New albigensianism
The gnu atheist-haters have been having a busy weekend. Yesterday Michael Ruse told us, after saying that he took Philip Kitcher’s article seriously even though he disagreed with it, and wouldn’t be writing about it if he didn’t –
(Actually, as a general rule that is just not true. I write about the New Atheists, even though I don’t think their position is worth taking seriously at all. Or rather, I accept many of the conclusions, but I think the arguments are lousy. But I write about the New Atheists because I think their hateful attitude towards believers is a potential force for great social and moral evil.)
And today Julian Baggini told us about the way atheism is currently perceived (without telling us that he has been doing his bit to foster the very perception he finds worrying).
The problem is that while the word atheist itself means nothing more than “not-theist”, it seems that for many, “a” stands for anti…If being an atheist meant being anti-theist, then I would not be one. I am an anti-dogmatist, an anti-fundamentalist, yes. But I have no hostility to theism as such, and have no desire to strip all theists of their faith.
Neither do we. (I’m including myself among the anti-theists, which is fair enough – my overt atheism is the stated reason the owners of The Philosophers’ Magazine removed my name from the masthead with the last issue, after six years of being on it as Editorial Advisor, then Deputy Editor, then Associate Editor. Julian of course is one of the owners, so it’s fair enough to think I belong to the guilty group.) Neither do we – what we have desire to do is say frankly and unapologetically what we think is wrong with such beliefs. It is a form of majoritarian bullying to pretend that that is the same thing as wanting to “strip” people of their beliefs. If that were the case, Julian would be a criminal simply for being a philosopher.
Of course I think theists are mistaken, but no one should be automatically hostile to everyone they disagree with. Hostility should be reserved for the pernicious, the wicked and the harmful.
But again – the hostility is for the beliefs, not the believers, at least not unless the believers are shouting at us. Again, it’s a ploy, and a nasty one, to pretend otherwise.
Dividing the world up into believers and non-believers, while accurate in many ways, doesn’t draw the distinction between friends and foes. I see my allies as being the community of the reasonable, and my enemies as the community of blind faith and dogmatism. Any religion that is not unreasonable and not dogmatic should likewise recognise that it has a kinship with atheists who hold those same values. And it should realise that it has more to fear from other people of faith who deny those values than it does from reasonable atheists like myself.
Well, that has the virtue of being clear, at least. Julian is saying he sees us – the overt atheists – as his enemies. He’s saying he is reasonable and we are not, and he is an ally of reasonable people and we are enemies.
He is in Ruse country.
He ends by pointing to “two sad facts”:
that atheism has come to be seen as anti-theism, and that, perhaps partly in response, we expect people of faith to forge not-that-holy alliances with each other rather than far better unholy alliances with kindred non-believers. We should challenge both those assumptions, for the sake of values that good believers and good atheists alike hold dear.
So now he’s among the good atheists, and we are among the evil ones.
It’s staggering.
Ah yes, the good atheists: those who are willing to throw other atheists under the bus just so they can be accepted by Christians.
It is interesting that biologists such as PZ, Jerry, Larry and Richard are now being accused of sabotaging science education just by being both atheists and scientists. The real people sabotaging science education are the religious fundamentalists and their rich conservative backers – yet a group like Biologos which claims to promote science saves the greatest part of its venom for atheist scientists – and these are the people we are supposed to work with? Religion will always be more important than science education.
The latest polling from Gallup shows no change in 30 years on acceptance of evolution among the US population.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/21814/evolution-creationism-intelligent-design.aspx
Not a republican in congress will now publicly accept AGW.
And we should stand back and play nice?
It would be nice to see a transcript of Justin’s sermon. My guess is that he did not actually talk about why I was an atheist. (I may be wrong there, and will happily apologize for my presumptions.) His hosts would have regarded that as anti-theist, which is, of course, the last thing he wants to be. I’m betting that it’s pretty much summarized in his column.
