The freeedom not to respect
Quinn O’Neill, in her much-discussed piece on religion and reason and “tolerance” offers a familiar confusion:
Ensuring individuals’ freedom of religion is undoubtedly important in securing secularism. As Michael Shermer eloquently put it: “As long as religion does not threaten science and freedom, we should be respectful and tolerant because our freedom to disbelieve is inextricably bound to the freedom of others to believe.”
Ensuring individuals’ freedom of religion is important for a lot of reasons, but ensuring individuals’ freedom of religion does not depend on being “respectful and tolerant” of the content of individuals’ beliefs. It does not, and it cannot, because that would in fact interfere with everyone else’s freedom of religion (which, of course, includes freedom of non-religion). That is a very coercive, illiberal line of thought that has been entrenching itself lately, and it must be resisted. You are free to believe what you like, and I am free to pour scorn on any belief, and vice versa. Freedom cannot require the automatic “respect” for beliefs of the rest of the world, because such a requirement would itself be insanely coercive. Demanding “respect” for any belief is itself thoroughly anti-freedom.
O’Neill continues with the confusion.
Personal and vitriolic attacks on religious individuals are also inconsistent with religious freedom. If we value religious freedom, respect for people’s right to hold irrational beliefs is in order (so long as the beliefs don’t infringe on the rights of others).
Personal attacks on any individuals, if they are literal attacks, are inconsistent with freedom in general and with the rule of law. But of course she’s probably not talking about physical attacks…she’s probably talking about verbal disagreement. Well, that is not inconsistent with religious freedom. Respect for people’s right to hold irrational beliefs is not the same thing as respect for the irrational beliefs themselves. O’Neill simply conflates the two, either sloppily or dishonestly; I don’t know which. The result, at any rate, is sheer bullshit. Yes, of course we have to respect everyone’s right to hold irrational beliefs, but no of course we do not have to respect the irrational beliefs themselves. There’s a difference, and the difference matters.
an important point that doesn’t get made often enough.
I don’t agree with the Michael Shermer quotation O’Neill uses to buffer her point with, but I respect it.
I’ll repeat, in briefer form, what I said on Jerry’s blog: O’Neill’s musings on whether religious (and other irrational) delusions might be a net positive may become relevant in some distant future when religion stops having an outsize influence on politics, when the vast majority of religious people belong to some benign sect like Unitarians or Quakers, when it really has about as much of an influence on most people’s lives as the daily horoscope.
Until then, who cares? I consider it an open question as to whether religious delusions are inherently negative, or if they can be positive… but it seems like an open-and-shut case that religion today is a net-negative!!
I certainly do not respect religious beliefs. I have never been given a satisfactory reason as to why I should. Believing in gods is irrational and is not deserving of respect.
I am also not certain that respecting someone’s right to hold religious beliefs is something that I should indulge in. Some of the beliefs that are held concerning religion are not only irrational but are also disgusting in themselves. Why should I respect the right of someone to believe that mutilating a childs genitalia is acceptable? Why should I respect the right of someone to believe that half of the population of the world are second class citizens? Why should I respect the right of someone to believe that members of the LGBT community should be killed? These are all religious beliefs and I reject them and reserve the right to challenge anyone who holds them. I find it rather hard to respect the right of people to hold beliefs such as these.
Curiously, the idea of respecting someone’s right to believe as opposed to respecting their beliefs bears some conceptual similarity to the “love the sinner, hate the sin” view espoused by some Christians.
There are big differences, of course, but I think there’s a vague family resemblance between the two.
‘our freedom to disbelieve is inextricably bound to the freedom of others to believe.’
Our freedom to disbelieve has been won by being unafraid to express our disbelief in the face of ignorance, superstition and persecution.
Why is religion a special case and not, say, politics? Do we hear arguments that the freedom of communists rests upon their respect for fascists, or vice versa? That Keynsians must respect free-market libertarians or anarchists must not criticise statists?
You see this over and over again, this conflation of respect for a person versus respect for the ideas they espouse.
Telling someone that it’s wrong to stone women to death or cut off their noses or genitals is not an attack on the person holding the ideas, just on the ideas themselves.
Of course some people live their lives vicariously through their beliefs to the extent that it becomes difficult if not impossible to separate the person from the idea.
But that’s their self made, internally imposed problem, not ours.
‘Telling someone that it’s wrong to stone women to death or cut off their noses or genitals is not an attack on the person holding the ideas, just on the ideas themselves.’
Actually, I’d be happy to attack people who hold those beliefs.
I might mock the *beliefs* of someone who thinks they can pray for good weather but someone who harms others because of their beliefs is an asshole.
In fact I don’t think ideas have an existence independent of the minds that hold them. Criticising ‘racism’ but not racists themselves would be perverse.
I might tolerate someone who harbours relatively benign beliefs but someone who holds viciously misogynistic or homophobic religious beliefs is fair game.
