Aggressive mean naughty bad atheists
Atheists are mean, says Nicholas Kristof. No they’re not, say Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett; you just think so because you’re used to religion’s special immunity. As Dawkins puts it:
Mr. Kristof has simply become acclimatized to the convention that you can criticize anything else but you mustn’t criticize religion. Ears calibrated to this norm will hear gentle criticism of religion as intemperate, and robust criticism as obnoxious.
Which is really not an ideal situation: it really does make it difficult for people to discuss the subject honestly. It’s a little worrying how many people are eager to join the chorus urging atheists to shut up – or to be less ‘obnoxious’ and ‘militant’ and ‘in your face,’ which amounts to the same thing. Dennett notes:
There is nothing “dogmatic” or “fundamentalist” about Dawkins’ tone; he is simply speaking truthfully about matters that most people have trained themselves not to mention, or else to allude to in mealy-mouthed terms.
That self-training is not such a good idea.
Mary Riddell skipped that lesson, fortunately:
[T]he bishops are on the prowl…The Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, announces that ‘illiberal atheists’ and ‘aggressive secularists’ have stolen Christmas. On a point of semantics, secularists do not wish to harm religion or deny its great cultural influence. They simply want it to know its place. Which, in the view of many bishops, is in every corner of the public realm…On 1 January, laws protecting gay people in Northern Ireland will be tightened. Ruth Kelly…has bowed to religious leaders complaining that the pillars of Christendom will totter unless Christian adoption agencies, bookshops and hotels are allowed free rein for prejudice…[T]he harmonious society Mr Blair desires is not best served by Christian leaders passing themselves off as a persecuted minority and the whipping boy of multicultural Britain. This is purest fallacy. The might of bishops trickles down from the House of Lords, where they sit without a fig leaf of democratic legitimacy…Mr Blair is right to be fearless in giving necessary offence. At a time when religion fills the vacuums hollowed out by fear and uncertainty, he should spread his criticism more widely. Tell the Christian churches that their inroads into the public domain are unacceptable and their twisting of the truth sometimes despicable. This is the opportunity to defuse the public power of all gods, to ban religious schools of every hue, to end the cross-contamination of faith and policy and to move towards a secular state.
Terry Sanderson does the ‘aggressive secularist’ thing:
So now the spotlight is turned on “the fundamentalist secularists” who, according to the Archbishop of York, John Sentamu, are the real villains of the piece. Sentamu opportunistically put out an overblown and hysterical statement, pointing the finger at “illiberal atheists”. “There is a worrying trend to be seen where illiberal atheists have combined with aggressive secularists to create a ludicrous situation where those who don’t believe in God have decided that a Christian festival is offending other faiths,” he said…Is the man fully in control of his faculties? Who are these “aggressive secularists” who want to rob Christians of Christmas? Come on, Johnny, name names. And don’t trot out Richard Dawkins, because he has never said any such thing. Nor has anyone at the National Secular Society…The Christian push to incite resentment against non-Christians is dishonest and very dangerous. At a time when the term has become extremely loaded, Sentamu’s usage of “multiculturalism” – whose only proponents, in his view, are these “aggressive secularists” with their censorious political correctness – will be understood in many quarters as code for an attack on ethnic minorities and other non-Christian religious groups.
Oh but he’s a Christian, so surely he can’t be inciting resentment. That’s just the kind of thing Christians don’t do…isn’t it?
Oh, why did you switch back the header and author fields? I thought that was brilliant.
Ah “illiberal atheists” who are demanding the burning at the stake of the wrong sort of believer, or who are billetting troops on those who embrace the wrong religion, or who are persecuting people for being witches, or who are daring to suggest that women should be allowed to control the insides of their own bodies ….
Erm, or am I missing something, because that’s what religious believers do, isn’t it?
I think, and Ophelia hints at it, that it boils down to:
How dare you ask pertinent, relevant questions about our overpriveliged position(s)?
As well as Dawkins’ comment, that is.
who are daring to suggest that women should be allowed to control the insides of their own bodies ….
Goneril Tingey, the undiscerning, in action again.
