The memory-hole
David Koepsell commented on Berlinerblau’s “what gnu atheist martyrs?” post to say
You should read my entry on “The Law and Unbelief” in the Encyclopedia of Unbelief, in which I detail such cases in the US, when courts even admitted that atheists were free game because of legal prohibitions against their testimony, and some were attacked and sometimes killed for sport. This happened even into the 1920s. I summarize that lengthy article in this shorter version.I posted this same comment at Joe’s blog, but it’s “awaiting moderation”… I hope it makes it through.
It didn’t. You can see exactly how worthy of non-posting it is – how full of invective and misrepresentation and free-floating hostility.
David used to be at CFI; I met him there at the same time I met Joe. They’re former colleagues. So it goes.
Read David’s article; it’s very informative.
If you’re lucky.
…so not merely intellectually challenged, but factually incorrect…
Again, why does Berlinerblau have any sort of traction anywhere where brains should be engaged? Oh right, we live in a world where Glenn Beck is seen as a shining example of American intellectual rigor.
Of course it didn’t go through. They’re liars and cowards and bullies.
Automatic comment moderation, where the default is “don’t post until blog owner approves”, is extremely shady in any case.
The motives of these anti-gnus are questionable to say the least.
Theisms and football colours are about tribal identity. So outsiders are treated with suspicion, hostility and at times, murderous intent.
I beg to differ. A few gnu bloggers I read regularly have turned on moderation recently, I suspect largely to deal with the contributions of a certain notorious pest known for issuing death threats. Mind you, they’re on blogspot, which provides few other tools to deal with crap like that.
Is lawlessness and vigilante justice being equated to judicially approved execution in this string? That seems to be the case. Under any strict definition, I can’t see the relevance of it, not even if a court looked the other way. Beyond this, I can’t make out whether the argument is (a) atheists don’t need martyrs because why would they die for what they don’t believe in (a paroxysm rather than a paradox) or (b) there have too been atheist martyrs, darn it–prisoners of conscience to the denial that dare not speak its name. I think anyone who actually read the blog would have hit this speed bump: “So to the question: Have there been atheist martyrs. I think the answer is a conditional rather than a resounding No. Social marginalization and suspicion is not the same thing as martyrdom, not the same as systematic legal persecution.”
Eamon – yes, and I should have clarified that. All other things being equal, no death threats, and with a filtration/banning system that works (unlike Blogger), I find automatic moderation shady. It’s characteristic of people who don’t like being disagreed with, and/or who want to make their comments section appear to be more supportive than it really is.
Why won’t you post dissenting comments Joe? And why do you keep talking about something you’ve constructed yourself, this putative hunger for martyrdom among atheists? It doesn’t exist, and you’re off the rails.
Koepsell’s article is a good one that’s going in the big ol’ folder of bookmarks (I’d like to read the longer version!), but I think he undersells the child-custody point. As law professor Eugene Volokh has found (link link link), a huge number of American courts adjudicating divorce cases have openly stated that they are denying custody to an irreligious parent because of that parent’s irreligiosity. (And, in the Nisbet thread Koepsell references, I and a handful of other folks were jumping up and down, pointing to Volokh’s findings.)
That’s not just “lost custody cases,” it’s direct evidence of a long line of jurisprudence, from all over the country, holding that irreligion is a sufficient justification to deprive a parent of custody of his or her children. If that’s not an attack on atheists’ civil rights, what is?
May I just say, Mr. Hoffman, how utterly cowardly it is of you to mod comments at your own blog with which you disagree, only to show up at someone else’s blog where you are more or less free to speak your mind? Earlier, I accused you of being small. Perhaps it is necessary to charge you with hypocrisy, as well.
Oh, crap. Comment spam-filtered again.
This one had only three hyperlinks! Grrr.
Joe,
Where the hell did you come up with the idea that Gnus think atheists being martyred (killed) is either a common problem or somehow evidence that atheism is true or noble or something?
I think most Gnus are well aware that outright atheist martyrdom is pretty rare, because most atheists can hide their atheism if need be, and generally don’t feel a strong moral obligation to die for the cause—not that it’s not a worthy cause, but what purpose does it serve in practice anyhow?