It’s patronising to regard religious believers as lacking agency and responsibility for themselves.
I would limit myself to attacking those who turn those beliefs into action, but I understand the sentiment.
I have no problem telling RCC acquaintances that by not leaving the catholic church they are complicit in the rape of children and the promulgation of genocide in Africa with their dogma on condoms and birth control, both as heinous as stoning women to death, but a physical attack on their persons is excessive and probably counter productive.
We all probably hold ideas that someone out there finds repellent and disgusting to the point that they could rationalize a physical attack on the holder of the idea. Just look at how Islam responds to any criticism.
In fact that could be an operative definition of religion, treating criticism of ideas as a personal attack and limiting its response to criticism to personal attacks on the critic.
I wasn’t necessarily referring to physical attacks – I meant personal abuse. Sometimes it’s perfectly justifiable to verbally attack the holders of beliefs for holding those beliefs.
When challenged about the lack of evidence for extensive verbal abuse from avowed atheists, O’Neill replied with a list of comments pulled from Pharyngula. Which is rather telling.
Did she?
Honestly.
Pharyngula is a huge site; it averages 140,000 hits a day. It’s way too big to patrol or groom. Nobody knows you in outer space. It’s just stupid to draw conclusions about frank atheism as such from selected comments on a giant site like that. Stupid.
There are Christians and Muslims and Jews who are perfectly respectful of each other, and of us.
But not so many.
Christians and Muslims especially are highly critical and vituperative when the topic is atheists. I think respect should be reserved for those who reciprocate. All others be damned.
I’m really sick and tired of the shit spewed about atheists by the godwallopers. I have no problem with giving it right back to them.
I start each morning with PZ, and especially like Sunday Blasphemy blogs. I laugh myself silly sometimes at the comments.
April may be the cruellest month, but summer is clearly the silly season. This new “rational” critique of rationality is irrational and silly. And this kind of thing has been happening lately with increasing frequency. It is simply silly to suggest that we should not criticise religion. That’s like saying that the religious should not criticise atheism, which, of course, they will inevitably do. No one is suggesting, as Ms O’Neill implies, that people who favour rational, critical thinking, and rational, critical solutions to human problems, want to deny emotions, or to place limits on creativity. There are, indeed, people, who have an unerring way of feeling themselves into situations, and no one, surely, is suggesting that we should impose limits on people’s freedom to feel or to create.
But it is simply absurd to suggest that the criticism of religion is about this. Criticism of religion is about an exceedingly powerful force in human life, one that sums, in the end, to a negative quantity. I take seriously Christopher Hitchen’s claim the religion poisons everything. Indeed it does, and it is important that these poisoners of the human well not be permitted to go about their perfidious activities without the reasoned restraint of those of us who take exception to their idiocies. There are religious idiots in our midst who are prepared to allow their children to die rather than call a doctor. There are religious fools who think that it is appropriate to play as many dirty tricks as it takes to precipitate what they think will be the final battle, when history will be wrapped up and the righteous will proceed to their reward and infidels to their deserved eternity of pain. There are religious madmen around who are prepared to blow themselves and their neighbours to smithereens for some obscure purpose defined by their religious hopes and fears.
Is Ms O’Neill honestly suggesting that those of us who think that these people are deluded and foolish, and that they are a danger to all of us, should simply fall silent? I mean, what is the matter with people like this? She thinks we do our “side” no good if we take people who share religious delusions to task for their delusions, and for the consequences which unpredictably spin off from groups of people who suffer these and similar delusions. But we do no one any good if we do not take seriously the idiocies of the religious, and in response criticise them with all the reason and severity at our command, and it is getting, frankly, tiresome to hear from deluded atheists who think that these people need to be coddled! After all, these are the ones with strong stomachs, who are quite prepared to shrink at nothing to see that their beliefs are upheld and honoured. Roman Catholics are quite prepared to let women die, just so that they can continue their madcap idea that abortion is murder, and contraception a near neighbour to murder! They are prepared to let people suffer and die in misery, just so that they can say that life is sacred! Muslims are prepared, as a punishment, to sever a man’s spinal cord, to stone a woman to death for adultery, to kill gay people just for being gay. These are severely depraved people, and Ms. O’Neill wants us to stop criticising them, just because religion makes some people comfortable and happy! The idea is simply mad, and to suggest that it is rational to take this point of view is ridiculous, and would be laughable, if the consequences of holding such a view were not so devastatingly destructive.
O’Neill’s response
lol, she quoted Holbach. Even the Pharynguhorde think he goes too far and calls him out on what he says. That comment is over 2 years old, so there’s been about 500,000 comments posted since then at least. You have to try real hard to pull up a post by Holbach. And even then, let’s look at what Holbach was responding to:
Rev BDC is still a regular, and generally held in high regard. In his defense, the post he was responding to was in fact gigantically stupid. There’s no single most stupid part to point to, and it’s too long to post here.