Anti-abortionists argue that a foetus is not part of the ‘insides’ of a woman’s body but is a human being INSIDE a woman’s body.
Or do you believe that a foetus remains part of a woman’s insides until the moment of birth, and then becomes part of her ‘outsides’?
Many secularists are opposed to, or at least queasy about, abortion, and some certainly believe that abortion is murder.
Besides, some religions do in fact permit abortion under certain circumstances (before the ‘quickening’ on the embryo). Some branches of Islam, if I’m not mistaken. The Buddhist Dalai Lama says it OK if the unborn child is retarded. Mormons justify abortion in the event of incest or rape.
Goneril, do your homework before you shoot from the hip!
Anything but Goneril (I’m assuming you’re referring to “Lear”) or undiscerning.
Anti-abortionists can argue all they like about the status of a foetus, but: ….
Unless and until they face up to and address the “problem” (From their point of view.) of the huge number of natural abortions then they are making some very load and emotional noises, but they are nonetheless completely irrelevant.
Natural abortions outnumber live births, and have always done so (as far as I am aware) these fall into several categories, and you need to talk to a medical expert on the subject, but let’s have a go:
1. The egg is fertilised, but fails to implant – almost certainly the largest category. The fertilised blastocyst doesn’t implant, because there is something wrong with it, so it is rejected or doesn’t implant. But, according to the christians in the US and elsewhere, humanity begins at the moment of conception. (Don’t the RC believe this also?) Erm – 150% irrational.
2. The egg fertilises, and implants, but fails within the next week or so – the next largest category. This is usually for very similar resons to (1) – there is something wrong with the bundle of cells that it has become, and the chemical signals in the mothers’ body and the call-bundle “recognise” this and it drops out, usually as a heavy late period.
3. There are serious, but not immediately obvious defects in the growing foetus, and it aborts within the first few months. This is what is usually recognised as a “normal” miscarriage.
4. There are in fact, TWO fertilised eggs, but the mother’s body isn’t “prepared” to carry two. You need to consult serious medical texts and professional gynaecologists on this one, but the phenomenon of the “Missing Twin” is quite well-known, as is finding what I suppose might be called “left-over bits” emerging with the placenta, etc, when the other successful half of the twins is born.
Yet again, I’m afraid you need to look at the known facts, and make judgements, if any, based on those facts, rather than emotions and empty religious vapourings.
I can do without the snide comment about insides, thank you: – of course the foetus is part of the woman’s insides – it her problem and care. Once it is born, and shown to be viable, then it has become a separate individual, needing care.
So Cathal, and others, I was not shooting from the hip, I was using my modest knowledge of medical facts – given that I’m a Physicist/Engineer – but which, from your post, you seem ignorant of.
Though I strenuously disagree with the “militant atheists”, I’m a bit surprised at the opposition against them within for example the anti-creationist movement. There seems to be a kind of instrumentalism in the “let’s shut up about religion and all get along so we can be united against the fundamentalists” notion which I dislike. Welcome as it is as a diversion from the kind of atheist who regards each theist as on a par with Torquemada or at best a believer in the Tooth Fairy. But if people believe that, they should by all means say so. Covering up clear differences of opinion in the same of uniting against a common enemy is never a good idea. Learned that from my Trotskyist schooling ;-)
But theists are on a par with believing in the tooth fairy – I ought to know – I used to be one, until I finally realised what a load of foetid dingoes’ kidneys the whole thing was and is …..
And these “militant atheists” are not marxists or communists (who are just another sort of religous believer) but people like Dawkins and Dennett who merely point out that the emporer is naked, and get reproved for telling the truth in public, because it might upset (some) people.
Can we expect the Archbishop to be giving up his vote in the House of Lords any time soon, just to show how persecuted he is?
Or will he start promoting some traditional “Christians vs. Lions” events at the York Barbican centre (or perhaps Clifford’s Tower, if the weather’s nice ?), to drum up a bit more sympathy?
Ooh, that would be fun. Then gays could dress up as lions and gnaw on him to their hearts’ content.
Especially if they nibbled the more interesting bits first.
