Be Quieters v atheists
It reminds me of the old Bugs Bunny line – “Of course you know, this means war.”
This means war. The grotesque punishment meted out to Harry Taylor might as well be an official government announcement that atheists have no rights.
It is a common accusation that the “new” atheists are bullies who gang up on poor innocent bystanders like Mooney and De Dora and other Be Quieters.
Well – not so fast. Let’s pause and consider. Who exactly is bullying whom?
Which is the majoritarian view? Which is the conventional wisdom? Atheism? Hardly. No, the majoritarian conventional wisdom is, at the very least, that religion deserves an almost infinite amount of “respect” and that any atheist who falls short of that heightened “respect” is automatically a “New” aggressive militant brash extreme atheist and subject to being called just that by people with prominent soapboxes like…Mooney and De Dora.
The dissenting view is a minority one, and it is somewhat odd to accuse people with minority views of bullying people with majority views. Only somewhat odd; it is of course literally possible that, say, an atheist could physically bully a theist or a Be Quieter. But to see the disagreements between Be Quieters and atheists as the latter bullying the former seems warped to me. To me it looks much more as if various prominent Be Quieters with lots of media access started shouting at atheists and calling them names, and then atheists fought back. I don’t consider fighting back “bullying.”
This always happens when people start to feel their oats and speak up, you know. It happened with the civil rights movement, it happened with the women’s movement, it happened with the gay rights movement. There are always anxious people hopping up and down on the edges saying, “Oh dear oh dear I agree with you, I support you, I’m on your side, but for god’s sake slow down, and ssshhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, don’t say it so loudly, be careful, watch out, keep your head down, you mustn’t be so extreme. I fully support you but be patient! Extremeness never got anyone anywhere. Be patient, be respectful, be well-dressed and punctual and neatly brushed, and in a few decades, or it may be generations, things will start to get better, I promise you.”
Fuck that. (I should work up a “fuck that” dance to go with Stewart’s “go fuck yourself” dance.) Things are starting to get better, Harry Taylor notwithstanding, but that’s because we have been making noise rather than being quiet. Annie Laurie Gaylor says as much.
“It used to be a lot worse,” said Ms. Gaylor, 54, an atheist whose organization, the Freedom From Religion Foundation, recently won a suit in federal court here that declared the National Day of Prayer to be a violation of the First Amendment. “Things are changing. Society is becoming more secularized. It’s becoming acceptable to be atheist and agnostic. And there are more of us.”
And there are more of us. Not fewer – not quieter – not more apologetic – but more, and more vocal, and more forthright. And that’s how change is made.
Well, you’ve said it, but it’s precisely that. The Taylor verdict makes clear that there’s a right not to be offended which is granted only to those with religious beliefs. There is no non-religious equivalent, just as there’s no atheist prayer room where one might be “legally” offended at, say, proselytising literature.
There’s a Pat Condell video where he explains what it is that is much more offensive to him than any blasphemy ever could be to a believer: the infringement of his freedom of expression. Fits this case like a glove.
Many of you will have read Martin Luther King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail. (If you haven’t, you should. This is what it means to speak with moral authority.) Until I went looking for it just now, I had never read the statement to which he was responding.
http://www.stanford.edu/group/King//frequentdocs/clergy.pdf
Fully in the spirit of Chris Mooney.
“It’s not what y0u’re saying — it’s the way you’re saying it.”
Right. So, mess with their heads. Use the soft and gentle language of the accomodationists, dripping with polite respect — and make the exact same damn points. Drive them home with a smile. Ok, then. That must be so much better. They will be ever so appeased.
Is it really all about superficial appearance?
Yes, I had Letter From Birmingham Jail in mind. I linked to it in Flashback recently. MLK and the movement were beset by Slow Downers and Be Quieters.
That is indeed apt, Kenneth. There is a sense in which our medium is our message. They don’t like us raising our voices, or being heard at all. But our whole point is that it’s our right, not something negotiable or about which one reaches accomodations. Our message should be crystal clear and in direct contrast to the accomodationists: we might be quieter at some point, but not one second before it is generally accepted that it’s something about which no-one has a say except us. Let there be no illusions, no voice raised to silence us will remain unmet by a louder voice of assertion of our rights. The only way they will ever reduce the level of our volume is to shut up themselves about how much they don’t like it. Short of a theocracy imposed by force, we’re not going away – and between us, I have a sneaky feeling that won’t do it either, but that’s what’s called self-defence.
At this point, it seems that that’s all they harp on about. But if we modified our superficial appearance in the way you suggest, they will only find something else about us to complain about.
