Tell all the truth but tell it slant?
So to return to the core of the issue that Ben was talking about – the utility of atheism for atheists, science communication, conflict as a way into discussion rather than an impediment to it, passion as a motivator. I talked to him about it at Facebook, and tried (not for the first time) to take a hard look at why I feel so strongly about the subject.
I said that I have a visceral reaction to advice about framing. I do. Why do I?
First of all, I’ve had it for a long time; maybe as long as I’ve been thinking about anything. I dislike all the manipulative “professions” – advertising, PR, political operative stuff. I dislike trickery and pandering. I dislike them in an objective sense; I think they’re harmful. I can see their utility for some purposes, but I think they do some harm in the process even so. For some jobs and vocations, they’re simply disastrous – they’re the exact opposite of what people should be doing. Scholarship, teaching, and journalism are among those vocations.
And that perhaps explains why I dislike them even more in a subjective sense – why that’s not what I want to do. I want to spend my time trying to tell the truth about things, to the best of my ability, as I see it, and all the other qualifications. I want to do that, I don’t want to coddle or manage or mollify. I also don’t want to be coddled or managed or mollified.
And I think that’s a reasonable commitment. I think the opposite commitment is more dubious, because it’s more apt to damage people’s cognitive abilities. I think in general clarity and honesty are better than tactful arrangement when it comes to public discourse.
I know exactly how you feel, Ophelia. Rarely has someone put my own core motivational value judgment so well and so succinctly.
Thanks Dan.
I feel the same way, obviously. But it won’t be long before they come here to tell you that they don’t want you to lie, they don’t want to you to coddle, they just want you to be nice and not be a dick. And it starts all over again.
The utility of framing becomes lost when a ‘journalist’s’ words read as manipulative.
The utility of a simple apology would go a long way towards restoring a little credibility to CM.
Is that so hard to see?
That’s it. That’s the argument for clarity and honesty and not pulling punches. If the arguments fail to persuade so be it, but they’re the real arguments.
I actually feel much less strongly about this, Ophelia. While my own motivations are fairly similar to yours, I don’t entirely rule out noble lies and I do think that a certain amount of day-to-day self-delusion may even be necessary. There are some things it’s probably better not to inquire into too closely, as a whole body of social psychology research suggests. E.g. it may be best for me not to inquire too closely into whether I fall within, say, the ninth decile or more like the fifth decile (or lower) of philosophical talent (among people with philosophy PhDs, that is; I’m confident that I really would be in the ninth decile of the general population, but that’s not very useful). With things like this, it’s wise to go on assuming, as individuals, that we are, or may be, better than we probably really are … even if we’ve read the relevant body of social psychology literature and know that that’s what we’re doing. I think we can live with an element of that kind of paradoxical thinking, and are probably even better off doing so. Human nature is complicated enough to allow people to do this while also displaying ordinary intellectual honesty.
Likewise, people probably shouldn’t inquire too closely into such questions as whether they love one of their children more than another (or one parent or sibling more than another). The answer may actually be “Yes”, but I think it’s a door that’s probably better left shut as much as possible.
My complaints about Mooney are rather more specific than a feeling that he is insufficiently pure in his love of truth. I can feel a blog post coming on!
I also think that some of the comments over there on Ben’s thread by Jean Kazez are useful and insightful. The trouble is, they fail to excuse some of Mooney’s specific behaviours, even if they are absolutely correct about his general motivations.
Russell, no I have no problem with that – and in fact I argued something much like it at the beginning of Why Truth Madders. (Or not so much argued as…I don’t know…chatted about.) But that’s personal rather than public. I was talking about public discourse about public subjects in the above.
Agreed, about the comments, except that I think they’re somewhat inaccurate about how much emphasis Mooney puts on which reasons. I took another look at the book, and it’s not like that. Climate change doesn’t stand out from the background. She may well know that’s his motivation from personal conversation, but others don’t.
And maybe this is the rub. To the accommodationists and other noble liars, religion is just a private sphere issue. It’s rude in the private sphere or the public sphere to call someone fat, regardless of whether it’s an obvious publicly accessible truth. Telling people their religion is false is similar to a lot of people. Whether or not you can plainly see it, i goes in the bin of things you don’t mention publicly and you let people delude themselves about.
They just don’t recognize this as a conflict over truth and institutional powers’ illicit claims to authority in serious moral and epistemological matters.
I personally think there is a role for tone and rhetoric in enhancing rather than obscuring communication. In fact, I think you do a pretty good job at that already.
I think there may be some truths that we shouldn’t talk about but I don’t know what they would be. Russell’s example of which child we love the most may work for some but I think questions of how we get attached to people and how that attachment may vary are fascinating and I love to learn about them. Maybe the answers are unpleasant but I think that when we get over the shock, the information can only help us. And if we don’t like the answer, being aware of the unpleasant sides of our human nature, we can be better armed to avoid any negative consequences.
I wish I knew why I was like this (or how to pass this affliction on to others) but I value truth for its own sake. It just so happens that by knowing the truth we can match our actions with reality and achieve our goals far better than through ignorance or denial but that’s a happy extra.
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Accommodationists may have a point if religion were some minority thing that didn’t want to convert everyone. But it’s not, it’s a majority thing and it’s evangelical. It’s like a shark in the pool, you don’t ignore the shark or pretend it’s not there, and then tell kids to go in and swim.
As for PR and advertising and propaganda, that all works fine for religion and selling crap, but it’s completely inappropriate and toxic for education, journalism, academia and science.
Plus selling crap is not always a great thing to do, so a skill that works well for doing that isn’t always an inherently great skill!
And it doesn’t just try to convert people, which is fair enough in itself. It tries to impose its standards on people who don’t accept them.
As above, I can live with people not asking too much: “Which of my children do I love more?” Better, in fact, not to go there (despite Tyro’s comment). I could even live with people not asking too much, “Is my religion really true?” But they don’t get to take that attitude if at the same time they want to shove its teachings down others’ throats, with anti-abortion laws and all the rest of it. Once you start making your religion an issue that goes beyond your own psychological comfort – and to some extent this is almost inevitable – you have to expect other people who aren’t buying it to challenge its truth-claims in a forthright way.
I have to admit that I have some Hobbesian sympathies that colors the way I think about religion.
One way of putting it is what we might call it the “Lord of the Flies” test. Suppose you were on a desert island, much like the boys in Golding’s story. Suppose you are in Ralph’s role. Suppose, finally, that the only way to keep the choirboys in line is to go out into the woods, and pretend that you have made a deal with the Beast. If you don’t, then almost everyone will die. Would you?
I don’t hesitate for very long before I say “yes, absofuckinglutely, lie to the idiots and take control”. (I don’t know if that means that I passed the test, or that I failed. Meh, whatever.)
But this kind of patriarchal instinct can sometimes become a whole habit of mind. Like a parasite, it sucks on more and more of the person’s ambitions until they end up like an addict. Certain people will nurse the sense that they’re the guardians of civilization, the middle-managers of free thought. But actually, they end up like Captain Benteen in the Twilight Zone episode “On Thursday We Leave for Home”, pretentiously telling people that they are looking out for the greater good but never bothering to take a poll. They say they’re telling a noble lie, but the bastards don’t have enough self-consciousness or good taste to see a difference between a noble lie and an ignoble one.
So in conclusion life is full of contrasts.
Artists, playwrights, orators, authors… when a play completely slips inside your defenses and forces you to take a new look at an idea… is that not manipulative profession at its best?
I say that, not to defend Mooney’s cowardice, but to suggest that other than very basic levels of information, human communication is all about manipulation on some level, planting your thoughts in another’s mind (including modeling that person’s mind as you present your case. You can cover the plot of a great novel or play in a few sentences, but it would have no transforming power.
When there’s a mutually agreed upon suspension of disbelief, there is nothing wrong with this. All communication depends upon influencing another’s thoughts. But honest communication admits that it is for the recipient to consider the merits and accept or reject.
Dishonest communication paints a lie as The Truth ™ with a nice wrapping and a bow. This is the essence of dogma, whether religious, nationalistic, corporate, or other.
When metaphor and symbolism are used to make Superman a mythical saviour figure, it’s alright because nobody is pretending that Superman is actually real. When the same is done with Jesus, it’s a problem specifically because it is proclaimed to be True ™.
The question is not just about influence, it’s about when and how people bend truth into falsehood. Again, this is largely an epistemic question about truth (small-t, no trademark), and a moral question about honesty and deception.
Yes, jay, there’s something in that, of course. We don’t want to start banning novels, plays, movies, poems, etc., though we do need people who are intellectually equipped to analyse how they work, and, where appropriate, to challenge the presuppositions and rhetorical devices that they rely on in communicating whatever messages they do (and obtaining the “transforming power” that you mention). Pursued patiently, honestly, and with skill, the role of literary and cultural critics is an important one.
Part of the trouble with Mooney is that he hasn’t gone off and written a novel that might make us feel more strongly about the problem of climate change – perhaps by showing us what its effects might be like for ordinary people a few decades hence, and getting into their minds so we feel their anxieties. That would be a good approach if Mooney had the skills of a storyteller like, say, Kim Stanley Robinson. The quid pro quo would be that his novel is out there to be picked apart. Hey, maybe he has hidden talents and should do something like that.
If his motivation is as Jean Kazez tells us, he’d be much better off writing serious near-future sf novels or writing books like Why Evolution is True: patiently explaining the evidence and arguments that support reputable and important scientific findings so they’re available to a wide audience. I don’t think anyone objects to the extent that he does things like that. It’s when he accuses Jerry Coyne and PZ Myers of somehow hindering the grand strategy to save the world (if that’s what he’s accusing them of) that people get upset. He thinks that PZ shouldn’t have done lots of the things he did, and is absolutely scathing about it. He thinks – and has said – that Jerry Coyne should not have written that review of the Miller and Giberson books, or should not have included criticism of the authors’ religious apologetics. Kazez’s analyis of what motivates him, which may well be correct, only makes sense of those actions by Mooney if he believes that Jerry and PZ are somehow Letting Down The Side and hindering the efforts of Right-Minded People like himself to save the world.
That would be a silly thing for him to think, and surely he could see this if he thought it through. It’s not as if anyone is asking him to act like PZ or even like Jerry, but he doesn’t want them acting like themselves.
Can I just say that I am a little tired of the assumption that the arts are about manipulating others’ emotions. It is something that gets stated over and over again in what seems to me to a quite unthinking way. In all honesty, Jay, I don’t think your example of a play enabling you to see something in a new way is an example of manipulation. Novels or plays that are fundamentally little different from political speeches and have an obvious design on its audience are in the main poor stuff: I remember going to see some anti-Vietnam War plays in London back in the late sixties (I was of course against the war) and being appalled by the crudity of the attempts at manipulation. There’s no room here to go into a full criticism of this idea (together with the concomitant idea that it is the job of the critic to demonstrate how the artist goes about manipulating his or her audience), but I shall simply provide some brief quotations from a lecture I gave to the Asiatic Society of Japan on ‘The Noh Drama and the Modern Stage’ that have some relevance, I think:
“The weakness of the naturalist approach derives very largely from its being in thrall to a crude misconception that is all the stronger in its hold because it is entertained largely unconsciously and not really thought about: the idea that audiences are passive collections of voyeurs and that the performer’s relation to them is one of manipulation – manipulating them into believing, or at least into not disbelieving, what is presented to them; manipulating, too, their emotional responses – really, in the manner of a politician: Hitler’s Nuremberg rallies were nothing if not ‘theatrical’. ”
“…masks – like puppets – are curious objects that inhabit the ambiguous borderline between the animate and the inanimate – I am reminded of Chikamatsu Monzaemon’s wonderful saying: ‘art is something that lies in the slender margin between the real and unreal’, which is not unlike Shakespeare’s, or rather Touchstone’s, observation that ‘the truest poetry is the most feigning’ but far from Coleridge’s more obviously Western dictum about ‘that willing suspension of disbelief… which constitutes poetic faith’. ”
“…after a certain actor had, at a workshop, demonstrated to a group of singers a few lines from Marlowe’s Dr Faustus, one singer remarked that as soon as the actor slipped from his role of teacher into the role of Faustus, ‘the air in the room changed’. Another way of putting it might be to say that the quality of attention in the room changed, so that the world of Dr Faustus could be at once brought forth as much by the audience as by the actor. For a true dramatic character is not some kind of self-contained Freudian atom set before a disengaged audience in a dead, empty space, knocking into other similarly self-contained characters and forming bonds with or being repulsed by them. Hamlet and Ophelia cannot be separated from their world and their understandings of that world, and the task of the actor who plays such a part is not merely to create the character of Hamlet or Ophelia considered – as it cannot be – in itself, but to create with the aid of the audience that character’s world, for in the end the character and his or her world are one.”
“The ‘double consciousness’ that is so essential to play is not only the possession of the performer; it is the possession of the audience, too.”
“Theatre, I would say, is first of all the creation of an ‘appearance’ or ‘presence’ – thinking of mugen or dream nõ, one might even use the word ‘apparition’. I do not use the word ‘illusion’ because that suggests that audiences are deceived, when they are not, any more than the celebrants at the May Day festival in Padstow in Cornwall are deceived by the hideously masked Old ’Oss or Hobby Horse, whose presence inspires a mingled delight and terror, or the celebrants at the hana-matsuri in the mountains of Aichi – a winter festival that preserves elements that went into the original making of the nõ – are deceived by the axe-wielding oni or demons who invade the dancing floor at the end. They all know that there are people behind these masks, and even who the people are, but it is not those people who are present, it is the Old ’Oss and the oni that are present.”
That’s enough quotation: the point is that theatre in particular is, as that wonderful director Mike Alfreds said, ‘shared experience’; it is not about manipulating audiences. And the same is true of good novels.
Sortry about the double posting. I made a mistake. The second one is the one to read.
Heh. Are you sure your emotional reaction isn’t largely based on the fact that “framing” has become the rallying cry of a bunch of people who have been acting like asshats to you for no good reason?
I find myself viscerally rejecting calls of patriotism for similar reasons. I can think of logical reasons why patriotism is a bad thing, and why I’m justified in feeling creeped out by it… but I can also think of good things about patriotism if I make myself. My negative reaction probably has a lot more to do with the fact that so many people who repulse me spend so much time wrapping themselves in the flag. They’ve given it their cooties.
Here’s an effort at putting a positive spin on framing:
Human beings are notorious for allowing emotional reactions to motivate their reasoning. By framing your position skillfully, you can sometimes bypass these emotional reactions, and you can do what you can to encourage people to evaluate your arguments in a rational, rather than reactive, frame of mind.