You seem to have invented a gnu obsession in order to discredit it, and somehow discredit Gnus for saying something false that in fact they don’t say.
Might I ask whether your serious drinking problem is similarly relevant to this discussion?
Not that I’m saying you have one, but if we’re just inventing things to criticize, how about it?
Hoffman:
No. But all of the above are mechanisms by which a bigoted majority can attempt to maintain their hegemony against challenges from a minority they hate.
Fascinating. I trust you’ve called your friends in the American history field and informed them that lynching is not “relevant” to civil rights struggle, given that it was all “lawlessness and vigilante justice,” frequently involving a “court look[ing] the other way.” I wonder how they’d respond?
Well, (a) is really more about the fact that the legitimacy of a given cause has nothing to do with whether or not it has martyrs—but yes, both. In other words, your digression into martyrdom is both (a) irrelevant and (b) false. Congratulations, and nice try with the false bifurcation.
Unless you can prove there really is an afterlife then all martyrs are atheist martyrs, once they are dead.
All your martyrs are belong to us.
The gnubashers have won this round, I’m afraid. They’ve been able to change the subject to something irrelevant (whether or not or to what extent there have been atheist “martyrs”), and then use that new (irrelevant) subject as yet another shit-filled-sock with which to thwack gnus: See how silly gnus are; they don’t even have martyrs, but they think they do! My goodness, setting the false premise, what in the world does that have to do with the central arguments of gnu atheism? Nothing—it’s irrelevant.
Hoffman:
Ugh, do you see how this guy is loving this topic? He loves that it seems to put us on the defensive; he loves that he’s been able to decide the terms of the discussion; and he obviously loves flexing his pedant muscles.
Joe: You mean James David Doyle, a 16-year-old atheist who was shotgunned to death by his Christian schoolmate?
Or Larry Hooper, another teen-ager, who was murdered by his “friend” because Hooper didn’t believe in god?
Do they count as atheist martyrs?
I’m curious as to what level of death qualifies in your book? Or what level of attention to the atheism is necessary in order to make it a “good” atheist death? After all, several hundred thousand communists were executed in Nazi Germany. Do they count? Or is their atheism merely a secondary reason?
Do the well-known heretics of the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries count? Is there some sort of time limit to martyrdom? With all of the Catholics killing Protestants and vice versa during that period, what are a few atheists? Does Bruno count? Or Vanini? Chevalier de La Barre? Adam Duff O’Tool? Sir Walter Raleigh — executed for blasphemy? Jock of Broad Scotland?
Does only death matter? Does Shelley matter — expelled from university and barely avoiding prosecution for a pamphlet called “The Necessity of Atheism”? How about Richard Carlisle, prosecuted in 1819 for reprinting Thomas Paine? Or Carlisle’s wife and sister, who both followed him to prison?
And how in the world does this matter? What in the world does the number of dead bodies have to do with the truth of the arguments? Are you saying that the more atheists who die, the more likely it is that there is no god? Should all good atheists report to the gas chambers so the rest of you will finally wise up?
Where is it written that the group with the most martyrs wins? Please let me know whether this represents your morality or not. Because this is what it appears that you’re saying — that only groups who have been slaughtered needlessly can have their ideas considered seriously.
If this isn’t the most asinine, brain-dead argument I have ever heard, I have never heard an argument.
Funnily enough Rieux, I suspect that you are the one Joe had in his sights when bringing up this whole martyrs lark. I’m struggling to remember all the different blog comments sections in question, but I do recall that you had quite a long back and forth at Josh R’s blog with a someone McCarthy about the Oppression Olympics (which was excellent btw, I’ve been meaning to say cheers, it was a very informative discussion, even though you appeared to be talking to a wall, the stuff about child custody cases was really interesting).
As I recall, and this is all hazy because I really can’t go back and string together all the comments sections and what went on, but Josh’s post was at least tangentally about the Hoffman/Ruse/etc cerfuffle, and at all the comments sections in question you and others have responded to comments either in the blogs or the comments section about bigotry with a bit of a “hang on, even if it’s different in scale, there is bigotry.” Which Hoffman appears to have run with all the way to you/gnus wanting martyrs for the cause.
the legitimacy of a given cause
Joe:
You’re really going there? You’re going down the road to say that a cause is not legitimate unless it is attended with useless slaughter?