Ahem.
I note, incidentally, that no-one has tried to refute my FACTUAL basis for not getting worked up about abortions, or, contrariwise, why are the religious getting worked up about it.
Can I make a plea in these discussions for known facts to be more important than cheap fake-philosophising by people with no apparent scientific knowledge?
Because this is why the “hard” scientists hold the “Arts” in contempt.
Incidentally, if you want another example of the sort of insanity “the arts” get up to you might do well to look at THIS < … there are further links that take you closer to the real thing (if you really want to, that is – ugrrrr …..
Hang on. G — you used to be a tooth fairy?
I note, incidentally, that no-one has tried to refute my FACTUAL basis for not getting worked up about abortions, or, contrariwise, why are the religious getting worked up about it.
At your service, GT.
The first point you make, concerning the huge number of natural abortions, is irrelevant. Because they do not imply anything as to what our moral stance towards abortions ought to be. There are lots of natural deaths, and accidental deaths in car accidents and so forth – but this does not mean we ought not to ban murder. (Note: I’m in favour of legal abortion, I do not think it is murder, I’m making the analogy to show why your argument misses the point).
Your second point is highly debatable as well:
I can do without the snide comment about insides, thank you: – of course the foetus is part of the woman’s insides – it her problem and care. Once it is born, and shown to be viable, then it has become a separate individual, needing care.
It seems to me highly arbitrary to draw the line between “inside” and “outside”. Surely a just-about-to-be-born baby has much more in common with a newborn baby than with a ten-week foetus. Also, very few people in my impression would argue that abortion should be wholly legal right up until the eight month of pregnancy.
In reality, the line between where a woman’s right to control her own body ends, and where a human being’s right to live begins is drawn differently. And probably also more-or-less arbitrary (can you define exactly at which point during pregnancy a foetus becomes a human being?). But that’s exactly the problem.
As I said, I think abortion should be legal. For a host of mixed reasons. Abortions are going to happen, and where they are legal, at least the woman involved survives; it is obvious to me that at least during early pregnancy an embryo is not yet a human being, and the easier it is to get abortions, the earlier they may be performed; and as a guy I am hesitant to moralize too much on this issue. At the same time I am “queasy” as Cathal put it on the whole issue. Perhaps in the far future a woman could consciously control gestation due to some cool nanotechnology thing or something, and we won’t need abortions any more. That would be a good thing, in my view.
What I do not believe is that the moral issues surrounding abortions can be dismissed as simplistically as you do.
Getting fed up with this hysterical “atheists are banning christmas” nonsense (there was more last Friday in the Torygraph). As pointed out before, much of the multi-culti stuff that sits behind these pathetic decisions is the desire to treat minorities more favourably (not wantig to offend them); the only way our dumb-ass PC institutions seem to be able to recognise cultural ‘otherness’ is by religion. So it’s actually magnifying religion’s role and importance… I don’t see how this likely to be an atheists’ ambition. Somehow the meaning of the word ‘atheist’ is warped into another term ‘anti-Christian’, which in some retared minds also of course means satanism…
Merlijn, please switch your brain to ON and take account of the facts – as previously stated.
As far as I am aware ALL the christian groups who oppose voluntary abortion do so because the “Soul enters the body/human life begins” at conception – as soon as the sperm has fretilised the egg.
Therefore ANY failure to complete to term is an abortion.
This includes all the cases I previously listed.
Which just shows that those christians who bang on and on about abortion are lying hypocritcal blackmailing bastards, but then, what’s new about that?
Yes, perhaps I was overdrawing the line about before and after birth.
Cases of Cesarian (sp?) section and premature were left out, foir simplicity’s sake … so yes, we shoulfd have line (a fuzzy line?) somewhere after 6.5 months (approx) where you seriously have to consider that keeping the foetus alive as a baby is the better option, assuming it does not have terrible congenital defects.
AND AGAIN: NO-ONE is even looking at the cases I mentioned. Yet these cases are “wasted human lives destroyed by an (natural) abortion, according to the christians very publicly declared standards.