Not so bad from that perspective?
But surely, if those fat people had so much clout in the public sphere that other people were being force-fed, you’d have to start addressing the problem publicly, whether or not it fell into the category of rude behaviour. Leaving out so much context is a great injustice; how can you judge the attitude of atheists towards religion without taking into account the pre-existing attitude of religion towards atheists and what that means and has meant in societies where a high percentage call themselves believers?
A gnu atheist novel is a good idea, if written well. Or perhaps an artistic movement, embracing naturalism and scientific education. It sounds like the sort of project we should actually be doing.
I officially second Egbert’s suggestion.
I’d love to agree with you Ophelia that honesty is the right way to engage with this debate but I have to object that honesty is the goal, not the tactic. Despite the vast amounts of bad faith propaganda on behalf of the other side we all know that a commitment to being at minimum reasonable almost defines the Science/Atheism side of this debate.
On the other hand we’ve all become so accustomed to the constant bad faith of our opponents: Creationists trot out the same debunked claims over and over again; time and time again Atheists are accused of failing to have any grounding for morality despite silly little problems like the pretty much the whole of ethics since Plato being one long secular argument; I’m still livid at the time given to arguments from people like Marilynne Robinson that atheists apparently “fail to grasp” the problem of consciousness, despite silly little things like Daniel Dennett being one of the major living philosophers of the mind. I can’t help but wonder at how shockingly naive it is to think that the way you respond to such consistent and overwhelming bad faith and bad behaviour is to be nice. No, the people who win these debates are, love it or loathe it, the popular confident ones who get to set the terms and have a strong community backing them. In aid of that then, I think I’m going to go and enjoy the bits of time I get geeking out with the fellow members of my community and nothing anyone says is going to make me feel guilty about that.
Well, all I shall say regarding Egbert’s suggestion is that true artists have their own interests, and trying to get a group of people (I rather doubt that those who agreed to cooperate would be genuine artists) to produce plays, novels, paintings, films, music etc on the basis of, or expressing the virtues of, ‘naturalism and scientific education’ seems to me a splendid recipe for worse than mediocrity. Good art is not the illustration of sets of ideas that people, or certain groups of people, happen to agree upon, however worthwhile those ideas might be.
Russell: your last sentence nails it. That’s it exactly. No-one is stopping Mooney from doing things his way to get the word out, but he doesn’t seem to want to do that. With his fellowship it’s as if he’s joined the obscurantists and has nothing useful to contribute any more. When was the last time he actually wrote about science? It’s getting hard to remember.
There’s one aspect of promotion of science literacy that I haven’t seen mentioned. It is that an understanding of science requires a level of critical thinking that many find taxing and would rather not have to sustain. We have also succeeded in creating education systems where the basic level of knowledge, sometimes even simple reading skills, are just not up to the job. Students don’t take on science, or mathematics, if they don’t have to because it’s “too hard”.
There really has never been a shortage of good writing about science, by scientists themselves. Go to any good book shop. My interest is physics so I have books on my shelf aimed at the general, reasonably educated, reader by Max Born, Heisenberg, Einstein, Feynman, Alan Guth, Kip Thorne, Steinhardt & Turok and others. It’s the same for other branches of science and for mathematics. There isn’t any need for a Mooney to explain science, the scientists have already done it. What could Mooney write that hasn’t already been written many times better by Stephen Hawking? All Mooney can do is dumb down the message and spin it to the point where it becomes pointless and irrelevant. He is an unnecessary hindrance to his own professed cause.
Completely off topic but Ophelia highlighted the brave stand the governor of Punjab province in Pakistan took against the mullahs in the blasphemy issue. That man’s been murdered.
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/01/04/pakistan.governor.killed/?hpt=T2
@ Tim Harris,
It doesn’t have to be literary, only entertaining while pushing a bit of science, education and atheism. It may sound like propaganda or trash literature, but it does not have to be. There is a massive genre industry out there with the purpose of pushing entertaining but otherwise unimportant books onto the general public. It is the mass market that I was considering.
I think the analogy to calling someone “fat” that Camels With Hammers mentioned is a really good one to see all sides of the issue.
Imagine that you want to convince people that being overweight is bad and that they should try to achieve a healthy weight and stop overeating. You can cite personal benefits and benefits to society in doing so. Now imagine that at least some people try to do this by calling people who are overweight “fatties” in public and writing many papers and blog posts that say that people who are overweight are just lazy, undisciplined cows who need to get off the sofa and put the chips down.
Some overweight people may be convinced by this sort of approach. Some of them will change because they’ll be shamed into it; they won’t understand WHY being overweight is bad, but they’ll change because they don’t want to be insulted by others. Some who were leaning that way anyway will also change because it may make the comfort they get from overeating go away by associating it with the insults that will, again, make them feel less comfortable.
But you’ll also get a lot of people who will ignore, get angry and entrench. They’ll insist that they aren’t that bad or bad enough to have to change, and generally refuse to listen to even good advice from people who say that, because they’ll stop listening to people who clearly just want to insult. And those people will get called out by other people who want to work on the problem of the overweight because the insults will seem harsh and unnecessary, and they’ll wonder if the people making them really want to help or if they’d just rather make insults and have found a convenient target.
The alternative strategy would be to still talk about how being overweight is bad and what the problems are and how to fix it, but without the personal attacks or claims about the personal qualities of overweight people. This would be the approach that “weight accomodationists” would espouse, and would include ensuring that overweight people don’t feel utterly worthless just for being overweight or morally inferior because of that, and also ensure that groups that are, say, advocating for a better public image for those who are overweight are utilized when talking about issues like anorexia and excessive pressure to be thin. They’d say that this strategy will work better, and it certainly seems more likely to reach those that are merely misguided as opposed to unwilling to consider it.
But, all in all, it’s certainly a NICER approach. And if you can’t take the nicer approach and be honest, then that says more about your attitudes than about the attitudes of those who call you not nice for it.
(Two caveats: I could certainly stand to lose a few pounds and accept that accomodationists and theists can be “not-nice” as well.)
Apologies for commenting twice in a row, but I hate making one comment with two completely different ideas in it.
@That Guy Montag
On bad faith, you’ve pretty much hit one thing that bugs me, a lot. I could nitpick over the other examples, but the consciousness one is the best example so I’ll focus on it:
” I’m still livid at the time given to arguments from people like Marilynne Robinson that atheists apparently “fail to grasp” the problem of consciousness, despite silly little things like Daniel Dennett being one of the major living philosophers of the mind. ”
Well, other major living philosphers of mind do, in fact, also claim that Dennett doesn’t grasp the problem of consciousness, so it’s not like it’s an unfair charge. Heck, Dennett himself would agree that he doesn’t grasp the problem of consciousness, but that’s because he thinks it’s an invented problem and not actually real. And that’s Dennett, who is the one atheist who pretty much everyone can agree is well-versed in the issues around consciousness. Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris and others aren’t anywhere near that level, and yet they do make claims about consciousness and about what answers we have or don’t have and about what problems there are and aren’t about consciousness. If they’re qualified to make such claims, she’s qualified to point out and argue that they’re wrong. And Dawkins, at least, didn’t even get close to understanding dualism in “The God Delusion”, so he’s clearly out to lunch on the underlying concerns of consciousness.
So, who’s acting in bad faith here? You’ve cited one atheist who knows what he’s talking about (there are, undoubtedly, others) and even he gets challenged on that point by other people who know what they’re talking about. So it’s not an unfair charge, even against Dennett. It’s even less unfair against those atheists who don’t really know what they’re talking about — and there’s no reason that they should, since it isn’t their field — and yet have commented on it and based positions on their very minimal understanding of the issues.
It’s not acting in bad faith to call or claim that someone is wrong. Now, if she fails to back it up, then you can call her out …
Verbal Stoic:
And the people who do this, in the atheism debate, are? Who are the prominent gnu atheists that do nothing but insult believers into feeling they’re “utterly worthless”?
See, this is part of the problem. Those on the accomodationism side are always talking about these nasty atheists who do nothing but insult and talk down to believers, but they can never churn up an actual example of that behavior, save maybe a random blog comment somewhere. It’s a dirty tactic to make their own position sound reasonable, at the expense of demonizing those who are outspoken.
[…] http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2011/tell-all-the-truth-but-tell-it-slant/ […]
Jason,
Let me first outline my criteria: your question, for me, can be translated to “Who are the atheists that call all believers irrational, delusional, superstitious, dishonest, immoral, and/or brainwashed?”. Which, by that, might be a lot of them, even the ones I like [grin].
That’s how it compares to what’s said in the analogy to “fatness”. The people saying that might actually be right about some overweight people, that they are lazy and simply need to get some exercise … any exercise. But it’s still an attack on them as people. And attacking them as people isn’t nice, and is especially not nice when some of the people in the aimed at group aren’t like that.
As for specific examples, P.Z. Myers and Hitchens strike me as being the really bad extreme end of that, but I might not be being fair to Hitchens. I don’t think Dawkins and Dennett are in that category, although they do have their moments.
What is the difference between pandering and persuasion? An objective definition of that would clarify the issue greatly.
The “fatties” discussion does have some parallels with the gnu/accomodationism debates.
I think the Gnus are going out into the public and saying that being overweight is unhealthy to individuals and potentially damaging to society. While food appears to bring comfort, changing your diet and adopting an exercise routine has proven medical benefits and far from making people less happy, it creates a lasting, valuable feeling of satisfaction, pride and contentments in addition to being a great mechanism for dealing with stress. On the other hand, overeating generally leads to a decreased sense of self-worth, directly contradicting the pro-overeating groups claims. The Gnus are not insulting any individuals, they instead mock the arguments of their opponents while presenting reasoned, evidence-based arguments for their own positions.
The accomodationists are saying how nice some obese people are, how they should be free to eat whatever they wish in whatever quantities they wish and we should respect and value their decisions. When pressed on the health benefits, they demur and say “well, I chose a healthy lifestyle but perhaps eating a tub of Ben & Jerry’s provides comfort in difficult times so who am I to say what the right path is.” They maintain that the right way to persuade people to reduce their consumption is to avoid discussing any health costs and that any gnus who do discuss this are harming the cause by making people feel bad about themselves and that life would be better if the gnus would just shut up and let smarter people deal with things.
My sense is that when the gnus talk about how harmful overeating can be then they will make some people feel bad. It’s not their intent, they aren’t singling out individuals, they certainly aren’t saying that obese people are bad or immoral but hearing that your actions have been harming yourself physically as well as socially is a hard thing to swallow (ahem). However, committing to changing your diet and exercise routine is difficult and requires overcoming powerful psychological defence mechanisms which is bound to hurt, no matter what. That bad feeling isn’t all bad, it is the recognition that you have been wrong and that it’s time to invest in the long, difficult path towards change. If gnus succeed in upsetting people, that is only because they are recognizing flaws in themselves – I’ll guarantee that flat earthers won’t upset many astronomers because there’s no substance to their critiques.
So do we go around calling overweight people “fatties”? Certainly none of the prominent Gnus do that, it’s an absurd and desperate accusation. It’s the Gnus who are making the reasoned, evidence-based arguments to promote health while accomodationists dissemble and strive to convince others without ever discussing those truths which might upset people or, gasp, motivate change.
God damn it to hell!!!!
Thanks for the alert, mirax.
Great discussion here. I’m distracted at the moment by the news of the murder of Salman Taseer. Fucking hell.
Of course no analogy is perfect, but as I read this, something else came to mind. More and more my annoyance was at the ‘do-gooders’ who take on the job of nudging, urging, cajoling.. it’s simply not their damned business what other people choose to eat or how they care for their bodies.
I hope we are not like that. I don’t think we are, nor I am not arguing that Dawkins etc are doing that. But that is not the model we should adopt.
Jay
Are you saying that Dawkins or Hitchens is trying to control which religion people adopt? I know Hitchens has said many times he doesn’t care what people believe provided they keep it to themselves. Dawkins says he cares about the truth and about keeping religion out of politics and education. It sounds to me like they’re the ones that are fighting to preserve our ability to make our own choices while it’s the theists (overeaters) who are trying to cram their choices down our throats.
I find it galling that, even here on B&W, people should compare persuasion with force while ignoring the genuine force that’s used by the theists!
Verbose, the analogy is a really bad one, and it kind of pisses me off. Physical insults are uncontroversially cruel. I hate them with a passion. I have a long story about some punk on a bus going out of his way to shout an insult at a slightly overweight woman who had just gotten off the bus, which I think I have told here more than once. It made me ill with rage. (I’ve been accused of resorting to physical insults myself, but I don’t. I sometimes point it out when people use an attractive appearance for a PR purpose. I take that to be a completely different kind of thing. The fact that the people are attractive is the whole point!)
It’s not the same. It’s not similar. It’s not a good comparison. It’s extremely loaded.
Insults to people’s intelligence are also uncontroversially cruel. Calling someone a moron, retarded, an idiot, etc. is as abusive as calling someone a lard ass.
The problem is that in many ways many religious people literally attack the priority of reason and in doing so are, technically speaking, irrationalists. We should have every right to call them that since it’s not an epithet, it’s what they are doing by pulling “get out of reason free” faith cards whenever they are refuted. But to a lot of people it sounds like we’re just using an epithet. That’s unfair to us. They want the religious to get to have it both ways, to defend all sorts of irrationalistic methods of persuasion, all sorts of flagrant abuses of logic and philosophical/scientific rigor, and even an explicitly irrationalistic epistemology, and <strong>still</strong> be exempt from charges of being irrationalists as though it’s a low blow.
That’s where we are treated unfairly by the accommodationists and the religionists.
BUT, we have to be scrupulous about always attacking irrationalism and poorly formed beliefs without using words like moron or retard or idiot or other non-specific, broadly abusive terms about people’s intelligence. And to claim there is none of that from, say, PZ Myers and no Gnu Atheist ever did anything wrong on this account (except for some far flung post on some obscure atheist blog no one ever reads buried somewhere in the atheist blogroll) is to not want to seriously critically examine our own side.
And we ARE represented by the people who overstate things too. We ARE represented by redditors and people’s facebook statuses, regardless if even PZ doesn’t go as far some of them do. And we DO need to take responsibility for our side’s sloppiness in letting people slip from critiques of the irrationalism and falsehood of religion into unqualified statements that religious people are “fill in your non-specific, overgeneralized abusive term here”.
And I hang around enough internet atheists to know this is not an unfair frustration with our side.