I love “Be Quieters and Slow Downers.” Ophelia for the win!
A commenter on my blog summed it up perfectly: People are so used to whispering around religion that a voice raised to normal volume sounds like a shout. And that analysis doesn’t just apply to religious people themselves; it applies equally well to the shy, timid souls who would rather make no social progress than get people upset.
The grotesque punishment meted out to Harry Taylor might as well be an official government announcement that atheists have no rights.
Y’know, as much as I disagree with the verdict, this feels a lot like Hitchens (P) attributing the case of Harry Hammond to society’s anti-Christian bias. Our laws can be neurotic on the giving of offence, yes, but I don’t see a lot of bias there.
Bias? I didn’t say bias. I said announcement that atheists have no rights. Well what else would it be? Harry Taylor didn’t even commit a crime – there is no law against depositing leaflets in airport waiting rooms. He did something that someone found irritating, so Inspector Plod found a judge and twelve jurors who also found it irritating, so they all punished Harry Taylor heavily for doing something they found irritating. He obviously doesn’t have any rights! I’m not attributing anything to society’s anything, I’m saying this conviction and sentence are a fucking outrage.
Does this somehow need amplifying? A man was convicted of a crime for giving vent to his feelings about religion by doing nothing that is actually illegal. Can it possibly get any more cut and dried than that? I fear it’s part of the coming backlash to our having the effrontery to use the right to open our mouths; strategies will be sought and probably found to curtail and remove that right – on a very selective basis.
Ophelia…
Bias? I didn’t say bias.
“This means war. The grotesque punishment meted out to Harry Taylor might as well be an official government announcement that atheists have no rights…This always happens when people start to feel their oats and speak up, you know. It happened with the civil rights movement, it happened with the women’s movement, it happened with the gay rights movement.”
The common theme behind these movements – which you’re identifying atheists with – is bias against a group. Don’t it’s unfair to assume that you’re implying governmental – or, at the least, societal – bias against atheists. If you weren’t then, naturally, consider the statement whipped from the passage of time; what’s the “war“, though, and why does this case raise its urgency?
Well what else would it be? Harry Taylor didn’t even commit a crime – there is no law against depositing leaflets in airport waiting rooms.
No law on leaflets qua leaflets, but if the material they contained fell under, say, the Race Relations Act you’d still be prosecuted. Stephen Green, as I recall, was taken to Court (though, rightly, let off) for handing ’em out at a Mardi Gras. As in the Haddock case, the Jury’s prized the sensibilities of a group over a person’s right to expression.
Bensix – I don’t understand your objection. What are you trying to express? It’s trivially obvious that society is biased against giving offense to the religious. When atheists are accorded fewer rights to free speech (either legally, in this case, or socially, as in the case of the massive pressure to Shut Up), that is the very definition of bias.
Because I don’t think this illustrates much about societal attitudes towards religion; I think it’s just another example of the Courts prioritising the supposed right to be free from offence. Case after case, for example, where the law’s butted into the lives of foolish but essentially benign homophobes. If this is to be overturned, it won’t take a merely secular society, it’ll take one with a different understanding of the harm principle.
…or socially, as in the case of the massive pressure to Shut Up…
As maddening as the Shut Up crowd may be for you, by the way, Richard Dawkins is still published in the Times and the Washington Post, and Christopher Hitchens writes, well – wherever the fuck he likes! Either the pressure’s not so “massive” or the No, I Bloody Won’t-ers are remarkably obdurate beings.
You may be right about that, I’m not a Brit and have no first-hand experience.
Surely you’re not airily dismissing the very real and extensively documented social pressure (much of it coming from presumed “allies” ) for atheists to shut up based on the fact that world-renowned writers and scientists are able to publish books? You do realize, I hope, that we mere mortals (at least in the US) have to contend with extraordinary social pressure not to speak up as atheists, even in the most timid of voices?
You do realize, I hope, that we mere mortals (at least in the US) have to contend with extraordinary social pressure not to speak up as atheists, even in the most timid of voices?
I’ll return the submission to experience: I’m not an American, and you may be right. In the vague blogospheric n’ media world, however, I don’t see how criticism – rotten as it may be – has become “massive pressure“. Happy to be shown otherwise (though I realise that “convincing some guy on a blog” ain’t a thrilling task).
Shorter me, this thread: the law’s not clamping down on your giving of offence, it’s clamping down on the giving of offence.
