Let one flower bloom
Gnu-haters are bad enough when they just say it, but when they say it and then later say they didn’t, they’re worse. I got into a disagreement of that kind with Stephen Prothero on a thread of Jennifer Michael Hecht’s at Facebook. Remember Prothero? I did a post about an article of his in December 2009. Lots of people did. It was the one about how gnu atheism is angry and male but women will maybe fix it up.
He said I got him all wrong.
My point is that there are TWO ways to argue for atheism, rather than one. (Actually, there are many more, but two will do for present purposes.) The people who lit into me afterwards (you included) were/are trying to impose ONE way of doing atheism–an imposition I opposed then, and still do.
Right, except that that’s not what he said. This is what he said:
Today, most Americans associate unbelief with the old-boys network of New Atheists, but there is a new generation of unbelievers emerging, some of them women and most of them far friendlier than Hitchens and his ilk. Although the arguments of angry men gave this movement birth, it could be the stories of women that allow it to grow up.
…
I heard two very different arguments at this event. The first was the old line of the New Atheists: Religious people are stupid and religion is poison, so the only way forward is to educate the idiots and flush away the poison. The second was less controversial and less utopian: From this perspective, atheism is just another point of view, deserving of constitutional protection and a fair hearing. Its goal is not a world without religion but a world in which believers and nonbelievers coexist peaceably, and atheists are respected, or at least tolerated.These competing approaches could not be further apart. One is an invitation to a duel. The other is a fair-minded appeal for recognition and respect. Or, to put it in terms of the gay rights movement, one is like trying to turn everyone gay and the other is like trying to secure equal rights for gay men and lesbians.
See? He’s unmistakably not saying there are two (or several) good ways to do atheism; he’s saying there’s currently a bad shitty nasty way to do atheism and there’s also a good respectful nice way to do atheism and the latter should replace the former. That’s not debatable – it’s on the page.
Yet he felt entitled to say I was misrepresenting him.
I prefer my way of doing arguing to his way of doing arguing.
I bought his book accidentally the other week. I was in a hurry and thought the premise looked interesting.
I haven’t read a book in a while that made me want to throw it across the room so much! I do NOT recommend. The last chapter on atheists could have been written by Ray Comfort. It certainly does not read as something written by a scholar of comparative religion.
If he doesn’t think that a “fair-minded appeal for recognition and respect” is also, at least as things stand now, an invitation to a duel, he lives in a happy sheltered world indeed.
Why is a world without religious nonsense an unworthy goal? Why does having that goal, especially when you seek that goal through education and debate and discussion, not only a bad thing but also something that makes you a bad person? And why does Prothero have to attack that goal by piling lie upon lie upon lie? If he’s right, he should be able to show it without being both rude and consistently dishonest.
Maybe that’s the problem: part of the Gnu Atheist deal is that we’re not shy about pointing out where people are being demonstrably wrong, illogical, and/or dishonest, and without free rein to be those things without criticism, people like Prothero would be forced to get real jobs.
Well jeez, whaddya expect, Ophelia? You’re a strident she-Gnu who doesn’t play the Mom card*…YOU’RE BLOWING HIS WHOLE ARGUMENT!!!!!
*yes, you do have an adorable puppy…but you probably plan to eat him soon.
Hearing him in a radio interview was all the exposure I wanted or will ever need from this mealy-mouthed faitheist. All religions may be different in many ways, but in one way they’re all the same – wrong.
I would like to see some evidence that any of the New Atheists has ever said that, in general, ‘religious people are stupid’. I have not seen such a statement made by any of the New Atheists. Never. This is a very tiresome straw man.
Of course, there is “a bad shitty nasty way to do atheism”. However, most of the people accused of doing it in “a bad shitty nasty way” actually aren’t. It seems that their accusers take a few statements out of context, and use those as the basis for jumping to an unwarranted conclusion.
The probability of a bad argument made by a gnu being criticised from within the group by other gnus is I suspect substantially higher than a bad argument by an accomadationist being criticised by other accomadationists, who value and respect other peoples views even when they don’t merit it. So if either the gnu or accomadationist side were heading in the wrong direction which one would you expect to notice?
The opposition to outspoken atheism comes from academics with a vested interest in close ties to religious groups. Once again we see that people who see themselves as entitled to act as interpreters of religion are threatened by a critical stance which isn’t deferential to their position and presumed authority. It’s curious, but understandable that Prothero and Hoffman vent spleen at gnus but don’t bring to bear their critical (and sympathetic) analytical skills to try to understand our position. Why not take the historical view and see gnu atheism as part of a long process in the development of human thought? Isn’t that what they’re supposed to do?
