” however, it already exists, and it continues today. indeed, speaking confessionally for a moment, the reason i have become the (nigh dogmatic
and THAT’S the rub, to me. that, to these “new atheists,” belief in God/religion follows one track: that of the fundamentalists. (i’m with you, d.n. nation). belief and theology and religion are all complex phenomena with so many iterations, that treating them with the (phallic) BROADSWORD OF REASON when a fine scalpel would be much more appropriate does everyone a disservice.
Hand, I’m confused why you seem to think that the fact you’re not a fundamentalist makes your belief in a supernatural entity worthy of respect.
Atheists don’t believe in *any* god; that is not confined to mean and nasty ones. I mean, I’m glad you believe in a nice god and all, but hell, unicorns are nice too but we don’t waste time wondering what they think.
and THAT’S the rub, to me. that, to these “new atheists,” belief in God/religion follows one track: that of the fundamentalists. (i’m with you, d.n. nation). belief and theology and religion are all complex phenomena with so many iterations, that treating them with the (phallic) BROADSWORD OF REASON when a fine scalpel would be much more appropriate does everyone a disservice
It addresses the fundamentalists because they’re the ones running things/making the most noise right now. But the same argument applies to all religions. They’re all equally wrong.
This is not a case for a scalpel, but an axe. Pruning the berries at the tips of the branches of theology is pointless if your aim is the rotten trunk of the tree. Belief, theology and religion may be slightly separate entities, but they’re all growing on the same bush. Kill the roots, and the rest comes with it. Kill it with the Agent Orange of Reason, if that makes you feel better, but kill it.
Arghh. That fist paragraph was supposed to be blockquoted from invisible-hand.
invisible_hand:
I do not know the term in Logic for it, but you are making a false assumption of a binary situation. The world is not divided into PhDs on the one hand and those who “have not studied it really at all”. John Keegan and the novelist Tom Clancy, for example, are world-renowned experts on military matters, and neither has a Ph.D (to name just two right off the top of my head).Your statement thus can be rephrased to “I’m not saying that only PhDs should talk about religion, but if anybody else does they are the same as the christian fundies”. That is simply false.
you are making a false assumption of a binary situation.
False dichotomy.
Seeker, I think hand means: “I’m not saying that only PhDs should talk about religion, just that they [the new atheists] have not studied it at all.”
In other words, you don’t have to be a PhD to talk about religion, but you do have to have studied the topic some.
Which is true, but “I believe in a supernatural being that…” is enough to run afoul of negative inductive arguments, the barrier is pretty low.
I don’t know if it can be killed with Reason, mothworm. It’s a FEELING, and something so nebulous can hide when you’re looking the other way.
You can go round the mulberry bush and try to believe in some shadow of God, like “God is love” or “there’s more than one god” or “God is incomprehensible to us”. There are people who search for “meaning”, and people who just do the Occam’s razor thing and go “snip”. Those who believe are those who still WANT to believe, and they’ll whittle God down and make him more and more mysterious to be able to believe. It’s hard to accept that a species as clever as ours isn’t special enough to rate a supernatural overseer; lots of people never will.
Cripes. “is enough to run afoul of negative inductive arguments, so the barrier is pretty low.
Thanks, Jack.An excellent point, although it may be useful to remember that Christianity didn’t invent centralized authority. Charles Freeman, in his The Closing of the Western Mind, argues convincingly that Constantine’s “conversion” in 312 C.E. (scare quotes signifying that the nature and meaning of his conversion is contested by historians and theologians) is really the story of how Christian dogma was co-opted by the pre-existing power structure of Imperial Rome. Of course, 312 is pretty remote from our current situation, and this by no means lets modern day, Bible-thumping hegemons off the hook.
Hardcore atheists may have little interest in (or patience with) the distinction I’m about to draw, but for some reason–one which may be peculiar to my own make-up–I find the atheist vs. theist conflict a lot less interesting or relevant than the one between hegemonic and non-hegemonic. In short, it’s simply in the nature of entrenched power that it seeks to perpetuate itself, and woe betide any force that tries to stand in its way. The degree of harmfulness of monotheistic religion depends in large measure on the power dynamics of a given society, whether you’re talking about the U.S. (where Jesus freaks pretty much run things, their relentless bleating about the “persecution” they suffer at the hands of secularists notwithstanding) or the Latin American dictatorships (where people of faith were the bulk of those on the receiving end of state power, and religious leaders foremost among those challenging it).
I would respond to John Haught and his ilk by suggesting that we are all sufficiently “expert,” if not on theology, at least on the dynamics of our own life-worlds to be easily capable of mapping the social injury caused by dogmatic religion, and to be just as capable of denouncing such harms as they occur in real-time. Pulling the deep “mystery” and “complexity” of one’s faith system out of one’s ass is a classic rhetorical power move, a way of obscuring the fact that there are fundamental regularities within Christian doctrine and practice about which one can safely generalize, even if one’s understanding of certain particulars might be wanting.
If one only reads four good, comprehensive books about Christianity, that can go a long way towards closing the knowledge gap. I would even argue that those four books, whichever ones they are, matter a lot more than any subsequent 100, and those who argue otherwise just want to erect a wall of obscurantism between themselves and any would-be interrogators.
I doubt religion will ever go away entirely, though it’s influence needs to be drastically reduced, and I can’t think of any tool better than reason. It’s why I quit believeing, although, looking back, I realize that I never “felt” god or any sort of presence, so perhaps I’m more amenable to having it pointed out that there’s no eveidence for any theological belief, and that most of them are patently absurd on top of that.
