Zeal of the X syndrome
I googled zeal of the convert syndrome, out of curiosity, even though it’s pretty self-explanatory. The meaning is pretty self-explanatory, but I was curious about what and whom it’s applied to. The answer is: lots of things. Islam, Zionism, Bush/Fox News/Palin derangement, Stockholm syndrome, Yvonne Ridley syndrome (funny that one syndrome refers to others, but apparently it is so).
So anyway, does new atheism fit? Sure, probably. Clearly a lot of things fit, so why wouldn’t gnu atheism? It has aspects of “a movement,” it is in some ways political, so sure, it probably has aspects of zeal of the convert syndrome too.
But I don’t think that’s the source of my “zeal,” at least (assuming for the sake of argument that I have zeal – that zeal is the right word for what I have). I’m not a convert, for one thing…at least not to atheism, though I may be a convert of sorts to a more overt or active atheism. But even that dates back to the mid-90s, and I don’t think a mere “conversion” from quieter atheism to noisier atheism counts as much of a conversion for the purposes of syndrome-ascription.
So I’m not really a convert in the relevant sense, so my zeal, if such it is, isn’t really that of the convert. What is it then? I think it’s the zeal of the person who is chronically surprised at the malice and mendacity of the (for want of a better term) other side. I think what keeps me interested in this, and commenting on it, is the steady stream of dishonest enraged polemic issuing from the people who detest gnu atheism. Without that – I just wouldn’t keep commenting on the subject, because what would there be to say?
So we have a perpetual motion machine here. The other side keeps offering up its fury and scorn and misrepresentation, so people like me keep pointing out the disproportionate fury and the misrepresentation, so the other side does what it does some more, and so on, ad infinitum. Ironic, innit.
I’ve been playing with the idea that superstitionalists tend to be more comfortable navigating social space than rationalists/naturalists/etc. That is, those who learn effective strategies for appraising and reacting to the emotional responses of others would seem to me much more likely to become superstitionalists, whereas those less certain about navigating social space would be more likely to become rationalists.
The reasoning is pretty simple; for someone who typically gets what they want or need through social interaction, the notion of a transcendent mind or will with control over everything is very appealing. If the world is ultimately overseen by a divine person, then effective social skills might seem the best way to take control of one’s life — by cajoling this supreme being in the same manner one might convince a friend to do something he’s not terribly disposed towards doing.
For someone less effective at this, the notion of history unfolding according to a parsimonious and comprehensible set of inviolable rules would be much more attractive.
How it relates to the post is this: the superstitionalist lives in a squishy social space where things are decided heuristically, on the fly, and by consensus. One might offer a proposition as a tentative belief, only to swiftly retract it based on the outward signs of disapproval by members of the person’s community. These are people who are very good at learning the rules as they go along, who are very comfortable with ambiguity.
Rationalists, on the other hand, have a much harder time with ambiguity and squishiness. When someone within the community challenges the belief of a superstitionalist, the likely response is to try to find a compromise. But for a rationalist, such a challenge means either that one’s beliefs are incorrect or that the challenge is in error. The result is almost always going to be a spirited debate.
Basically, the idea is that superstitionalists self-select for the tendency to compromise (at least within the community) while gnu atheists self-select for the tendency to figure out the fact of the matter. If this is really the case, then it’s hardly surprising that superstitionalists think gnu atheists are the zealous ones — after all, why can’t we all just get along?
Although I’m not a new atheist, I really think it was post-9/11 politics that did me in. In that way I’m similar to you. My metaphysical beliefs haven’t changed radically, but I’m no longer in the mood to play the role of an enabler.
Dan L. distinguishes between the social attitudes of superstitionists and rationalists. Although I can see what he is geting at, I am unconvinced. I don’t think either group fall into such neat compartments. His comments can certainly apply to religionists of the Karen Armstrong – Terry Eagleton type, but there are plenty of religionists who absolutely hate ambiguity. Take the question of sexual attitudes – it seems to me that it is religion that attempts to lay down rigid rules to which people are expected to conform, whereas rationalists are much more likely to tolerate diversity. And some rationalists, frankly are bullies who delight in putting people down. All you can say is that you can’t gereralise, the criticisms of new atheists by the religious are greatly exagerated, but there is an element of truth in what they say.
I’ve always been an atheist but a catholic upbringing and education deprived me of the cognitive tools and vocabulary to properly express this.In one sense religious education is a lot like Orwellian newspeak, it reduces and simplifies your vocabulary to the point where it becomes very difficult the dissent against the dogma.