I don’t think so. Suppose a theist left anti-atheist leaflets in the offices of the NSS or the BHA or similar. Assume for the sake of argument the NSS/BHA squalled about being offended and called the cops – do you think the cops would call the CPS? Do you think the CPS would prosecute if they did? Do you think the judge would upbraid the defendant for showing no remorse if the case went to trial? Do you think a jury would convict? Do you think the theist would be sentenced to six months, suspended, 100 hours of unpaid work, 250 quid in costs, and an ASBO forbidding her to carry theist literature in public?
I of course can’t prove that none of that would happen – but do you seriously think that it all would?
Wasn’t Taylor charged with religiously aggravated something or other? Would theists teasing atheists be charged with that?
Totally agree, Ophelia. This is exactly the sort of opposition both from within and without the secular society at uni too: there are two factions, exactly as you’ve described. I’ve taken an inclusive approach . . . sure, you guys can say what you want: BUT SO CAN I. It’s worked, so far. Although a concerned freshly minted Dr of philosophy came along to one of our meetings to quiet us down: for our own good, of course. It’s so infernally patronising, and a serious occupational hazard.
Sure, they’d find something else to complain about — and again, on a superficial level. The whole point is to avoid the actual issues we bring up, by changing the subject to some area where they feel they’re on firmer ground. Well, yes, there’s all that stuff about the violence and dogma and none of it making much sense if you look at it rationally — but what about your language? Or, if not your language, then your tone. Okay, you managed the tone okay, this time, but you should have seen your expression, and that way you crossed your arms. There was a militancy about it which prevents us from entertaining anything you say…
I like Ebonmuse’s quote on ” People are so used to whispering around religion that a voice raised to normal volume sounds like a shout.” They don’t want respect; they want forbearance.
That’s a fair point, Ophelia: no, I don’t.
The difference, one suspects, is that atheists aren’t seen to invest that much in being atheists. So, no, scrap the shorter, but I still think it applies to people who hold, or are presumed to hold, particularly strong allegiance to a supposed identity; who are seen to express themselves as communities. Thus, the slapping down of homophobes, above, and the blockading of religious sensitivities here. It’s almost as if – in these cases, I’m not implying a conspiracy – the courts hope to project a sheen of inclusivity; removing discord from the public space. Anti-atheism wouldn’t fall under that, because atheists wouldn’t be dreadfully bothered. They might be biased against, in this regard, but I still don’t think they’re subject to a particular bias; Taylor, doubtless, would have treated the same if he’d cleaved to one religion, and focussed his ire upon another.
I basically agree, but it’s not just atheists who have problems. In the European countries and Europe-influenced countries such as Australia, our friends the fundamentalist Christians are also in the shit if they have the temerity to preach that the pope is the anti-christ or that Islam is an inherently violent religion or whatever else they believe. I think they should be allowed to say those things (and that I should be allowed to mock them about their more stupid claims).
There’s currently a mood that no one must rock the social boat, and that freedom of speech is a low-level value in comparison. Of course, Shut-uppists like Chris Mooney are contributing to this mood, but it goes far beyond them.
That’s so deeply disturbing, Russell. Re-reading MLK’s Letter From a Birmingham Jail today (thanks to those who brought it up), I was struck by how the same dynamics play out in every age, in every social movement. Is it that we haven’t had anything as pressing, as urgent, as the Vietnam War (though I’d argue we have, with our current wars), or the US civil rights movement to galvanize us and get us off our complacent butts? Are we just too damned comfortable? Does it take a real, immediate crisis to wake us up to the importance of protecting fundamental liberties, and if so, does that mean we’re doomed to go through cycles of passive complacency and upheaval over and over again?
I, as a poor benighted colonial, was shocked that Britain even had laws that could be so mediaeval. I have long been disturbed by the encroaching of ‘religious rights’ (WTF?) into the liberties that have been such a formative part of what Britain represents to me. JS Mill argued that we have no right to freedom from being offended, and that seems to be the problem here, the reduction of rights to dogma. Salman Rushdie, Danish cartoonists, William Tyndale…and now it starts again. The Inquisition has returned to Britain, and will defend and prosecute all beliefs except those of freedom and dissent.
To be sure, deists and pandeists (and all who try to use logic to pinpoint possible metaphysical characteristics of the universe) face much the same silencing when put up against theistic faiths whose absurdities we break down.
When the debate is between pandeism and atheism, then we’ll be living in a rational world.
When the debate is between pandeism and atheism, then we’ll be living in a rational world.
Why?