Thom, that may be what invisible_hand meant, but his false dichotomy (thanks again, Jack - I hate forgetting these things) remains: he assumes that the so-called new atheists haven’t studied this matter. First, that is demonstrably false in the case of Dawkins and Hitchens. (I can’t speak to the work of the others.) Second, it is rather a condescending assumption on invisible_hand’s part, as it assumes that anybody who disagrees with religion must prima facie be doing so because they are ignorant and uneducated. Third, it ill behooves people arguing for the existence of a never-seen, wholly unprovable supernatural being to argue that their opponents> are uneducated dolts. Ignorance is intellectual Strength, it seems.
seeker - read your damn email…
Which is true, but “I believe in a supernatural being that…” is enough to run afoul of negative inductive arguments, the barrier is pretty low.
This may be true, but I have to say, as a practicing Catholic for many years, and as a former fundy, I have had numerous and extensive contact with religious doctrine, and I get the feeling that my opinions on the matter, despite being very closely aligned with the scientific skepticism approach, would not weigh as highly due to the fact that it does ultimately come down to parsimony and useless, unprovable propositions.
thanks again, Jack
You’re welcome, seeker!
MikeEss: I was playing hard to get.
Funny you would use the term “roast me on a spit” … I have no problem at all with people who find personal comfort in the belief of a higher being, but roasting people on spits is something atheists tend to do figuratively, and something religious institutions have spent centuries years doing literally.
Because of that, you’ll have to cut us mean, hyper-critical unsaved people a break for exercising our ability during this brief window of partial sanity in human history to voice our concerns about being burned alive.
Reason is phallic?
I’m not entirely sure of your point, Jack; I think you’re saying that the theist is not likely to be persuaded, yes?
I don’t disagree, but my point was merely that the quantum of knowledge necessary to reject a religion as nonsense is very, very, low. I’m an old atheist myself, but it isn’t as if one needs to be able to compare Cartesian and Augustinian arguments for transubstantiation to question the premise that a supernatural being exists at all.
BlackBloc: Moonies, Baha’i, and Discoballmousetarians.
Thom’s comment #80 is a crisp distillation of my hitherto-unarticulated discomfort with “good Christians” vs. bad theocrats. I gotta remember those key points. “I take care of the poor because Jesus said to” is not so different from “We must kill the infidels.” Plenty of atheists donate to the local food pantry because it’s the kind and right thing to do, not because it’s the religious thing to do. Using religion as the reason for doing good is ultimately hollow, for me–just as justifying hatred as God’s will is also hollow.
I couldn’t agree more. Drawing the big distinction between theistic and nontheistic systems misses the point; just because Stalin’s system was nontheistic didn’t make it a good one–it was the canonical nightmarish authoritarian hell which should have put the kibosh on anyone claiming that atheism was by itself good. While a good argument can be made that theism teaches that authority, revelation and tradition are the best ways of knowing, and that these lead to the hegemony you describe, it’s entirely unsupportable to claim that atheism in and of itself leads to utopia.seeker6079, you might be interested in this list of logical fallacies, expressed with a healthy serving of delicious self-reference.
just because Stalin’s system was nontheistic didn’t make it a good one
Then again, to what extent was Stalin not tearing down Theism, but, instead, raising up himself as God-like through propaganda and totalitarianism? It’s a fine line, I think, though I will agree that it does point to pure atheism not being inherently a bastion of progressivism.
I’m weary, though, of saying that Stalinist Russia was atheistic in terms of the actual principles of atheism, but yes, purely by definition, it was atheist.
I’m weary
Should be “wary”.
I don’t ask that you share my faith. I don’t ask that you “respect my beliefs”(empty phrase that it is). I ask that you respect me as a human being enough to not be an ass about my having them. That’s all I really have to say.
Of course I do. To respect someone as a human being is to accept that human beings are flawed creatures. Ain’t none of us perfect, all of us have will to power that needs to be balanced with what’s right and what’s peaceful. Religion seems to be a weakness to me, but it’s understandable. Like smoking, for instance. I don’t think it’s right to smoke, I’ll say it’s wrong, but I get why people do it and face to face in social situations I wouldn’t bust their asses about it. And I think it’s best if they respectfully step outside to pursue their habit.
Actually, there’s all kinds of great stuff in the Bible – and you don’t even have to look very hard for it. Take the Book of Ruth, for example: it’s the tale of two widows, one of whom left her homeland to join her impoverished mother-in-law on a journey back to Bethlehem.
I believe the argument is about faith, not the literary merits of good story-telling. The Bible has some good stories. Shakespeare is better, I’d say. I’d also argue that “The Wire” is better, but I won’t be starting a church based on that.
The idea that moderate religion is somehow immune to the atheist arguments against fundamentalist belief is a dodge.
The truth is that your little internecine quarrel about whether or not Jesus told you to hate gays or to love them is completely irrelevant - it doesn’t matter, because Jesus never said anything that has survived to this day. The Bible simply isn’t his words, if he even existed in the first place.
That argument is just as potent against moderate Christians as it is against fundamentalists, and the precise content of your moderate belief is irrelevant. It’s based on the same thing the fundamentalists base their beliefs on - the existence of God and the historical existence of Jesus, who said some stuff. And the arguments that prove the falsity of both those claims are just as potent, and have yet to be addressed, by both moderates and fundamentalists alike.
Arguments against the existence of God don’t get less effective just because you decide to believe in a weaker God, a God who answers prayer less than the fundamentalist God, who is less interested in human affairs, etc. If anything your moderate belief is just evidence of how effective and accurate the atheist’s arguments are - you’re already starting to incorporate those atheist conclusions into your belief.
So why not go all the way?
You know something, I came out of the closet at the same time queers read this circulated around in response to many of the same arguments that queer activists should play nicey-nice with our straight allies.
And it took me a few years and then it sunk in.
People who face systematic oppression have every right to a rhetorical space in which they can express their justified anger regarding the dominant class. Those members of the dominant class who have a clue, know how to shut the fuck up and listen when confronted with this anger.