The post that E.V was responding to said the following:
Pharyngula may be rough, but they generally do not unload on people unless they show chronic dishonesty or say such utterly disingenuous things.
To O’neill’s credit, she did say “To be clear, I’m not suggesting that the recipients of these comments aren’t idiots or that nothing should be done about potentially harmful, irrational beliefs”. But it’s still silly to look at comments which are responses while ignoring what they are responding to. At least she didn’t go the Tom Johnson route and quote the religious people attacking Pharyngulites.
Sorry to taint your blog with this, but after all the Intersection garbage I have a firm policy of not wasting my time replying to disingenuous hacks on their own forums. It just provides them with financial incentive to keep misrepresenting and sliming people.
Ack, I should have known better than to make a post with several links. What was I thinking. Well, in short I was just pointing out that it’s silly for O’neill to call out comment responses as negative indicators while omitting what they were actually responses to. They were responding to some doozies. She challenges the commenters:
<blockquote>The next time PZ Myers, of the ScienceBlog Pharyngula, posts something related to religion, post a comment in defense of religion and see what kinds of responses you get.</blockquote>
This is just silly. Responses come in the same manner as the religion defending comments come. People who engage frankly and honestly (e.g. Scott Hatfield) are even lauded and valued by the community regardless of religious persuasion (although there are no current religious types doing so, this is hardly a shortcoming of the atheists). There’s even a rule about not unloading on people until they post 3 times and still demonstrate a lack of interest in actually participating in serious discussion or argument. The fact that the vast majority of religious respondents on Pharyngula are either dishonest or simply take the Bible as Gospel (heh) and thus fail to stimulate any serious discussion or debate is no shortcoming of Pharyngulites in general.
A bit off topic (only a bit), but I wanted to recommend the R. Joseph Hoffmann essay posted under Latest News on this site. It is some gorgeous writing. Example:
I haven’t read all the above comments, but will do so later. However, I’m just sooo jaded with all this. It seems the very basic message will never get through.
Yes, freedom of religion is important. But freedom of religion means freedom from persecution by the state on the basis of your religion – and even that needs to be explained and qualified carefully. More correctly, it means freedom from having the state act on the basis of religious views, either to impose its preferred religion or to persecute those who don’t follow the preferred religion (because they follow a different religion or no religion at all).
It does NOT mean freedom from having the tenets of your religion criticised by people who are not the state. Indeed, freedom of religion includes the freedom to criticise the tenets of the religions that you don’t subscribe to, without being persecuted by the state for your trouble. Freedom of religion is best maintained in an atmosphere where no religion is considered beyond criticism.
As y’all know, I’m writing a book about all this, and it has now been greenlighted by Wiley-Blackwell. I’m enjoying writing the book, but the quality of the public debate (I don’t mean people on this thread of course) is so low – it shows such ignorance and confusion – that I hardly know where to start when writing at less than book length. Right now, I feel burned out from making the same elementary points over and over in a social environment of such ignorance. It’s just so frustrating seeing this huge, unshiftable mountain of ignorance out there – such as in O’Neill’s article, which further feeds the ignorance and misunderstanding of the public.
Russell, yeh.
I met several people in Stockholm who feel the same kind of frustration, on this and related issues. I found myself in the position of being…I don’t know, the ambassador for The Perky View or something. For just stubbornly keeping at it.
Thanks Ken. Joe Hoffmann is a reliably gorgeous writer.
“”When challenged about the lack of evidence for extensive verbal abuse from avowed atheists, O’Neill replied with a list of comments pulled from Pharyngula. Which is rather telling.””
I find this rather dishonest, sure anyone can goto Pharyngula and find examples of people being jerks. But if you really put any effort into reading different threads you will find a surprising amount of civility. just a few days ago i was reading one where a self professed Christian was posting. Everyone was polite, they made it both clear that he was welcome and his views would be considered and dismantled with reason and evidence.
On other occasions I have seen religious posters defend Christians from the less than polite.
I think many on Pharyngula absolutely love it whenever anyone makes a good argument. I think that may be why skeptics fight among themselves so much, its a rare occasion when someone irrational puts forward a good argument.
err damn. regular posters not religious
Right – the idea was that it was telling that that was all she had. It was telling about O’Neill, not about Pharyngula or atheism.
I just read the comment where she said that. Honestly – it’s extremely silly. She’s the admin of a Facebook group. Oh wow!
As Russell says:
I’m not engaged in quite the colossal labour that Russell is engaged in, but I am simply fed up — more than annoyed — by this continuous stream of nonsense about the criticism of religion. What do people think religion is? Some harmless little game played by old ladies on weekends? It’s not. It’s real, it’s hard, it’s vicious, it’s violent, and it’s relentless, and it’s going to take relentless criticism to keep its worst effects at bay. There is scarcely a day that goes by that is not punctuated by some religious violence or other outrage, and even atheists are jumping on the, “We must honour the religious” bandwagon. It’s tiresome and irritating, and I’m fed up. A year ago I was feeling hopeful that something could be done; criticism was beginning to bite and get a purchase; but now we seem to be marching steadily backwards.