When I read “End of Faith” by Sam Harris I became a convert in the sense that I realized that there were a lot of people out there that thought the same way I did and by reading Russel, Dennet, Benson, Harris, Hitchens et al I started to acquire the tools needed to express myself.
Put on proof to this “element,” as it were. Where “truth” of said element is defined as “factually accurate.” Not some wishy-washy, namby-pamby “feel good” ‘truth,’ but actual, real truth.
Because, to date, I’ve seen a lot of wishy-washy “DBAD” stuff. A lot of Tom Johnson as it were. But, completely unsurprising, no proof. No actual citations of this horrible “gnu atheist” way of life where the poor, beleaguered ‘man of faith’ (or whatever) was innocently minding his business and, despite being pure as the driven snow, was ambushed by some hateful group of Gnu Atheists.
By the way, did you not notice he made qualifiers in his post that clearly meant he was general large-population dynamics and not trying to actually include each and every person in one of these camps? Because I thought it was bloody damn obvious.
My experience is that when people do that, they generally assume (though I don’t know why seeing there’s almost always (another qualifier there) someone with a peeve has to misconstrue the post and make a big issue out of it) people know they’re talking about generic, not-entirely-inclusive large-population dynamics and expect the argument to be taken that way.
Instead of some rules-lawyer screaming about compartmentalization or the functional equivalent. Which, essentially, screws the conversation. So thanks for that. (That was sarcasm, btw.)
Same here. Most of the arguments against the new atheism that I’ve seen have been based on some kind of fallacy (the fallacy of the false equivilancy is the most popular). And many of these arguments, especially those made by religious apologists, are pure sophistry.
I’ve said elsewhere that the real “story” of the new atheism is not the new atheism itself but rather the disproportionate and largely dishonest backlash against it. Enter some variant of the search terms “new atheism” into Amazon.com’s search function for “books.” You’ll get the four horsemen’s books, and a couple by Vic Stenger, six or seven books there, tops. The rest—and there will be more than you will expect to see—will be books bashing the new atheism. And they haven’t stopped (a new one, by Reza Aslan, is forthcoming). These books tend to regurgitate the same weak arguments. It’s really quite pathetic. Touched-a-nerve-much?
What I find surprising about the criticisms of the “new” atheists is that they are not really new. Here in Britain, there is a long tradition of robust crtiicism of clericism, so the arguments have all been said before. What is new is that atheists are much more open about their atheism and are unwilling to keep quiet. Richard Dawkins is not someone you can ignore, however much the religious might wish to do so. Religion in Britain has long been on the defensive, and most people simply do not take religion seriously. Overt displays of religiosity are regarded as embarrassing. This poses a dilemma for those who wish to retain their religion – how do you maintain your religion while avoiding ridicule or hostile criticism? The answer is a compromise – something that is neither one thing nor the other. The position however is unsustainable – you can’t compromise between religion and non-religion – they are not positions that are amenable to compromise. Hence the rather querulous tone of the religious towards their critics, at least, here in Britain. Non-believers tactless enough to point out the absurdity of their position are regarded as fundamentalists, or likened to the taliban, but it is not serious criticism, rather it is a way of avoiding facing up to the reality of which side of the religion/non-religion divide they wish to be.
I have often wondered if I would have become an atheist if I had been raised in a liberal fluffy feel-good religion, like UU or something, rather than in the LD$ church where, even before I began to seriously question the religion itself, it was painfully obvious that I didn’t fit in with these people. In any case, I almost certainly would not have the “zeal” that I do now.
This of course does not have any bearing on the claims being made and the evidence presented for them. I think it’s possible that with a UU background I would have retained some vague agnostic-ish spirituality, but I would have been wrong. Lack of exposure to the serious dangers of a particular issue can result in complacency, and this is true of any issue. I’m sure that in the American South in the first half of the 19th century, for example, there were plenty of white people who grew up in homes where their parents treated their slaves with kindness and compassion, who then grew up to be rather neutral towards the issue of slavery; whereas if their parents had brutalized their slaves they might have acquired a “convert’s zeal” opposing slavery. So what? The latter position is still obviously the correct one.
