Words are not interchangeable
Sholto Byrnes says aha – but his aha depends on a confusion of terms, a lumping together of different words with different meanings as if they all meant the same thing. That kind of aha is not a good kind, because people can just say, sharply or compassionately depending on temperament, ‘oh dear, you’ve made a muddle there.’
Let’s be clear: they could now be afforded rights under law specifically formulated to protect religion and belief. And those are two words that many scientists, rationalists and atheists don’t like to be associated with at all.
Nonsense. We have no problem ‘being associated with’ belief; we don’t claim to have no beliefs or to want no beliefs or to object to beliefs as such. Of course we don’t! Religion and belief are different things.
Atheists in particular hate it when they are referred to as “fundamentalist” or if they are accused of making a religion out of science. I’ve done both in the past, acts that have swiftly been followed by much foot-stamping and name-calling in the blogosphere.
But that’s a different thing. We do object to the first one because it’s just a silly distortion of the word, and we object to the second when, for instance, it’s just a wild assertion about atheists in general, as it so often is. We don’t say that no atheists ever ‘make a religion out of science’; we do say it’s just rhetorical abuse to claim that we all do.
[I]t seems to me that most militant atheists are characterised not just by an absence of belief in a god, but by a trust in science so certain and ardent that it is entirely akin to religious belief — and a highly devoted, if not fanatical, one at that. No, they say, these are not matters of belief. These are facts. Science says so.
No we don’t. We don’t say that. Sholto Byrnes is remarkably bad at accurately characterizing people he disagrees with. He skids into gross exaggeration and over-generalization the minute he puts fingers to keys. He should work on that.
I suppose that Byrnes, like HE Baber, can’t be blamed for going after the long-dead philosophical schools that they find most interesting and coherent. But it seems a bit anti-social of them to ignore the beliefs of the living breathing people around them. Kind of like going to a party and only playing with the cats.*
* Granted, I do this.
Maybe his starting point should be to define “militant atheists” before he tells us what “most” of them do. It’s fast becoming a cheap term of abuse, a way of lumping the enemy under one all-purpose soubriquet, without actually having to say how you know someone even is one.
define “militant atheists”
Oh, you know, nasty people you wouldn’t want to meet at a dinner party.
define “militant atheists”
Atheists who have the temerity to talk about religion?
Well, that’s the thing, isn’t it? The definitions are so uneven. Atheists are described as “militant” if they’re up-front about their lack of belief and honest enough not to deny that they think they have a better grasp of matters than believers. If that kind of definition were to be applied even-handedly across the board, it would mean most religious people are “militant,” including most of those normally described as “moderate.” What does that even leave available for the believers who wish their views backed with force?
I’m not sure how one would go about having a certain and ardent trust in science.
Does he mean the scientific method? So far it has proved reliable and effective and there is no plausible competition, but that is scarcely ardent trust.
Or does he mean fetishising people in lab coats?
It’s sheer innuendo. There are people for whom religion is good and science is bad. But – when they *really* want to make science look bad, they claim it’s like a religion (which in all other contexts, they present as something positive). All clear?
Yeah, I think so.
Does that mean I can pray to Science to smite my enemies?
Oh, Great Science, thou art so mighty,
Smite my foes,
Yea, smitey, smitey.
(I assume that, like all deities, Science only responds to archaic language.)
And you’d think that, if they were going to be fair, that if they say your science is like their religion, they’d at least treat you as an equal and give your “religion” the respect they demand for theirs. But, no, you can only get respect if you have real religion, not just something that (they say) is like it.
Actually, one reason they’re pissed off and running scared is that not only can science smite its enemies, rational people can argue the pants off them. I assume most readers here have taken a look at the Hitchens/Fry rout of the Catholics. Like some commenters elsewhere, I think my favourite moment is when Stephen Fry really calls Ann Widdecombe out on her trying to have it both ways. Paraphrasing: you cannot claim to be in possession of special (divine) knowledge and then try to excuse bad things you did in the past on the grounds that nobody knew any better back then. Not if your main claim is that you’ve always known not just best, but perfectly, in a manner unchanging for two thousand years.
Yes, I watched an edited version. It was delightful, but I’d like to see the full thing.
Hahahahahahaha
That’s funny, Don.
“there is nothing wrong with the law providing a degree of protection for a range of beliefs”
Er, yes there bloody well is. What there is nothing wrong with is the law providing protection for people’s freedom to hold a range of beliefs.
I usually agree with you, so I’m guessing that’s what you meant. Quite an important difference.
Well, yes, but I was using well-known shorthand. I considered writing something like you suggested – though it would actually need to be even more convoluted, if I were to make it totally precise, since it’s not just a matter of “freedom”. The government provides positive rights in this case, not merely the liberty to believe. Conversely, it also restricts the freedoms of employers, presumably in the name of redressing employer-employee inequality of bargaining power. So what is actually going on here, in the labour law context, is even more complicated than your formulation.
But I take it no one is under any great illusions about how this kind of legislation works, so that could be taken as given.
When the gist of my meaning is clear in context, I often prefer euphony to pedantry. All the more so in a short blog comment.
Fair enough. Like I said, that’s what I suspected. :)