So. Thank you Russell, Ophelia, Jerry, and others who have stood up for our freedom to say what needs to be said and for stubbornly keeping at it. It shouldn’t need repeating, but clearly, it does. We may not be able to eradicate religions, but we should be able to keep them on the defensive, and we need to keep them that way.
I was jsut reading an older post the “oh Grow Up” related post and it occurred to me. What do they think would happen if by some miracle, everyone “respected” religious beliefs the way they want. No one questioned anything put forward by religions in anyway we all just played nice. Do they think it would become a nicer world? Would it?
I tend to think once that happened religion would simply do what it always does, ask for more.
I hear you.
You know, I was going to post this earlier today over at WEIT (I had several months ago at Pharyngula), but then I couldn’t find the comment I had planned to respond to (something about how since this is all newer in the US, the religious are still so very sensitive). So I’ll do it here.
A description of the reaction to a work criticizing religion:
TGD? No. Paine’s Age of Reason.* (And he was a friggin’ deist.) The religious haven’t learned to face up to criticism and honest challenges over more than two centuries – if anything, they’ve gotten worse. None of you shushers has argued anything remotely new for years – your articles and posts are just fodder for Gnu Atheist Bingo at this point. It’s not about tone or context; it’s the content they’re afraid of. Tough. I’m not going to shrink from addressing this nonsense or ignore the harmful acts of religious institutions because some nitwits who know nothing about social movements babble at me, and I doubt anyone else is, either. I’m going to continue to write when, where, and how I always have, and they’re getting no deference from me. So you’re wasting your time, simpering chorus of accomodationist hacks.
*The quote is from Scandal & Civility by Marcus Daniel, p. 248.
David #20. I decided to test your theory about Pharyngula posters. I created an identity, dux anglicus, which I thought was a translation of Brian English, but it turns out that Brian means noble, not leader. In any case, I hope it’s not sock-puppetry, as I’m not posting under another name for or against the dux persona. I haven’t said I’m a believer, but posed a scenario and asked for best arguments against belief. So far, most of the posters have been reasonable, if a bit brusque. One or two seem to have jumped to conclusions and read a lot more than I have said about me. I’m a delusional fool to them. Ah well.
I emailed PZ to tell him what I did in the hope that he won’t ban me for sock-puppetry.
Here’s the thread:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/08/episode_xcv_the_hospital_threa.php
Brian,
I understand your reasons, but I don’t like it. If you don’t out yourself in the next several minutes, I will.
BTW, from that thread:
http://chronicle.com/blogPost/My-Daily-Read-PZ-Myers/25150/
(Note his current favorites. :))
I emailed PZ to tell him what I did in the hope that he won’t ban me for sock-puppetry.
I knew I smelled a dishonest hack.
pathetic show, old boy.
Brian wrote:
Consider that revised; now you’re a dishonest ass to them. Perhaps you can start a blog and call it ‘You’re Not Helpful’ or something like that.
Icthyic
I knew I smelled a dishonest hack.
pathetic show, old boy.
Fair enough. I’ll log on and apologize on Pharyngula. Sorry.
<i>Consider that revised; now you’re a dishonest ass to them. Perhaps you can start a blog and call it ‘You’re Not Helpful’ or something like that.</i>
Fair enough. I don’t see how posing as a random punter who asks a for arguments against non belief on Pharyngula, never claiming to be a believer or claiming that atheists are evil or whatever is equal to Tom Johnson/Your not helping. But it must be, why else would you guys be comparing me to someone of such ill repute? Oh well. I’m sorry for what offence I’ve caused. I honestly don’t feels it’s comparable to the YNH stuff, but I’ll reflect upon it.
<i> Perhaps you can start a blog and call it ‘You’re Not Helpful’ or something like that.</i>LOL
perfect.
just to rub salt on this wound.
here is what David originally said:
David, to test this, instead of putting up a good argument, flailed and dissembled, and then wondered why many of us saw through the show.
again, if it was an attempt to test what David said, it was a perfect example of how to epically fail.
I’d like to laugh, but I find it just too pathetic.
Brian,
For starters, you don’t seem to realize just how many people come to Pharyngula lying about who they are, or trying to score rhetorical points by forwarding positions even they don’t believe. Anyone who stays there for long develops a very strong bullshit detector when it comes to things like that. And they’re generally not very kind to people who come across as fake or trying to trap them into saying something disingenously quote(mine)-able.
David Brian, to test this..
strikeout no workie.
*shrug*
well, you get it.
Paul, fair enough. They tried to dismantle my arguments. Such as they were. I was testing to see if they’d go logically, and mostly they did.