Please don’t. Please. I think so little of you as it is, that any further diminution would be of Planck size.
I’m being reminded of Joaquin Phoenix and I’m Still Here, tbh.
It doesn’t matter whether or not atheists like us, people who did not believe in any deities at all and were not religious, were killed or persecuted or not by theocrats or vigilante fundamentalists. What matters is that a large number of people have been killed and persecuted for no other reason than not bowing down to a particular religion. History is rife with people being slaughtered by theists for what they were perceived to think or what they professed to think, and this form of religious violence continues to this day. It’s a significant reason to work toward building up that wall. Gnu Atheists have every reason to find a little solidarity with other humans wronged by religion.
The World According to Hoffmann:
Mr. Gandhi? Sorry, but your cause of non-violence isn’t legitimate, yet. We have to wait until people are actually killed in the cause of non-violence in order for us to take non-violence seriously.
Sorry, Mr. Darwin. Nobody appears to be interested in dying in the name of evolutionary theory. So, I guess it’ll have to go into the dustbin. It was a nice try, but no deaths means it doesn’t pass muster.
Dr. Einsten? Yes, I’m afraid it’s true. Nobody will die for relativity. So, it’s back to the aether for us!
Mr. bin Laden: GREAT NEWS!! It appears thousands and thousands of young people are willing to die for your particularly violent and repressive version of Islam. That MUST mean it’s correct! We’ll get right on letting everyone know.
I don’t get it – surely by the time authentic atheist thought was able to emerge nobody was being killed for their beliefs. We’d moved on a bit.
It seems that Hoffman’s charge is that atheism (especially the gnu variety), or rather the freedom to express it publicly, has been too easily won; that if gnus only stopped to consider the origins of atheist thought we’d realise that it began with believers disputing doctrine. And since many of them did it bravely and ended up dying for it we should be lauding believers rather than criticising them today.
Does that mean that modern practitioners of medicine should refrain from criticising quacks peddling medieval treatments? After all, where on earth do they think their scientific knowledge came from?
David:
I find that hard to believe (and indeed fathom)—but hell, maybe I’m just one important dude! …For some reason that hasn’t yet occurred to me.
Hoffman’s comment @19 (though it’ll be #20 or higher when my currently spam-filtered comment is dislodged and shows up as the new #11) sort of lends credence to your theory, David; apparently he’s decided to start pulling random phrases from my comments and posting them without full syntax, much less context. Boo-yah, Hoffman, that’s right, I said “the legitimacy of a given cause.” That was a killer of a six-word formulation if I’ve ever posted one. Look upon my noun phrases, ye Flighty, and despair!
Oh, certainly, I remember that. I can’t understand how anyone would respond to that exchange by asserting I was holding up some Atheist Martyr or other (though get a load of Kevin @17/18 et al., that’s good stuff). But Hoffman’s a funny guy, obviously.
Both a and b provide part of the answer. Some people who were atheists didn’t want to die for what they didn’t believe. Should they have been willing? I don’t see why they should. In other cases atheists no doubt refused to recant and were killed. Lacking a cult of glorification to promote their status history would not record them as martyrs, martyrdom not being a category in nature.
We atheists don’t claim special status, but we don’t think the implied inferior status where we don’t technically qualify as martyrs is right either.The best choice would be to recognize that martyrdom is also a matter of cult practice and belief, and any attempt to portray the treatment of atheists should keep that in mind.
@Rieux: Well, I may have to dub thee The Gnu Atheist, or something. Either way – and while admitting that it’s really problematic to try and mind read – RJH does seem at once dismissive of the comments side of the blogosphere while at the same time too quick to use it to justify gnu bashing.
Also, just read the CFI article linked. Very itneresting. And clearly self aware and with some perspective about where things stand.
Ugh. Anthony McCarthy is almost certainly the most intellectually dishonest creep I’ve encountered over the last few years, the worst kind of Liar for Jesus armed with every slimy tapdance step in the Big Scumbag Book of Choreography. Even hearing his name makes me want to take a hot shower.
Props to anyone willing to try changing that spectacularly disingenuous closed mind.