@Verbose
Your analogy doesn’t make much sense and neither does your reply to critiscm. For starters few atheist (in the style of Myers) result to name calling and speculation about someone’s morality. They don’t until they’ve seen them earn it. Take the whole Catholic Church/abortion thing. If someone like PZ were to call the Catholic church mysoginistic out of blue for no reason, he’d be acting the way you accuse him of. But as he’s responding to very real and specific cases where the Church’s morality were applied he’s entirely right to do so.
((Sorry if that came out weird. Typing this on my phone))
Yes that news about Salman Taseer left me shaken, with a mixture of despair and anger. We’re trying to point out how religion is DANGEROUS and here is why.
And my friends, the good news is that there were angry protests about his assassination.
Julian, the issue is not a specific word like “misogynistic” leveled at specific instances of misogyny (or, equally fairly, the deep traditions of misogyny of which all the faiths are demonstrably guilty), it’s broad uses of words like “brainwashed”, “delusional”, “immoral”, “dishonest”, “superstitious”, “irrational”. Now, I want to argue that it is immoral to believe without sufficient evidence, it is dishonest and irrational to give the Bible intellectual or moral authority, and religion and superstitiousness are infamously associated in ways that I don’t think need clear demonstrations. But it still makes sense that people get offended by the implications of brainwashing and delusions and that they bristle when we don’t just say “believing on insufficient grounds is immoral, dishonest, irrational, and superstitious” but all or most people of group x “immoral, dishonest, irrational, and superstitious”. It’s that shift from the attack on the content of the beliefs or the morality of the practices, which are legitimate and fair, to the attack on the persons who hold the beliefs and engage in the practices which needs to be expertly navigated.
Now, I’m afraid that as long as we are attacking the intellectual and moral quality (not just the content but the general quality) of the beliefs and the practices, people will hear us blanketedly attacking the individuals who adhere to the beliefs or participate in the practices. That’s where we will be constantly misrepresented. But, there are also instances of people making the shift from attacking religion in general terms to attacking religious people in general terms and that’s where it gets ugly. And many on our, activist, atheist side, whether they’re the leaders or the acerbic rabble becomes irrelevant if we are a responsible movement, are surely guilty of this slippage all the time.
We need to be scrupulous about the distinction between attacking beliefs and practices in the abstract and attacking over-generally the people who hold the beliefs or engage in the practices. There’s got to be a chasm between the two things and it is the responsibility of the leaders of a movement to demand such distinctions be recognized.
And when Dawkins provocatively, but medically inaccurately, titles a book The God Delusion he dances on that fine line between attacking bad beliefs and baiting those of like mind to him to run around calling religious people delusional. Dawkins’s one weakness has always been a flair for a misleading but exciting phrase. His “selfish gene” is forever misinterpreted as something it’s not because he recklessly disregarded the overwhelming moral connotation of the term “selfish”‘s ability to confuse people in order to take advantage of that same term’s sexy, selling, appeal. He may have done the same thing naming a book The God Delusion. It invites the temptation to epithets, when he role models using a technical term sloppily for the sake of attack. And to our enemies, all they hear is the epithet and all excellent analysis and advocacy for rationalism, science, and the value of truth for its own sake is missed.
I don’t want to pander or manipulate and avoid giving people the straight truth. But I also don’t want us handing to our enemies a ready moral excuse to ignore the greater and substantive intellectual and moral case we have to make.
The ‘fatties’ analogy seems to have moved on to centre on being nice to fat people while forgetting the point made earlier that fat people aren’t banning fruit and veg.
As far as public health is concerned ‘being nice’ is a perfectly reasonable approach when dealing with people who are only harming themselves but this isn’t a public health issue: its political.
The analogy doesn’t work.
(As an aside, I agree with Tim Harris on theatre, performance and the novel.)
Well – most religious people (in this country, naturally) are only affecting themselves. There are baneful trends but, then, obesity at large is costly/bad for productivity and so on.
Verbose Stoic:
I am frankly unconvinced by the three major thought experiments that highlight the supposed “hard” problem of consciousness, Searle’s Chinese Box, David Chalmer’s Philosophical Zombies or Frank Jackson’s Mary. The idea that somehow we’re in a position to know anything intuitively about what is or is not possible with consciousness is frankly barmy. If however someone put forward a physicalist or materialist theory of mind, if they didn’t at least acknowledge these arguments I’d look at them funny. If a physicalist were to engage in discussion after discussion, make wild claims about how they’ve read all the arguments for dualism including Frank Jackson and fail to mention the Mary argument, I’d have reason to accuse them of dishonesty.
For that reason, when Marilynne Robinson gives interview after interview and explains how she’s read all the New Atheists and none of them engage with the problem of consciousness, I don’t feel ashamed at all to accuse her of bad faith or culpable ignorance, your facetious and frankly unjust point scoring about Dennett not considering consciousness a worthy problem far to one side.
As for the rest of it, Fuck it, Atheists are people too. Worse: we’re an easily marginalised minority. I know for instance that growing up I didn’t know a single Atheist my own age and I know that’s not untypical. I know that even in relatively wealthy and well educated countries, the life of the mind is often very isolating in a culture that comparatively doesn’t value it and it’s important to note that can make it very hard to develop. All of that means while it might lead to youthful exuberance that might lead to a tone you don’t like, that can’t be an excuse to further marginalise the people who form my community. I care about a lot of what happens in the world but I’m not going to feel ashamed about taking care of the people who need me in my own back yard first.
And the funny thing is, as far as I’m aware that also happens to be how we win in the long term. In my experience, people gravitate towards the confident and self assured, not the supine arse kissers. If you want to go scurrying after the approval of those who don’t share your values be my guest; me I’m happier seeing a confident and flourishing community growing and knowing that success here breeds more success.
Wow, what a great conversation. I have to say that what you had to say resonated with me from the outset. Truth matters, and the attempt to dress truth up in fancy PR clothes doesn’t really help very much, in fact, is most likely to mislead. I also think this has got nothing to do with literature and the arts, since there is something that is clearly a pursuit of truth in, say, fiction or drama, that is done in a way that couldn’t be achieved discursively. However, I’d be very chary about deliberately hiding the truth from myself, as Russell suggests. Parents who refuse to consider, for example, whether they love one of their children more than another are much more likely, I suspect, to favour the child they love, and to disadvantage the others. That, certainly, was my own experience. I recall my wife Elizabeth speaking to my mother about this at one time, and I overheard the conversation.
Mother. But it’s natural to prefer one child to another.
Elizabeth. It may be, but it’s destructive to act too often on that preference.
Which I think is probably true. And if my mother had at least considered clearly what it was that led her to prefer one over the other, she might have moderated its influence on the way she treated her children. Truth is best, even it seems to me, right down to whether you are at the top of your field in smarts and achievement, or whether you should accept that your contribution is more modest. Why should knowing these things be helpful.
Of course, standing up for the truth can get you killed. That is something worth considering, but if no one is willing to put their life on the line for truth, then this will cease to be a priority. The history of the Enlightenment is a clear demonstration of that.
Camels With Hammers pretty much said what I would have said, and probably better than I would have. So all I need to do is pick up some small remainders:
Ophelia, I’m curious as to why you singled out “physical insults” as being particularly bad. The best reason I’ve heard for that is that you can’t really change your physical appearance, but unfortunately one can very much change one’s weight, so that wouldn’t be it. So why would a physical insult be worse than an insult about someone’s character, say? Note that I, personally, just don’t like insults, except maybe as good natured teasing.
Camels With Hammers: A minor nitpick, but since you said that technically some of them would be irrationalists for their stance on reason vs faith, I think I have to say that technically they’d be “arationalists”, in the sense that they think reason doesn’t apply in some cases. It’s not that they choose what reasons says one shouldn’t, but that they reject the ability of reason to judge the matter at all.
That being said, your stance of relating it to a claim that believing without sufficient evidence is all of those things is good, because it’s arguable, and my own main preference is to argue over that specific topic, mostly over how to know what is or isn’t sufficient evidence for belief. It’s unfortunately prone to shortening, but it is a position that can be debated and a case where positions, not people, clash.
Tyro: Dawkins has said — and many Gnu Atheists have adopted this line — that teaching your children your religion is child abuse. Presuming he’s not an amoral ba … person, I think I can presume that he’d want child abuse stopped, and so he really should want legal action to prevent me, for example, from teaching my children my religion and my own beliefs. That’s pretty close to me. I just don’t take him to task over that in the way you take religious people to task for their impositions; I focus on the claims. Ultimately, though, it isn’t that clear to people hearing the insults that at least some atheists wouldn’t want to impose atheism and humanism on people if they had the power to do so,
Shatterface: I’m on your side in saying that religious beliefs — or the lack of it — should not be imposed on people. That being said, I’m still going to get offended if you make the sort of generalized complaints simply because I have a belief that some people are trying to impose on others, especially when I’m not and those comments aren’t really relevant to the claim that they shouldn’t be imposed on others. I don’t see that as being unreasonable, and don’t see how ticking me off helps your cause.
That Guy Montag: I haven’t read her comments specifically, and so can’t answer for the specifics of her claim. However, if she’s done deeper reading and enough to know Dennett’s positions on philosophy of mind, then my reply to your first phrasing is valid; he is accused of that in broader works. If she hasn’t, then I don’t recall Dennett addressing consciousness in his works specifically on religion, but it’s been a while since I read “Breaking the Spell”, and so in that limited context she might be right. Regardless, you still have one atheist that’s knowledgeable and a host of others that aren’t; her slight exaggeration isn’t sufficient to consider that “bad faith”. Now, she might herself not know the arguments, but that does seem different from what you originally claimed.
Also … I’m actually on the other side. But I don’t think it a good idea to “take care of my side first”. In fact, I don’t see it as sides because, really, I’m not on any side. And I can excuse someone getting ticked off and saying things far stronger than they mean. I just get suspicious when that sort of statement seems to be a) all the time and b) gets defended as the way to do things. You can be confident and self-assured without insulting people.
I did mean to preview that. For some reason — perhaps just because I’m right handed, I end up on the Post button first even while intending to press the other. So there are some errors: ‘face PR clothes’ should be ‘fancy PR clothes’, for example.
Verbose, it’s not true that “one can very much change one’s weight.”
In any case physical insults just are wounding in a special way. I don’t really know “why” but then I don’t think it’s a rational matter. I don’t really care why; they just are. (As for “good natured teasing” – all too often it’s the teaser who would say it’s good natured while the teased would not. Putative good natured teasing is very often just aggression under a horribly thin disguise.)
Eric, it is a great conversation, isn’t it. I liked jay’s comment and then I liked the disagreements with it.
That’s just being dogmatic. I’m sure plenty of individuals have been as harmed by being called “retarded” by people they cared about as others have been denigrated over physical traits. Especially since there is so much cultural prejudice that tells us what “really” counts is on the inside. Many an outwardly beautiful, but intellectually bullied, person feels worthless in terms of something that’s supposed to be a matter of “true character”, their ability to think and so it has to sting as much for some such people to be called abusive things for their intellectual mistakes, just as much as it hurts many outwardly ugly people to be physically rejected and called related names.
Thinking of how demoralizing gym class was for me as a weakling and then imagining all of school being like that from 5-18 years old (or younger because I had to drop out) makes me think that those who internalize intellectual failure probably have the bigger burden in life in general and that abusive terms are only going to track that existing reality.
Fair enough. I didn’t mean to be dogmatic in aid of saying “nothing else is as bad” but rather in aid of “just don’t do it” – which is to say I lost the thread.
Camels with hammers, Could you perchance provide a couple of links to the behavior your attributing to PZ?
Verbose:
Her argument doesn’t get better. As a whole it just reads like someone yelling qualia with their fingers in their ears. Kind of like Searle (I know, not qualia but close) just without y’know, the whole interesting speech acts business.
As for bad faith, I stand by it. I’ve done a Google check, I admit, a touch less than rigorous, just to make sure and there seems to be not one instance of her acknowledging Dennett as a philosopher of mind. She certainly never acknowledges that fact in the two instances I’ve listened to her at the RSA debate she spoke at last year and when she spoke on an episode of Thinking Allowed. It’s an extraordinary omission given how she talks and given that all it would have taken would be to read his Wikipedia page and slap bang you know he’s a philosopher of mind. I think though that’s about as much as I feel like arguing about an elderly lady, however bad her argument. Feel free to add any extra comments if you’d like, I’m bowing out on that point.
As for the rest I can’t disagree, but then I’m left thinking it’s a bit banal.
How about this for a challenge then: how do you conince my passive aggressive Christian, conspiracy theorist, 9/11 truther, creationist former flat mate? You’re three years in, you’ve used every polite argument and despite that he’s taken to once again yelling through your closed door that there’s another grainy YouTube video of completely unknown provenance that just proves 9/11 was an inside job, despite the umpteen other times you’ve explained the definition of compression artefact. That or he’s got more evidence that Madame Blavatsky was the head of an evil cult that’s been controlling the world’s religions since the Babylonians. Look, Dragons!
Ophelia:
There’s a certain set of actions that always provoked a similar kind of reaction in me. It’s always been difficult to justify but there’s a whole category of acts that I can only describe as “rude” and yet were pretty guaranteed to throw me into a literal blind rage. I get a feeling most people I know got used to just smiling and nodding condescendingly. Well, the jokes on them because I recently discovered On Being a Shit and it’s nice knowing that my intuitive sense was on the right track. The crib notes version is that a Shit is someone who acts unkindly to another person, treats them like furniture is how I’d describe that, and then gets away with it. I don’t think I can sum it up without it sounding a bit too pop-psychology but you might find it enlightening.
Thanks Montag; looks useful.
PZ calling people abusive names?
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/04/witless_wanker_peddles_pablum.php
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/10/maher_really_is_a_moron_on_med.php
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/04/two_idiots_get_a_forum.php
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/10/what_did_america_do_to_deserve.php
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/05/idiot_america_new_and_expanded.php
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/07/geologists_get_to_suffer_with.php
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/02/richard_cohen_advocate_for_ign.php
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/03/episode_xxxix_play_spot_the_mo.php
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/11/dennett_harris_hitchens_vs_bot.php
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/06/in_which_i_have_hurt_ken_hams.php
I’m sure I could keep scrolling through these thousands of pages and if we want to include his viper pit, find countless thousands of abusive, often colorful, epithets used for religious people or conservatives or libertarians or any of a number of despised groups. One does not need to read much of PZ commentariat to know it’s filled with people who have little rhetorical restraint when it comes to epithets.