Although I’m surprised that Ichthyic didn’t seem understand what Occam’s razor was, or that someone thought that evidence was an argument against the problem of induction, or that the concept of begging a question was against a person who holds an argument seemed strange to some.
I imagined that it would be taken in the spirit of that show Punked. It wasn’t. Sorry for that. As Ichthyic says it was a fail.
From Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occams_razor#Aesthetic_and_practical_considerations
<i>
Aesthetic and practical considerations
Prior to the 20th century, it was a commonly-held belief that nature itself was simple and that simpler hypotheses about nature were thus more likely to be true. This notion was deeply rooted in the aesthetic value simplicity holds for human thought and the justifications presented for it often drew from theology. Thomas Aquinas made this argument in the 13th century, writing, “If a thing can be done adequately by means of one, it is superfluous to do it by means of several; for we observe that nature does not employ two instruments where one suffices.”[14]
The common form of the razor, used to distinguish between equally explanatory hypotheses, can be supported by appeals to the practical value of simplicity.</i>
I just realized that I might have misunderstood Ichthyic when he appeared to be denying that Occam’s razor was an aesthetic principle. If that’s the case, add it to my whoops list for today.
Anyway, I did end up writing something over at Metamagician and the Hellfire Club. The trouble is, even though the concepts are not exactly rocket science they do take a bit of spelling out each time. Have a look.
When the pope admits that atheists will NOT burn in hellfire, then we can talk about respect.
You do realize that was a thread about PZ being in the hospital Brian?
Heres everyone wishing PZ well, hope he gets better soon, and you come in with a tired old argument. I think they were being very restrained.
Ok I read your posting and the responses. Try a good argument, or at least seem willing to listen to reason next time. There is of course a problem with this because there really are no really good arguments for the belief in something without or against evidence. But I have seen a few people make honest arguments. That were quickly dismantled with reason logic and a bit of humor.
Besides that you went into a get well thread and posted tripe I think this Poster summed up well why they started getting annoyed towards the end
“You don’t seem to realize that people here deal with idiots of your type all the time, the same arguments, over and over and over and over. You aren’t offering anything which hasn’t been heard before, you aren’t offering evidence, you aren’t offering anything except extreme softness of the brain and shifting goalposts, so you’ve decided to cry “aha, I struck a nerve, looky!” like every other idiot before you.”
—Caine, Fleur du mal OM
I believe you honestly wanted to test the claim Brian, it came off badly but I think simply skimming back a few threads would have worked better and been more representative of how they respond to honest arguments.
I was going to go digging for the examples I mentioned but even most of the old threads on Pharyngula have upwards of 500 posts now. I just don’t have it in me to go sifting through them all, i know it sounds like it should be easy but when i started looking I realized the people there discuss and debate anything. From transmissions to wine. My first impression is that religious discussion is actually only a small part of what goes on.
I think Brian’s experiment with Pharyngula was far from scientific!
There’s a useful distinction to be made between a belief and its realization in some resulting action, as mentioned in #9. Even in Saudi Arabia or North Korea, you are free to hold whatever beliefs you like, but you don’t get to express them publicly unless they accord with the officially espoused ones. Also, beliefs themselves cannot infringe on the rights of others, they’re just beliefs. It’s their translation into action (or at least into attitude) that may do so.
Respect is something that an idea may or may not deserve, but it can be earned.
Having read the examples offered by O’Neill I get the impression that she thinks the use of any sort of insult is beyond the pale of civilized discourse (she seemed to have garnered her examples by searching for any post the mentions words like “idiot” or “fool”). In my experience the proportion of individuals addressing people as fools or idiots tend to be tiny, even on the more ‘rough’ websites like pharyngula. Some of the insults can be appropriate (you do get a fair number of trolling idiots turning up on pharyngula) although sometimes they are not – a valid disagreement with a member of the regular pharyngula clique can result in insults heading your direction the same as any other clique-ridden environment. That said, its still pretty rare. I do wonder if both O’Neill and Plaits points are classic examples of what Daniel Dennett has described as deepity’s – something that where it is correct is merely trivial (don’t call someone a moron if you want to get on their good side) and where it is not trivial is simply wrong – such as ruling out ridicule as a method of changing minds or behaviors.
You all speak of religion as though you didn’t have your own. Until you have the entirety of knowledge, speaking in such terms is pure tripe: disingenuous at best and just as delusional as you claim your opponents beliefs to be.
Furthermore, you work toward the same oppression and violence that you accuse ‘the religious’ of having used to squelch your own views. Hypocrites one and all.