Nope. You miss the point. It is perfectly possible for a Christian anti-abortionist who believes life begins as conception to regard miscarriages and natural abortions as tragic accidents, comparable to natural premature deaths, and yet to strongly oppose actively induced abortions. The difference would be that the former are beyond human control, whereas the latter are within human control and free will and thereby subject to human morality. Your failure to understand the kind of thinking you so frequently rail against does not imply the other side engages in lying, hypocrisy or indeed blackmail.
Gustav Tingey writes:
As far as I am aware ALL the Christian groups who oppose voluntary abortion do so because the “soul enters the body/human life begins” at conception – as soon as the sperm has fertilised the egg…
Since neither I nor Merlijn (AFAIK) belong to Christian groups, you’re barking up the wrong tree. The moral problem for secularists is that there is clearly a continuum between conception and the birth of a child. At some stage the embryo becomes a foetus and at some stage the foetus becomes an unborn child, i.e. a person. Since (as Steven Goldberg has pointed out in an essay I referred to some weeks ago) there is no ‘scientific’ way of determining precisely when a non-person becomes a person, and since the intentional killing of a person is murder, it is impossible to determine precisely when abortion transmutes into pre-natal infanticide. Some believe that a person comes into existence the moment the spermatozoon penetrates the ovum, which I find pretty bizarre; others believe that the foetus is a non-person until the moment of birth, which I find both ridiculous and abhorrent. Some believe that the person comes into being the moment the foetus is capable of experiencing physical pain (in which case abortion may be equivalent in effect to torture). Etcetera.
So my point is simply that are no easy answers, and that intelligent, well-intentioned people disagree as to the borderline between abortion and murder.
By the way, Gustav, you talk about 6.5 months pregnancy as being the cut-off point “where you seriously have to consider that keeping the foetus alive as a baby is the better option”. Better in what sense? Morally, or just a matter of convenience? Does that mean that it is OK for a woman to abort her 6-month plus 3-week old foetus just because she feels like it (say because she has got a new boyfriend who will abandon her if she brings the child to term)? Even if the foetus is perfectly healthy? Even if the foetus is a sentient being (which I presume it is, at that stage)? And if she waits another fortnight, it might be a ‘better option’ to continue her pregnancy?
P.S.:
Merlijn – you’ve saved me a lot of trouble, thanks.
Additionally,
Because this is why the “hard” scientists hold the “Arts” in contempt.
Is this actually anywhere near true? I am sure there are quite a few myopic philistines among the “first” culture to compare to the jaded woolly-headed postmodernists of the “second” – but I doubt that they are in the majority. And those scientists and science writers who have criticized excesses of some science critics within the humanities (Sokal, Weinberg, etc.) hardly hold the whole of them in “contempt”. Rather, they have done a service to the academically traditional and intellectually rigorous research done in the core humanities disciplines.
Your example confuses the “Arts” with “Art”. Which is a tad silly. The English usage of “science” vs. “art” has always seemed unfortunate to me. I prefer the German “Naturwissenschaften” and “Geisteswissenschaften” (Germany is the intellectual home of humanities disciplines anyway). Maybe something like Peirce’s “psychics” or “psychic sciences” would do were it not for the unfortunate connotations of “psychic”.
“But theists are on a par with believing in the tooth fairy…”
No, no, no. Remember, class A of supernatural beings with no evidence of their existence are totally made up and silly to believe in, but class B of supernatural beings with no evidence of their existence are deadly serious!
Right, let’s deal with the christians first – look at This revolting report from an EU state …
Secondly, I agree that there is a continuous development between conception and the point at which a foetus becomes “independently” viable as a child – and that drawing the line (usually somewhere between 20 and 26 weeks pregnancy) is very difficult.
I would argue that anytime before 20 weeks is OK, and that any time after 28 is definitely not OK – which gives you that awkward period in between. This is where the debate should be concentrated, and rely on proper data on survival rates, quality of life, post-partum disabilaties (of both child and mother). Religious “morality is 150% irrelevant here – lets’ stick to facts, shall we?
BTW I trust this answers Cathal’s point on when the cut-off should be, and why.