And I also think there is a bit of gender and power going on in this, because it seems that every time Amanda expresses her anger in regards to the political impact of religioun in United States politics, we have this long thread about how she should in the interest of political togetherness play nicey-nicey with people who will probably never face discrimination or harassment on the basis of religion. But no one will call Christopher Hitchens to task for calling Huckleby “a primate too stupid to know he is one.”
I have to say, the bit about loving one’s enemies is fairly unique. The other bit about forgiveness of wrongs done to you shows up in most of the other main religions too, but there really is an interesting moral leap in the New Testament.
Not that it has much of anything to do with how the faith is practiced by the vast majority of its adherents. But there’s an idea there which has beauty in it, even if it’s not something which many of us would choose to pursue.
You can go round the mulberry bush and try to believe in some shadow of God, like “God is love” or “there’s more than one god” or “God is incomprehensible to us”.
Smith: “I believe in something bigg- you know, not some guy with a beard, but something highe- a force that- a larger m- something that gives meani- something that can’t really be expressed.”
Jones: “Well, not by you, obviously.”
Reason is phallic?
Ah, I see you’re getting the thrust of the argument…
“you are making a false assumption of a binary situation.”
False dichotomy.
See here.
Secularists can have gods, too. Here is how me and mine celebrate the year’s festivities!
the “Free-Thinkers” are part and parcel with a political/philosophical program that seeks to champion the Enlightenment and reject the revolutionary critiques of the postmoderns.
Whereas I agree that this is a tendency, I do not see it as being all that clear-cut. In fact, one of the jobs that the “new atheists” have is to readdress and indeed, re-evaluate the critiques of the postmoderns. The aspect of interpretation of texts is an important one, as you have pointed out. However, it is also true to say, as Nietzsche pointed out, that to invest “truth” in the interpretative capacity of the herd is to reintroduce God into the frame. So we do need some criteria for truth that stands outside of the herd’s interpretations — which, to be honest, just leads us back to right wing populism (or much more rarely, its left wing variety).
Jennifer Armstrong
2007 Senate Candidate for Secular Party of Australia
I wish I’d thought to visit Pandagon earlier. The Salon piece was one of the first things I read today, so of course I had to go to Pharyngula, and that led to Yglesias, and so forth and so on. And this thread is over two hundred comments already.
It’s not hard to find the gist of the anger towards the “New Atheists”: they just want us to shut up. Stop venting in visible comment threads. Stop writing best-selling books. Hands off religion. Public atheism is intolerant and disrespectful.
At least they aren’t saying “Think of the Children”! Yet.
I have a bit of problem with atheism in that it’s implicit that not believing in something is somehow a defining characteristic.
There are an infinite number of things I don’t believe in. God happens to be one of them. As does the Abominable Snow Man. The fact that I don’t believe in God is not defining; it’s barely interesting.
For all this bluster about new vs. old atheism they both use religion as a reference point and pay deference to it by putting it at the center of the discussion, affirming its importance. The true “new atheism” is people who think about God in the exact same way they think about Zeus — they don’t.
The true threat to religion is not from active disbelievers who define themselves relative to religious beliefs but from people who just don’t give a shit and for who religion isn’t even on their radar screens.
I’ve never understood active atheism. I don’t believe in the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man but I’ve never felt compelled to write a book about it. Defining yourself by what you don’t believe seems very roundabout.
This interview is just an endless parade of muddled thinking, isn’t it?
I think John Haught is wrong in literally every answer he gives in that interview.
Every. Single. One.
But to stick to the subject of this post, the big question when somebody says, “Oh, that’s not what my religion is really about” is,
“says who?”
Basically, there are two reasons to say that guys like Dawkins should ignore the goofball fundy version of religion.
The first and simplest is to make a case that that branch is so small and inconsequential that there’s no more point in writing a book to argue it then there is in writing a book to argue against the flat earth.
The second and more relevant way is to show that there is significant evidence that god is real, and that he endorses the nice religions and not the mean ones.
Neither of those positions strikes me as being obvious, and I’ve heard no real compelling arguments for them.
———————————————————-
I really hate arguments that atheists should be nicer.
The mainstream American religions mostly have the idea that all other religions are incorrect, and were created by people who were either deluded, deceitful, or just plain too stupid to really understand things.
I have this opinion that what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.
I think it’s a perfectly fine thing to say, “Your idea is wrong” and, yes, even “Your idea is stupid” and follow that up with an argument about why you think that is.
Huge chunks of Christian belief are devoted to doing that; why is it okay for them to do it, but we have to be all nice and respectful?
Margalis:
That’s surprising, because it’s really not that hard to understand; When a group is marginalized, they often feel the need to convince people that they shouldn’t be marginalized.
Why do you think that the phrase “Black is beautiful” is much more popular then the phrase “Green eyes are beautiful”?
It’s because there was an organised movement saying, essentially, “Black is ugly”, while there was no similar movement against green-eyed people.
If somebody says, “You’re a loser” it’s only natural to say “No I’m not!”
And atheists are marginalised in America. Not to the extent of black people, but it’s hard to imagine an atheist being elected president.
Oh, incidentally, does anybody know of an interview where Mr. Haught talked with a more hostile questioner?
Because Steve Paulson lets Haught get away with some pretty awful lapses.
Early in the interview, Haught says that atheism is a terrifying belief that inexorably leads to hopelessness and nihilism.
Steve Paulson of course brings up the Buddhists and other atheistic faiths.
Oh, no he doesn’t. He waits until the end of the interview and brings them up in response to Haught saying that belief in a personal god is one of the stages of religious feeling.
A good interviewer would have brought up atheistic faiths at the beginning of the interview. I have a very hard time believing that Buddhists consider their faith to be terrifying, hopeless, or nihilistic.
This interview completely sucks from start to finish.
grendelkhan, that list is quite funny as well as helpful. Ta ever so.
“I have a bit of problem with atheism in that it’s implicit that not believing in something is somehow a defining characteristic.”
When the default is BELIEVE! (or else), not believing takes courage, and the ability to accept the pain that is sure to follow.