Oh, Wowbagger, I wasn’t expecting to convince him of anything; I was just trying to thrash him on points badly enough that persuadable lurkers might have been able to see through his blustery nonsense.
You’re obviously right, though: McCarthy is one nasty piece of work, probably as bad as anyone that a gnu might tangle with online. Joe Hoffman’s a regular pussycat by comparison.
A summary, in case Mr Hoffmann is capable of reflection:
1. The fact that people have responded with two very different counter-arguments does not make them confused; it means there are two very glaring holes in your opinion piece
2. Has anybody ever defined martyrdom as requiring official court involvement before? Almost all of the Christian martyrs in the New World and the Pacific were killed without trial in nations where there was no judicial system. St Stanislaw of Szczepanow was to be killed by King Boleslaw’s soldiers without trial. When the soldiers would not comply, the king killed Stanislaw by his own hand. While the recorded history is rather fanciful (it includes references to Stanislaw’s hacked-to-pieces body reassembling itself), it shows the idea that martyrdom depends on official legal persecution is a nonsense. King Edward the Martyr is so-called despite having been murdered (the details are sketchy, but he certainly wasn’t tried and executed). The Jewish martyrs of Blois were killed by crusaders for refusing to convert to Christianity; no trials. in Islam, martyrdom has very broad inclusion criteria, including dying in childbirth or dying protecting one’s property. The concept of martyrdom is complex in Hinduism, but it seems to include dying nobly on the battlefield (rather Viking-like, if you ask me). In Baha’i, martyrdom includes life-long sacrifice to god, so one doesn’t even need to die for one’s beliefs to qualify.
This is a classic piece of goal shifting. “Give me some examples! Oh, those examples…um…they don’t count because…let me see…I’ll think of something soon…got it!…they aren’t really martyrs because I am now defining martyrs in a way never defined before and according to this definition they aren’t martyrs and please ignore all the existing religious martyrs also excluded by this definition. Ha! Gotcha!”
I still can’t see what RJH’s point is, except “shut up, it’s not so bad.” However, the evidence provided so far suggests that historically, when atheists could be persecuted they were. Atheists have been difficult to persecute because there have been so few of them and because atheism is easy to hide since it does not affect one’s skin color, language, ethnic origin, and since it does not force atheists to stick out through the perceived moral obligation to dress or act a certain way. It doesn’t matter that there aren’t piles and piles of atheist bodies to pick through because, for instance, Aquinas argued in a manner entirely consistent with his religion that heretics should be killed. It is not due to the self-restraint of these theocratic societies that atheists have been successful at hiding their heads–or even that atheist heads did not exist to be chopped off for a good while–and these facts do not de-ligitimize these criticisms.
I really don’t know where the atheist martyr thing came from, or why it seems relevant to some people. But I’d like to point out a few things about martyrdom:
1. Martyrdom is an act of witnessing–that is, it is suffered with the intent of perpetuating a cause by inspiring others. As Hoffman himself points out, atheism is not really a cause, but a byproduct of skepticism and a naturalistic world view. So I’m not sure why he even bothered to mention martyrdom in this context.
2. In order to be a martyr, you must be killed specifically for your adherence to your beliefs, and for no other reason. Any violent action, or involvement in violent actions, disqualifies you. Nor can you seek it out deliberately; recklessness and deliberate provocation also disqualify you. Terrorists are not martyrs for this reason–in fact, there is a fairly good chance that most suicide bombers are simply suicides who are trying to bluff their way into heaven, or at least into the good graces of their friends and family.
3. Religious martyrs die with the conviction that they are going on to a better life. The act of martyrdom is therefore not valued primarily as an act of courage, but as a testimony to the strength of their faith. There is a strong asymmetry here between believers in an afterlife and atheists, who know they have only this life. The faithful simply do not value their lives as much. For the atheist, death is the ultimate sacrifice, and yet there are atheists in foxholes (ironically, C.S. Lewis was an example of this.) If Hoffman wants to talk about courage, he must take this into account.
4. Religious martyrs are exalted by the ranks of the faithful, while atheists have, until very recently, stood largely alone. It is therefore not surprising that there are no ringing testimonies regarding those who died for not believing until the modern age. If Socrates had not had a loyal following, we would never have heard of him either.