This isn’t to say that overall I don’t support PZ. I actually love PZ and am grateful to him for his role in the movement and as our most prominent voice. On net I think he does good. I even sometimes like the viper pit and learn from them when they actually make arguments instead of just froth. But abusive epithets cross the line and embarrass us and give the accommodationists and religionists moral ammunition against us.
(and no, I don’t think he’s too hard on religion or that he should mollycoddle religious people, just that he should use language more fitting an academic classroom than an elementary schoolyard. He constantly conflates criticisms of his abusive language for criticisms of the uncompromising character of his arguments. He may make as harsh and rationally groundable arguments as he likes. He just does not have to name call. It’s childish, it’s impolite, and it hurts our cause because it lets people think that the only possibilities are accommodationism or name calling. There’s a third way and it’s polite but uncompromising rational rigor that makes no unnecessary concessions to religion or woo or any other nonsense but treats religious people and those under the spell of woo respectfully, in the most bare minimum civil ways.
Hey, hey! Can’t wait to find out how to be a shit! Yes, it does sound useful. It’s a Bullshit detector! And shows you how to unmask them too. Just watch out, I’ll be on the prowl!
But you know, Camels with Hammers, it seems to me that we need colourful people like PZ. Sure, he calls people names.. I took a look at the first three of your links. The first called de Dora a witless wanker. Well, he had a point. De Dora did — I haven’t followed him much recently — start off with a lot of fuzzy, irrelevant talk that was more unhelpful than something straightforwardly astringent would have been. The second called Maher a moron on medicine, which he was, jumping on the anti-vaccination bandwagon, which was desperately unhelpful and no doubt cost a few lives. the third talks about the idiots Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron. When I first saw Ray Comfort’s banana gig I thought it was a parody. He is an idiot, so why not call him one? Not everyone has the gift of colourful speech. Let’s not take it away from them. It makes the world interesting. If we’re all talking academese, things will get a bit hard to take.
Great comments today.
The discussion of the arts being manipulative is interesting if only because it makes me want to notice that this post’s title comes from a wonderful Dickinson poem. (And, of course, Dickinson herself was a 19th century wink-and-a-nod deist—which is to say she was at best an agnostic. Her letters, in my opinion, reveal an atheist, but there’s smart folks who dispute that.)
Verbose Stoic:
Dawkins has said…that teaching your children your religion is child abuse.
Could you quote this from the God Delusion (or somewhere else) please? From memory Dawkins says that his brief experience of being embarrassingly fondled by some person did him less harm than being indoctrinated into a religion that would have him believe he was eternally stained with sin and worthless. Something that is quite different from what you’ve attributed to him.
The problem, Eric, is that the majority of people are intellectually mediocre and a sizable minority are pretty intellectually inferior even and to a lot of people in both of those groups, idiot, moron, retard, dumb, etc. are bullies’s words that have been used to abuse them at various times in their lives. Some people from these groups are prone to a whole lot of ressentiment against “intellectual elites” and rally behind the Sarah Palins and Ken Hams of the world to “show it” to those “know-it-alls”. If you call their champions idiots, they identify with the person being called an idiot, they won’t like you. And if they hold the same views as the prominent person who can take being called an idiot just fine, they will think you are calling them idiots too and they will not just take it fine. They will hear the eggheaded know-it-all-who-never-had-a-real-job-blah-blah-blah-stereotype-blah-blah-blah calling them an idiot. Period, that’s all they will hear. And even many smart people will just turn away repulsed, not because they’re scandalized by vigorous arguments but because childish namecalling is kind of beneath the kind of intellectual discourse they want to be engaged in and because they have sympathies for the “idiots” of the world as usually well-meaning people and don’t like seeing smart people preen over being able to beat them in an argument.
Of course this isn’t everybody. Some people will get whipped into shape. Some smart people will feel embarrassed to see a bad thought they had themselves called idiotic when someone else says it and feel pressure to correct themselves quickly. Some people will see beyond the insults and just listen to the arguments.
But throwing in name calling just draws sympathy of smart people to those poor ignorant under-educated intellectual mediocrities who are otherwise good people or ire from those “idiots” themselves.
Why do we need this in our movement? Every time I hear a conservative use the term “lib” as an abusive, I immediately flash back to Rush Limbaugh and get disgusted and tune out that conservative immediately.
The atheist movement does not need our most audible spokespeople to spread such cancerous, antisocial habits throughout our movement and embarrass us and make us a fringe. How far would gay acceptance had gone if the most prominent gay voices in the mainstream culture were calling heterosexuals “breeders”?
Not. far. at. all.
ack, I’m sorry about the blockquote fail. I’m in the habit of defaulting to HTML in other blogs’ commenting sections and always forget these superior tools B&W has to use! Could you fix it Ophelia?
Dawkins has said something like that in different places and in different contexts. He goes into it here: http://richarddawkins.net/articles/118-religion-39-s-real-child-abuse
Money quote:
Thanks for the links, however after reading the first couple i can not find where he insults all believers in a broad manner as you have claimed. I will continue reading however it would be much easier if you could point to the exact place where he does this.
After reading further it seems clear you didn’t read them before posting them.
Eric:
Actually Harry Frankfurter’s On Bullshit is the Bullshit detector. Primarily I’m using On Being A Shit as a scholarly justification for getting annoyed at the many trivial and enfuriating dehumanising injustices people inflict on each other every day like clipping their toenails in the kitchen, forcing me to squeeze past them when I’m trying to get off the bus or not realising that that two objects cannot pass through the exact same space and therefore standing to the one side on the stairs in the Tube for people passing the other way; it’s about all the little things I think people need to get angrier about.
What’s more amusing still is his name is Harry Frankfurt. I blame it on dinner.
Camels with Hammers:
Forgive me but I just want to give you a hug.
Maybe you know it’s not all apocalyptic? Maybe everything doesn’t hinge on every little word or decision and sometimes we need to just relax and realise that what we need is a range of responses.
My own suspicion though and partly my own experience is that nice doesn’t really cut it. You want nice you go to some twee half full Anglican service; you want converts and it’s impossible to argue with the Evangelicals success.
David all I accused PZ of was the following: “BUT, we have to be scrupulous about always attacking irrationalism and poorly formed beliefs without using words like moron or retard or idiot or other non-specific, broadly abusive terms about people’s intelligence. And to claim there is none of that from, say, PZ Myers and no Gnu Atheist ever did anything wrong on this account (except for some far flung post on some obscure atheist blog no one ever reads buried somewhere in the atheist blogroll) is to not want to seriously critically examine our own side.”
I said that we shouldn’t use broadly abusive terms while attacking irrationalism and poorly formed beliefs. I gave examples of such terms, including moron and idiot. I never said PZ slipped into the overgeneralization of all believers mistake, which is a distinct but related one that you need to read his comments section for usually.
You asked me for links in which PZ exhibited the behavior of which I accused him, I provided links of him calling individual people morons, idiots, wankers, etc. And that’s all I had accused him of.
And I did skim through the posts enough to make sure he was actually characterizing people as idiots, etc. And even came across wide generalizations about “idiot America”.
It’s simple, name calling doesn’t even belong on a school yard, let alone on the most prominent atheist blog in the land. It only makes us look bad to our enemies.
@ Camels with Hammers.
If I’m understanding you’re thinking correctly, you believe that PZ does make “harsh and rationally grounded arguments” but that doesn’t matter because people notice only the name-calling, and not the fact that he often concludes with it as a result of his “rationally grounded” criticism.
It seems reasonable to call a specific idea idiotic and explain why; attribute that idea to a person; say that person is being idiotic as it applies to their idea; and when that person’s name comes up again and again, as often happens, to short cut that progression and call them an idiot, expecting your readers to appreciate the context.
Don’t you think the problem is with the motivations of people who only criticize PZ for name-calling?
Maybe this doesn’t apply directly but recently an atheist friend of mine read an account of Crackergate–it happened to be Chris Mooney’s–citing it as evidence that some atheists were only interested in picking fights with religious people for no reason. This person had no idea that there was a back-story or a plainly stated motivation by “some professor from Minnesota” for provoking Catholics. You blame Mooney for lying by omission and my friend for not going to the original source. But blame Myers?
Scratch that, it doesn’t just make us look bad to our enemies—because really, I don’t actually care what a Kirk Cameron or a Ken Ham or a Ray Comfort or a Rick Warren or the Pope thinks of us, as I have as much contempt for them as PZ does.
What I care about is the persuadable middle who find unnecessary meanness of language demeaning and are led to sympathize with the bullied.
Look, calling the person an idiot is just a meanspirited and insulting thing to do which alienates people who have common decency, especially when they aren’t much disposed to like you already (regardless of whether those reasons are themselves unfair). But, more to the point, I don’t care if you show me everything someone just said is upsides down and backwards and wrong in 15 different ways. You haven’t proven to me this person is an idiot or earned the right to treat him abusively even if you have.
Isaac Newton believed in astrology. He wasn’t an idiot. Wagner believed in proto-Nazi racist horseshit. He wasn’t an idiot. Plenty of brilliant people have made dunderheaded arguments. Their arguments or their conclusions may be idiotic but they are not. The human brain is really complex. It is capable of some real genius and some real buffoonery, even in the case of the same brain. In fact, I’m pretty sure you and I and even the smartest and best educated people on the planet have more than a fair share of idiotic mistakes sitting in our heads right now or that we have done some wildly idiotic things. It takes a lot of chutzpha to designate someone else as an idiot.
But even if PZ really can tell that Kirk Cameron is really an idiot—he really is a likely candidate, what does it add to our understanding of the truth? If PZ can give us all the facts that show Cameron is wrong. If PZ can prove a case that Cameron omits facts he knows and is being willfully dishonest and if PZ can demonstrate that Cameron has obtusely ignored key counterarguments and argues in bad faith, etc. Why not stop there? Saying Cameron is ignorant of the facts, dishonest, and argues in bad faith is enough. Conclusion: Cameron is wrong and guilty of dishonest behavior. Adding as your “conclusion”: “Cameron is an idiot” is just a way of saying “Fuck you Kirk Cameron”. It adds nothing of substance intellectually. It’s superfluous and just makes you look impolite and like you need to incorporate abusive bullying.
And less educated people on a given topic trying to figure out who to trust might very well mistrust the person who resorts to bullying. Since usually bullies are covering up for inadequacies. In PZ’s case, he’s just a gratuitous bully. He beats you on the merits but then has to showboat about how bad you got beat. Because, you know what’s really persuasive to people in the middle? Sore winners.
Look, I cheer on PZ as he eviscerates many an insulting piece of gibberish from the other side, just as much as the next serious atheist does. But I wince when he talks like an 8 year old bully. It’s not clever. It is embarrassing.
And, also, PZ does not just “conclude” with “so and so is an idiot”—half those posts above put it right in the title. And often he opens up the post with a whole substance free little discourse about what an idiot he’s about to talk to before he even dives into the substance. It’s not a fair way of discoursing and it distracts people who care about fairness from paying attention when the argument finally comes. And I understand it. Maybe some days Rush Limbaugh makes good arguments—do you think I am going to stick around to listen after he insults me? Do you think if he brings up a fact or a theory of events that upsets my worldview that I’m likely to give it credence or dismiss it since it’s coming from a hateful slimeball?
When you resort to lowball rhetoric, you hand the human mind that looks for confirmations of all its biases a ready excuse to ignore you the first time it wants to.
It’s a bad strategy. Abandoning it loses us nothing. We can still argue forcefully while being respectful. Not name calling is not the same thing as pretending there is any credence behind creationism or belief in God guided evolution or the special wisdom of the Bible or anything else that is false.
I think some people criticize PZ for the name-calling because they think anything else he adds can be found elsewhere and that it does more harm than good. I disagree with them but I can see how they make the judgment.
I think others like Chris Mooney are not interested in truth and PZ calling people names gives them an easy way to conflate taking the truth seriously with being a gratuitous ass hole about it. Yeah, Mooney’s disreputable. Does that mean that PZ has to hand him ammunition? Does that mean PZ has to constantly conflate toughness of argument with incivility of word choice so that our enemies can go on conflating them and dismissing tough arguments as just mean words?
I’ll say it one last time so I stop repeating myself ad nauseum here. Abusive language distracts from arguments whether or not it should. It just does and is foolish on that account. And it’s an irrational, emotionalistic way to make appeals, which should be beneath a defender of reason and science. The arguments should be sufficient. And coming from a PhD to non-PhDs, it’s contemptuous bullying treatment towards people below one’s rank. It stinks to everyone but PZ’s base.
No, I supported Myers in crackergate and whatever Myers’s wrongs are they don’t make Mooney right (and vice versa). I’m not talking about acts of defiance in the name of the right to “blaspheme”, I’m talking about treating people, not religious symbols or institutions, etc. abusively.
On the child abuse thing, AC Grayling does pretty much think that socialising children into a religion is child abuse, and he gives reasons. But even he acknowledges the problems with treating it like more obvious kinds of child abuse and simply banning it. People who worry about the religious socialisation of children are not fools.
But Dawkins does not claim that merely socialising children into a religion is child abuse. I am sick to death of people lazily or dishonestly making that allegation about Dawkins. He’s answered it over and over again. It’s this sort of laziness or dishonesty that gets me exasperated and leads me to express my exasperation, which I then feel bad about because I’d really like to conduct the debate in a cool, calm way. But it would really help me, and others, do that if our opponents were more intellectually scrupulous.
What Dawkins objects to is not parents A and B socialising their child, C, into their religion, D. By and large he accepts that that’s their right in a liberal society. He objects to the rest of us labelling C as a D-ist child when she is still too young to have made any rational choice. It’s as if we just assume that any child born in a D-ist household is a D-ist and will grow up to have D-ist views. But of course the child has every right in a liberal society to reject the views of her parents, and she may choose to do so as she matures (even if this is statistically unlikely). Dawkins thinks we should treat young children as individuals who have their own decisions to make about matters of religion, irrespective of what their parents might be teaching them. When we fail to do so, and label a young child as a D-ist – and treat her accordingly, rather than as an individual – that is, according to Dawkins, a form of child abuse.
The other point made by Dawkins is that it depends on the content of the religion. He doesn’t think that merely socialising a child into the parents’ religion is child abuse. Not without more. But what if the particular religion involves, say, terror of Hell? What if the child is subjected, from an early age, to stories of being tortured for eternity in hellfire? In those circumstances, Dawkins, thinks, religious socialisation is indeed abusive.