So yes, indeed, “not believing in something” can easily be a very important defining characteristic…
In case you have read it (and are still reading this thread)
http://www.amazon.com/Only-Begotten-Daughter-Harvest-Book/dp/0156002434
Plot: Jewish guy donates to sperm bank, sperm joins with a holy overy giving Jesus a half sister living in New Jersey. Judy Bloom meets Philip Pullman meets Candide.
I’m not sure is there’s a sexist component or not (I’d wager that there is, but I have no way of confirming it), but certain people do see waaaaaay too invested in whether Amanda plays nicey-nice or not. It really is just a concern troll way of trying to silence dissent and shut people up.
I for one hope that she never plays nice.
You don’t try to negotiate with people who want you on the ground with their boot on the back of your neck. That’s that.
I have a bit of problem with atheism in that it’s implicit that not believing in something is somehow a defining characteristic…
…The true “new atheism” is people who think about God in the exact same way they think about Zeus — they don’t.
The true threat to religion is not from active disbelievers who define themselves relative to religious beliefs but from people who just don’t give a shit and for who religion isn’t even on their radar screens.
I’ve never understood active atheism. I don’t believe in the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man but I’ve never felt compelled to write a book about it. Defining yourself by what you don’t believe seems very roundabout.
I’m intrigued. I’d be interested to know how you acomplish that, because I really can’t imagine how that works. I don’t believe in the Stay Puft Marshmellow Man, and, unless I’m watching Ghostbusters, I don’t give him any more thought than Zeus. But, then, I’m not constantly bombarded with reminders that there are millions of people who do believe in them. If there were millions of people who did still believe in Zeus, and a vocal group of them were actively harming people because “Zeus said to”, you’d likely find more people speaking out about their disbelief in Zeus.
“I’m not sure is there’s a sexist component or not (I’d wager that there is, but I have no way of confirming it), but certain people do see waaaaaay too invested in whether Amanda plays nicey-nice or not. It really is just a concern troll way of trying to silence dissent and shut people up.”
You know there is a Godwin-like “law” that says the longer any feminist blog discussion goes, the odds of someone mentioning Amanda approach 1, right?
Our Amanda is an extremely important person to the proper functioning of the intertubes…
Velvet Elvis:
That book is fantastic. I highly recommend it.
You would if those who believed in Marshy had a strong enough lobby that nobody could have s’mores any longer. Or Rice Krispie treats. Or (as another, far-out example) have abortions or serve in the military. Or, say, if those who believed in Marshy decided a woman who’d been raped should be given 200 lashes for it.
At the risk of whining, “they started it”, well…they did.
Getting into whether it’s religion or God that needs to die is too tangled for me to wade into. I do believe that if a Supreme Court Justice is listening to a voice he believes is there (but isn’t) when he makes his decisions, we’re in trouble.
Not only that, but fundamentalists are perfectly happy to destroy everything just out of spite. It’s one reason why I’m terrified of fundamentalists overrunning Pakistan. Those bastards don’t care if they start a nuclear holocaust by attacking India. They believe that God will reward them for it. At least atheists have to worry about self-preservation.
I have a bit of problem with atheism in that it’s implicit that not believing in something is somehow a defining characteristic.
If society has normalized having a certain characteristic, then yes, lacking that characteristic is, to some degree, defining. If the beach is full of star-bellied sneeches, not having a star is a defining characteristic. (Unlike in the story, though, atheists aren’t lining up to get the star stamped on by that Lorax-lookin’ dude.)
Society normalizes belief in God and acceptance of faith. As an atheist I don’t see any problem with identifying as someone who rejects both, when it comes up in conversation. But I don’t lead with the atheism any more than Methodists do, for instance. Day-to-day my atheism is about as relevant as my astrological sign.
To those posting scripture: A useless exercise if you haven’t figured that out already.
When beliefs interfere with the government then I cry foul. I don’t want government in any way involved in whatever is the latest in fad Christianity. It smacks way too much of the power Catholicism had way back when. Surprisingly, some people who have a belief in the sky fairy do understand the inherent danger in allowing the sway of religion to rule government.
Thom December 18, 2007 at 2:33 pm
I mean, it’s great that you’ll always be on our side, no doubt, but look at it from our perspective: you’ll always be on our side because that’s what a supernatural being whose existence we find laughable wants you to be. We’re glad you’re here, but it doesn’t inspire confidence.
Thom, nah, it’s not the sky fairy. It has more to do with a serious understanding that all people are entitled to the same rights. Probably for the same reason you believe everybody should be allowed the same rights. I just happen to believe in the sky fairy, and you don’t. Sort of extraneous information on both of us.
I have noticed that quite a few atheists share one thing in common with the fundamentalists. It’s an odd need to dismiss everything but what they believe as being right. Damn, it’s the same thing that pisses me off about the religious right. This is too firmly establish that I dislike anybody doing it.
Discussing is one thing. The ‘I’m right, you’re wrong’ is ridiculous, no matter who it comes from. Nobody knows jack shit.
Rob, (verb)er of (noun)s
I kind of liked the sky fairy. Never heard that one before. And I agree with MikeEss. Pat Robertson and the like attack anybody that doesn’t believe their version of Christianity. Which is what seriously disturbs me about those Christians who get media play. It’s fricking scary is what it is. And to be blunt, I personally feel far more under attack by the religious right then I do by atheists calling God a sky fairy. Eh, I’m going to hell along with the Atheists according to them.
But then I also think if the religious right is what I’m going to find in Heaven, I’ll skip my way to Hell. Works for me.
I am finding it all kinds of strange that anybody would think you need the first understanding of any religion to be a real Atheist. That implies there are fake Atheists. Anybody want to explain what that would be?
There’s a contingent of asexual pacifist vegans outside who’d like to have a word with you. And if you were essentially barred from public office because you didn’t subscribe to a particular school of thought with regards to the Snowman’s hairy hooves, you’d have a point.I should draw the distinction between atheism and religious criticism because they are often conflated.