Third, Merlijn says, quite correctly (!) …
“It is perfectly possible for a Christian anti-abortionist who believes life begins as conception to regard miscarriages and natural abortions as tragic accidents, comparable to natural premature deaths, and yet to strongly oppose actively induced abortions.”
Well, they can regard it as much as they like, but they are wrong, and insane and deluded and … I think you get the idea. I cartainly used this argument more than once on classes of 14-15 year olds, and they bought my argument, completely, as far as I could tell.
Actually Merlijn, and everyone else, I’m going to alter a quote of his thusly: “…does imply the other side engages in lying, hypocrisy or indeed blackmail.” I have removed the woed “not” – remeber that all the monotheistic religions, including communism are a very well-organised bl;ackmail operation. So why should we be surprised?
Fourthly, I used “The Arts” in the contemporary performance sense. A huge number of scientists and engineers appreciate “Art” and the other “finer” things in life quite well, thank you. I’m looking forward to going to the Velasquez exhibition in town over the Yule break, thank you. But, for vast quantities of pretentious bullshit, there is nothing like “the arts” for it. Not even politicians, I’m afraid.
And isn’t/wasn’t claasical Greece, followed by Alexandria the home of the humanities disciplines, as well as the start of science? I still think Aristarchos of Samos, practising in Alexandria was one of the all-time genius’ of science ….
Merlijn writes:
Your example confuses the “Arts” with “Art”. Which is a tad silly. The English usage of “science” vs. “art” has always seemed unfortunate to me. I prefer the German “Naturwissenschaften” and “Geisteswissenschaften” (Germany is the intellectual home of humanities disciplines anyway).
So do I. But to defend the indefensible — even Gudrun T. deserves her five minutes in court – the fact is that the ‘hard’ scientists are quite justified in holding both ‘Art’ and ‘the Arts’ in contempt. You can use the German term ‘Geisteswissenschaften’ (‘mind sciences’? ‘spirit sciences’?) if you wish but that doesn’t change the reality. The hard sciences are in fact ‘hard’ — you need a pretty high IQ even to enrol for a physics degree, let alone manage to get one. So Gudrun is probably in the first centile (though she certainly manages to conceal it).
The Arts? Let us be quite frank: any near-moron can get a degree in (say) sociology from one of Britain’s so-called universities. And not only those. The daughter of one my colleagues is studying German philology in Oxford in her second year — and yet most of her fellow students can hardly string a German sentence together. Anecdotal, I know — but there you are. Welcome to the Ivy League Humanities in the age of open access.
We could close down all the ‘Arts’ faculties in every university in the Western world right now and nobody would notice the difference even a century later. If anything, the world would be a better place because the money saved might be spent on something of genuine cultural value rather than on subsidizing the entertainment of unemployable dullards.
But try the same with the ‘hard’ sciences — and we would be back swinging from tree to tree with our bushy tails within about one generation.
Cathal,
I think you’re engaging in a bit of hyperbole here – about closing down all the ‘Arts’ faculties in every university in the Western world. The intellectual rigour of the discipline varies terribly from place to place, and from subject to subject. Let’s say that general linguistics at say Leiden or Stockholm University is as tough as it gets. And were they closed down, we would absolutely notice it: we’d have that much less knowledge about language variety in the world, and consequently miss out on interesting source material for cognitive science, anthropology, etc. I would suppose the same goes for archaeology departments – and though there is a certain amount of woolly-headedness in archaeology too, a lot of it still deals with old-fashioned excavating interesting stuff. I know people who have done linguistic fieldwork in Bhutan or Papua New Guinea – for which you need serious skill in linguistics as well as social skills, general inventiveness, strong health, etc. And that’s what’s done in Arts faculties, too. All of which tells us about what humans are and what they have done so far. I don’t think any more justification of the discipline is needed.
At the same time, University education in the West isn’t getting any better. Quite a few fellow students during my undergraduate years showed little discernable interest in their own subject. My own subject was the most obscure one could think of (Finno-Ugric languages) and in a way “protected” both through sheer unfashionableness – little danger of the postcolonialists and the standpoint epistemologists hijacking it – and through the need to learn and learn to analyze a bunch of rather exotic languages, which means you can’t be too much of a dullard.