Whether or not you agree with Dawkins’ position, it’s a subtle one. He spells it out in his writings, making appropriate concessions and qualifications as he almost always does, and has, as I said, clarified it many times. And yet, we still people misrepresenting him: claiming, with an air of confidence, that Dawkins thinks merely socialising a child into a religion is child abuse.
Thanks for that clarifying post, Russell.
I am puzzled though what is entailed in “labeling” the child and “treating the child as such” that makes this child abuse which is not also assumed to be entailed in socialization and which is so clearly abusive while all the other aspects of socializing someone into a religion are not.
Maybe the distinction is just really subtle, but it sounds to me like a distinction without a difference, or at least without a significant enough of a difference to still alarm and offend religious parents and make them fear the laws a Dawkins inspired atheist legislature would someday enact. Feel free to just send me to helpful links if this is all spelled out in a hundred places and it’s too tedious to go through it again!
That Guy Montag: I’m not sure that you can, at least not just being reasonable. But I’m not sure that you can convince him with insults either, and am quite sure that it won’t make him change his mind for rational reasons; he’ll be just as immune to evidence and argumentation as he ever was, but will just be accepting a different belief, the one you espouse.
Russell Blackford: I just skimmed the relevant chapter in “The God Delusion” and the link Andy Dufresne provided, and in both he isn’t clear on where he draws the line. He certainly thinks that teaching them about hell and eternal damnation is a problem, but he also talks a lot about indoctrination and some of the consequences of that as well and doesn’t distinguish all that well where that stops or where that fits. The quote about there being degrees confuses it as well since if hell is the top tier, there’s a lot of room for other mental abuse as well. And the arguments about the “Christian child” seem to be more of a reaction to thinking it acceptable to indoctrinate them into it when they can’t choose for themselves, not just a reaction to the name. If it’s just a reaction to us calling them that, then it seems he’s greatly overstating things to call it child abuse. At least railing against the indoctrination is a credible point worth considering. And here’s a telling quote: “Our society, including the non-religious sector, that it is normal and right to indoctrinate tiny children in the religion of their parents, and to slap religious labels on them …” [The God Delusion, pg 381 – 382 in the paperback edition]. It sounds to me like he’s complaining about the labels legitimizing the indoctrination with should neither be normal or right.
At any rate, though, you’ve cited enough to support my case; he does indeed consider raising a child Catholic with the attendant beliefs related to hell to be child abuse, which means that he does think that if I raised my child Catholic that would be child abuse. If he really thinks it such, then it’s not consistent of him to not want it stopped, even by legal force. Does he actually mean it? Don’t know. But that would be the point of this comment thread.
(BTW, if Dawkins has clarified this in more detail elsewhere, I would appreciate seeing it; I haven’t read that much of him outside of the book.)
To be honest, I like PZ and don’t see his language as abusive, but simply honest. Brutal honesty. I’ve seen the kind of language used by accommodationists or believers, which can be ridiculously nasty, and it’s different, it’s hateful and bigoted toward the person rather than their stupid opinions. There’s a huge difference between the two, and we should consider the source whenever judging whether insults are justified or not.
He’s clarified it repeatedly in interviews and speeches, many of which are available on YouTube or on his site. He’s also said things in articles and on his TV programs. It would take me days of work to track it down for you. But you see, you have to do some of your own research before you make wild allegations, as you did in this thread.
I also think it’s absolutely clear in the chapter that he does not say “Socialising children into the parents’ religion is child abuse in itself.” Obviously he’d consider the famous hellfire sermon scene in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man to be an example of child abuse, and to the extent that the Roman Catholic Church still does this sort of thing he’d consider it to be engaging in child abuse. However, that’s hardly an extreme position! Surely all reasonable people who are not in the grip of the religious doctrine concerned would think this is actually correct. James Joyce is obviously presenting what happens in that scene as abusive. Most readers of Joyce would agree.
When you look at what Dawkins actually says it is nothing as simple as the extreme-sounding “Socialising children into a religion is child abuse.” He makes specific claims with qualifications attached to them, and he obviously sees a range of cases. Even if all his qualifications and nuances leave you unsure where he draws the line … well, shouldn’t that lead you to say that you’re not sure where he draws the line? You could say that Dawkins says: “Some kinds of religious indoctrination are child abuse.” You could add that he develops a carefully qualified and nuanced position, even if you also say you find it confusing. That would seem like the intellectually honest thing to say. The trouble is, of course, that when you put it that way it’s obvious that Dawkins is being reasonable and trying to be careful. At worse, he is insufficiently clear – and even that is not surprising, because of course it’s going to be difficult to draw a precise line with something like this.
<blockquote>You haven’t proven to me this person is an idiot or earned the right to treat him abusively even if you have.</blockquote>
Hold on. Where have I condoned abuse or claimed that someone is an idiot?
First off, saying “fuck you” is not the same as “abusive bullying.” No way no how.
Second, I think you’d be hard pressed to show by example how PZ fits the definition of a bully. His title of PhD does put him in a position of power on the internet, either.
Third, when he engages in the apparently highly unproductive and offensive act of name-calling he’s not speaking for anyone else but himself. From what I’ve seen when he’s been invited to give public talks on behalf of some humanist, science or secularist organization he rarely engages, if ever, in name-calling. He also refrains from doing so in his class-room in his role as a professor.
<blockquote>It adds nothing of substance intellectually. It’s superfluous and just makes you look impolite and like you need to incorporate abusive bullying.</blockquote>
Is it ever okay in your opinion to ridicule and mock dishonest debators such as Kirk Cameron and Ken Ham? Those were people you linked to as evidence of PZ’s bullying behavior. Why do you think mocking them will make the undecided readers on PZ’s blog (if such people exist) turn against his atheist awareness and/or pro-science cause?
Yes, the difference is between calling an idea stupid and calling a person stupid, between calling an idea ridiculous (or ridiculing it as part of demonstrating its absurdity) and ridiculing the person who advances the idea. PZ by not just calling ideas false or ridiculous but those who advance them idiots and morons crosses that line. And while it may be true that accommodationists and believers are just worse at this, my suspicion, in lieu of the kind of exhausting, objective data that does not exist, is that you read PZ’s epithets sympathetically because you agree with him and you take umbrage at the accommodationists’ and the religionists’ personal attacks because they are aimed at you and those you identify with.
Name-calling is name-calling. When your argument is “my name-callers are less hateful about it”, it’s likely that’s just your prejudice talking.
Re PZ’s use of insults & whether it turns people off…
The example of how Sarah Palin’s supporters just cling more closely to her when others insult her is generally accurate so when PZ insults Ray Comfort or other specific high-profile individuals, it is not likely to persuade their immediate followers. Okay, I’ll grant that.
But is this really his audience? I don’t think so. I think he’s writing to the much larger group of people who have not yet drunk the Kool Aid, who may be evaluating arguments and who can still be reached by persuasion and who are averse to mockery (rather than thrive on it, solidifying ingroup/outgroup distinctions). To these people, his form of no-prisoner’s truth-telling and humour may be very compelling.
I don’t see any reason to think that a different style of dialogue would be any more convincing to the true believers and could be a less convincing to the undecided. I know that his form of writing is very compelling to the converted and the still closeted, far more than some mealy mouthed blather.
A big question I ask myself is: what level of respect are people like Ray Comfort really entitled to? They show no concern for truth, science, reason, evidence or education and continue repeating lies long after they’ve been corrected. Does anyone really believe that they deserve respect, or that treating them seriously would reduce (rather than enhance) their pernicious influence?
The “You” in what you quoted was the general You. It was not aimed at you you.
An abusive bully can use the phrase “fuck you” as well as any other. Yes, there are other ways to use the term. It’s hard to see the word “idiot” as not a bully word though. It sort of comes from childhood bullies, doesn’t it?
He uses bullies’ rhetorical tactics, that’s all I’m saying. You don’t have to have official powers to do that. No one appoints schoolyard bullies head of anything and yet they treat people abusively by calling them names.
Good for him, I’m sure he also doesn’t call his wife names or his mailman names or his kids names or his friends names.
What does any of this have to do with the name calling on his blog? Does it make it go away? Does it make it represent atheism less poorly just because he’s polite in private and professional in the classroom? Should I poll Rush Limbaugh’s intimate acquaintances before getting angry at the way he talks about people like me on his talk show?
Yes, ridicule and mock every stupid idea and call every dishonest thing they do dishonest. Just make it about beliefs and objective deeds, not about people. That’s the polite distinction. I’m not asking him to go easy, I’m just asking him to trust the merits alone to beat people.
I don’t see why the converted and the closeted won’t be satiated with vigorous, rigorous, well-worded argument. You can be entertaining without being insulting.
As for the middle, the middle identifies people who throw epithets as extremists. The middle is largely disposed against us from the start because the middle thinks the moderate thing to do is to be for both science and religion as the way to be inclusive and open minded and “live and let live”. The middle is more likely than anyone to hear dismissals of people as idiots and think they’re just reading an extremist who must not get subtleties or be interested in understanding sophisticated people but picks on hacks instead and calls them idiots.
The middle has mainstream views on politeness. They already maddeningly think it’s rude even to question religion. Throw in some epithets and you confirm their prejudice, you keep the link tight in their mind between questioning religion and being rude.
Forgot to address this. Call him someone who argues in bad faith, call him dishonest with links to all the evidence. Do this every time his name comes up if you like. It’s different than name-calling, it’s factual and doesn’t turn off reasonable people.
Verbose:
The legal standard for child abuse already rules out some stuff many folks would consider abuse. And that’s as it should be. Which is to say, just because I consider something harmful, that doesn’t automatically mean I think it should be illegal. The legal standard for what constitutes actionable child abuse rules out various forms of verbal abuse that most people would agree are terribly harmful to the child. But making such conduct against the law might create more problems than it solves. In order for child abuse laws to have any practicality (not to mention enforceability), they have to rule out milder forms of what most would consider abuse.
Have jettisoned my unfinished but funny comment on the missing parallels between the overweight and believers because while I was napping it passed its sell-by date.
However… I heartily concur that many good things have been said above. I appreciate also that Camels with Hammers has joined in and can see where he’s coming from in his comments about PZ’s choice of language. But a couple of things jump out at me:
and
There is a large spectrum of ways in which an atheist with self-respect can express her/himself nowadays, i.e. an age where actual punishment for simply admitting to being an atheist is rare in the western world. Some people may see the above quotes and the way PZ sometimes expresses himself as adjoining on the same extreme end of the spectrum, PZ just over the line, the other not quite crossing it. I see them pretty much as the opposing ends of the spectrum (if self-respect is key here).
Meaning, what arguably really sets our current era of atheism apart from those previous is the break from the idea that some respect for religion must be maintained even while firmly disagreeing with it and debunking it. Dawkins has pointed out how furious criticism over things like politics or the arts can be without anyone bursting a blood vessel about “tone.” I’m not at all saying everyone (on the atheist side) should be like the “worst” of PZ, but I am saying that invoking respect is highly problematic, because, in a certain sense, it concedes religion one of its strongest defences, an armour that can be impenetrable, if we shy away, in only this case, from the idea that respect is given only where deserved. By all means, judge on a case by case basis; why be rude to an opponent who is both sincere and obviously respectful of your own views? But I think PZ does do this. As to the fringes, the commenters, I don’t think it can be controlled, just as it doesn’t get controlled on the other side, either. We shouldn’t be attacked or judged for their existence, just as I’m sure no one on our side is anti-religious primarily because of Dennis Markuze. Why bother with him, when you have the pope and any number of imams who do command the respect of millions as targets?
While I was typing, Tyro said part of what I was aiming at, and Camels talked about the line PZ crosses between ridiculing ideas and those who hold them. Again, it’s a judgement call, but should anyone be able to claim immunity from derision because the ideas are (arguably) stupider than the person holding them?
You can’t hide behind respect. And if you can, then we sure as hell ought to be able to do so, too. And we sure as hell can’t.
There is a spectrum among our opponents. I’m not sure Dennis Markuze and the pope are necessarily at opposing ends of it. But there is no “one size fits all” kind of criticism. If you can’t insult someone, it can seem like a giveaway that you take them seriously (cf. Mel Brooks and Nazis). We should save the taking seriously for those who deserve it and not let anyone think we’ve conceded anything to those who don’t.
Good thread. Wish I could keep up with it.
Thanks, Stewart. To be abundantly clear, my point is not that religious people qua religious people deserve any special respect. I am as adamantly opposed to that as any other Gnu Atheist. I also adamantly reject the idea that religious ideas deserve any special respect either.
But religious people qua people deserve respect. That’s civility in the Enlightened world. We all get respect just for being people. That’s basic human decency. That’s the principle that we invoke for our right to speak as atheists. It’s a bonus that we deserve to speak because we are also, in fact, correct. But even if we were the loony ones with crazy theories, we would deserve to be treated as people and not personally demeaned.
Would we deserve our ideas to be treated as though they are true or plausible when they’re not? No, and religious people’s ideas do not deserve any such respect either. But religious people, like all other people deserve to be treated respectfully.
Of course what this means can vary a good deal and people can be treated roughly sometimes consistent with respect. It’s okay sometimes to lose one’s temper or whatever. But the name-calling as a modus operandi is methodical disrespect and I think it’s unjustified and undermines the cause.
Forgot a couple of key points in Stewart’s remarks: On Dawkins’s remarks about what it is polite to talk about, yes, people do get upset about acerbic name-calling political discourse. It’s a mess. Yes, people find some political pundits to be extremists who only throw red meat to the closed-minded. PZ is a terrific writer, right about a ton of stuff, I don’t want him to be rightly classified and stigmatized in the Limbaugh bin when he could have wider respectability.
We should not emulate the lowest forms of political discourse when dragging religion into the sphere of political discourse. It does not make us look like the champions of reason against irrationality but just another extremist group if we do that. Let’s be as rationality based as possible and give them no excuses to ignore us with bad behavior.
And, yes, PZ’s viper pit and all over the top atheists who are bad at using qualifying adjectives when describing religious people represent us. Whether or not people should judge us by our meanest links, in the case of atheism those are the ones they come away complaining about. Either we take this PR issue seriously and think about ways to still be out and proud and argumentative atheists in ways that neutralize this meme that we are unnecessarily extreme in our meanness or we just keep giving accommodationists and religionists a cudgel to beat us with.
We’re all responsible, we all have effects.
Russell Blackford: If it would take you days to find one good example — which is all I asked — then it’s a bit much to say that I’m in any way dishonest or lacking in research for not having seen it. But at this point, I really don’t care; even your interpretation proves my point, and the quote from Andy Dufresne shows that it isn’t only the extreme cases of hellfire that he cares about.