The religious can participate in religious critcism. David Kuo for example bemoans that the mix of politics and religion is bad for both. Throughout history many critics of religion have been religious and gone on to form splinter groups. Being an atheist doesn’t make you a critic and being a critic doesn’t make you an atheist.
I challenge the notion that being an atheist is somehow brave - millions of MySpace posters disagree with you. That is a large part of my point, that disbelief in God is increasingly commonplace and casual. It’s as brave as smoking pot.
On my own blog I’ve railed against the virtual test of religion in politics. (Specifically the “What is your favorite Bible verse?” Russert asked in a Democratic debate) But I’ve found many religious people who agree with me there.
That question is disgusting and improper, but that has nothing to do with whether or not God exists - it’s disgusting and improper either way because it’s fundamentally opposed to how our country is supposed to operate.
Being an atheist and being a critic of religion (and especially religious institutions) are not interchangeable concepts. Focusing on whether God exists seems pointless to me because even if God does exist it doesn’t make make religious criticisms any less valid.
Priests raping kids is wrong either way.
Belief in God is not in itself a problem and disbelief is not in itself a solution to anything.
Hope that makes some sense, kind of rambling I know. Maybe I hang out with a younger crowd but from what I see non-belief in God is quickly becoming an acceptable norm.
There’s a contingent of asexual pacifist vegans outside who’d like to have a word with you.
As threats go, grendalkhan - Epic Fail.
It’s fucking dumb of me to dignify this with a response, but…persecution complex much, Sheesh?
You don’t assume people are out to get you and strike at them unless you have irrefutable proof. That’s that.
You fucking wait until they attack you, and only then do you defend yourself or take aggressive action. Even then, you only go after the specific ones who’ve attacked you, and don’t condemn others due to guilt by association. If you behave any differently, you’re as bad as the people calling for Iran to be bombed, as well as all the hawks who thought that invading Iraq was as vital as winning WWII, because you’re thinking “show no mercy, wipe them out before they wipe us out, don’t spare ANYBODY.” You’re thinking like a goddamned neo-con, and it’s sad that you can’t look in the mirror and realize that.
Tom B., much to your surprise, it’s quite possible to not watch American Idol without having any opinion on the contestants. If you didn’t CHOOSE to be ignorant of the whole discusssion, you’d know that.
BlackBloc, you forgot the Pastafarians. Unless you feel that actively working on being a joke excludes one from the list.
“You fucking wait until they attack you, and only then do you defend yourself or take aggressive action.”
The people who attack you are the people I’m talking about. Like many atheists, I’m perfectly willing to live and let live until they start intruding on my rights or the rights of others. Certain contingents are actively doing that right now and they deserve no quarter. Aside from that, I could give a flying fuck which sky fairy people believe in. It is completely irrelevant to me as I judge them by their actions.
Oh and I’ll fight or not fight whenever I fucking want to, thanks. What arrogance to try and direct others in such a manner!
Maybe I hang out with a younger crowd but from what I see non-belief in God is quickly becoming an acceptable norm.
Depends on where you live and with whom you are interacting. “Norm” is loaded word here. “Acceptable”, I’ll grant, but that is merely due to increasing attitudes of tolerance in younger generations. As it stands, these people are not the ones in our Congress or running for President.
You don’t assume people are out to get you and strike at them unless you have irrefutable proof. That’s that.
Forgive me for indulging this, but what constitutes a “strike” here? Because if it is anything like what has transpired in this thread, this:
If you behave any differently, you’re as bad as the people calling for Iran to be bombed
is sheer idiocy.
“The people who attack you are the people I’m talking about. Like many atheists, I’m perfectly willing to live and let live until they start intruding on my rights or the rights of others. Certain contingents are actively doing that right now and they deserve no quarter.”
Sheesh, Rob is just asking you to completely subvert your own principles and pretend to be religious - just for him and his. Otherwise he can’t be responsible if some god-poisoned, bible-thumping, whackjob decides to make an example of you and your evil I-don’t-believe-in-god ways.
Rob does offer you the right to go after your attacker, AFTER you’ve been attacked. But Rob will not guarantee you any success in the newly christianized “justice” system, nor do you have any assurance of avoiding torture, or being designated as an “enemy combatant” in the War On Christianity and being imprisoned without trial for years on end, etc.
But you can take solace in knowing that you are allowed to live (for now) in America, Land Of Freedom!
Remember, the 4th Amendment to the Constitution (BTW, sorry about those shit stains - Cheney said they’d come out, but…) says:
“Congress shall make no law
respecting an establishment of religion, orprohibiting the free exercisethereofof religious indignation on god-hating atheists.”It’s right there, look it up…
4th Amendment to the Constitution
Heh, I think you mistyped, Mike.
“Heh, I think you mistyped, Mike.”
Uhhhhh, I knew that…of course…I learned it…in school, or something…it used to be the 1st Amendment…but when Mike Huckabee rewrote it, he, uh, changed the number. Yeah, that’s it…
Caffeine is our little chemical friend. Caffeine is our little chemical friend. Caffeine is our little chemical friend. Caffeine is our little chemical friend. Caffeine is our little chemical friend. Caffeine is our little chemical friend. Caffeine is our little chemical friend….
Shayne: If you’re not deriving your moral commitments to justice and fairness from your belief in God, have some hallelujahs from my secular amen chorus. I won’t pretend that Prime Mover gods are philosophically supportable, but I’m not going to worry about your politics, except in the unlikely event that you -do- start relying on the existence of God as a justification for actions.
Or are just prejudiced against atheists, like this:
Yeah! And liberals are the real fascists, and multiculturalism is the real racism! Spare me. You got a lot of damn gall to throw this pox on both your houses shit around, making claims about how atheists are so damn confident when you believe–without any evidence–in a supernatural being. You want to talk about cocky empirical claims, start at home, brother.