It seems to me that, to a large degree, this particular thread has lost its way. Certainly, all the speculation about some rough comments over at Phryngula doesn’t get us very far in dealing with someone like O’Neill. Of course, it is tolerably clear that very few well known atheists behave like the Christian family Phelps, though the existence of the Phelps and their outrages should be a reminder that all we have to do is pick a side, and we’ll find some objectionable people on it. But what O’Neill seems to be claiming is that reasonable, yet severe criticism of religion does everyone a disservice, mainly because things like astrology, religious belief, and other non-rational pursuits, not to speak of irrational ones, may do their fans some good, and it is a restriction of their freedom for there to be fairly blunt criticism of their irrational pursuits out there somewhere where they may be encountered, and so diminish the good that their irrationalities do for them. The key to the whole thing, as Ophelia points out, lies in a disastrous remark by Michael Shermer in best accommodationist form. This remark:
Now this, as Ophelia points out is indeed a disaster. It more or less justifies the extreme response of the mullahs to Salman Rushie’s Satanic Verses. Indeed, if respect and care not to cause offence, and some kind of accomodationist tolerance, are essential to freedom of belief, then do we have freedom to believe at all? Certainly, we do not have freedom of speech, and without freedom of speech it seems clear that our freedom of belief is definitely placed under threat, and certainly under severe restraint.
Edmund Standing’s essays on the vital necessity of criticising religious texts in their plain meaning are important in this context, for so often religious people retort to such criticisms with anodyne claims about the harmlessness of their religions, despite the fact that their sacred texts contain invitations if not commandments to some of the worst atrocities than we cannot, I hope, easily imagine without their assistance. The claim that the way these texts is interpreted is more important than the text themselves is a dangerously misleading ploy to get us to ignore the fact that, while certainly interpretable in various ways, some of them apparently benign, the texts as they stand are vicious and dangerous, and are, regretfully, still used this way, sometimes by a fringe, but often by core groups of deeply devout people who find the interpretations of the liberal to be deeply unfaithful to what they consider the word of God. And even the fringe groups who read the texts as they are written, without sheltering and defusing hermeneutics, are not always fringe, and may not remain so.
I don’t understand your point Josh. As it stands it seems to be false, but I may have misunderstood. Would you like to put some meat on the bones?
Oh? Where, how, in what sense? Where are the calls for oppression and violence? Or is that covered by the weasel-phrase “work toward”? We don’t actually call for oppression and violence but, by saying we are not required to “respect” beliefs, we “work toward” oppression and violence – is that it? Well, if so, could you please explain the intervening mechanism? It’s not self-evident.
What is the point of disrespecting religion if it does not threaten freedom or science? Would you go to a Star Trek convention and say that you think the show is crap? You certainly have every right to, but maybe you shouldn’t. The whole point of criticizing religion is that it threatens science and freedom.
Point proven.
Craig-
Clearly Newton, Faraday, Galileo, et al were so severely hindered by religion. That’s a dumb argument.
Josh – do better than that, or I’ll just delete your comments.
Erin-
I’m not defending the position that religion shouldn’t be criticized. However, the folks doing the criticisms here have both forgotten the reality of their own religious beliefs as well as the glaring differences between being a religious person and the actions of a religious institution. The contribution to science of Catholics is perhaps the greatest known, despite repression from the Catholic church.
Thus, when it comes to the criticisms levied in the above discussions, the suggestions include killing those whose religious beliefs or institutions drive them to violence and/or bodily mutilation. What’s neglected (or unobserved) is that they are suggesting violence based on their religious beliefs to combat violence by others based on religious beliefs. The argument is circular at best.
Ophelia-
“Dissent better or I’ll oppress your comments for disagreeing!!! OMGZZZ!”
Ooooh. Now you’re a scary threatening hypocrite.
Josh – don’t be schewpid. Do better than #52 or I will delete your (empty) comments.
Craig,
I think respect is kind of like belief. One of the mistakes that accommodationists often make is by somehow implying that a person can not believe in things while they believe in them, i.e. ‘I believe in God’ to many of them means ‘I don’t really believe in God, but I believe in the good a belief in God can do’, or ‘I believe in belief’, or ‘I believe in a truth beyond our understanding’, etc. What they don’t understand (or don’t want to understand) is that they don’t actually believe in God.
Similarly, people say ‘I respect your beliefs’ as a social pleasantry (accomodationist belief in ‘God’ is a social pleasantry), when really they don’t ‘respect’ the beliefs they say they do. Respect is given to things that deserve respect. An argument or belief that is founded on good evidence and reason deserves respect, just as evolution deserves belief. I may be polite when talking to you about your belief in God, but I don’t respect that belief. It isn’t rigorous. It isn’t empirical. I may respect the mythical craftsmanship that went into some of the stories of your faith, or some stuff like that, but I think your faith is unfounded, and therefore don’t respect it. It’s not personal. I could play along with the accomodationist ‘polite police’ and say that I respect your beliefs, but I just don’t. I’m just being real with you.
Regarding the public satire and questioning of religion; it’s not polite, and it’s not respectful. It doesn’t have to be, and that is wonderful.