You know, let’s distinguish ourselves, together, from the Fundamentalists On Both Sides™. And good luck with that, Jason. I expect you’ll find a welcoming faith community so long as you limit the discourse to shared values; liberal Christians adore a friendly nonbeliever. Remember, though, not to say anything that would lead them to think you find their beliefs unreasonable. The hallmark of a good atheist is silence. Oh, and yelling at those who aren’t.
I disagree. Karl Giberson’s recent columns are actually unusual for BioLogos. Their mission seems to be getting evangelical Christians to accept a scientific understanding of the world. If they have an identifiable enemy, it’s Albert Mohler and Biblical inerrancy. Which isn’t to say that they’re a force for good. Obviously, they’re desperate to preserve belief in the face of that scientific understanding. (A common theme is that it’s not about Genesis, it’s about Jesus.) But they’re less openly hostile to atheism than many atheists!
Funny. I work with a student named Justin that I’m constantly calling Jason.
But there is no venom there toward fundamentalists – and they are really mostly trying to get them to accept evolution, not necessarily a complete scientific understanding of the world. It is after all an apologetics site; they try to cram their ancient religion into modern science. They will gladly accommodate any and all Christians – not so sure about atheists – except Ruse and his anti-New Atheist rants.
Firstly, I think the above shows clearly that Julian Baggini points are all empty moralising and naive philistinism. No reasoned arguments are constructed, only the moral ‘should’ utterances of yet another moral coward, unwilling to voice either what is true or what is right.
Secondly, he completely fails to use the correct terminology. He doesn’t mention accommodationism, nor new atheism, and uses the term anti-theism, because he does not understand the debate or the position of the people he vilifies. He does not even understand the various meanings for the prefix “anti-” and so grapples about shooting at windmills.
Reasonable people like: Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Victor Stenger, PZ Meyers, Jerry Coyne, Orphelia Benson. Those reasonable people or do you mean these reasonable people: Francis Collins, Paul Kurtz, Jennifer Michael Hecht, Michael Ruse, Joseph Alois Ratzinger…Which group do you belong to? Please let me know.
Because clearly he is ‘hostile’ to the blind faith believers and dogmatists, which means he’s a hypocrite for moralising those who he thinks are also hostile.
I’m glad that the rousing passion of the debate between the atheists, along with the high-profile of the New Atheists, has prompted Westminster Abbey to invite an atheist give a sermon against the Gnus. I can’t think of a better outcome.
So I say, let’s aim for double the number of atheist speeches at the Abbey for 2011. If we keep up the fight, then by 2050 we might even be able to get an atheist Pope!
In message #3, ToneMaster Pidcock quotes:
What religion would that be?
So, let’s recapitulate: science bases its findings on evidence derived from direct analysis of observable reality. It also provides a list of the conditions that would falsify its conclusions, all of which are always subject to revision or even complete overhauling.
Religion tells us that a god, or gods, none of which we ever get to see, nor find objective evidence for, does, or do, undoubtedly exist and nothing is allowed to deny that, or to tell us otherwise. Of course, no list of conditions is ever provided that would be allowed to prove the assertions of any religion to be mistaken or plainly unsupportable.
So, viewed in that light, science is dogmatic, whereas religion is reasonable? Nice logic there, sir.
Also, why are scientific achievements so often called a “theory”, whereas we never see religion described as such?
For a self-professed rationalist, your depth of thinking does not impress me in the least.
For us biologists, the idea of working with religious people means something along the lines of promoting good science education. Both the NCSE and gnu’s such as Dawkins and Jerry Coyne, despite some religion/science compatibility arguments have emphasised the common ground that is the acceptance of both the gnus and those religious figures that evolution is the prime structure underlying biology. For some philosophers, however, the primary area of agreement with the religious seems to be in the idea that the gnu atheists are terrible people who should be castigated.
Well forgive us for not joining in with the ra-ra’s as the accomodationist cheerleaders demonstrate their commitment to working with the religious. Theirs is not an alliance based on mutual respect. It’s merely a temporary truce while they tackle a common uppity foe that refuses to stay in its place.