It’s interesting to note that one of Hoffman’s examples of Christian martyrdom, Dietriech Bonhoffer, would be disqualified by 2. Bonhoffer was deeply involved in the plot to kill Hitler, and actually used his identity as an otherworldly theologian as a cover. While it was a brilliant idea to kill Hitler, you can’t say that Bonhoffer was killed for being a Christian (his motivation, as a member of Prussian aristocracy, seems to have been the same as that of Rommell.) It took courage to take part in it, but it was ultimately a failure of courage that caused the plot to fail (though this wasn’t Bonhoffer’s fault)–several of the people involved had ample access to the Fuhrer, and had any of them been willing to die outright, the plot would have been a great success. As it was, they all died anyway.
Number 3 also relates to an interesting fact about the cold war. Since the Soviets did not believe in an afterlife, they understood that nuclear weapons could never be used. They had one world, and this is it. Even Stalin, evil as he was, would not cross this line. By 1960, the Soviets knew that they could never catch up with NATO. Kruschev precipitated the Cuban Missile Crisis in a desperate attempt to achieve parity, but the risks he incurred were so great that the Soviets sacked him. They knew they were losing, and they chose to lose rather than risk mutual assured destruction (MAD). Those who believe in an afterlife, or that God will protect them, do not have the same reservations. MacArthur wanted to use nukes in North Korea, and for this reason Ike pulled him. Nuclear armed Pakistan is falling under the control of jihadists, and fundamentalist Christians have made a concerted effort to take over the U.S. Air Force, which controls 80% of the American nuclear arsenal. Given that both believe that the end of the world will bring about the Kingdom of God, what restraint can we expect of them?
This is a context that the Gnu bashers never mention.
First contact:
Earthlings rejoice! Today marks the first confirmed contact between our species and an extraterrestrial life form. Surprisingly enough, its first words were (according to our best translators) “Take me to your leader.” Establishing dialog is difficult, however, since its primary mode of communication seems to be the non sequitur. According to leading Earth scientists, the Hoffmann specimen is apparently in control of the mother ship, while the Berlinerblau variant may be merely a remote-controlled android. This question is, however, still under investigation.
In a related story, Earth girls were mildly disappointed to find that the aliens are not quite as handsome as Jeff Goldblum.
If you define martyrdom in terms of propagating a faith then there are no atheist martyrs. Obviously martyrdom is not an appropriate measure of atheist persecution. So why is the issue raised? Unless one takes into consideration other forms of suffering it amount to a deliberate devaluation of the lives that were lost. We don’t know, we can’t know how many were murdered under conditions of anonymity as nameless heretics.
This is a cynical move. Is it credible that there were no atheists among the heretics killed? Were atheists deliberately spared? How, other than by remaining hidden, did they escape? The question of martyrdom is only raised as a way to minimize atheist suffering. No martyrs, no suffering, because we can’t prove anything about people we know so little about.
How about if we just pass a law mandating that all new atheists cite at least one Hoffman paper or book and acknowledge him in the introduction of any book they write?
On a previous thread RJH said he should go back to writing satire.
Is that what he is doing here?
hi Joe, nice that you reacted here. Have you let my comment yet through “moderation” at your blog yet? No matter if you didn’t, as far as I recall, you have never, ever let one of my comments through there, even though in each case I was only offering to clarify the factual record.
Nonetheless, I think it will defuse your continued objections if you just read my article in the New Encyclopedia of Unbelief, because I offer many more examples. I think it is informative that in a number of examples, those who ended up being punished once in the legal system (as opposed to by vigilantes), could easily have saved themselves by lying, pretending to have a faith, swearing on a bible, etc. When the defendants I discuss in my long article chose to be truthful, not swear on a bible, etc., their defiant act of truthfulness meant their entire testimonies could be, and were ignored, and they were railroaded easily. Perhaps their lack of fame prevents them from becoming martyrs, or perhaps by refining the definition even further, we can continue to argue that their courage in defying both private and institutional demands that they conform, believe in some deity, or be punished and maybe even die, is somehow irrelevant, meaningless, or perhaps just bad luck.