Josh –
That’s a falsehood. I just did a search, and there are zero such suggestions.
Incidentally, people like Josh are why Pharyngulites tend to be so colorful. So much bad faith argumentation, projection, and inflated self-opinion. It’s not helpful to feed them unless you get sufficient pleasure from correcting others to overcome the negatives of constant insult by someone arguing in bad faith.
Craig,
oh, and regarding your star trek analogy; star trek doesn’t nearly affect society and the psychological welfare individuals anywhere near as much as religion does.
you should be more respectful of the importance of religion than that!
Paul-
Incidentally, people like Paul […] get sufficient pleasure from passive aggressive commentary while neglecting any attempt at reading the exchange. Perhaps it’s not just trolling.
Ophelia-
False. Read #7.
I meant ‘the psychological welfare of individuals’.
Josh,
False. Read 11.
And I never said you were “just trolling”. I said you were arguing in bad faith. Thanks for providing a live demo. I won’t keep talking to someone who apparently seems eager to get banned and their posts deleted for lacking any substance.
Josh – no; the word in 7 is “attack,” not “kill.” “Attack” can of course mean disagree with, criticise, insult, mock, etc, as well as attack physically.
Paul-
The only thing I’m eager for is a rational group of people. The whole point of this is the “freedom not to respect”. If I’m belligerent and you all threaten to ban me for refusing to respect a course of bad logic (and, using the medium as the message express that dissent) then you’ve failed a basic test.
Paul-
If the point of the thread is the “freedom not to respect” and I reject the premise of your argument and don’t respect it, and you ban me, passive-aggressively attack me, etc., then I’ve proven my point. You only want freedom to attack one set of religions (theistic) and reject the notion when someone fails to respect yours.
Josh’s argument:
If you don’t know everything, then you can’t criticize anything.
Brilliant.
So what you are saying Josh is all religions are equally true?
I’d respond, Michael, but it appears my posts aren’t going through.
Until then, I’m not saying you can’t criticize. I’m encouraging a little restraint, however, from hubris.
I’m not trying to be obtuse, I really have no clue what josh is saying when he claims we all have religion.
Could anyone explain this? doesn’t matter if its true or made up. really, what is it that he means?
” Would you go to a Star Trek convention and say that you think the show is crap?”
Its been a long time since ive been to a Star Trek convention but last I saw pretty much everyone there argued about which movies, episodes, characters and series. were crap.
Last I checked there weren’t many skeptics going to church picnics and and calling jesus names.
Funnily enough, I do remember one older treker calling for a jihad to wipe out the next gen trekies. Pretty sure he wasn’t more than half serious though.
David,
I believe Josh is doing the old “atheism is a religion, one that believes in not believing in gawd.”
Apologies but I must correct this.
David:
<i>Besides that you went into a get well thread and posted tripe I think this Poster summed up well why they started getting annoyed towards the end</i> I don’t believe I did. I went to the Curl up Huff Po and die thread
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/08/curl_up_and_die_already_huffpo.php#comment-2752623
where I was given a few answers, told I was thread jacking and to move to the endless thread which I did. I posted on the Huff Po thread because that’s what I imagined a random would do. I moved the other thread when told to. My arguments were not great, but then I don’t imagine a random would post with the level of Swinburne or Plantinga. I can’t read apologetics without falling asleep and don’t believe in any of it anyway, so it’d be surprising if I came out with ‘The coherence of Theism’ in a post. Remember, I wasn’t claiming I was a liberal Christian, only asking what arguments would you use against a liberal Christian who acknowledged their faith was inculcated, but then found arguments by the likes of Plantinga, Lane Craig to be reasonable, so felt their faith had rational support. Not enough support to convince an atheist, of course.
Almost none bothered with that, which I found odd. Instead they just thought that asking for evidence was everything, and that science was the whole of epistemology.
Stephen Turner:
<i>I think Brian’s experiment with Pharyngula was far from scientific!</i>
It certainly wasn’t an experiment as understood in the natural sciences. Anyway, it was meant to be a bit of fun. When I go to a party with strangers, I approach it as a bit of fun. I don’t know who will or won’t like me, but I go anyway. I think of that as an experiement. Anyway, the Pharyngulites are all rational enough and all have well developed senses of humour that I couldn’t see how it’d be a problem. Obviously I didn’t control enough variables.
Sorry Brian, didn’t realize you started elsewhere, I followed the link you gave me thanks for clarifying.
You did say however that most were reasonable, which proves the original point all by itself. Pharyngula is considered the lions den so to speak. If most were reasonable there, of all places, it speaks well for how Atheists act in the real world and elsewhere.
I have seen some ridiculously stupid and irrational posts from self proclaimed atheists on youtube but ,Well youtube is youtube and I don’t think anything done by anonymous trolls can be laid at the feet of the skeptic or atheist community.
I don’t know if this is the case or not but you may have found them a little bit more grumpy the past few days, because PZ was in the hospital for something not trivial.
