No eggshells
Good stuff from Jason Rosenhouse.
The problem comes when outreach to religious groups becomes a euphemism for bashing people who take a less cozy view of the science/religion issue. Pointing to the diversity of religious opinion is fine, dismissing as fringe extremists people who dissent from NOMA is not.
What I keep saying. It’s othering, and it’s othering of people who are notoriously already The People It’s Right to Despise.
I believe a long term solution to this problem does not lie in moving people towards relatively more reasonable sorts of religious belief, but rather by moving towards a society in which religious belief is accorded far less respect than it currently is. Certainly that is a very long-term goal, and I do not know precisely how to achieve it. But I do know that making atheism highly visible is a big step in the right direction. Writing polemical books is one way of doing that. Yes, polemical books. Polite, nuanced philosophical treatises are good too, but they just don’t obtain the sort of attention that is needed.
Yes, polemical books, and polemical articles and blog posts, as well as more sedate and gentle ones.
[A]nother thing we can do is have vocal atheists and humanists stand up publicly, and with a bit of anger and confidence say we are not going to kowtow to a state of affairs where the dogmatic pronouncements of religious clerics are treated with crazy amounts of respect. We are not going to accept defeatist talk about how religion will always be with us and about how you can’t change people’s mind on this issue, and that we can only hope to adapt to this reality and work around it by walking on eggshells around their religious beliefs. We can make atheism and humanism so ubiquitous and commonplace that the younger generation does not find them weird and exotic.
Precisely. And that is what we are trying to do. And that is what we are going to go on trying to do, because we think it is already working and will go on working.
“…and with a bit of anger and confidence say we are not going to kowtow to a state of affairs where the dogmatic pronouncements of religious clerics are treated with crazy amounts of respect.”
Exactly; although I would have said “where the CRAZY dogmatic pronouncements of religious clerics are treated with RIDICULOUS and UNCREDULOUS amounts of respect.”
It is again the critical difference between the private (to oneself only) and the public (to anyone else) expression of beliefs.
As soon as someone says “You can’t do that (or must do that) because of my religious beliefs”, then any “duty to defer” (from the other thread) I may have is gone.
Just something you might be interested in – http://www.timeslive.co.za/sundaytimes/article174668.ece
“[A]nother thing we can do is have vocal atheists and humanists stand up publicly, and with a bit of anger and confidence say we are not going to kowtow to a state of affairs where the dogmatic pronouncements of religious clerics are treated with crazy amounts of respect. We are not going to accept defeatist talk about how religion will always be with us and about how you can’t change people’s mind on this issue, and that we can only hope to adapt to this reality and work around it by walking on eggshells around their religious beliefs.”
Or, to put it more succinctly into one word, we should promote being unapologetic in our atheism. (See my comment on the previous post for my case for the word ‘unapologetic’.)
Joshua Rosenau insists that he isn’t telling atheists to shut up, at least not this week; it’s just that if you’re an outspoken atheist no one will be able to hear anything else you say.
At least this week’s message isn’t that outspoken atheism is the only thing driving believers into creationism and climate change denial, so there’s progress of a sort.
The first comment under Jason’s post (a reply to his “We can make atheism and humanism so ubiquitous and commonplace that the younger generation does not find them weird and exotic.”) is what I’ve been trying to say (especially to Jean) for some time now:
“That’s been pretty much the situation in northern and western Europe since the Enlightenment.”
Which brings me to this question: why do Americans so often wonder about possible outcomes of something that’s already been done over and over again elsewhere, and with great results? Do you really have no trust in learning from others? Universal Healthcare is another such thing: “Let’s hypothesize on how we should go about this completely new and unprecedented idea, and what its possible consequences might be…” Look across the pond, people!
It’s the same with teaching secular rationalism – people in Europe used to be very religious too, you know! They too hated everything that contradicted their chosen faith! Do you really believe we made them accept scientific theories by pretending they’re written in the Bible?
Executive summary:
We refuse to lie for illusory short-term gain.
Three cheers for Rosenhouse! Hip, Hip … (well, you get the drift). Like Wonderist, I think this really does put it very nicely. Let’s just keep up the pressure. We don’t need to be terrifically nasty, we just need to be persistent. Trust me, religious people will find that nasty enough!
Nor do we need to be defeatist about this. The young people I know tend to think of religion as something from the past, and find it strange that their parents really take it seriously. And, when you stop and think about it, with the supermarket of religions that you have in most places in the West (at any rate), religious claims have a tendency to cancel each other out. There just can’t be that many answers to the same question. Philosophers have been saying it for ages. Now it becomes obvious, surely.
But don’t underestimate the power of religion to go out with a bang rather than a whimper.
“why do Americans so often wonder about possible outcomes of something that’s already been done over and over again elsewhere, and with great results?”
Oh, god, tell me about it. The health care thing in particular just drives me insane – all this laborious sweaty re-inventing of the wheel, all to come up with something woefully inadequate compared to what most sane First World countries do.
why do Americans so often wonder about possible outcomes of something that’s already been done over and over again elsewhere, and with great results?
That’s an easy one. Most of us Americans have no idea what’s been done in the rest of the world, let alone how often and with what results. No, for us, if it hasn’t been done in America, it hasn’t been done. Everything is a first.
Tea, you’re just exactly right. Many of us Americans (at least the Bad New Atheist kind) have begged Mooney, Kirshenbaum, and their comrades to address this point. Lots of people with much more credibility than an anonymous guy like me have said the same. We never get an answer.
As I commented on Jerry Coyne’s blog a while ago, I wonder why the accommodationists are so pessimistic that they think American must always and forever suffer this intellectual handicap. Especially when Western Europe’s deconversion is staring them smack in the face.
Good comments here. I do agree that the fact of Europe’s significant degree of deconversion is very important to the debate. Be careful, though. Post-Christian Europe can also be very irrational. For example, have a look at Germany’s restrictive laws relating to IVF. Look at how Peter Singer is treated when he visits Germany.
Quasi-religious concepts such as “human dignity”, the “inviolability of nature”, etc., are alive and well in post-Christian Europe, and these must also be fought if we are to get rational public policy. Public policy needs to abandon such ideas and concentrate on purely secular ideas such as amelioration of suffering, prevention of harm, and access to a (relatively high) economic safety net.
Russell,
I just finished a book on surrogate motherhood legislation in the U.S., and often the same rhetoric (dignity, nature…) was used in its opposition, even by non-religious groups.
In any case, you’re right that religion and religious concepts still often try to shape public policy in some European countries: the point is that it’s much easier to oppose such attempts when you can do so openly, without pretending that the most important issue is whether god will be offended by such changes in policy. In other words, when someone says that something is “offensive to Catholic Church’s view of human dignity,” the rest of us say “so what.” We don’t have to bend over backwards to prove that god really, REALLY wanted kids to have two parents of same sex.
“often the same rhetoric (dignity, nature…) was used in its opposition, even by non-religious groups.”
A lot of that is thanks to Leon Kass and Bush’s “bioethics” council, which was religious in all but name.