I am one who thinks we don’t need martyrs, and rallying around any individual person to define a cause is stupid. It’s one of my complaints with organized humanism as well. I don’t like martyrs, leaders, or causes, frankly. They seem all too religious for my tastes. No gods, no masters, thanks. But it is simply dishonest for those who criticize Atheists to claim that they don’t suffer for their lack of faith in society at large, or that they haven’t been systematically persecuted, or to suggest, as some continue to do, that they should just shut up, hold their lack of belief private, and go with the flow.
Best,
David
Is it my imagination, or has Hoffman provided not one single solitary real example of an actual new atheist actually saying that atheist martyrs validate atheism? It seems to have studied with Hoffman having a feeling rather than with anything outside his head.
Plus he seems to think that the two-pronged response (Firstly that people ahve suffered for atheism; secondly that is is irrelevant to the validity of an idea) is somehow contradictory.
It’s embarrassing.
@Dk #38: Excellent post and well put.
Meanwhile, I took the time to go back and reread the Hoffman piece. And it’s actually really quite frustrating. (And right now, I can’t seem to load some pages, so I’ll have to muse from memory.) It’s frustrating because if you look at the entire article, it basically starts with a poor argument, as noted by others, but still manages in the middle to give a perfectly serviceable and interesting potted history for what turns out to be the majority of the piece, before returning to the end with the crazy talk about how gnus want martyrs. I actually really enjoyed the middle of the article, the discussion of the finer points and who believed what and the incremental steps they took was all plain old interesting.
And I don’t think I would be alone in saying that, I’m sure the majority of readers here, even in passing, are more than happy to tip their hats to those that deserve it, regardless of the label placed on them. I might add that I deliberately didn’t say we’d concede that people various deserve our kudos, because that seems to be at the heart of things here. I don’t see it as a concession because I don’t see that NAs lose anything by agreeing that the move from theism to atheism has been long and drawn out and complicated and not over and not necessarily always heading in the one direction. Are there any NAs who actually claim otherwise? Come to that, are there any NAs who are so enamored with the label that they’d care enough to bother arguing that they’re not part of a long tradition of thought?
This exchange is interesting:
One guy says no atheist contingent is worried about martyrdom, the other guy says he has detected hysteria from NAs on the subject, meaning before the current discussion. He doesn’t mean there’s a controversy now that they’ve planted one, does he?
As a tiebreaker I’ll consult my own familiarity with the concerns expressed by gnus: I’ve never heard any concern about atheist martyrdom at all. Not just no hysteria, but nothing. Atheists are simply less interested in dying for (non)beliefs than death cultists are. Therefore I strongly suspect that Berlinerblau is making it up.
If I’m wrong Berlinerblau will follow up because he’s interested and intrigued by the subject. So we’ll get to the bottom of this with his help.
Rieux has already pointed out the deficiency in rational thought illustrated in this and connected statements, but honestly, Hoffmann, this is mad. Brain-strain, perhaps? Overdoing the spade-work? I thought your behaviour was best explained as deliberate mischief prompted by arrogance, but now I’m beginning to wonder.
I’m glad that Helen Wise has picked you up on the gall with which you happily post comments on a fairly managed blog while deleting comments you don’t like – yes, mine too – on your own site. As she says, it’s cowardice. But of course it also serves your purpose of conveying the distorted image you wish to promulgate of those you have chosen to attack. You have simply no moral right to criticise others for shortcomings which you display in almost every word and deed.
I have to repeat, are you really a responsible person? Why not take time off, go and see someone? But whatever, I do wish you would stop making up discreditable rumours and lying smears and pissing on other people.
Ernie Keller said.
I knew an old atheist back in Ireland who used to hang out in the corner of a pub off Georges Street in Dublin. He always sat down with great difficulty and using extreme care – claiming “I’m a martyr to me piles”
Does that count?
Oh thank you Sigmund, we’ve found our atheist martyr at last!
Yikes. Berlinerblau seems to be doing his best to race after Joe straight down the rabbit-hole of nutso Gnu-bashing. He told me off for saying “there is no ‘hysteria’ about ‘martyrdom'” because he considers David Koepsell’s comment saying “some atheists have been killed” an example of “hysteria” about “martyrdom.” Godalmighty.