Fair enough David. I think most were reasonable, though some don’t seem to understand some basic underpinnings of reason. In hindsight it was a silly thing to do.
I found it odd, that a week ago, a Pharyngulite wanted to nominate me for a molly award
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/08/smokin_out_the_rascals.php#comment-2740086
for my middling efforts against Barney Zwartz on this thread
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/08/the_clown_shoe_still_capers.php
but when I used those same middling efforts in testing (I won’t say experimenting) some Pharyngulites then I got a level of vitriol, right from the get go in one posters case, that was unexpected. But as you say, they might be a bit touchy because of PZ illness. To (mis)quote the great one ‘reason is and always will be the slave of the passions’.
I’ve threadjacked this thread now. Apologies again. I’ll try and shut up about this. I just thought it important to get the truth out.
Brian said:
” Remember, I wasn’t claiming I was a liberal Christian, only asking what arguments would you use against a liberal Christian who acknowledged their faith was inculcated, but then found arguments by the likes of Plantinga, Lane Craig to be reasonable, so felt their faith had rational support. Not enough support to convince an atheist, of course.
Almost none bothered with that, which I found odd. Instead they just thought that asking for evidence was everything, and that science was the whole of epistemology.”
Brian, as one who attempted to engage you legitimately, I must say that you did not behave as you are describing here. First, you never once mentioned which arguments your sock-puppet found “engaging,” even when asked directly. Plantinga never once came up. Instead, you simply claimed you found some arguments “reasonable.” Most of the responses concerned the possible reasonableness of these arguments. However, as you never once made a concrete claim, *there was nothing to debate.* We were left with our only real option (assuming we were to take you seriously): attempt to draw you into a serious discussion.
And you spent most of your verbiage dodging a serious discussion. It was almost as if you were a real theist.
Secondly, when others started presenting arguments about the relative rationality of theism vs. atheism, you kept changing your goals, as if we were playing some perverse game of philosophical whack-a-mole. At one point, you stated outright you weren’t interested in arguments *for* atheism, even though you stated in your first post you were. Shifting goalposts are hard to argue.
And, as I am the one who claimed that science is the only demonstrably effective epistemology (though I did *not* claim it was the “whole” of epistemology), I would like to point out that you were not able to present an alternative epistemology that is even vaguely effective. That challenge remains open, if you care to engage.
I invite other readers to follow the actual discussion, and decide for yourselves whether or not Brian represents himself accurately. The link can be found in Brian’s original post.
<i>but when I used those same middling efforts in testing</i>
that’s the problem.
you didn’t. You admittedly used arguments you pulled out of your ass, because you couldn’t be bothered to even look for good ones.
your “experiment” is an epic fail, on many levels.
I hope you find the dent to your credibility to be worth it.
I really think some self examination on your part is in order.
Brian sez:
one word for ya:
fail.
nigelTheBold:
At one point, you stated outright you weren’t interested in arguments *for* atheism, even though you stated in your first post you were. Shifting goalposts are hard to argue.
I said:
I was wondering if you good give your best arguments for non belief.
Fair enough. I concede this point. I could quibble, but you were very fair, so it’d be unfair to you. If I recall correctly you were the most rational responder. My intent was as I stated, I should have wrote the post down and read it before posting. Something I never do, and so I’m wrong.
Ichthyic:
<i>I hope you find the dent to your credibility to be worth it.</i>
Likewise Mr. doesn’t understand what Occam’s razor is.
<i>I really think some self examination on your part is in order.</i>
I’ve done plenty. I’ve accepted is was a bonehead move and apologised. But at least I’m able to do such things, something you’ve shown no ability to do.
<i>one word for ya:
fail.</i>
Right back at ya.
This is my last post about this on Ophelia’s blog. It’s not fair to her or other B&W types. You scuttle back to Pharyngula where you are comfortable.
<blockquote>My arguments were not great, but then I don’t imagine a random would post with the level of Swinburne or Plantinga.</blockquote>
Any moron can post at the level of Plantinga. I’m completely serious. Plantinga hasn’t even heard of evolutionary epistemology, and it shows.
(Never heard of Swinburne. If he were better at it than Plantinga, he’d be more famous, I suppose…)
And as I posted on the Endless Thread yesterday, you are the one who hasn’t understood that Ockham’s Razor isn’t a mere aesthetic preference. The other way around: it’s such a basic part of science and has led to such successes that science <b>selects for</b> scientists who like Ockham’s Razor.
Really, what other principle than maximum parsimony should we use? Maximum munificence isn’t attainable.
I came too late to actually participate in the discussion, but it was tedious to read how you claimed there were reasonable arguments but never even tried to bring any up or cite them (as nigelTheBold has mentioned, you didn’t even bring up Plantinga). Instead you retreated to postmodernism, replacing “rational” by “looks rational to me”.