So I think you’re putting the matter too sharply, but I agree there is a problem – more of one in some subjects than in others. Too much “fashionable nonsense” (people forget that you have to actually know some stuff first before you can learn to think “critically”), too little genuine intellectual curiosity. One of my old professors – he’s in his eighties now – regularly complains that in his time, students entered university smarter than they leave it now, which isn’t of much help to students nowadays. They have to make do with what they get. But there’s probably a kernel of truth there.
Merlijn,
Thanks for your comments, very good stuff. Well, of course I’m engaging in hyperbole – or, rather, I am referring to the NET pros and cons of expenditure on the humanities. And now that you talk about linguistics — an area with which I am familiar — I would almost exempt Steven Krauwer from the University of Utrecht and other academics involved in a now defunct Europe-wide machine translation research project in which I played a bit role. However, it cost a couple of million euros to demonstrate that you can’t design a workable machine translation system on the basis of x-bar theory and related fads: a critical but well-informed citizen might complain that anybody with his linguistic head screwed on could have proved that point over a pint of beer, free of charge. But I digress.
Let us not mince our words: the core problem is that the universities have had to open their doors to hoi polloi who simply lack the cognitive competence required for serious study — whether it be physics or cultural anthropology or difficult exotic languages, or whatever. Bassesse oblige!.
You mention that students have ‘too little intellectual curiosity’ and that students may have been smarter a few generations ago. Of course they were smarter. They were from the top decile of the bell curve. Today virtually anybody who can sign his name can enrol for media studies, women’s studies or film studies … so what do you expect? A hidden Hegel?
[barman, noch ein Bier, one more beer please, I know it’s closing time now …]
Cont. on page 20034
See my post on PoMo at the top of the list….and Ophelia’s comments thereto (or the other way around)
Incidentally, why are people labelling me with Female, character names?
I assume Gudrun is a corruption of “Gutrune” – Hagen’s sister(?) in Götterdämmerung.
Now, I know my last surname is Huguenot, and before that Viking, but this is silly.
People aren’t, it’s just Cathal, and I think he’s been doing it because you referred to him as ‘she’ a few times. A deadly insult, you know, which must be returned. I’ve been meaning to tell him to stop. Cathal, stop. Enough already.
Ophelia, I had completely forgotten whoever referred to me as as ‘she’. In fact, I quite enjoy this gender confusion as regards my name if only because girls have an easier life in the blogosphere. They have all the fun. Men are nicer to you if they think you’re a girl, don’t call you ‘asshole’ or ‘dickhead’, respect the dignity of your sex, metaphorically open doors for you and generally behave like online troubadours.
The reason I call Goldilocks Tingey by girls’ names is because he is so obviously and quintessentially a male. Girls just don’t write the way he does – straight from atheist boot camp.
It would be maladaptive for them to do so.
Oops delete ‘maladaptive’ and replace by ‘against nature’.
Uh – consider yourself the recipient of an atheist boot straight to the head.
Stop with the damn girly thing, and the damn stereotype thing, and the damn nature thing. It’s against nature for me to be sitting in this chair typing at this keyboard wearing these warm clothes in the glow of this electric light inside this house; so the fok what?
Oh dear, you took the ‘against nature’ thing seriously. I’d better make more frequent use of smiley faces when I’m being sarcastic. Yes, of course I know that humanity has been ‘against nature’ ever since we moved down form the trees.
Don’t stereotype stereotypes! They are the salt of the earth and normally (but not always) are a fair reflection of reality, though naturally they occasionally lead to our ignoring individual differences.
BTW the book to read on the cognitive dimensions of stereotyping is ‘Stereotype Accuracy — Towards Appreciating Group Differences’ (Yueh-Ting Lee et al).
And don’t tell me it ever even occurred to you that Guenther Tingey could be anything other than a male!
Hi Guenther! Don’t you agree with what I say?
Um. Caught. Well, you so often do say it seriously. Plus I got no sensa yuma. Girly thing, you know.