Andy Dufresne: Maybe he doesn’t think that the law can get involved, but he does really think it should be stopped. I suppose religion has the history of imposing itself working to make it doing that again more credible, but when Dawkins wants to attach the behaviour to something that we generally do want to stop using any means necessary it might make one suspicious. I’m not claiming that he’s just waiting for atheism to really get power to do these things, but more that his rhetoric is aiming for a strong moral stance that can lead to that, just as much as the strong moral stance of religion can lead to that.
Stewart,
If I recall correctly, wasn’t Dawkins comparing it to politics and critics? Politics is known for being very nasty, very partisan, and basically a dirty and rude field, and critics are generally known for being, well, critical. Neither of those are good examples of how you want to proceed when you want to convince people based on rationality or when you want to show any respect at all.
Thanks Camels (or may I just say Dan?).
Let’s leave all nitpicking aside and make a blanket assumption that everything in your last comment is reasonable and not a cause for contention. That will leave us free to deal with the question about the size of the phenomenon to which you refer. Is it PZ all the time? Is it only PZ? He can express himself quite superlatively without resorting to insults, which makes me think he does have an intention when he’s less polite. Is the negative stereotype of Gnus somehow frothing at the mouth at all a true one? I’ll be up front; I wouldn’t be at B&W as often as I am if it met that stereotype. I do comment very rarely at Pharyngula, because PZ gives very free rein to the commenters and I feel I am less clearly heard in all the noise than I am here. But I read him just as often as I do Ophelia; it’s not a fair comparison, as I feel the characters of the blogs are so different.
Of course, I’m not happy if I see someone ostensibly on my side write or comment in a way that could lead to unflattering generalisations that reach all the way to me. I don’t deny the existence of the problem, but I see it as existing on the margins (by which I don’t mean it’s marginal). I think the most well-known names on our side give us no cause for shame or embarrassment. This is probably an argument that will continue, because someone who feels release at spewing epithets (I really don’t think this describes PZ) is unlikely to read or fully take in your reasoned arguments against the practice. I hate to divide our minority camp still further, but would it help to make a distinction between Gnu Atheists and Tourette’s Atheists?
As I’ve explained before calling say Ken Ham an idiot in the context of already having critiqued his arguments, called him on his lies and basically done the hard work elsewhere is reasonable, because your audience knows you’re discussing Ham’s position on evolution (lies) and atheists (going to burn in hell) specifically. This is what I see Myers doing and this is not bullying.
<blockquote>He uses bullies’ rhetorical tactics, that’s all I’m saying.</blockquote>
No, what you said was this.
<blockquote> In PZ’s case, he’s just a gratuitous bully.</blockquote>
May I remind you, this name-calling as a placeholder for criticizing ideas (or debating tactics in this case) is what you are currently chastising others for.
Again, I’m saying using the bully’s language is the bullying, regardless of whether there’s other good, substantive context there. On that point, I guess you and I just disagree.
Well, if you gave the full context of that quote I was not saying that PZ was “just a gratuitous bully” in the sense of saying that’s all he is and dismissing him. I was contrasting him with bullies who use bully tactics to substitute for inadequacies. I was giving PZ credit for having actual arguments and not needing to bully anyone but bullying just gratuitously, i.e. unnecessarily.
But, yes, a fairer way to word the point would have been “PZ just bullies gratuitously” so that the emphasis was on his activity and not a description of him himself where it could be taken not as I meant it (that that’s all he is and should be dismissed as such).
Verbal Stoic:
I was thinking of the Dawkins point in the sense of the social convention of treating religion with kid gloves, when the gloves are constantly off in other fields.
General point about bullying: When I was a child a bully was someone who went after those who were weaker and less able to defend themselves. How can PZ, or anyone, be bullying religion or those with the backing of its institutions?
Myers represents himself on his blog. He never claimed to be speaking for all atheist and scientists. He’s one loud voice. And it should be pretty obvious that using Limbaugh is a bad comparison because he lies about his opponents and their positions before calling them names. This should make all the difference in the world.
I’d be delighted :)
Yes, but I don’t see where those intentions justify the behavior. And, yes, he does not do it in every post (mercifully), but I’m also not picking on something comes up only rarely or in the heat of passion. It’s something he’s quite deliberate about when he does it and something he has specifically defended doing. We all get worked up. I’m sure if you scoured my Facebook page where I let loose a little more since it’s less public and often I have personal relationships with more of the people I address that allow for a little more familiar tones, I’ve gone too far in some arguments. I’m sure even on my blog where I try to be more polite because it’s a public forum, I’ve probably gotten carried away a few times.
But I don’t defend it as a matter of principle or conflate it with the practice of giving harsh criticism itself and that’s where I find PZ especially problematic and his viper pit usually unreadable.
HA, yes, part of me wouldn’t mind splintering off and stigmatizing that the Tourette’s subset of us. But, on the other hand, I also don’t want to alienate them but would rather talk reason into them instead of encouraging them to identify themselves around their belligerence. I have even been known to deliberately friend the most acerbic atheists I find on Facebook since I would rather be part of the dialogues that have them than that they only associate with others with Tourette’s.
Because I’m also an anti-religion atheist, I have a soft spot for them even when they go too far. I’m glad to see them get it out, glad to see them liberated to burst out all that pent up frustration with religion, glad just to see they are atheists. My Id identifies with them even as I wince at their extremism. But, yeah, ultimately, I hope they move beyond it and treat people civilly and develop more nuanced views on religion and the world.
And, for the record, I too would never classify PZ as a Tourette’s atheist. He just throws red meat to them sometimes.
Since he will be taken to speak for us or, at least, will in fact just represent us in many people’s minds due to the unique size of his platform, he does accrue some responsibilities regardless of whether he intends them. If in fact people will interpret what you say as representing a group, it does not matter what you intend to do, in their minds you are representing that group and you should take that seriously if you care about that group.
Dan,
All points noted. I also look forward to the day when outbursts will seem more gratuitous to all of us. I have to recognise that at least some of it is pent-up pressure from the onslaughts of religion. I also don’t know how many online Tourette’s Atheists are writing from locations where they are scared to admit their atheism in daily life, maybe not even to close family. Let’s not discount this.
re: Facebook. A (religious) FB friend, maybe a year ago, posted something on her status about defriendings she hadn’t noticed at first. I chimed in that it had also happened to me and she came back with (more or less) “no mystery why in your case; your profile says you’re an atheist.”
And that right there is why any atheist, no matter how acerbic, has a friend in me on Facebook. We need to stick together. We also need to hold each other to high standards, but we need to stick together.
Name-calling is a tactic bullys use. If you do it, regardless of context, you must be a bully.
If this is your position–and if I haven’t oversimplified it–then I guess we have to agree to disagree.
Well, you are doing a characteristically bully thing. I don’t know if that makes you a bully in your essence, but that’s just probably semantics.
I am trying to think of an instance in which calling someone an idiot is not the verbal equivalent of shoving them, demeaning them, trying to marginalize them, and trying to emotionally get control over them. All the cases I can think of, even when the less powerful use invective against the more powerful and it’s a kind of moral bullying, have this “bullying” character to them in my mind. It’s certainly not respectful.
Ah well. We can’t agree on everything, I guess. At least we still have that “there is no God” thing, right? :)
I have huge admiration for PZ and really have no objection to his calling Ken Ham or Terry Eagleton (people who can look after themselves) idiots, but I did cringe – and cross swords with him – when he held up for mockery a woman from Eastern Europe whose son had some rare disease that, the son’s doctor happened to discover, could only be treated in America, and so she and her husband sold many of the animals on their small farm to raise the money for the operation (which, so far as I know, was successful); the woman felt that God’s hand must have been involved in her son’s doctor going to some conference and coming across an American doctor who told him where her son’s illness could be treated.
With great power comes great responsibility. I get that.
But what you seem to be suggesting is a Catch 22. Pharyngula’s popularity grew first from the owner’s assertiveness and bare-knuckle rhetoric (it filled a niche). With breakout popularity in the mainstream media from speaking engagements, crackergate and “expelled from expelled” you’re now implying he should tone down some of that rhetoric (if he cares about that group) because it’s harmful. This would undoubtedly be seen as selling out by many in that group and it’s essentially the self-censorship that Mooney has been insisting he do for years now.
Well doing the right thing means certain sacrifices sometimes.
I don’t think though that he has to be any less assertive or bare knuckled in the ways that really matter. Again, it’s the false conflation that Mooney and Myers both accept that thinks there is a necessary connection between toughmindedness towards bad arguments and the willing to resort to insults.
But let’s say PZ does see these arguments and thinks that as a mainstream representative he should drop the insults. I don’t think that’s capitulating to Mooney, I think it’s recognizing his larger audience and how to serve it better and not alienate a large chunk of it unnecessarily. He should be willing to alienate those who cannot handle true criticism of religion or arguments for atheism but not those who just want civil discourse.
And really I think his other stunts which demonstrate the right to free speech, the right to blasphemy, the right to bury a Koran and a Bible in one’s backyard, etc. will more than suffice to keep his reputation as dangerous.
And I wholly agree with “Camels with Hammers” in his criticism of Dawkins’s provocativeness, as well as with the palaeontologist Richard Fortey when he remarked on the ‘macho’ aspects of RD’s writings. RD may be soft-spoken, but there’s a fair bit of aggression there. And, having said that, I have to say also that I have read virtually all of RD’s books and, despite such reservations as I have given above, I have in general great admiration for them.
Frankly I’m not sure what to make of the criticisms of Richard Dawkins. I do think it’s a little strange that people criticise others for not writing perfect books. So there are extra arguments he could address; there are always extra arguments you could address. What I will say is that whatever your concerns it’s hard to fault the man for being anything other than a glorious writer. The Greatest Show on Earth was my first experience with him as a science writer and there’s no denying he has a wonderful ability for choosing evocative and compelling metaphors and analogies. I respect anyone who can write that well.
As for the religion as child abuse claims sure someone might take them as being provocative but it’s been argued in this same thread that sometimes provacative claims need to be out there to get the debate going. Regardless of how it gets perceived I think there needs to be a genuine understanding about the rights of children regarding self-determination and I’m not going to let some people choosing to misunderstand that legitimate concern in order to nurse their own petty sense of grievance hijack a legitimate debate.
I’ll also second Russell on Dawkins. You’ll forgive me if I don’t throw out examples Verbose, but I do happen to have a life and unless the interview I’m looking for is in the first page of a Google search I don’t generally feel compelled to spend too much more time searching for it though if I need to write something official that isn’t a blog comment I’ll make more of an effort. In any case I am aware of one discussion he had with a Roman Catholic though I can’t remember the name, and what struck me was that he very quickly granted the claim that a parent has a right to teach their own child what they choose. I think that’s a contestable claim and I feel his argument would have been stronger if he’d challenged that; it certainly would have been consistent with the position he’s taken. I don’t think I’m wrong in thinking that suggests he’s at the very least conflicted about the principle.
Camel:
I’m reminded here of the interminable philosophical discussions trying to appease The Sceptic. Some might think the sceptic is a bit of a bogeyman because no one in their day to day lives would take serious the person suggesting that we’re all really brains in a vat or that there really is no good reason not to steal lunch money from school children. Aren’t we in danger of creating our own bogeyman in the form of the “Convincable Middle?”
And a final point: what do we make of the conversions?
Verbose Stoic It would take me days partly because there is so much of it, not because there is so little of it, as I made clear. Yes, I could go and rewatch television shows and look at YouTube to find you examples, but why should I? It wouldn’t be obvious to me which are the correct ones to provide the best examples of where he discusses this point. It’s not like having a book where I can just look up the index to see where it is discussed. Meanwhile, you are just as capable of looking as I am. If you think I’m lying about what he has said in interviews, etc., then so be it, but I don’t make a habit of lying.
I have, however, taken an hour or more to reread and make some notes on the relevant chapter of The God Delusion. That should be quite enough for you. What I find is not the claim that socialising a child into the parents’ religion, or as you put it “teaching your religion to your children”, is child abuse. I find over 30 large-format pages with far more nuanced claims and arguments (and digressions and ponderings) than that.
However, Dawkins makes it clear on page 315 what his main purpose is in the chapter. Sure enough it is to “question” the practice of labelling children “as possessors of beliefs that they are too young to have thought about”. He does in fact call this “a form of child abuse” on the same page.
Perhaps my being correct on that suggests I might know what I’m talking about here. I do, in fact, know what Dawkins’ position is on this matter. He then discusses “ordinary” forms of sexual and other physical abuse, but argues on pages 317-25 that terrorising children with stories of Hell can be a form of psychological abuse that is worse (while noting that the Catholic Church supposedly does not make as much of Hell as it once did). He says that this kind of thing is, indeed, a form of child abuse. I agree with him, but of course it’s again consistent with what I told you of his actual position.
There’s then a thoughtful discussion of Nicholas Humphreys’ views on pages 325-331. This is the passage that goes closest to supporting you, but it’s actually rather inconclusive and meditative. The closest Dawkins comes is when he admits to feeling queasy about the Amish having the right to bring up their children in a way that largely cuts them off from mainstream society. I also feel queasy about the Yoder case, as, notoriously, did Joel Feinberg, as do many other people. At this point, Dawkins has said nothing about socialising a child into your religion being ipso facto child abuse, though he does give examples where the specific content of someone’s religion made it harmful – as in one ancient cult where it involved human sacrifice.
He then spends several pages attacking the teaching of creationism in schools, and government support to schools that do this – while noting that many clergymen agree with his position (as do I).
On pages 337- 340 he returns to the issue of labelling children, which I mentioned. But all he actually asks us to do, after batting it around for a few pages, is wince when we see/hear it (page 338-40). Then (pages 340-42) he concludes with a discussion of the importance of teaching the Bible as part of our inherited literary culture.
The fact is, you’ve been caught out. You’ve been caught out because you made a wild claim which you would have known was false if you’d actually followed Dawkins’ pronouncements over the years – watching his TV shows, looking at his interviews .. or simply reading chapter 9 of The God Delusion at all carefully or the slightest bit charitably or with any sense of its tone and nuances. Even without doing much homework, you should have known you were wrong and that what I told you about Dawkins’ position was correct.