I have noticed a trend, I think… though obviously this is all anecdotal, no data to back it up whatsoever… that outspoken atheists tend to either have been raised in a secular household (like Ophelia) or raised in a rather nasty religion like Catholicism or Mormonism or conservative Islam or fundie Protestant or what have you. You don’t see an awful lot of liberal Presbytarian cum gnu atheists, or Quakers cum gnu atheists, or whatnot. If true, this trend would not be that surprising… those who never had religiosity drilled into their heads to begin with find it easier to see/accept the truth, and those who are exposed firsthand to religion’s nastier side are shocked out of their complacency — whereas those who were conditioned with religious ideals from a young age but for whom it was largely a positive experience have less of an incentive to reject that early conditioning, and even if they do it is not surprising they sympathize with those who yearn to believe what they did. It’s an inescapable fact that some religion does make some people feel good (at what cost, of course), and we shouldn’t be surprised that most outspoken atheists don’t fall in that category…!
Of course PZ has to go and be a glaring counterexample to my above thesis. Harumph.
@Dan L. — you may be interested in the book Supersense by Bruce Hood. His thesis is similar, that our inborn sense of the supernatural (most particularly essentialism) is rather important towards us getting along as a society. It’s highly speculative stuff, not to be taken as something backed with copious hard data or anything, but it’s a fascinating read nonetheless. If anything, it has attenuated me to notice how ubiquitous an implied belief in essentialism is. We all do it all the time, without hardly even realizing it.
Apologizing in advance for a disturbing story, here is an example of essentialist superstition that I indulge in quite frequently: We have three dogs and two cats, and about a 1-acre property with lots of trees and bushes — so they kill small animals, a lot. It really sucks, actually, especially when they only mortally wound the animals and I have to finish the job goddamit, but anyway… the point is, whenever I have to deal with this stuff, I have an overwhelming urge to wash my hands afterwards, even if my hands never came anywhere near to being in contact with the dead animal. I feel like anything I touch will be infected with the plague, heh… This is true despite the fact that I am most definitely not a compulsive handwasher in any other situation — in fact, I probably ought to wash my hands more often than I do. It’s just this one thing, I feel like being anywhere near it has transferred some kind of essence of death onto my hands.
I indulge it because it’s probably the safe thing to do anyway. But I don’t do it because of that, I do it because I feel an overwhelming compulsion. Go figure.
I was raised in pretty middle-of-the-road Anglicanism, often find myself thinking PZ is good for me…
… as in moderating. ‘Cos at least he can call the bullshit bullshit without actually foaming…
I mean, I think foaming is warranted, ‘n all, and pretty much in proportion, but sometimes it’s hard for people to catch what you’re saying. Those shubtle shibilants eshpecially…
Erm… pardon…
(Wipes mouth again…)
But then again, re that background, there was a sorta charismatic movement moving through the local churches ’round the time I was around, too, tho’, so mebbe calling it ‘middle-of-the-road’ isn’t entirely on. Dunno how you call that.
Will say: I think there’s reasons to think that your correlation between the nature of the sect/upbringing and the general attitude re being volcal might well tend to happen, sorta trend-wise, at least. You will find outliers. This may be about innate psychological differences, or finer details of the situation that larger picture misses…
In other and sorta related news, I’m reading Supersense now and can generally echo the recommendation. Speculative, yes, and not actually a huge surprise to me, but a good counterbalance, again. I do tend to think about superstitions generally and religions more specifically in terms of their social psychology–Hood’s conjectures about more innate stuff, even when I find myself thinking he might be taking an observation a little further than it obviously goes to me, I am thinking of it now as a potentially valuable fine-tuning to/addition to what I begin to think I understand of that other sphere.
Will also say, Ophelia’s comment on malice and mendacity hits home for me.
That is what it is, or a huge part of it. There’s a huge contingent out there–the Energizer bunnies of bullshit–who just keep coming up with more of it, their shamelessness without apparent bound. My general annoyance with deliberate, even self-indulgent unreason and anti-reason would probably live far more in this almost abstract, theoretical realm of concern about the costs of messing with people’s intellectual potential, except that some of them do seem so very insistent on being so fucking aggressively, arrogantly contemptuous about even the gentlest of critiques.
You get to thinking: well, then, screw being nice; it ain’t as if they seem to appreciate it so much anyway.
I agree, there are still plenty of valid reasons to be foaming-at-the-mouth angry even if you were raised in a relatively benign middle-of-the-road religion :)
I have often been struck by the malice, mendacity and misrepresentation of theists when debating them(if that is the right word for it), on youtube, mostly.
Prove a statement to be wrong, and it is ignored, and the same argument used in subsequent arguments. Where the atheists are generally keen on making their arguments as clear and honest as they can, theists will obscure, quote-mine, dissemble and lie shamelessly.
As I have said, more than once to them, – if you have to lie to support your beliefs, it is time to reconsider those beliefs.