Do these hatheists think for a second that the religious would still acknowledge them if a theocracy came to power? Their likely reward would not differ from that readied for the rest of us. I am reminded of a line from family guy, Stewie, “I like you. When I rule the world your death shall be quick and painless”
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Skeptic South Africa and Ophelia Benson, Dale O'Flaherty. Dale O'Flaherty said: This http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2010/new-albigensianism/ is one of my favourite websites […]
This is beginning to border on the absurd! First of all, where are Ruse and Baggini and Mooney, and the rest of the gang, getting the idea that the gnu atheists are hostile? There is actually very little hostility. Listen to some of the debates that Hitchens and Dawkins have taken part in. There’s no evident hatred or hostility. Instead, what you see is an incredible willingness to discuss, to debate, to answer questions, to give explanations, etc. etc. Where did the myth of hostility and stridency and shrillness come from?
But if you really want to find stridency, just read a few of the religious responses to the gnu atheism. Some of it is almost incendiary. And it’s not a question of allies or enemies either. No one that I know of has spoken of individual religious people as in any sense enemies. It just hasn’t happened. However, there is another group of people entirely, unbelievers, atheists like Julian Baggini, who have singled out certain atheists as enemies. Now, that really is an interesting development.
The strange thing is that the response of people like Baggini is not to any specific words or acts of specific, nameable atheists. It’s a response (I believe) to the very real alarm that religious people are starting to express about the growing success of atheism. It’s significant enough of a threat that the pope made atheism his main target when he came to the UK. That’s where the real stridency comes in. That was not only strident. It was downright malignant in its hatred. And all of this is taking place against the greatest success story of our time: the unparalleled growth of unbelief. There is simply no precedent for it.
And atheists are not dividing the world up into believers and unbelievers. There is certainly a militancy, if you like, about some current expressions of atheism. But this is a response to the increasing demands that religions are making to public recognition and privilege. Islam wants the privilege of never being offended. Christianity and Islam and all the rest want to see religious law enforced in the public realm. In places the catholic church has been successful, and have criminalised abortion. In many Muslim majority countries Sharia law has been imposed with greater energy and cruelty.
Whether Baggini wants to admit it or not, religion is becoming a menace to the peace and security of the world. It needs to be opposed, because, with good reason, it feels endangered, and endangered religions are themselves dangerous. The world can no longer be divided between religious blocs of nations and cultures. Throw them all together, and they become even less believable than before. Plurality of religion defeats the claims of religious belief. This is unavoidable.
But Baggini is wrong. The gnu atheism is not hostile to religion, except insofar as religion threatens freedom and endangers the vulnerable. Religious believers are welcome to believe what they will in private. They are however not welcome to use religious belief as the basis of law, and insofar as they do so they must be resolutely opposed. If Baggini cannot see this, then he needs to think again. And while he is thinking, he might just remember that, as Jesus is depicted in the gospels, he is a divisive and not a unifying force. It is because of this canonical understanding of Jesus’ significance that anti-Judaism became a scourge that has killed millions of people, and may yet kill more. He may have said that being a good Samaritan was better than being a bad Jew, but, in the gospels, a bad Jew is one who does not believe in Jesus. For his trip to the Abbey Baggini used a skewed hermeneutic, long favoured by Christians. This is not reason. It’s prejudice. Baggini should think some more.
Good one, Ben!
(If I understood the beginning of Julian’s piece correctly it wasn’t the Abbey itself that invited him but the associated school. You know how English cathedrals have choir schools attached; I suppose it was one of those.)
Westminster School is an expensive ‘public’ [ie, for US readers, private] school for carefully selected children. It is closely tied to the Abbey. It perfectly illustrates why the dear cosy Church of England is evil: “All [chillingly, sic] pupils attend services [at the Abbey] twice a week.”
http://www.westminster.org.uk/about-us/the-abbey.html
“Any religion that is not unreasonable and not dogmatic”
Alright, Julian, I’ll buy that. Name some. Not dear middle-of-the-road Anglicanism. They have 39 dogmata, and they mindlessly recite the wholly unreasonable Apostles’ Creed in most services. Not Islam. Not Judaism, except Lionel Blue. Not Hinduism. Not Buddhism, as now practised, deeply laden with superstition. Maybe the Society of Friends (Quakers). Maybe some Unitarians. Who else? Go on, tell us.
