Who is the most contrarian?
Caspar Melville says on the New Humanist blog that the “‘Beyond New Atheism” debate was
a genuine attempt to see if we could have a different tone for discussion about belief, non-belief, human nature and God.
Well I could have saved them the bother by just answering the question: sure we could. Of course we could. In fact we could find such a discussion, with its different tone, any time we wanted one – we could read Comment is Free Belief or the New Statesman, we could browse the BBC’s “Religion and Ethics” pages, we could stroll into a church or mosque. It is not the least bit difficult either to have or to find “a different tone for discussion about belief, non-belief, human nature and God.”
(Different from what? From that of the “new” atheism, as the post as a whole makes clear.)
Given that, why should we? Given that there is already an abundance of discussion about belief, non-belief, human nature and God that is very friendly to god and belief and very unfriendly to non-belief, why is there any need for the few people who take a different tone to be more like the majority?
Well, maybe by “we” Caspar meant humanists and atheists rather than humanity at large. That seems likely, especially since the debate was sponsored by the humanists. But even then, the answer is still yes of course; there are lots and lots of humanists and atheists who are more than willing to distance themselves from the blunt unapologetic “tone” of the gnu atheists and take a more obsequious tone instead. Many of them in fact take an obsequious tone when talking to theists and an acidly hostile one when talking to or about gnu atheists – which is in itself quite interesting.
In short there are different rules, and it is reasonable to wonder why. Many of the people now so caught up in lecturing gnu atheists for being so gnu are not caught up at all in lecturing old theists for being so gnu – so militant and aggressive and fundamentalist and evil. Why is that? Why do theists get a pass while atheists get a dam’ good scolding by other atheists?
I don’t know. I suppose some of them think it’s admirably contrarian and independent-minded and scrupulous about not letting allies off the hook – which might be fair if the claims weren’t so uniformly evidence-free and repetitive. As it is, when there have already been so many “the New Atheists have a bad tone” announcements, making yet another one looks much more like ganging up on a hated minority than it does like admirable independence of mind.
Your post (Ophelia) points to a general trend (not new, I realize) among some academics and certainly among US media outlets to often ignore content and focus instead on the tone of someone’s argument as well as to create the impression of being sincerely “fair and balanced” (while being no such thing) by respecting opposing views.
Perhaps in the case of the media (say CNN, et al.) it’s to do with budget cuts or intellectual laziness–probably the latter mostly. It takes patient work after all to assess the validity and veracity of many arguments we’re exposed to, say, those of reasonable-sounding climate change deniers. So that when “both sides” are given equal time and equal respect, though one side clearly doesn’t merit either, the impression is, to continue with the example, that climate change scientists w/content on their side but too passionate a tone in their delivery of it are overreacting. Hah!
In any case, though I may be repeating what has been said here by you and others before, it bears more emphasis, I think. Because thanks to Melville’s criticism, gnu atheists are once again being nudged (pushed?) closer to fundamentalists, or in other words, being depicted as sharing “equal footing” w/said fundamentalists. And I suppose that in trying to be “contrarian and independent-minded and scrupulous,” critics like Melville (intentionally or unintentionally) succeed quite well in distracting everyone from the content of the claims and arguments which he would have us address in a better, more respectful tone. When Melville ends with the following, he proves the point about valuing tone over substance: “But let’s be clear, no matter where we decide to go we wouldn’t be where we are now if we hadn’t had five good years of irascible, impatient, blunt, godless discourse – New Atheism – to leave behind.” That gnu atheism discourse is something to be “left behind” (no pun intended) because it’s impolite or reliant on “crisp logic” (a la Dawkins) is a silly argument.
Very interesting indeed. Maybe I should stop trailing my coat now. It’s not that I was prevaricating on the last thread, because the question of the relevance of theology is one of my known hobby-horses, but I was trying, unsuccessfully, I’m afraid, to get someone to say: “Oh, here we are. We’re doing it too!”
Because this conversation is beginning to sound theological. I’ve spent enough of my years immured in a theological circle — because, for all its human interest, theology is a circle — and there’s really no way out — to recognise the signs. It begins when someone says, discretely at first, and then more bruquely, “He’s not really one of us.” (Or ‘she’ as the case may be.) And then there’s a lot of dancing back and forth, where each tries to prove that they really are, or that, no, perhaps you’re really a liberal or an evangelical or an anglo-catholic — or perhaps, god forbid!, you’re one of those atheist christians or non-realists, and belong to the Sea of Faith, or subscribe to the tenets of the Jesus Seminar…
What is this, a church — and not even a broad church, at that?! Well, it seems like it, doesn’t it? Caspar is at the dancing stage. He doesn’t want to say to Richard Dawkins: “You’re a loud-mouthed bully.” But that seems to be what he thinks, because he characterises him in a dismissively inaccurate way. Instead of simply getting on with the conversation — which no one was stopping him from doing — he thought the conversation should include a kind of othering, the beginning process of forming sects of atheists or non-believers. Those are the strident ones over there… Here we take theology seriously and try to form alliances with liberal believers. But they don’t. They get the tone wrong, and besides, their arguments are simplistic and won’t convince believers.