You should be retracting the remark I pulled you up on and apologising for your error. Instead, you keep trying to twist things to show that you were somehow “correct” after all. But you weren’t: Dawkins has not argued for the bald position you attributed to him. He has, in fact, put the much more nuanced, specific, and defensible positions that I attributed to him. Those positions may have implications that you dislike (they may not even reflect my exact position, which is another story). They may entail that quite a bit of teaching by those religious parents who take the doctrine of Hell seriously actually is abuse. But that’s what I said: it depends on the content of what is taught. It’s not the same thing at all as the claim that you made in #48 about what Dawkins says, and which I disputed.
If you are an intellectually honest person, you’ll concede this point and you’ll never again make a claim to the effect that Dawkins says: “teaching your religion to your children is child abuse.” That is not what he said in The God Delusion or any of the relevant interviews, etc., that I mentioned, and you cannot honestly still maintain that it is what he said.
Meanwhile, others reading this can go and read Chapter 9 of The God Delusion for themselves to see what Dawkins actually argues, what he wonders about, and what conclusions he actually reaches. The very last paragraph is especially interesting for those who see him as lacking subtlety and nuance.
If there is no convincable middle, then we are all seriously wasting our time. But I don’t think we are. Long, protracted debates about ideas do have major influence over time.
What of them? Just because some people see the light using PZ’s tactics they’re necessarily and in every respect above reproach. I have said many approving things about PZ in the above comments. I have never denied he does a lot of good and has a lot of valuable effects. I have even mentioned there are some people who respond to being treated roughly. But surely we can acknowledge that even successful people can improve and can stop doing immoral things even if they are integral to that success (though I really doubt that the magic power of epithets is PZ’s indispensable secret weapon—and if it really is the only way to deconvert people, that’s truly depressing).
Unless of course by “Convincable Middle” I mean the hypothetical person that keeps getting referred to who isn’t one way or the other inclined but gets so incensed by the tone of some commentator they jump to the other side.
As for conversions maybe it seems like a small thing, but it is real and this other group not so much unless it’s the already religious criticising us for not valorising faith enough, or fellow Atheists who I can’t help but feel are being a touch contrarian. I don’t disagree with contrarianism but, you know at some point it might better just to call it a day and get a beer with some mates and not worry too much.
The Guy Montag,
As I said earlier, I’m actually don’t think Dawkins is that bad. I do think he has a tendency — as others have said — to aim more for phrasing things in a nicely rhetorical way as opposed to the way that best explains his point, and he sometimes jumps the gun with the mockery, but I wouldn’t put him in the category deserving excessive criticism; he doesn’t come across as a total jerk.
But just as you don’t really see the need to look up a bunch of interviews for a blog comment, I’d ask for the same courtesy, especially when it’s other people telling me “There’s other evidence out there, go find it!”. If you think there is something that would make me change my mind, then the onus is not on me to seek it out and find it and discuss it, but for you to do so. If you don’t and that’s the only think that would change my mind well, then, my mind probably won’t be changed. But I’d say that neither of us are really wrong there as long as it’s based on a principle of you saying that there is but it isn’t important enough to you to find it at the moment and my saying that it’s not important enough to me to find it myself.
My statement of “Dawkins has said — and many Gnu Atheists have adopted this line — that teaching your children your religion is child abuse.” should have been more qualified. I still believe that some of the things that people would say is part of teaching them their religion are things that he’d call child abuse, but that statement might imply that any teaching of religion would be such and even my reading of the chapter suggests that that might not be the case. So, I certainly oversimplified it, and it’s also probably the case that he might not object to how I’d teach my children, if I had any, since I wouldn’t promote the line that not being Catholic will mean that you’re going to Hell because, well, I don’t believe that. I had a different idea of what he might mean from thinking on what was said in the thread, but I’m not sure about that anymore so I won’t mention it.
Russell,
I don’t want to harp on the Dawkins thing, since it isn’t directly relevant to this comment thread. I’ve already said what I think I need to say about it, that basically the way I said that implied all religious teaching which is likely wrong but that he certainly would be after some kinds of things that people would consider normal religious teaching, which was enough for the point I was trying to make.
But I want to use you as an example of how tone does impact discussions. So, when I oversimplified the point, you came in guns blazing, talking about how people only make that point by being lazy or dishonest. At the point you entered, at least two if not three people from varying sides — theist and atheist — had said that that was something like what he said, so you were basically calling people lazy and dishonest for … what? Not listening to everything Dawkins says? Interpreting the chapter in “The God Delusion” differently from you? It’s not good to start a discussion with “If you disagree with me, you’re lazy or dishonest”. But, okay, it’s a sore spot with you. Fine.
Other people might have either flat-out ignored you or simply denied what you said. I didn’t. I went back to the book, and clarified my position a bit, pointing out the importance Dawkins places on indoctrination in that chapter. Could I have clarified it better, been perhaps more “apologetic”? Maybe, but I still didn’t think I was wrong, but I conceded that it isn’t clear where the line is as opposed to making it an absolute position. I also quite politely asked that if you had a link to the clarifications, because I openly admitted that I hadn’t read a lot other than “The God Delusion”.
Your reply, though, essentially asked why you should do my research for me. Excuse me? If you’re saying that he’s clarified it elsewhere — even many places — and I admit that I haven’t read a lot of what he said other than that, why is it my job to support your claim that he clarified it? And you also made claims about my making a “wild assertion” — despite the fact that it is a common misconception of him, which is why it bothers you so much — and essentially accused me of thinking it an extreme position when I said no such thing. You were fair in saying that my statement made it sound such, but I never did claim that; my whole point was about that if he considered that sort of thing child abuse he should want it legally stopped. You also attached a claim that if I said it the way I had just clarified my position to be, that it would make Dawkins seem reasonable and careful as if that was something that I wouldn’t want … except that I’d already claimed that I had no problems with Dawkins, other than over his tendency to put making good rhetoric over making clear claims, which I stand by.
At this point. I was getting tired of being called dishonest and/or lazy. I had a harsher reply planned, but decided it wasn’t a good idea and made my more modest reply, reminding you that your own point proved the point I was trying to make and opening with pointing out the contradiction that you were claiming these clarifications where ubiquitous while saying it would take you days to find the examples. Yes, I was aware that you probably meant “all of them”, but who’d asked you for all of them?
Your final reply is a step-by-step walkthrough of the chapter where, ultimately, you continue to call me dishonest while pointing out things that, yes, I need to consider but while conceding that in some cases the text could suggest my point, though you call it “inconclusive and meditative” while I, of course, might not see it that way. At the end of it all, if you read through the whole exchange carefully, one would probably discover that we don’t disagree on much; I think he makes a bigger point about indoctrination than you think he does, but we can probably both concede that some normal religious teaching would be considered child abuse by him, but that not all religious teaching would be so considered. We, actually, aren’t disagreeing on all that much.
But you essentially make judgements on me, as a person, for not jumping up and apologizing when I certainly wasn’t convinced that I was wrong. You also seemed to think that I was calling you a liar when I just wanted to see the evidence you claimed was out there. I certainly thought that if you said there were clarifications, that there were … but I wanted to see them myself to see if I really thought they changed my viewpoint. That, to me, is fair and demanded by critical thinking, and I was a bit miffed that you would insist that it was so common that I simply couldn’t have missed it — despite my already claiming that I didn’t read or listen to a lot of the other stuff and so wouldn’t have seen it — but that you couldn’t provide it without effort.
So, hopefully, at the end of all this we’d have some sort of common understanding right? And we’d all get along better, right? Wrong. Because by basic human psychology both you and I now don’t look at each other all that pleasantly. I’m annoyed with you; you’re annoyed with me. Maybe I won’t read things you say, or be less generous, and vice versa.
And all this started with: you taking umbrage at something I said, going on the attack, and my feeling the need to defend my genuinely held — and not uncommon — beliefs. If you’d cut out the attacks of “lazy and dishonest” and just said basically what you’d said, I would have looked at the chapter just as I did here and been less defensive, less trying to prove my interpretation reasonable and more willing to concede that I overstated it. I might have even just said “Okay, it might be overstated, but he certainly thinks some count”. Tone matters. And I’ll even wager that you get so upset because that simplified statement I made sounds like an attack on Dawkins. Tone matters.
Sorry for the lengthly comment …
I forgot to say this in an earlier comment to That Guy Montag:
I think I’m part of the conceivable middle. I’m a theist who isn’t in any way a fundmentalist. I’m as opposed to imposing religion on people — other than, perhaps, your own kids — as you are. I roll my eyes at most of the stronger theist claims and am utterly convinced that neither theists nor atheists know whether or not God exists. I think claims that atheists cannot be moral are completely wrong (although I am curious what grounds their morality) and don’t ground my morality in religion.
But a lot of the comments by “normal” atheists sound a lot like the sort of irrational and dangerous “us vs them” mentality that ticks me off about a lot of theists, and when it gets echoed and defended by the so-called active stars of the atheist movement, and they get defended for it, it makes me think that whatever new sort of thinking atheists and humanists are going to bring, it’s going to be depressingly like the old sort of thinking. And if they do apply that too broadly, I’m very worried to be forced to choose religion or this new thing, when I don’t care for either of them. I’ll, likely, simply not choose, but others will pick sides. And that can’t be good, because once there are sides my experience has been that people stop listening to the other side.
And I’ll shut up now for a while.
Mr With Hammers
I’d just like to say that you’ve stated my feelings on arguing and insults. I wish I could have put them that well.
OP
Wow, fast thread.
Camel – do you think that there is any point at which reasonable people think that insults and ridicule are either deserved or at least unremarkable?
I’d like to assume that some part of you understands that it’s actually a matter of you having a different threshold than PZ. I think you seem to frequently lose sight of this and are acting as if insults are always unjustified, always a turn-off and that there is a large body of evidence to support your claims. None of those are the case. Treating all undecided people as pearl-clutchers who will fall into a swoon whenever they see derogatory comments sounds far more insulting to them than anything PZ is doing. A more productive dialogue would not be trying to maintain the indefensible position that insults are never warranted but instead trying to establish what conditions make it justifiable. Perhaps PZ is wrong or perhaps he has a lower threshold but an absolutist position which rejects all ridicule is absurd.
Maybe I’m misreading you in which case I’ll apologize after any clarification.
[…] science and religion in a way that implies there is none to little genuine conflict between them), Ophelia wrote: I dislike all the manipulative “professions” – advertising, PR, political operative stuff. I […]
Are we still talking communication strategies? There is no always right and always wrong way of doing things as you seem to be insisting here.
Everyone says they want civil discourse. Not all recapitulate. And that’s a very real problem in these debates about civility. Plus, I think you’re assigning things to PZ that he wouldn’t necessarily agree with. Such as, where does this new responsibility to accommodate a wider audience, based solely on one’s popularity within a group, come from? Asking PZ to change his behavior, (i.e., drop the name-calling and so-called abusive language) because he may be hurting the cause (data not shown) sounds to me like populist pandering at the expense of personal integrity and intellectual honesty.
Why must PZ, or anyone, accommodate a larger audience? Why is it his job, why is it anyone’s, to do that? And does not doing so necessarily hurt the cause, as you claim? That seems more like a veiled threat to self-censorship to me. I don’t think atheism or science outreach needs a single leader or voice. Like the devil told Jesus “My name is Legion, for we are many.” If PZ did assume the role of One True Leader, and insisted his confrontational way the only way, I’d be more inclined to agree with you.
And then there’s the question, why should we think PZ’s style is really fundamentally repellent when he has such a massive readership?
I never at all said PZ’s style is “fundamentally repellent”. Again, I’ve given a much more nuanced account of PZ’s tactics. Of course, since this is a debate about the ethics, civility, and effects of insults in public discourse and I have referred to PZ as an unrepentant insulter who advocates using them explicitly, we have focused on this part of his strategy to an unbalanced degree. But it is not most or all of what he does that I think it should characterize him in total or lead people to dismiss him in general at all.
Even if using personal putdowns really is the secret of PZ’s success (and I’ve argued it’s not and that all the things which are not fundamentally repellent but correct and admirable can be effective without them), then what would that say about his success? Rush Limbaugh’s success is based in large measure on the traits that make him fundamentally repellent by various ethical and decency standards but it is not a kind of success to be proud of. At least not for a movement purportedly aiming to improve the rationality of the culture and not just be another extremist subgroup.
Sure, South Park is my favorite show. Comedians can ridicule people because they are equal opportunity offenders. I also think that in personal exchanges there can be good humored forms of teasing. While I think Ophelia’s right and at least sometimes teasing is a disguised form of genuine cruelty, people can be teased in productive and constructive ways within some relationships.
And, I am all for the ridiculing of absurd ideas because it’s a way to highlight the contradictions and when people laugh, they essentially concede the logic in a special, involuntary way they may never have from reading a discursive argument. And I am all for ridiculing symbols, institutions, etc. where sincere, effective, and not an issue of gratuitous interpersonal harassment.
But, nonetheless, I still see little need for calling people idiots. If you have conditions you can lay out for me on when it is actually good, constructive, civil, and appropriate to do so, then I would happily consider what I think of your proposal.
I haven’t referred to “any large bodies of evidence.” I’ve never seen anything like empirically rigorous evidence adduced on either side of the issue here. I imagine insulting people may help PZ’s numbers in some ways and hurt them in others.
What I am talking about though is countering frustrating stereotypes about us that PZ walks right into. People conflate our intellectual confrontationalism with personal rudeness, when it’s not that. But sometimes PZ willfully presents his excellent vigorous, straightforward intellectual confrontationalism take the form of unnecessarily personal rudeness and when he does that I have ever reason to assume that all of those explicitly charging that it is rude to question religion rigorously see evidence to support their prejudice on a silver platter. Why wouldn’t they read him that way? That’s their prejudice, it’s what they say about us even when we’re being polite but just dogged.
What I’m saying is there are well known negative memes about us. Many self-proclaimed moderates have gone on record denouncing us as x, y, and z and ignored the other things we are really focusing on (w, u, v). When PZ explicitly adopts the strategies of x, y, and z while doing w, u, and v, it is perfectly reasonable to think that he has only given fodder to all those people who all along were waiting for evidence or assuming we do x, y, and z. And those people will, it stands to reason, be more likely to dismiss us.
Now, you can wave those people away and say their prejudice was against us or they didn’t bother to pay attention to the arguments they didn’t like because they had a ready excuse. My point is that if you keep waving away those who start out disagreeing with you, then you’re not interested in persuasion and you’ve abandoned one of the major purported reasons for what you’re doing and decided to just offer red meat to the converted. And I think that’s really an unnecessary shame when you have the largest blog platform in the country to advocate for atheism. If our largest voice is only aimed at the converted, there’s a missed opportunity in my view. Do I need “data” to support that judgment call?