And please, no more foolishness like this:
I’ll grant you that you may not know more than jack shit, but, not knowing more than jack shit, how do you know that I don’t? It’s a shame for your side that there aren’t really good arguments for the existence of God, but unless you can shock the philosophical community and come up with one, you’ve got no more right to expect people to pretend this is something that could go either way than a right to expect biology teachers to “teach the controversy.”
It’s fucking dumb of me to dignify this with a response, but…persecution complex much, Rob?
Yes. You pay the fuck attention to what’s being said, and maybe pay attention to the world around you, before you decide that posters are saying Christians Are Evil–especially when so many have said their only problem is with THE ONES WHO ARE TRYING TO LEGISLATE THEIR MORALITY AND MAKE THE REST OF US GO ALONG. Not to mention the fact that–hello–mind-bogglingly, they’ve been doing it. How many times do I have to say “abortion rights shrinking, gay rights shrinking, misogyny” before it penetrates?
You mean, like we’ve been doing? Most atheists aren’t exactly militant, you know. It’s only come to this because the land of the free, where church and state are separate, is turning into a theocratic dictatorship. That doesn’t mean I blame my neighbor across the street, as I said.
WAKE UP and listen. Get the fucking plank out of your own eye, kiddo. Like everything else in these discussions, if it’s not about you, it’s not about you.
You might as well say “I’m gonna go out and punch some random person in the face when there are no cops or witnesses around, and if you tell me that I’m wrong to do it, you’re arrogant.” Aside from one being physical and the other verbal, it’s not that different.
Now, you say you’re only going after guys like the thankfully late Falwell, and Robertson, and Dobson, and the jerks who hang on their every single word (no matter how idiotic or hateful)? Good!
MikeEss is wrong when he assumes I’m some infiltrator from that side, though. I don’t want all religious people wiped out, or margninalized, so that makes me an evangelical who’s trying to sabotage Pandagon from the inside, right? Er, no. I’m somebody who wants peace and who wants people to treat each other decently.
When the religious right attacks atheists, or gays, or feminists, or anybody else (damn, they have a lot of targets), I hate them for it because none of those groups actually provoked the attack.
If, on the other hand, we lived in a fantasy world or parallel universe where the religious right were just minding their own business, and then some group came along and began attacking them, I’d hate those attackers just as much.
In a nutshell: I hate people who start fights, and I hate people who don’t have a merciful bone in their bodies.
Is that wrong?
Aside from one being physical and the other verbal, it’s not that different.
How does this, in any universe, apply here? Telling someone that you think they are stupid for believing in a supernatural deity is equivalent to punching them? How is calling out your opposition to religious beliefs the same as threatening to invade a sovereign nation with your military? Where are you getting this from?
where’d the rest of my comment go?
My response was:
It’s about the violation of the inviolability of the belief in Belief.
The answer is that they’re both attacks, and they both cause different kinds of pain.
Ahhhh…you always remember your first time arguing with people smarter than yourself.
See, how much damage you cause and whether anybody dies isn’t the primary thing I focus on. Obviously it’s very important, but what I really look at is whether the victim (be it a victim of an insult or an explosion) deserved to be hurt.
If they didn’t deserve to be hurt, I won’t think favorably of the person who hurt them. To clarify more, no, I don’t think insulting somebody unprovoked is as bad as declaring war unprovoked. The war obviously causes much greater suffering. But neither action is exactly commendable.
Let me get this straight: Fundies who roll back abortion rights and wind up killing women are no worse, and no more dangerous, and have caused no more harm, than someone who hurts your precious ickle feelings by telling the truth?
See, how much damage you cause and whether anybody dies isn’t the primary thing I focus on.
So, on these terms (hypothetically speaking), me getting a failing grade on a physics test because I did not rightly understand the principles underlying the Schrodinger Equation (since it hurt my feelings to get a bad grade, and my teacher wrote “Study harder, Goff!” at the top of the paper) is in the same sphere as my professor hauling off and punching me in the face.
Riiiiiight. I think we’re done here.
If the amount of damage religion causes is irrelevant to you simply because nobody’s getting shot for being an infidel right in front of you at the moment, then frankly I am a little more worried about your “tolerant” religiosity than I otherwise might be. It doesn’t bode well for convincing others how harmless religion can be.
In fact, your unwillingness to admit you might have overreacted because your (religion-related) feelings were hurt demonstrates the very irrationality we’re afraid of where religion’s concerned.
So, less worry about the poor religious who don’t “deserve” scorn just because they haven’t burned anyone at the stake lately, please. Those religious people who really are harmless GET IT, and they don’t decide atheists are attacking them personally when the shit going on in the world pisses the atheists off. And, no, we’re not going to shut up. We do, however, promise not to burn you at the stake or force you to renounce your faith.
Oh and I’ll fight or not fight whenever I fucking want to, thanks. What arrogance to try and direct others in such a manner!
You might as well say “I’m gonna go out and punch some random person in the face when there are no cops or witnesses around, and if you tell me that I’m wrong to do it, you’re arrogant.”
*sighs* What I’m saying is that when and how I pick my battles and fight them is up to ME and no one else. I can’t decide what’s more annoying about you: the pious finger-wagging at the uppity wimmenz in thread after thread or the continuous misappropriating of what people say to twist their words into something completely different from what they meant.
I am seriously beginning to doubt your reading comprehension skills (among other things).
Erm…kinda forgot the block quotes up there. You get the general idea though.
Ok, I’m going to try to toss my hat into this, mostly because I’m curious about things.
It seems to me that atheists (and well, most people) believe that religion is inherently tied up with social control, whether it’s of a social caste or a gender or the drive to convert/eradicate other groups of people. However, considering not all religions care a whit about what its people do (namely, neo-paganism), it seems to me that one of the biggest arguments against religion in general doesn’t hold up.