I wasn’t raised in a totally secular household actually. More like de facto secular. It was all pretty enigmatic, as I look back on it – there was a kind of formal or polite deference to god but no really engaged defense of the idea, at least not that I remember. Maybe “lapsed” is the right word – we went to church occasionally when I was small (I was the youngest child) but never later…except for midnight mass on Xmas eve (which I never went to).
There was some of the formal custom left, but none of the substance, and eventually even the formal custom just faded out – we stopped saying grace before Sunday dinner.
But I never liked any of it; that’s one salient fact. I hated church, loathed Sunday school, was indifferent to saying grace, hated “the Lord’s prayer” (which my mother heard me say every night at bedtime when I was small), and certainly never developed any sense of “god” as a loving presence or anything like that. I preferred people like Davy Crockett and Bugs Bunny and Rowdy Yates.
My wife grew up in probably a similar type of household, though Jewish instead of Christian. Today, she feels much the same as me about religion, but there is one important difference between how we each feel, which I think is almost certainly explained by the disparity in upbringing: She doesn’t mind going into a church or synagogue, and rather enjoys doing it from time to time; whereas I even get the willies being in a UU church(*).
The lucky thing though is that although being in a synagogue creeps me out, I don’t really have any negative association with Jewish holiday rituals. The fact that the prayers are in a language I don’t speak helps a lot too ;) So we get to celebrate Passover and Channukah and stuff — oh, and Rosh Hashana is tonight! — and it can be just a fun tradition that we don’t take too seriously and that (luckily) doesn’t weird me out. OTOH, saying grace before a meal, which for some people can be an equally not-too-serious family tradition, no way, I can’t handle that crap. Yuck.
(*) Side note on this: We checked out a couple of UU services — since you can be a UU and an atheist, and my wife thought it might be nice to have some kind of weekly family tradition like that if there was nothing objectionable. They were fine, really… mostly positive humanistic messages. A little too much empty drivel about faith and stuff. And the music was pretty crappy. On the plus side, one of them was a “Blessing of the Animals” service, which translates to Bring Your Pet to Church Day. Now that was a fun time! heh… Anyway, if 98% of theism were along the lines of UU, I would basically have no objections. It’s not for me, but I don’t see any big problems with it either. They pay lip service to faith, of course, but the lack of any dogma to have faith in prevents it from being too problematic.
Well, first of all, you have to generalize. That’s what cognition is, as far as I can tell — drawing generalizations out of a dizzying chaos of particulars. Whether your generalizations are useful in terms of clarifying relationships between particulars is the real question.
Second of all, check my language. “Playing with the idea,” “tend to become,” “more likely to become,” “would be much more attractive.” I didn’t make a single normative claim in my entire post. I was describing what I thought might be (again, “playing with the idea”) correlations. That you’re “unconvinced” should hardly be surprising since I wasn’t making any sort of causal assertion that might convince you.
You have an interesting point, but I think if you drill into how it really relates to my thesis, it doesn’t really contradict it. I’m supposing that the fundamental orientation of one’s worldview — whether it’s more inclined towards cooperation or self-reliance, subjectivity or objectivity — tends to push one towards either superstition or some form of rationalism. I’m talking about factual or epistemic ambiguity in my post, whereas your counterexample deals with moral ambiguity.
In fact, I would expect the socially inclined — those comfortable with epistemic ambiguity — to be more resistant to moral ambiguity than those inclined away from epistemic ambiguity. After all, when one’s worldview is given shape largely by one’s social environment, individuals that constitutes a drastic departure from that social environment are in a way threats to that worldview. How this relates to your example might be that if one’s view of the world is derived from one’s social environment, then the right way to act or behave is dictated in no small part by gender roles. Homosexuals, by flouting the community’s standards for gender roles constitute a challenge to the general applicability of the norms imposed by those roles.
On the other hand, if one’s worldview is shaped by an inclination towards more objective knowledge, then it’s not consensus within the community but mutual independent confirmation that counts. In this case, strangers, others, and unknowns aren’t threats to the consistency of one’s worldview, but opportunities for confirming or disconfirming elements of one’s worldview. And one oriented towards objectivity (I guess I should be clear I’m using this word loosely) is much less likely to be hung up on particular modes of social behavior being appropriate or inappropriate, if only because they don’t see their own culture as defining the “correct” way to behave.
To clarify the last bit:
For me, the fact that homosexuality is not a choice and therefore cannot be a moral wrong is more significant than whether elements of my social milieu approve or disapprove of it. If they disapprove, I will disagree.