Any religion that is not unreasonable and not dogmatic should recognize that it has a kinship with atheism, not atheists. Which is the gnu atheist’s point, and one that rests on a desire to bring us together through persuasion to a consensus.
There are no checks and balances against reality in a system which gets its knowledge of other worlds through subjective other ways of knowing. When religions are being reasonable, they are always reasonable by secular standards. And yet the qualification for being a “religion” as opposed to being a “life philosophy with metaphorical poetry” is that you don’t follow or justify yourself by secular standards. Whether religious people make sense or not comes down to being a matter of luck. As Sam Harris says, at its best, religion gives you bad reasons for doing the right thing.
I would think it was far more divisive to consider religious people “off bounds” as long as they aren’t too silly, because trying to treat them as if they shouldn’t be silly at all is asking too much of them, poor things.
Yes, but the point is that they’re so much nicer than those horrible dogmatic hating atheists that it really doesn’t matter if they’re a bit silly.
I’ve no doubt that all atheists look to see belief decline.
Baggini and his colleagues contend that the focus should be on fundamentalism. In this, they assert that liberal believers should be our allies, and that, by antagonizing liberal believers, new atheists threaten this alliance and make it more difficult to confront fundamentalism. YNH.
New atheists understand that antagonizing liberal believers – who, as it happens, rarely exert much energy confronting fundamentalism – can actually be quite productive, because that’s where the converts are. Our liberal churches are filled with believers in belief who, when persistently reminded how unreasonable those beliefs are, might be persuaded to live more honestly. This is my personal experience, by the way.
The key to a more secular society lies not with trying to marginalize radical believers – which never works, anyway – but with increasing the number of nonbelievers. Personally, I think the NAs are doing a pretty job with that. YH.
Eric MacDonald wrote: “The gnu atheism is not hostile to religion, except insofar as religion threatens freedom and endangers the vulnerable. Religious believers are welcome to believe what they will in private. They are however not welcome to use religious belief as the basis of law, and insofar as they do so they must be resolutely opposed.”
Well said. I would go further and say that every reasonable person should be hostile to public arguments (religious or otherwise) which obfuscate or deny reality. To paraphrase Ayaan Hirsi Ali on a recent Intelligence 2 US debate, if we can’t admit to the same facts about real events and what we objectively know about them, no meaningful discourse is possible. And by “hostile” I do not mean anything other than that we should publicly reject and resist said arguments with forceful reason and good wit. (And no one said it would be easy, but this “good atheists”/”bad atheists” fallacy is a real drag.)
Ophelia said:
Which in turn feeds this notion that religious people are the victims of atheist persecution. Anyone who dares to criticize religion in plain English and with rigorous honesty, is basically committing a hate crime.
It’s not so much anything specific that the new atheism has done or said that has won it this evil reputation. That’s just what happens—and what has always happened historically—to those who dare to unapologetically criticize this racket called “religion.” You get ostracized; you get demonized (often literally); you get called names.
What is new about the backlash, in our time, is that now you have this whole population of right-thinking people who are not themselves religious but who nonetheless take tremendous umbrage at the idea that religious belief be directly criticized. This is typically under the banner of “tolerance” (Nick Kristof, Bob Wright) or “strategy” (Hecht, Mooney, Plait),
And Julian doesn’t actually give any reason to think he’s right about the evil of the bad atheists. In fact at the beginning he admits that it’s a matter of perception – yet this very article feeds into that perception. If people like Julian would stfu about evil atheists, there wouldn’t be that perception, or at least it would be weaker. But oh no, he has to jump on the bandwagon. I’m reasonable, they’re dogmatic; I’m good, they’re evil. That’s philosophy.
The whole concept of tone and style is really tangential to gnu atheism and what it’s about. You could smile, flatter, and be so polite it makes everyone’s teeth hurt, and still qualify as gnu atheist as long as you were making the arguments.