So, atheists, what do you think of this?
“It seems to me that atheists (and well, most people) believe that religion is inherently tied up with social control, whether it’s of a social caste or a gender or the drive to convert/eradicate other groups of people. However, considering not all religions care a whit about what its people do (namely, neo-paganism), it seems to me that one of the biggest arguments against religion in general doesn’t hold up.”
The “largest” religions, by popularity/membership/upbringing/percentage/etc., seem to all be highly concerned with “social control”, as you put it. In fact, the moral, social control, personal behavior, etc., aspects seem to be the most compelling parts of those religions to their believers.
The mere fact that some religions may not concern themselves with social control does nothing to offset the beliefs and actions of those which do…
Misplaced emphasis. The largest atheist critique of theistic religion is that it’s based on a proposition that has no evidence to support it: the existence of supernatural deities or beings.
Mike: True, but I have seen atheists take this and construe it as an inherent aspect of religion in general, which it’s not.
MAJeff: It seems to me from my reading here, elsewhere, and admittedly the book flap of The God Delusion that atheists spill more ink on the control aspect of religion rather than the non-existence of the divine.
From what I’ve read upthread, it seems that lots of people here were raised in some controlling religion and reacted against the control and became atheists. Note, using the verb “seems” again, but it seems that a belief in no deity springs from a reaction against the controlling aspect of their family’s religion and is based on the concept of that religion. For instance, I don’t believe that any god could care who I boink or how I wear my hair. I consequently reject the monotheistic conception of god, but atheists go a step further and conclude from this that there is no god. The lack of evidence seems to be secondary.
True, but I have seen atheists take this and construe it as an inherent aspect of religion in general, which it’s not.
Religion in general? Well , I suppose, but religion as represented by the majority of religious persons in Amer
SHITE! Fumble fingers,
True, but I have seen atheists take this and construe it as an inherent aspect of religion in general, which it’s not.
Religion in general? Well , I suppose, but in the name of religion as represented by the majority of religious persons in America? Nah.
Why is it that you assume that this is based on your gender somehow? If a man said “I’ll fight who I want, when I want,” do you think I’d say “Oh, okay then, get to it and I hope you win! I don’t even care who you’re gonna fight, or why, because you’re a man!” No.
Um. You mean like when somebody asks me “Are you really saying (blank)? Is that what you’re saying?” and somebody else chimes in with “No, what he’s saying is (blank), as well as (blank), in addition to (blank). Look at how I filled in those blanks! Doesn’t that make him look as crazy as possible?” (For an example, see post 284.)
Anyway, me doing that was unintentional and I’ll try to avoid it in the future. It was misinterpretation. Really.
And speaking of words being twisted or plain misinterpreted…
No, Cara. If you’re willing to listen objectively at this point, it’s not irrelevant to me. It pisses me off that gay marriage isn’t legal, and that there’s even a chance of Roe v. Wade being overturned.
That doesn’t mean I’m going to look at everybody who’s religious and say “they are all the enemy and they all deserve to be mocked or marginalized”, as it seemed to me some people here were saying. They aren’t.
When D.N. Nation said upthread “So stating that I have faith of some variety is akin to sucking up to Jerry Falwell?” and the response was (I’m paraphrasing here) “yes, even if you disagree with him on almost everything,” that was ridiculous. D.N. did not deserve to be talked to the way he was or to have his faith insulted (unless he wrote something really offensive and I missed it). He is no more part of the push to limit your rights than a moderate Muslim is part of a suicide bombing plot or 9/11. Based on his comments here, he is not one of the zealots Sheesh described who figuratively wanted all non-Christians on the ground, with his foot on their necks.
If I’m not mistaken, this also bugged Devil’s Advocate. Or maybe he was just being a devil’s advocate and saying “hey, it’s not all bad” without getting upset, which is maybe something I could learn from.
Whenever you make a negative blanket statement about any group of people, be it feminists or Christians or Scientologists or albinos or whatever, you inevitably end up insulting people who never lifted a finger against you and never supported anybody who lifted a finger against you or anybody you care about. That’s what I can’t help but object to, and it has nothing to do with me belonging to any particular group.
ashley…I am an atheist because there is no proof of a divine force and I see no reason to believe in something that cannot be proven. If baby jeebus appeared in front of me tomorrow and doves flew out of his ass while angels sang I’d be down on my knees shouting god’s name faster than a porn star.
The onus of proof is not on those who don’t believe something exists. If you believe something you had damn well better be able to prove you’re right or people would have no reason to believe you (and would be rather foolish to believe you without proof).
“If baby jeebus appeared in front of me tomorrow and doves flew out of his ass while angels sang I’d be down on my knees shouting god’s name faster than a porn star.”
Sheesh, you’d give up too easy. If I saw what you described, I would assume it was a hoax until proven otherwise.
In an age when photographs are as easily manipulated as clay, when computers are commonly used in film to create “reality” (and getting better at it year by year), and when the end (”saving” your “soul”, whether you want it saved or not) justifies any means, my skepticism is set on eleven.
Sorry to be that cynical, but that’s how I see it…
Ashley: It seems to me that atheists (and well, most people) believe that religion is inherently tied up with social control, whether it’s of a social caste or a gender or the drive to convert/eradicate other groups of people. However, considering not all religions care a whit about what its people do (namely, neo-paganism), it seems to me that one of the biggest arguments against religion in general doesn’t hold up.
So, atheists, what do you think of this?
There are so many things mixed up here that it’s hard to dig into it.
First, as you say, most people consider religion to be about social control, no matter if they believe in any gods or if they do not. In fact, it seems to be theists who are most worried about the erosion of social control should organized religion lose power.
So, why is religion tied in so strongly with social control? The reason for that, from my personal atheist perspective, it that social control is what organized religion is for. Its function is to keep the tribe together, and it takes the shape needed to do so: By coding morals, by proscribing behaviour, by having team-building ceremonies, by turning against some “other”, or by whatever works.