People for whom fact is a matter of consensus do not agree that homosexuality is not a choice. They assert it is, and their evidence is the fact that all the other members of their community agree with them. Not only that, but the fact of the community’s disapproval of homosexuality could perhaps be more significant to such a person than is the fact of it not being a choice. At the very worst, such a person would probably compromise: “Hate the sin, love the sinner.”
I’m much more like you than like your wife, despite the apparent similarity in upbringing with the latter. I can stand going into a church for secular reasons – voting for instance. (Yes, in a room of a neighborhood church; go figure.) But the idea of going to an actual service…that really creeps me out. All the hatred of childhood, plus accumulated enmity since then. Theophobia.
I find some things creepy, especially in the Catholic Church, with all its emphasis on suffering etc., and on sexual sin, and then there’s the whole subordination of women thing in Islam. But I don’t really feel all that much hostility or zeal or whatever. I simply think that it’s important to criticise religion (shorthand for various religious leaders, organisations, bodies of doctrine, etc.), especially its claims to moral authority, and that this has taken on a certain urgency at this point in history. I actually like learning about bizarre belief systems and would happily do a degree in theology (here I differ from Richard Dawkins). I feel reasonably at home with at least the less socially virulent Christian evangelicals, having once been one – I enjoyed talking over a cup of coffee the other day with the senior pastor of a Baptist mega-church. He seemed like a nice bloke. I’m now looking forward to addressing a conference of 500 pastors and other leaders that he’s running in a couple of weeks’ time (to use Ophelia’s favourite idiom).
What I mainly feel is responsibility to provide the critique, which most people run a mile from engaging in. I can think of many other things that I’d prefer to do if social circumstances were different. Hey, I’ve abandoned a promising career in franchise writing, which would surely be more fun and get me more adulation.
Now that’s interesting. I do have to admit to the zeal thing – it’s true. I do like having things to wrestle with. In that sense – weirdly – I have a kind of sympathy with people who start Great Awakenings and the like. I even have a kind of sympathy with puritanism…and even with people who talk about wanting to live a godly life when what they mean is things like not just watching tv and eating Big Macs all day. I like Improvement, and Effort, and Resistance…I’m a real pain in the ass.
Dan L,
This would also help in explaining the differences between the social organization of religionists and rationalists. Rationalists do not depend upon community affirmation for their views, nor do they look to it as a guide to ‘right thinking’. (See: Orwell, J. Christ etc.)
John Gibson.
Pointing out that religionists are not ambiguous about laying down rules (esp. prohibitive rules) doesn’t correlate to what Dan expressed in his post – These unambiguous stands are derived from authority (the Pope, Biblical text etc.) and are assimilated by the church and its members precisely because they are the accepted (by reason of membership) as the only correct attitude – if a person expresses a view that deviates from that correct understanding then they run up against these “outward signs of disapproval by members.” BTW: your last two sentences are, essentially ad hominem in the sense that they appeal to our feelings rather than our intellect. Most ‘attacks’ on religionists by rationalists are mounted in response to religionists inserting themselves, as authorities, into what are secular or scientific issues – issues in which a god or the gods are not helpful in providing answers. Politeness here has the same effect as it does at the four-way stop sign, the result is four drivers urging the others to move before them out of politeness rather than proceeding rationally on the basis of their order of arrival. Politeness has its place but it is not useful or productive in addressing those who feel compelled to misrepresent or distort issues. On this side of the pond those who address the lack of politeness on the part of atheists are known as “tone trolls”. Ad hominem statements and concern about tone, are used, by Americans, to steer the discussion away from its real issues into that of personalities and their manners. If anyone is uncomfortable with impolite, rational, criticism they can easily avoid it by being honest in their statements and not being devious in their goals.
Dishonesty and polemics are the cynical strategies that are often used by those whose power is challenged. The religionists are struggling to hang on to their previously unquestioned authority in social and scientific matters. The transparency of their dishonesty and the rise of the push-back by so many people is a direct result of rationalists exposing this dishonesty, wherever it occurs, and being uncompromising in their criticism.
I apologize for using the word rationalist as a broad brush to paint, what many see as separate approaches, ie. atheist, gnu atheist, agnostic etc.. These terms may have value in some specific arena where differences in approach are important. They should not obscure the fact that rational people, of whatever stripe, are part of a common effort to combat misinformation (lies, let’s be honest) and superstition in our culture. All those who apply critical thinking to these issues should be judged by the validity of their statements and their ability to respond to deniers in an assertive manner.
“Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity.”
The best advice I can offer is don’t feed the trolls.