One thing that is true of atheists and gnus specifically is that we don’t bend the truth to our position, that we have no cause or justification to do that. We take history, science and philosophy seriously enough to say that our beliefs about the world should conform to what the evidence shows is true in matters of fact and that we’re obligated to found our ethics on those facts and not on beliefs chosen without regard to them. We don’t think we have our own truth, and by historical standards this is a radical, and radically modest, position. It should go without saying that it’s not easy to live up to that standard but I think atheists are right to try. The academics that disparage the eminent atheists of our day should step back and try to learn something before they attempt to teach about what they haven’t bothered to understand.
(Are your links supposed to go to FB?)
I remember that stupid article.
I have to wonder who they are. I haven’t noticed a gnu-vs.-accommodationist generational divide, and many of the gnus I encounter – in contrast to relatively few accommodationists – are women. Of course, that’s just one person’s experience, but his equally data-lite personal observations don’t ring true.
Christopher Hitchens says almost as much in the following in the “Four Horsemen” video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfNgCaqLIR0
Around 34:18 he quotes admiringly HL Mencken who called people who believed in Methodism as “fools. They’re not being fooled – they are fools.” This is not quite the same, but it is extremely close.
(No, the links aren’t supposed to go to FB – it seems teasing to link to stuff that not everyone can see. I shouldn’t really talk about FB stuff, for that reason, but there keep being these interesting items, and I can’t resist.)
For Steve Zara @ #6
From Pharangula just yesterday:
It’s the very same rot, the poison of religion that twists minds away from reality and fastens them on hellish bogeymen. They’re demented fuckwits, every one, and the big lie rests right on the fundamental beliefs of supernaturalism and deities, not on the ephemera of one crank’s bizarre interpretations.
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/05/_the_world_didnt_end.php
I’m confused. The ones under “a post” and “an article of his” go to Facebook.
Ohhh…I must have taken the links from the Facebook page. Duh. I’ll fix’em.
So, the Gnus are New anymore? They’re old?
Jeez, who can keep up?
If this is the goal, then why are the accommodationists not consumed with telling the believers to be more tolerant, but with telling the atheists how intolerable they are?
*grumble*goddamnFacebook*grumble*
I always wonder how people make this statement with a straight face. Since most gnu’s acknowledge that multiple approaches are needed. It seems to only be people like Prothero who try to say “dont do that” in the guise of -rude, strident,unhelpful etc etc or who try to impose the ONE way of respect religion.
Brownian: If this is the goal, then why are the accommodationists not consumed with telling the believers to be more tolerant, but with telling the atheists how intolerable they are?
I see it as their attempt at policing their own ranks. It’s similar to what some moderate/liberal theists attempt to do with fundamentalist believers. It only seems to piss people off though.
Beth – that wasn’t religious people in general, it was those who believed in the recent Rapture,
Hmm, I don’t agree that he was saying there is a good way and a bad way to do atheism. His excerpt that you quoted makes the “gnus” sound unpleasant, yes, but it also gives them credit for starting the movement and giving it birth. I think his argument was that combative types are necessary to kick-start social change, while more peaceable types are necessary to keep it going and get it a wider audience beyond the initial converts. He clearly describes the “gnus” in an unflattering way but he also describes it as necessary, not bad or wrong.
Steve Zara–I don’t think that’s so clear. It’s at the very least ambiguous, since in his preceding sentences he’s talking about “religion” and not these Rapture-obsessed people.
This idea that men are gnasty and women are gnice does a disservice to both sexes. And the idea that older people are gnasty and younger people are gnice is just as bad. That’s leaving aside other stupidities such as the ridiculous (and gnasty) caricature of the demeanour and manner of people like Richard.
For the record, I was influenced by gnus Emma Goldman and Voltairine de Cleyre long before I read Dawkins or Hitchens.
Steve – I don’t agree. I took the main point of his post to be that he feels that way about ALL believers.
I think it’s about anyone for whom a rapture/coming/judgment is a serious belief on which they act.
Mmmehehe. Men have “arguments”, whereas women have “stories”. And I’m sure those women will convey their stories with a lot of “emotion”.
Maybe he didn’t even notice it when he wrote it, but it’s there.
And of course the “angry men” won’t, because, as everyone knows, anger isn’t an emotion.
*bares teeth*
The probably unnoticed assumption slipped into his point. He wanted to portray Dawkins and the others as angry men, as opposed to the more amicable bunch on the other side. Notice how “angry” is applied to “men”, not to “arguments”. I wonder why he didn’t say “…it could be the flawless logic of women that allow it to grow up”? Oh, right.
The problem with that is that it sounds dangerously like that blog piece of a few weeks back from Chris Steadman’s about polemics and bridge building. You’re conceding combative too early, and giving “peaceable types” an undeserved pat on the back. Can I get a Neville Chamberlain reference up in here?