That’s a dismissive strawman of my position. I do not see all undecided people as “pearl-clutchers”. That’s a demeaning and unserious way to dodge a serious ethical complaint. It’s not a matter of weakness or thinness of skin, it’s a matter of people having some sense of decency and expecting people who talk a big game about reason to persuade people using reason instead of schoolyard tactics.
Yes, that would be a more productive dialogue. But I admit, I am at a loss to think of any times when name-calling really is a defensible approach, but I would be happy to think over any suggestions for the appropriate boundaries you can offer.
We are talking three things—ethics, civility, and strategy. I think on the first two scores, it is nearly always wrong to get personally insulting except if you are, say, a comedian and essentially your job is to impersonally go after everyone’s personal character. Well, then it’s not really personal, that’s just what a comedian does. When I go to comedy clubs I sit in the front row and get made fun of and I die of laughter. That’s the way that works. But in public discourse you can shred people in vigorous ways, make the factual case that they are dishonest, bad faith arguers, that they make all sorts of intellectual mistakes, etc. and call them descriptive names (like homophobic when they say something that cannot reasonably be interpreted as anything but homophobic or racist or authoritarian or misogynistic, accordingly). Or, at least, use harsh descriptions of their actions rather than harsh attributions of character traits, as long as they’re honest.
In other words, I have never said you have to in any way give an impression that the awful things someone is doing are less awful than they are or that the awful arguments they make are less awful than they are. The only restraint I’m calling for is not to add the non-descriptive personal attack that this person is “dumb”, an “idiot”, “stupid”. To an extent stupid is as stupid does. Just tell me how stupid what he did is and we get the point, you don’t need to go and be mean and call him stupid on top of it.
I’m sorry, I don’t understand your objection here. Civil discourse is possible. Have I or anyone in this thread been uncivil or resorted to name calling? We have had multiple fruitful, vigorously debated discussions on interesting and important topics in here without any one being personally attacked. Where’s the problem? Why can’t this be the standard all atheists, as the explicit self-proclaimed champions of rationality and reasonableness themselves, hold ourselves to—even when engaging our enemies?
I do not think anyone’s “personal integrity” or “intellectual honesty” requires them to be abusive to other people. I am not asking him to alter or “reframe” a single one of his substantive philosophical or scientific or political positions just because he is a de facto representative of other atheists. I am asking him, and all of us, to just not stoop to non-descriptive, only-insult-oriented epithets. If the impulse to gratuitously insult is so deep a part of PZ’s personal character that it would violate his personal integrity to knock it off, then he’s actually something of a bad person after all. But I think there’s ample evidence to the contrary. He strikes me as a very good person overall and his reported unfailing politeness in person is evidence that he can be just as true to himself and intellectually honest without a single insult. Why not bring that style to the internet and be fully decent here too? He won’t have to change a single thing he thinks.
I cannot threaten someone with self-censorship, only encourage it for others. I am a free speech libertarian who would gladly write post after post about PZ’s legal right to insult people. He’s constitutionally free to do so and should feel free in that regard. But as a matter of ethics, civility, and strategy, I hold myself to many standards of self-censorship and am patiently explaining why I think he should too. That’s not a threat, it’s an attempt at a persuasive argument on grounds of morality, politeness, and strategy. If PZ were miraculously convinced and self-censored the next time he reached for the letters I, D, I, O, and T, then it would not have been through “threats” but through suasion.
Yes, we can have many flowers bloom but I don’t think any of them should fall below minimal standards of decency. I don’t think we should have our red meat throwers be personally mean. And if it means not having red meat throwers, then we should live without them.
But where at all have I said he shouldn’t be confrontational. Again, the conflation between confrontationalism and personal insults needs to end. They’re not the same thing. We can have one without the other and should.
And thanks for the kind words, OP.
I will say though, that on standards of at least letting himself be held to the standards he holds others to, PZ scores well. And his self deprecating sense of humor is a charming counter-balance to his willingness to deprecate others (even if it does not go all the way in justifying it). http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/01/i_made_john_benneth_mad.php
CwH:
We’ve all had those situations where a discussion seems to be going nowhere but someone keeps pushing. It strikes me as sometimes a short sharp fuck you can be the only way to warn a person they’re starting to cross a line. If they’re honest, most people will stop and reconsider if a discussion they’ve been involved with ends up at that point. People who don’t realise the warning signs or go past the point where someone is throwing names tends to throw themselves beyond the pale. It’s not a discussion anymore and then I don’t see there being any other resort than violence, physical if necessary, but at the very least verbal. I think it’s safe to say many discussions have long gone past that point; I think it’s pretty safe to say for instance there isn’t a single honest major creationist name left out there.
But wait you might say, what about the spectators. Well, insults might serve another purpose. A well placed insult tells the whole world this person isn’t worth arguing with. I know, that doesn’t sit well with me either. It feels wrong given the fact we’ve got the arguments on our side, but when people don’t necessarily understand the evidence or are engaging with it for the first time, people’s perception of your opponent is an important part of how they’re going to evaluate conflicting evidence. This is precisely the false balance problem and it applies whether we’re talking about the media or a group discussion. An insult here takes the place of “most scientists”.
The rest of the thoughts I’ve had along this line would be that a lot of this talk isn’t about convincing but group cohesion but I don’t think that would be adding much in this particular discussion because you’ve already granted me that already.
I also don’t think that three examples is going to be anywhere near exhaustive about the possible non-propositional uses of language so anyone with other ideas now’s the time to step in.
Personally, I think PZ uses name-calling to comedic affect all the time. Much of it is creative and fresh and well-timed. Why can’t any of us wear the comedian t-shirt when it suits us?
You have drawn a line of what counts as acceptable discourse for civilized conversation that seems completely subjective.
You’re okay in describing things people say as stupid but you’re not okay with saying that person is stupid/ignorant/foolish/dumb/idiotic for saying such. I don’t believe anyone is seriously saying Ken Hamm is a jackass 24/7, just when he opens his mouth about evolution,religion,creationism, etc. the jackass in him comes out.
Example: “Hey idiot! what you just said was really stupid. Here’s why.” That’s basically what I see PZ doing. Why is this unethical, uncivil and bad strategy?
Where does anyone stoop to only-insult-oriented epithets? Can you find a single post dedicated to name-calling and nothing else? If so, then you have a good point, but if not, then you’re taking the name-calling out of context, as I’ve explained above.
Personal insults aren’t part of rational discourse. If you’re personally insulting someone, you aren’t doing rational discourse anymore. And if you don’t want to do rational discourse, that’s fine, but you at least have to be honest about that. But the issue is that these “Gnu Atheists” make a big deal out of acting rationally in all ways, and so people who see personal insults and accept that personal insults aren’t part of rational discourse, then they’ll have cause to argue that those people, at least, aren’t any more rational than their opponents. And that’s worse for the atheist side than the theist side because atheists are explicit about the importance they place on rationality.
As for the difference between insulting arguments and the person, a lot of people will indeed see no difference and react as badly to both. That being said, I don’t think too many people would have much objection to classifying an argument as “weak”, and so perhaps calling it “stupid” is just an informal way of doing that. But part of the difference is that really smart people can make really stupid arguments at times, and still be smart. Classifying an argument isn’t the same thing as classifying the person making it, and isn’t a personal attack.
Now, in my opinion I think a lot of the concern about being asked to be civil is coming from a fear that doing that means taking away passion. It’s a credible argument to say that any movement that wants to change the world needs passion, and it’s certainly true that aggressive, hostile and even insulting words convey passion. I just think that you can convey passion without personal insults.
These are very fair points and difficult problems you raise Guy Montag.
On my blog and on my Facebook page I have recently felt trolled by a well-meaning, dogged, but downright sophistical amateur philosopher and aspiring apologist. She is constantly ignoring or just skimming patient counter-points I make instead of addressing them, replying to me in vague, cryptic phrases instead of making clear arguments, relentlessly responding to what I say back to her even if it’s just some attempt to coyly antagonize me.
At first I treated her as someone to reason with in good faith but soon realized she is the type of person not interested in constructive knowledge but will develop whole irrationalistic accounts of epistemology and raze the whole endeavor of getting clarity about what constitutes truth to the ground so that everything is equally irrational and her faith no longer suffers any special stigma for its own irrationalism. In short, she was a presuppositionalist who wanted to relativize all truth so Christianity can be no worse than the others instead of any better.
I see it as appalling she passes herself off as someone interested in philosophy when she’s really interested in its destruction. In my religious days I had a year long period as a presuppositionalist and post-religion it took me a while to shake off the irrationalism and I was a strongly anti-realist sort for a while, but out of high, Humean/Cartesian standards of skepticism. I never was wanting to destroy reason to make room for faith like she was.
And, so it got to the point where I would reason with her a bit and then try to stop the ceaseless sophistical pokes that were never going to clarify anything philosophically since their real purpose was to undermine various philosophical endeavors. And I started telling her, you suck at philosophy, you’re a sophist, you argue in bad faith, I’m not going to humor this any longer, either make a constructive argument or go away. And I’ve been curt and meaner than I normally am and this week went ahead and defriended her on Facebook I was so sick of it all.
Now, I get that for PZ Ken Ham and Ray Comfort are like that woman but with millions of dolllars in sales and a huge detrimental effect on science education in the country and many years of destruction in their wake and (likely) in their future.
As curt and harsh and personally confrontational as I got (and as you suggest is sometimes necessary) with my trolling apologist, I didn’t just pull out an abusive term like “idiot” or “bitch” or anything like that. I said “you’re not a philosopher”, I called her a sophist, I called her disingenuous, I accused her of not making arguments and wasting people’s time. I was personally antagonistic in those ways when I actually got fed up, which is really rare for me given how used to civil but aggressive engagement I am. But I just didn’t cross the epithet line.
Maybe the scale of the creationists’ deceit makes PZ lose it in a way that I cannot understand.
But, then I look and see he called some guy from the CFI a “witless wanker” for simply calling out PZ’s tactics. And then I think, what if on some off chance PZ reads my criticisms of him here and becomes so interested in them that he writes about me on his blog, do I expect him to treat me respectfully or do I expect him to throw me in a prejudicial light and use epithets before he even raises my actual arguments or addresses them? And I realize, I fear the latter. And that’s not a good thing for him to be putting in the hearts of people who have good faith disagreements with him and who agree with him on substance 99% of the time. And what in the world kind of way does it make people with much more complicated and nuanced variations of difference with him feel like?
And, also, as another takeaway from my own experience getting frustrated with a troll. I think it led to some of the nastiest blowback from Christians observing me that I have gotten in a long time. I mean, I have certainly turned off thin-skinned people with my relentlessness before in ways I don’t apologize for, but losing my cool and being aggressive with this troll even without insults led to some unusually fierce and personally accusatory stuff against me.
Maybe that’s just a coincidence (and I know it’s a small sample size!), but I don’t think my getting meaner in a personal way helped with the onlookers or the enemy.
Nonetheless, I definitely know and take serious the problem of the false middle and understand there must be a way to stigmatize the truly disreputable who are antithetical to the advance of knowledge. They cannot be treated as serious alternatives and be allowed to create false equivalences and falsely “moderate” positions.
These are hard issues, I don’t mean to imply they are not.
Verbose Stoic,
Russell has pwned you and you’ve refused to recognise it, thereby compounding the pwnage. I don’t think you understand that after Russell’s post you had two reasonable strategies. (1) Retract your statement, or (2) present direct quotes from Dawkins that back up your statements. Instead, you’ve twisted and turned, and now you’re expanding into sweeping generalisations that are just plain wrong:
Name one of the gnu atheists who has claimed that we should act rationally “in all ways.” Show me where Dawkins says you should only love your children if you can make a rational argument for each child. Show me where Dennett claims that all great art is rationally explicable. Show me where Harris claims that music appreciation is only useful when you can show the mathematico-logical relationships in pleasing sequences. Really. Show me one single referenced quotation. Bet you can’t.
Chris,
Well, let’s just see how “pwned” I was. I originally said this:
“Dawkins has said … that teaching your children your religion is child abuse.”
After all the discussions and comments here, to properly capture Dawkins’ position I’d have to say this (and I’ve already conceded that I would have to say it like this, if not precisely directly):
“Dawkins has said … that some of the accepted ways of teaching your children your religion are child abuse.” (Change in bold).
Wow. I clearly got pwned there; what was I possibly thinking?
Now, if the reason I was using the original statement was in fact to portray Dawkins as extreme or not nuanced — which seems to be Russell’s big pet peeve with the statement — then I might be pwned by that, since my whole point would collapse. But it didn’t. My point was about imposing on people, and that if Dawkins considers something child abuse he should want people to stop doing it, using whatever means necessary. I didn’t in any way call Dawkins extreme or unnuanced, and in fact in this very comment thread pointed out that I didn’t consider him one of the problematic atheists. Thus, as I’ve said repeatedly, even with the clarification the point I was making still stood. Hardly “pwned” then.
Your point is just more of the same. Let me, then, correct my statement, just for you:
“But the issue is that these “Gnu Atheists” think being rational is really, really important, especially when discussing things like what does or doesn’t exist or what someone should or shouldn’t believe.”
I don’t think you can deny that they really do think that, and so we can see how that relates, again, to my actual point. Which is, surprisingly enough, that if they think that it looks really bad for them if someone can claim that they aren’t interested or engaging in rational discourse because they rely on personal insults, which I claim are not part of rational discourse.
So, the most you can say about me is that when making comments on a blog, I sometimes don’t state things as carefully as I should. Fair enough; criticism accepted. But I’d have a problem rationally and intellectually if I relied on that not-so-careful phrasing to make my points. But in both of these cases if you read the points in their entirety you can clearly see that I’m not; the restatements don’t affect the point I was making in the slightest.
Look, discussion should be about bringing about greater understanding, not about winning or losing. Demands for apologies over genuine disagreements are, in fact, the problem, as it casts the whole thing in a light of “win/lose”, “right/wrong”. You can’t demand that anyone accept someone else’s interpretation or position unless it can be absolutely proven that that’s the right one. Between myself and Russell, there’s not a lot of difference at this point, since I concede that Dawkins allows for some sorts of religious teaching to be okay. But we still have legitimate disagreements, and I’ve already retracted as far as the evidence provided requires me to. As I said to him, at this point we should all be simply happy in having a greater understanding of each other’s position, but this insistence on the “win/lose”, “right/wrong” mentality gets in the way, as it does here with you.
That, as I said, is why tone matters.
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