Been there, done that. I remember confronting a fellow Anglican priest with the question: “I know you disagree with me, but can’t you see that there’s room for both of us in the church?” And he said, “No.” And that was the beginning for me of moving away from faith. “No.” Just one word.
Sam Harris talks about spirituality. So does Tom Clark. Richard Dawkins is in your face. God is nothing more than a big fairy godfather. Theology is empty. Dan Dennett is cool, and his very coolness makes him arrogant to the believer. He just says, “Lets look at this empirically. What do the facts show?” Hitchens is urbane, cosmopolitan, and, in a very real sense — some people seem unable to see it, but the signs are all over god is not Great — he understands what it means to have faith, and what it might be like to lose it. Jerry Coyne and Ophelia are different again. Jerry, as I’ve told him, is surprisingly well read in theology. He knows more than Richard. Ophelia has passion. There is an existential urgency about Ophelia’s unbelief. Richard Norman and Julian Baggini are more academic about their atheism, and think that the detached academic tone is somehow of the essence of what atheism should be like. Being abrupt and dismissive and brash simply gives atheism a bad name. And so on and on we could go.
But why is this an issue? Some people don’t like the way that Sam Harris talks about spirituality and meditation. So? Chris Mooney thinks its all framed in the wrong way? What frame? A frame for what? I don’t believe in god or gods. It’s simply too ridiculous to need talking about in one sense, but the whole theological project, in another sense, intrigues me still. What is it about human life that has thrown up these enormously intricate patterns of thought, based on air? How is that done? And why? But hey, that’s me, not you or someone else. And if I choose to read Don Cupitt — because he does fascinate me — then I will, and I never cease to be amazed at what I can learn when I do. Way back in 1980 he wrote a book entitled Taking Leave of God, and he’s been saying goodbye ever since. To my way of thinking he’s an atheist, and a cultural christian. But what difference does it make? What earthly difference does it make whether one atheist is “strident and shrill”, to use the accepted terminology, and another chooses to be eirenical, seeking alliances with modest believers? Does it make one’s disbelief somehow more real to be one or the other?
This is the kind of thing that religion does. It explicitly deals with otherness. Atheists can’t do that, because they all, in some sense, share the same disbelief. You can’t be more atheist than another, if you’re atheist at all. And no atheist is more fundamentalist than another either. Disbelief is disbelief is disbelief. It just is. So the ‘fundamentalist atheist’ label is a non-starter. But it’s being used. Why? Because of the tone. One is more elegant, more refined than another. There is the high class atheism on the one hand, and then there are the “rubes”, who just fell off the turnip truck. But you know, when this kind of thing is being said, there’s one atheist who just goes on ‘telling it like it is’, and no one says a thing about him. That’s AC Grayling. No one is more dismissive of religion than he. And yet no one speaks of him as though he were strident and oversimplifying. And yet he’s both of those things, if Dawkins or Hitchens or Dennett is either of them.
I guess my point is this. We’re not all going to agree on how this is done. That won’t happen. Someone is always going to seem too strident or too obsequious, to new or too old. (One of the strange things is that Dawkins, at first, was accused of writing a 19th century book, and then, suddenly, he was one of the “new” atheists.) Let’s lose the labels. That’s the religious impulse at work.
When was the last time a group of atheists tried to stone a woman to death for not being atheist enough? If that happens maybe I’ll consider being less harsh on the religious.
Eric, fantastic post. As usual.
then there are the “rubes”, who just fell off the turnip truck
I prefer the term yobbo, and I fell off the back of a ute, but otherwise, that’s me!
We could offer them a deal. Every time they convice ten religious belivers to stop being critical and condescending of athiest, we’ll convince one athiest to stop being condescending of religion. We’ll never have to pay up.
Or, to make it more positive, we could propose a conference. We will find a polite athiest for every polite religious nut they bring.
Of course, that will never work because we could use the exact same words they do in exactly the same ‘tone’ and we would still be strident and they would still be reasonable and calm and sugar and spice.
I tell you what, I’ll just post the date and time and then step back out of everyone’s way.
Buford – didn’t Eric just tell us that there’s none athier than another?
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Ophelia, I didn’t mean that your posts or this website are not fantastic.
Brian, I know, I was just joking, in a grumpy sort of way.
I think the term groupthink would be an interesting way to explain this phenomenon. It’s not about whether or not my voice or my arguments are valid, but how harmonious I am. I remember an episode of The Prisoner where number six was rejected by the village for being disharmonious, a rebel, a reactionary. and called unmutual. And this is exactly what I (and you) are being labelled as. Number six doesn’t change, he remains the same independent thinking self. What changes are those around him, they become groupthink.
Ah, but Number Six is his own jailer…
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