David K has another reply to B’blau, and Ron Lindsay did a good (and telling) comment.
You know, when someone points out an error in one of my blog posts, I typically highlight it very prominently in an update, not moderate it out of existence. If I think my central point still stands, I’ll say that too.. but to just completely bury a factual error? Not my style…
James – same here. I do that because I want people to see it so that they won’t be accidentally misinformed. I don’t want to hand out dud information; it bugs me.
Hamilton Jacobi,
I shamelessly lifted your “first contact” “take me to your leader” shtik and used it over at the Chronicle of Higher Education, without attribution. Hope you don’t mind.
I tossed in the Hive Mind of the Gnu Borg for fun.
I’d attribute, but that would spoil the Hive Mind thing.
Yup. Don’t mistake me; I love being right and detest being wrong, just like the rest of us egotistical jerks. ;) But the only thing I detest more than being wrong and having it pointed out to me is being wrong and not knowing it.
Furthermore, if I don’t feel the error undermines my point — which seems to be Hoffman’s contention here, that vigilante justice (even if explicitly tolerated) against atheists is irrelevant because only officially sanctioned violence can make a martyr — I feel it is important to bring that up and address it explicitly. If Hoffman really thinks that, then he should let the comment through and say as much.
David Koepsell posted a couple of excerpts from his Encyclopedia of Unbelief entry at Berlinerblau’s.
http://chronicle.com/blogs/brainstorm/have-atheists-ever-died-for-their-lack-of-faith/34162#comment-184319936
http://chronicle.com/blogs/brainstorm/have-atheists-ever-died-for-their-lack-of-faith/34162#comment-184327583
What exactly should we regard as a bona fide atheist martyr?
Since we can’t count atheists killed by lynch mobs I guess this means only state sanctioned death sentences will count. However, I get the feeling that we will not be allowed to include Islamic regimes (which do have death sentences for atheism on their books) since it is really an execution for rejecting Islam rather than accepting atheism. But execution for apostasy or heresy in christian lands was historically based on the rejection of the standard accepted religion (or version of said religion).
In other words, an genuine “atheist martyr” would be someone who was executed for not believing in any god rather than the rejection of an accepted God. I suspect its a bit of a catch 22 situation. By the time a society reaches the stage where multiple religions are tolerated with no prospect of the death sentence, it is almost inevitable that atheism will not be seen as a crime worth an official execution.
Aha; very neat. Lots of heretical “martyrs” but no atheist “martyrs.” So that’s the cunning plan!
Never mind, Joe has moved on; he’s posted an ancient review of Dawkins by Oliver Kamm. Uh……..ok.
@50…then Chevalier de la Barre would qualify. Killed for having atheist tracts in his house and singing “heretical” songs.
Sigmund @ 52 – in other words, the plan is to define “atheist martyr” into something that can’t exist, therefore there will be no atheist martyrs?
Also, what’s up with the ‘face gnu” – if this is shorthand for “a vocal representative who brings up Gnu points” then we have several already (Dawkins, Coyne, etc); if it is “someone who actually represents this group of Gnus and officially speaks for them”, then I don’t think there is anybody. Gnus do not seem to really be an organized group with an overarching belief system – we just have some things in common. Maybe this lack of authority throws them off and they can’t come to grips with that. Kinda like dealing with the “anonymous” anarchist-“group”.
Does it have to mean anything, Badger? What if it’s not meant to mean anything. What if it’s just another piece of nonsense, like “atheist martyr”. What if they just do it to annoy?
@Badger3K
I’m not sure if it was a plan but the clear goalpost shiftyness of their approach means that that essentially is the end result.
“I have no taste for martyrdom”, said Charles Bradlaugh.
I should hope that atheists generally would have more sense than to let themselves be “martyred”. Martyrdom is a religious notion, and we should have no truck with it. I guess atheists, not having a kind of burning ambition to get themselves killed in order to prove a point about faith, would keep their heads down rather than risk life and limb. And quite right too.
Historically, atheism broke out in the upper echelons of European society, and was usually covert. The early atheists were socially untouchable, therefore. Also, the existence of atheism was *denied*, therefore nobody could be killed as an atheist, because officially there were no atheists in the first place.