Maybe we should start to confuse the faitheists and hatheists and accomodationists by prefacing all our criticism with empty formal announcements like “I just love Francis Collins BUT” or “I just love Chris Mooney BUT” or “I just love Julian Baggini BUT” and then let it rip. Then, instead of accusing us of being so horrible and mean, they can start accusing us of only pretending to be all about Love, but they’ve gotten suspicious there.
Or, maybe, it would be enough. A courteous formality. We can accompany it with a death-head’s grin, to reassure them even more. We’ll show them nice — till they practically beg us to stop!
“…that atheism has come to be seen as anti-theism…”
Come to be seen? Seriously? It’s only just recently that atheism was seen as being against religion? Has he studied any history at all? Has he had his head in a sack? Ever hear of the 50s in the US? (Yeah, I know it started long before that, but that time period was a dark one for Church-State separation, so it sticks in my head). If he starts off with a premise like that, why should I even take him seriously? I agree with Andy – it does seem like he’s turning the vocal atheists into the victimizers – the bullies.
What an idiot.
Ophelia, I don’t think it was the choir school, but Westminster school which is one of the tip-top London Public (…I.e. Private) schools. AFAIK it is nominally religious in the impressive-old-tradition way that Oxbridge colleges are.
So the situation was probably more like ‘guest speaker at school assembly (in a very impressive building)’ than ‘atheist preaches a sermon to a religious congregation (aren’t they liberal and open minded?)’ he makes out.
Lots of private schools in England are church linked – its good old England/traditional branding as much as anything I think. Few of them select pupils on the basis of parents’ religious observance. If you are bright enough and wealthy enough and don’t mind sitting through a bit of chapel you can get in. Church schools that get their funding from the state require parents to jump through all kinds of religious hoops…make of that what you will.
Oh right, Westminster school – I’m familiar with it. I didn’t realize it got to use the Abbey for its assemblies! My school had to make do with the gym.
It’s interesting that Baggini claims atheism has “come to be seen as anti-theism.” I suppose he can point to a lot of historical evidence showing that, prior to the emergence of scary figures like Hitchens and Dawkins and lions and tigers and bears, oh my, the religious were quite fond of atheists and didn’t see atheism as anti-theism? That up until those damnable gnu atheists came around, the religious readily, willingly and happily formed alliances with the non-religious (aka “godless heathen scum”)? Seems to me that that was never really the case, but Baggini must know differently.
Or maybe what happened is, for a long time believers did hate atheists, but then all of a sudden things calmed down a lot and atheists got very very quiet because after all they had their espresso machines and their 3-way lightbulbs, and believers didn’t hate atheists any more and we all got along and it was just totally harmonious and happy and kumbaya and do my feet look big in these sandals? And Julian was just so so happy when it was like that, life was so good then, but now – oh gosh it’s gone all horrid now and it’s all the fault of those horrible fanatical unreasonable atheists who keep bursting into flames when anyone so much as hums a few notes of “Jesus Loves Me.” Julian’s an atheist so that means they hate him TOO oh it’s so sad and tragic and unfair.
In post #18, Andy wrote:
Indeed.
I’ve encountered this idea of “atheist persecution” often enough in the media and in the opinion pages (usually accompanied by gratuitous charges of “atheist fundamentalism” or worse) that I’ve really tried, since I do wish to be fair, to figure out how in the world a minuscule minority of individuals who openly identify themselves as atheists is managing to “persecute” religious people, who, according to polls, are a gigantic majority of the general population.
I’d like Baggini & Co. to explain that to us. Unless it’s another one of those “miracles” that need no evidence to be believed.
What Julian says would be quite correct when he says …
I see my allies as being the community of the reasonable, and my enemies as the community of blind faith and dogmatism. Any religion that is not unreasonable and not dogmatic should likewise recognise that it has a kinship with atheists who hold those same values. And it should realise that it has more to fear from other people of faith who deny those values than it does from reasonable atheists like myself.
… if by “reasonable atheists like myself” he had in mind Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, etc., as opposed to, say, Stalin. Of course that’s not how it comes across in the context of the current debates. If anything, the implication seems to be that Richard (and Ophelia, and I, and many other good guys) belong over there with Stalin. But if you just read the literal words in italics they are probably true. I could imagine Richard Dawkins saying exactly the same thing, and we wouldn’t cavil at it. I could imagine me saying the same thing, while making clear who I categorised in which camps (i.e., Stalin and the Pope belong together in the camp of “unreasonable and dogmatic”).