Making some higher power(s) the source of the rules is effective, because you cannot argue with the higher powers. (Can’t argue with something that does not exist.) Secular cults have a much harder time with this.
Religion createds coherence (through control), and traditionally religion broke up only when social coherence broke up beyond religion’s ability to keep it together. New groups aligned with new social models and mores, were anti-establishment for a while, the new social mores seemed liberating, but sooner rather than later either everything dropped back to business (and control) as usual: the lines promoting coherence survived, those reducing it died out. (And knowing neo-pagans, the dynamic is very much the same, only the groups are quite small.)
As social coherence makes a group stronger, and as religion, for ages has been the most robust institution to create it (because it developed to work in a low-tech environment), religion grew, mutated, adapted and prospered. Only with vastly advanced means of communication (widespread literacy comes to mind) could other structures be established which did very much the same (and caused pretty much the same messes).
And that’s why religion is tied to social control.
Now to your second question, which seems to me a complete non-sequitur.
Yes, “oppressiveness” (which is the less pretty word for “creating social coherence”) is a feature of organized religion. It might be an argument against religion (might be one for it as well), but not against (or for) gods. Organized religion is not the same as belief, nor does the immorality of something imply its non-existence.
I don’t believe in god because I don’t believe in god, not because I believe god is nasty. I don’t believe pink unicorns are evil, either. Something that does not exist cannot act, and so cannot be judged in moral terms.
I used to be quite active in church because I believed their goals and actions worthwhile. I left when I realized that the cynical argument is flawed: If someone does the right thing for the wrong reason today, they can just was well do the wrong thing for the same reason tomorrow.
Sheesh, while there is no empirical, laboratory testable evidence of divine, there are millions upon millions of reams of anecdotal evidence. I’m a pagan and i have definitely seen enough proof for me that there are Gods. Don’t care if someone else doesn’t believe me, but it’s enough for me. Call me an optimist, but I can’t believe that everyone who’s ever lived except the incredibly tiny population of atheists are wrong.
Similarly, according to all physical and empirical evidence, love=eating a bunch of chocolate. Anyone who’s been in it though knows that it’s significantly different, that it’s elusive, and that it’s real. I can’t prove to anyone that I love my husband or that he loves me, but it’s there. Are we simply deluded, or is there more to people than firing neurons and chemical reactions?
The thing about the “lack of proof” aspect of atheism is that it assumes that there is nothing more to life or human existence than the physical, and that directly contradicts pretty much everyone’s experience ever. Sure you can say we’re all deluded, but what’s more likely? That everyone ever lived is crazy, or that we’re not?
Ashley: MAJeff: It seems to me from my reading here, elsewhere, and admittedly the book flap of The God Delusion that atheists spill more ink on the control aspect of religion rather than the non-existence of the divine.
The evidence for the existence of gods, UFOs, astrological influences and the like has always been extremely weak. Just because there’s no evidence for something doesn’t mean people won’t believe it.
So it is much more useful to reason that people should stop doing things that hurt themselves and others than try to prove that there is no tea pot orbiting Earth.
Ashley: The thing about the “lack of proof” aspect of atheism is that it assumes that there is nothing more to life or human existence than the physical, and that directly contradicts pretty much everyone’s experience ever.
I find theists’ lack of respect for the physical disturbing.
Call me an optimist, but I can’t believe that everyone who’s ever lived except the incredibly tiny population of atheists are wrong.
I guess we should give in and admit the world is flat, since that’s what the majority of the world’s people have believed. And we might as well give in and admit that illness is caused by bad spirits….
blah blah blah…that’s not optimism. It’s silliness.
I find theists’ lack of respect for the physical disturbing.
but there has to be more! why? there just has to!
Sheesh, while there is no empirical, laboratory testable evidence of divine, there are millions upon millions of reams of anecdotal evidence. I’m a pagan and i have definitely seen enough proof for me that there are Gods. Don’t care if someone else doesn’t believe me, but it’s enough for me.
The onus is on you to prove the existence. If you choose not to engage, don’t expect to be taken seriously.
Similarly, according to all physical and empirical evidence, love=eating a bunch of chocolate.
A little knowledge is indeed a dangerous thing. Someone needs to stay away from science.
“Call me an optimist, but I can’t believe that everyone who’s ever lived except the incredibly tiny population of atheists are wrong.”
Try these out:
“Call me an optimist, but I can’t believe that everyone who’s ever advocated the imbalance of humours as a cause of disease is wrong.”
“…I can’t believe that everyone who’s ever advocated the biblical creation story is wrong.”
“…I can’t believe that everyone who’s ever advocated slavery is wrong.”
“…I can’t believe that everyone who’s ever advocated mental health treatment for homosexuality is wrong.”
“…I can’t believe that everyone who’s ever advocated FGM is wrong.”
Etc., etc., etc…
Similarly, according to all physical and empirical evidence, love=eating a bunch of chocolate.
The difference being that one is purely a reaction to an extrinsic stimulus (tryptophan being used to manufacture serotonin, mostly), and the other is the result of a large amount of both intrinsic and extrinsic interactions involving a large amount of both psychology and brain chemistry. And the two are not, in fact, chemically similar, except that increased serotonin levels is a side effect.
You keep using the word “proof”, and I have to tell you, I do not think that word means what you think it means. In science, you do not prove, you test and validate. That which is untestable is bubkis to science.
but there has to be more! why? there just has to!
Because otherwise we’d, you know, die. And I don’t want to die.
True enough, inge. I’ve been pretty tolerant all my life, and not insisted on bursting anyone’s bubble about the God thing unless they asked me what I believed.
I’m still not sure it’s my place to go out and DO what Rob’s accused everyone of doing (outright calling the believers “stupid”). But I’m starting to agree with many of you about quiet polite disagreement adding to the problem.