BenSix
April 26, 2010 at 1:37 amBecause for all atheists and deists disagree, neither side of that particular argument tries to use legal oppression to shut the other side up. It is why atheists tend not to go after deists unless the deists go after atheists first – deists don’t try to make their vaguely defined creator a legal authority. The argument is left to words.What the Taylor judgement amounts to is a clear case of religious oppression by the English courts. I would add that it echoes Cherie Booth giving a lesser sentence to a man because he was religious – which is to say the UK’s legal fraternity still believes that being an atheist should mean you get a harsher sentence if you commit a crime.This is why if you are a nonbeliever in the UK, a vote for Labour or the Tories is a vote against yourself. The UK’s godless population is not small, and right now political pressure needs to be brought to bear to put an end to this sort of nonsense. The Liberal Democrats are showing strength, it is time for the UK’s atheists to back them.
Okay, why did my paras vanish?
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The state and cultural institutions of the UK are systematically biased in favour of religion. This has the practical effect of producing bias against atheism.
I doubt it. Because then he would have been acting from a position of faith. Which would of course be understandable. ;-)
BenSix, I’ll echo Bruce Gorton and say that pandeism (which amounts to no more than a probabilistically based pantheistic-deism proposing a metaphysical radical kenosis as the explanation of our Universe) has no revelation and no dogma, and so offers no basis for oppression of those who disbelieve it. If all the world were atheists and agnostics and deists and pandeists, there’d be no religious foundation on which one group could justify persecution of another.
So, now this guy has fallen into the clutches of the courts, is an appeal being mounted? That is the only way forward, of course. It’ll take 10 years and go all the way to Europe; how much time do we all have?
Dirigible –
The state and cultural institutions of the UK are systematically biased in favour of religion. This has the practical effect of producing bias against atheism.
Yes, but – in this case, at least – only to the extent, I think, that I scribbled down in comment 20. That’s why it’s not – in my humble, naturally – a particular bias.
Orville –
If all the world were atheists and agnostics and deists and pandeists, there’d be no religious foundation on which one group could justify persecution of another.
Yes, but excising religion wouldn’t create a “rational world“. There’d still be conflict, for example, based on culture, ethnicity, ideology, class and host of other factors.
Yes – now there I agree with you, Ben6. I’m not sure I think that that excludes bias against atheism as an additional factor…but even if it doesn’t, the two are clearly entangled and clearly enable each other. That’s one reason I so loathe all the community-speak in the UK – it encourages a mindless kind of loyalty and groupthink and it marginalizes cooler and more reasoned ways of thinking about the world and morality and political ideas. We’re all supposed to think with our ‘community’ and the word applies only to some perceived groups and not others; or it applies much more concernedly and protectively to some groups than to others. Atheists and secularists – fuck them, they can take care of themselves; ‘the Muslim community’ – help them, help them! (But in doing so, of course understand them to be represented by male ‘leaders’ of ‘the community’ and treat women and non-religious ‘Muslims’ as non-existent or inauthentic or disloyal or all those. That’s very much the attitude to Salman Rushdie of community-minded people, for instance.)
Kenan Malik is always good on this stuff.
I’ve been wondering whether an appeal is afoot. I think in the US it would be all but automatic.
Who does this kind of thing in the UK? It does seem to make a difference that there’s no equivalent of the ACLU – I have no clue who would even know whether an appeal is planned.
If it isn’t it should be. Even apart from Harry Taylor himself, the precedent is just horrendously dangerous.
I wonder what Rowan Atkinson is thinking.
The CPS isn’t under the Home Office. Its more like Torchwood.
Actually no – it answers to the Attorney General, not to the Home Secretary or the Minister of Justice. Current AG is Baroness Scotland of Asthal, known to the elves as Patricia Scotland (ie the Scotland is part of her name rather than her title).
[…] of the stuff on the blog is good stuff and worthy of venting. But it’s one of Ophelia’s recent posts, “Be Quieters v. atheists,” that we think misses the mark a […]
From OB: He did something that someone found irritating, so Inspector Plod found a judge and twelve jurors who also found it irritating, so they all punished Harry Taylor heavily for doing something they found irritating. He obviously doesn’t have any rights! I’m not attributing anything to society’s anything, I’m saying this conviction and sentence are a fucking outrage.
Yes it is.
From Ben6: the law’s not clamping down on your giving of offence, it’s clamping down on the giving of offence.
But it’s applied inequitably on the basis of religious belief.
From ML King Jr.: we see the need for nonviolent gadflies (Harry Taylor, anyone?) to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood.
We see the need for an appeal that is very loud and highly visible. May I suggest Lord Justice Laws? He seems to have a grasp of applying the law equitably. (See his ruling here)
[…] an atheist was arrested recently – for leaving cartoons in an Airport – Ophelia Benson ruled that it “might as well be an official government announcement that atheists have no rights“. […]
Great post!