I think it is fine to talk about people’s public Facebook pages for exactly that reason, because we can’t all see them ourselves and so we need a guide who has seen them to tell us about them. That is one of the things reporters do, they find out stuff not everybody sees and tell us about it (well, good reporters…)
One of the things that absolutely infuriates me is when you get into an argument with somebody – they say something, you point out what they said, and then they cry misrepresentation.
I don’t know how well-known the Tom Johnson Blog-O-Drama is outside of the New Atheist corner of the Internet, but the affair has left me a bit perplexed and I suspect others are similarly affected.
The Tom Johnson guy is crazy. And not just in a figurative sense of the word. He’s nuts. I can scarcely believe that someone could do those things, yet it happened. What animates him is completely opaque to me. In that sense he’s worse than crazy: he’s crazy without explanation.
As a result it’s been harder for me to assess criticism of New Atheism. I can recognize possibly legitimate criticism here and there, but I have a nagging thought which was not there before: to what degree is the critic motivated by whatever motivated Tom Johnson?
Are there 1% Tom Johnsons out there? 10%? 50%? Given that we have a documented case of full-blown insanity in Tom Johnson, when I read criticism that seems Tom-Johnsony I am forced to wonder: has the writer been infected with a bit of the Tom Johnson virus?
It’s bad to dismiss criticism like that, but in order to separate the wheat from that chaff I need to know what the hell was going on with Tom Johnson. I haven’t a clue.
Scote…right, that’s pretty much why I do it – it’s part of the discourse but not everybody can see it. Good; I’ll keep doing it then. Not often, but when it’s quasi-public and [cough] disputable.
Eemil…I know. Boy do I know. That was one big reason for outing Wally Smith. Tom/YNH/Hammill/Wally infected a huge percentage of new atheist and anti-new atheist blogging, and I wanted to make it as clear as possible which was which. (That is, who was Wally and who wasn’t.)
Sorting out which new atheists are infected with Tom/YNH/Hammill/Wally motivations is another matter. One possible marker is to note where Wally-as-Hammill felt safe posting; another is to note which anti-gnus found Wally-as-Hammill interesting and thoughtful and worth quoting or engaging. He caught a lot of people in that particular trap. It would be vindictive of me to name them…
That post from ’09 is the essence of treating truth claims as lifestyle choices. A great postmodernist and accommodationist trick. If we can just reduce truth claims to equally valid points of view which coexist – and conflate them with ACTUALLY equally valid cultural lifestyle choices – then we never have to ask if anything is actually true. Or actually exists. It’s all just about picking the lifestyle that appeals to your own pragmatic needs. No need to challenge anyone’s beliefs in this vision of the world. These aren’t two different strategies for atheists: they are fundamentally different views of both what atheism is and what truth is.
And the utopian view isn’t the one that thinks we should ask what is true and what is real; the utopian view is the one that thinks we should only ask what promotes harmony – at any cost.
Having said what I said, there definitely is the place for fighting for equal RIGHTS – and this is a noble goal. I know most all atheists want THIS kind of equal validity (and many fight for it every day) – and do not want to eliminate the religious freedom of anyone else. However, the accommodationist technique seems to be to seamlessly conflate the goal of equal rights for nonreligious and religious people (and the requisite rspect for people it entails) with the goal of absolute equal validity and “respect” for all religious and nonreligious ideas. The first goal is a common goal we can all seek; the second goal is a fundamental difference in the perception of truth and reality.
I love the way Dale McGowan puts it in Parenting Freethinkers (p. 7): “People are inherently deserving of respect as human beings, and no one can be faulted for shutting you out if you declare disrespect for their very personhood. Ideas are another matter. I feel too much respect for the idea of respect to grant it automatically to ideas.”
I rarely see Gnu attacks on personhood; but criticism of bad and untrue ideas is what it is about. It is the respect for the idea of respect. Accommodationists seek to portray all attacks on ideas as attacks on personhood. This is the key conflation that is repeated over and over.
OB: not to be confused, hopefully, with Prof. Don Prothero, a geologist, instructor, skeptic (see The Skeptics Society), and a recent author.
@ Salty #10, that’s my experience, too: `current’ authors Jennefer Hecht, Susan Jacoby, Annie Laurie Gaylor, quickly come to mind, tho there are, obviously, others, and many in the past.
Postreligionist – yes and yes.
@Beth – 26
Atleast in context , PZ seems to be saying everyone who believes in the rapture (whether they fix a date or not) are stupid (not that all religious believers are) – though i agree the statement as phrased is ambiguous.
David M–I don’t know if the “you” in your comment is meant to be me particularly or just a generalized description of Prothero’s viewpoint, but to be clear, I don’t endorse that viewpoint. I don’t think the ‘gnus’ are any more combative than any other segment of people who debate religion, nor do I think those who are less hostile towards religion are necessarily softer in their argumentative style.