It really would be, um, helping if people would name names, as I and others said about John Shook’s HuffPo article.
hmmm
I would consider my atheism to be a two-tier posision. My “default” posision is: there is no god (or gods) in the physical world (which is all there is).
But IF there turned up convincing eveidence for a god, I would consider myself an ANTI-theist. At lest if the eventual god had essential similarities to the Abrahamittic god: JHWH/GOD/ALLAH.
The jealous, pompous prat I find in the scripture has such low moral qualities, I’d find it impossible to “submit” :-)
Cassanders
In Cod we trust
“To invite us into the citadels of faith and ask us to explain what we believe is therefore not to bring the enemy though the gate, simply because we are not the enemy.”
Really?
Tell that to Jesus.
“but whoever causes one of these little ones to lose faith it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.”
I was brought up in a traditional Catholic background and was certainly told, time and again, that saying something that causes someone to question their own religious beliefs (so long as it is a Christian belief!) is one of the worst kind of sins imaginable. The above quote of Jesus was used as the direct instruction on this matter. So definite is this teaching in Catholicism that for years after I became an atheist I still had the lingering notion that there is something inherently ‘wrong’ in saying something that causes someone to lose faith in their religion.
I’m better now.
Reasonable religion in its contest with dogmatic atheism has never had a better spokesman than Thomas G. West, Professor of Politics at the University of Dallas, Senior Fellow with the Claremont Institute, Author of Vindicating the Founders: Race, Sex, Class, and Justice in the Origins of America. West wrote the Intervarsity Press advertisement for William A. Dembski’s Intelligent Design: The Bridge Between Science & Theology, (1999).
From that ad, which I think is a classic statement of the position:
Science-inspired religion might just reason that the Intelligent Designer who gave us the 125 billion galaxies (1999 Hubble Telescope estimate, but rising all the time) spread through space, with the furthest up to 13.75 ± 0.17 billion light years distant from us, might not incline to playing tricks: like pretending to be a burning bush, or demanding sacrificial lambs of one kind or another.
But I am always ready to hear a well reasoned argument to the contrary.
Julian says that he is an “anti-fundamentalist”, giving the impression that he supports those who do not believe in the “fundamentals” of their religion. But just who are these people? After all, if you do not believe in the fundamental basis of your religion then surely that means that you don’t believe in your religion.
I notice that Frans de Waal has joined in the anti-atheist parade. You can find his article here in the NYT. He does say a few good and helpful things (and has a wonderful remark about Al Sharpton and those who think they need the restraint of religion to keep them from committing heinous crimes), but once again he shores up the religious belief system, pointing out that Western morality is steeped in religion:
That’s true, but we also have a fairly good idea what morality looks like without reason, since for centuries the church dominated Europe, just as Islam now dominates the Arabian peninsula, and the story is not a pretty one. Torture, burning at the stake, the cutting off of hands and feet, flogging women for adultery, stoning women who have been raped and seek justice: all these things are the products of religion. Surely de Waal is not that insensitive to the fate of millions of people now suffering under the grip of religious morality and its overseers?
De Waal even suggests that the new atheists call themselves ‘Brights’, and think of their religious counterparts as unintelligent. He clearly knows very little about the so-called ‘new atheism’. As a scientist he should do some research. The essay, on the whole, is a good one. I just wonder why he thought it necessary, in the course of it, to do this drive by shooting at people who have as much concern for morality as he does. How is it that people like de Waal, looking across a religious world the religious horrors of which are at least in part described in Does God Hate Women?, can be so myopic as not to be able to see the enormous distance between the morality of religion and the moral sensitivity of chimpanzees? Can he not see that what passes for religious morality amongst Christians is largely the product of a non-religious society, and that before liberal pluralism marginalised religion, with its endemic violence, cruelty, odious punishments for heresy, the subjection of women and the desperation of the labouring classes, was the norm, not the exception?
Eric said: “I notice that Frans de Waal has joined in the anti-atheist parade.”
He has been disparaging towards the likes of Dawkins for quite a while. I noticed it first in his book “Our Inner Ape” – where he completely misrepresents the gnu atheist position and actions.
Unfortunately I have figured out a, to date, foolproof method to get at an underlying commonality of these anti-gnus. It consists of the simple steps of typing in the name of the gnu-hater into google, adding one extra word to the search term and then pressing return.
I bet you’ve already figured out the extra word.
Needless to say, their grubby fingerprints are easy to find.
Just how much more tiresome are these op-eds, articles, speeches against New atheists going to get?
In an ideal world, I’d never discuss or argue without resorting to some infraction or a logical fail, but it isn’t ideal, so I do, I can only apologise. I can therefore excuse and not browbeat too much for occasional failing on that point, but not when it’s continuous, not when the whole “you’re not helping” is essentially one big failure to begin with.
Nobody seems sure what exactly isn’t being helped (as is asked numerous times here). That’d be a starting point mainly because it’s unfair to accuse a group of people of harming something, but refusing to tell them what they’re harming and thus affording them the right of reply or clarification. Sheesh, it’s like being 12 again and being ignored for some slight, but the offended party won’t tell you what the slight is.
As far as I can patch together, what’s not being helped is one of: convincing people to either understand or “buy into” proven science, assisting moderates attain a lifestyle of believing scientific stuff when it comes to AGW, but still not letting go of a god, “converting believers” or attaining world peace (or something).
What gets people to buy into science is good science education. But then education has been poisoned by fundamentalism. For the accommodationists: ask any science teacher who’s had to “accommodate” or “frame” proven scientific principles in favour of unfounded, deceitful, faith-based bovine effluvia just who they think “isn’t helping” them. Dawkins, et al, who put forward proof and evidence of scientific theory or accommodationism that seeks to find common ground? Ask them what’s standing in the way of getting buy-in for science. Ask them whether the influence of not the fundamentalist, but the pissant moderate groups who’re as scared as the accommodationists of offending or of being offended is more or less harmful that the damned simple proven facts of Dawkins et al? You may not like the answer; it may not sell books or column inches.
As to the converting, I give up. I haven’t the will to try and convert anyone on anything, it’s never my (or as far as I’m concerned any other NA’s) agenda. What that is, is hyperbole and lies told by fundamentalists to either tag atheism as a “religion” or scare their flocks. And you bought into it. Smart, real smart.
It’s sad, not that it’s a splinter group, not that it’s people who used to be closely allied, but that these things are written by people who should know better, who should know how to argue and discuss. It’s sad to see them stoop to this. But it’s annoying to see them continue and continue to write nice words without any context and without a point that seeks only to attack a few for no reason whatsoever.
The more this goes on without any specifics, without substance the more I have to question the motivation behind it. I could list conspiracy theories regarding publishers, publishing tactics, the huge market for selling to moderates, advertisers, etc, etc, but it’s just not worth the effort.
I just want them to do one thing, come away from the blogs for five minutes. Come away from the fawning gatherings for five minutes, just get off your high horse and speak to those who actually are affected by this. These people aren’t the Prius driving, morally superior, intellectual peers, it’s the people teaching science, looking for work or a job in a world heavily dominated and influence by religion. It’s those dealing with overt oppression, or those, like me, a new father who’s just been informed his son’s education will be third rate unless he’s baptised. It’s basically, the rest of the world. Not just the handful who post comments on blogs, not just those who sit around and pontificate philosophy among equally erudite and learned peers, actual real people who’s lives genuinely would be better off without the current influence faith is having. Ask them, ask me who isn’t helping.
it is rare that you get as much out of the comments on a blog as the blog itself …
Great thought Blackford!
Sigmund:
I’d forgotten, but I received the same admonishment. When I questioned my (liturgically conservative Lutheran) faith in adolescence (why are Jews condemned, etc), I was never reprimanded for it, but I was always reminded of how terrible it is to lead another person away from faith. In retrospect, I think it was a clever way for my parents to prevent public exposure of their tolerance for my apostasy. It worked, too.
Good point, Nicholas.
But surely dear middle-of-the-road Anglicanism was what he had in mind, since he was addressing the dear people who allowed him to preach in the Abbey. One assumes that they are at least nominal Anglicans!
I am beginning to think that the explanation for some of these gnuA-haters may lie in the personality traits described here http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/
They probably are, but remember this the Church of England so assumptions like that can be unwise!
Can they? Rowan Williams made a point of saying, a few years ago, that he really does believe the things an archbish is supposed to believe.
Does anyone know how one tells whether you are a good atheist or one of the evil ones? Clearly I am more likely to be one of the evil ones, given that I am alive. I note from the comments after Julian’s article that Richard Dawkins remains the shibbolatheist. Since I am only inclined to say things about him that are true I must be one of the evil ones…and yet one of my personal heroes is Chad Varah. I may have to just contemplate the mystery of this.
I think it’s one of those things where you Just Know.
Mind you, I may have the best claim of anyone in the world to be sure I’m one of the evil ones, since (as I mentioned) that’s why my name was taken off the masthead of TPM.
No, it’s not philosophy. Philosophy, at an absolute minimum, requires some sort of argument. Baggini has abandoned argument entirely, opting instead for empty and willfully misleading rhetoric. I started to lose my respect for him a few years ago; now it is well and truly all gone.
It consists of the simple steps of typing in the name of the gnu-hater into google, adding one extra word to the search term and then pressing return.
Damn, you’re right.
In de Waal’s defense, an “Institute for Research on Unlimited Love” sounds kind of groovy.
Shorter Baggini:
1. There are two kinds of atheists in the world, good ones and bad ones.
2. Bad atheists are the ones who divide world into those who agree with them and those who don’t, and then ostracize and villify those who disagree with them.
3. I am a good atheist! Unlike those bad atheists over there who disagree with me!
Ohhhhhhhhhh, really? Et tu, de Waal? Dear oh dear.
Also, de Waal just did a Bloggingheads.tv diavlog with Robert Wright. Most of it was about evolution and morality, but neither of them could resist taking some pot shots at the Gnus. de Waal made the hackneyed “observation” about atheism becoming a religion, and Wright noted that he was about to debate Sam Harris that night (it was recorded the day of the Council for Secular Humanism conference, I gather) in front of a crowd of supposed Sam Harris worshippers.
“De Waal even suggests that the new atheists call themselves ‘Brights’, and think of their religious counterparts as unintelligent. ”
I think the Brights campaign was/is a fasntastically stupid idea, largely because it was so incredibly easy to interpret as “a group of atheists who say everyone else is stupid”. At best it was culturally tone-deaf. And we already have a lot of great words; freethinker, humanist, rationalist, skeptic, or heck, ATHEIST.
He thinks atheism has -come to be seen- as anti-theist? So what were atheists seen as for all those centuries of being called devil worshippers, auxiliary-theists?
[…] of religious matters is being increasingly thought of as being “shrill” and “militant”. Ophelia is noticing the tendency as well. She suspects that, as an overt atheist, she would be lumped by Baggini into the class of […]
Say it loud and say it proud, brothah:
TEMPLETON!
They claim they don’t have anything to hide; let’s keep them to that.
The Brights versus the Frights? Well, it’s nearly Halloween, aint it!
2. “Any religion that is not unreasonable and not dogmatic should likewise recognise that it has a kinship with atheists who hold those same values.”
What religion would that be, I wonder? Speaking from an insider perspective, mind, not of my own making, I should say. It’s hardly the RC church of which Baggini has in mind. Now, where shall I begin…argument-wise.
(Scratches head with pen)
[…] offers other examples of supposed incivility, but these are to a couple of posts by Ophelia Benson that don’t actually seem uncivil at all. In each case she […]
[…] Dick” speech. I take it Plait is against contempt, but not against candor. There was also upsetness (October 17) about Julian Baggini’s speech at Westminister Abbey, in which he encouraged atheists not to […]