Remember, modern atheism only appeared in the 18th century. The great age of martyrdom was largely over by then in any case.
It is said that we should associate our history with the heretics and others – but my reading of histories of atheism is precisely that atheism *is* tied into the wider history of freethought, and furthermore always has been. So that’s a red herring.
Finally, how many genuine religious martyrs are there? Joseph McCabe, in his “A rationalist encyclopedia”, says:
Martyrs are like hen’s teeth, even after over 2000 yrs of Christianity.
Dan
On the subject of atheist history, Aratina Cage posted a link on the pharyngula thread, about a book warning of the dangers of “New Atheism” that was published in 1986.
http://www.amazon.com/New-Atheism-Erosion-Freedom/product-reviews/0875523625/ref=pr_all_summary_cm_cr_acr_txt?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1
Well, presumably a religious martyr is rather certain that he or she will be rewarded somehow for being martyred, whereas an atheist martyr would probably be rather certain that he or she wouldn’t, which already tilts the playing field.
There are also some rather obvious historical reasons why there wouldn’t be any atheist martyrs. First of all, it seems to me that you won’t be willing to call anyone who lived before the nineteenth century an “atheist” however heterodox their beliefs may have been. And I don’t know if you noticed, but by the nineteenth century people in the western world had begun to frown on torturing and killing people for espousing heterodox beliefs. In other words, ever since there’s been anyone you’d be willing to call an “atheist” it’s been pretty tough for anyone to get martyred.
Also, there aren’t any record keeping institutions for atheist martyrs. Christian denominations can just use the 2000 years of (dubious, apocryphal, and likely outright fraudulent) records of Catholic martyrs. Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam also have hundreds of years of oral histories in which to find stories (note that: stories) of folks being killed for their beliefs. Again, you’re not going to be willing to grant more than 200 years of history to atheism, and it’s the 200 years in which someone was least likely to be tortured and killed for their beliefs. Who knows how many free thinkers were killed in the inquisition for being unwilling to recant and simply had no one around to talk or write about it? (Heck, it could have been written about; the inquisition would have burned all that stuff anyway.)
But ignoring all that, there’s one simple example of a person who wagered his life on making a principled case for free thought when he almost certainly could have simply escaped with his life. Ever hear of Socrates, genius?
I didn’t say anything the other Dan hadn’t already said better (besides maybe the point about Socrates). Sorry about that.
Paul W.,
No problem — as a member of the collective, I was aware of it already. (I am aware of all … oh, never mind.) All for one and one for all.
I am, however, highly offended that you refer to it as “shtik”. It was intended as pompous Hoffmannian bilge of the first water.
Sorry?!
Ha – at my place people apologize for boast-worthy comments, while at Hoffblau’s, the posters preen themselves on posts they should be apologizing for.
I WIN!
I think I’ve mentioned previously that the final syllable of Berlinerblau’s surname (blau, “blue”) is German slang for “drunk.” In the same language, meanwhile, “hoff” can be a short form of the verb hoffen, “to hope.” (That’s not quite what it means in “Hoffman,” but never mind.)
On these terms, the Benson portmanteau “Hoffblau” may be oddly apropos. It just remains to be determined who’s hopefully (or who hopes to be) drunk–those two or the readers who are subjected to them.
Huff-Blow?
(Cross-posted from Coyne’s place)
While we’re on the subject of martyrs, you know who else the Nazis sent to the camps? Unitarians! Specifically Norbert Čapek, who gave us the flower communion.
Another Čapek also died there, Josef the painter, brother of the writer Karel. Among many other things they gave us the word “robot”.
The Nazis killed so many people that we can choose exemplars at our leisure.
(Flower communion has everyone bringing in flowers which are then redistributed throughout the gathering, generally by children. We’re nothing if not sentimental. You got a problem with that?)
Actually, lately, the tone here makes Unitarians seem brutal. Somebody ought to tone down the civility. Don’t we have a reputation to maintain?
We don’t owe religion any part of our heritage. None! Christianity inspired great artists the same way that the wealthy and powerful did: they paid the bills; they commissioned their work.
Our religious tradition had far less to do with the advent of science. All the church had to offer was a little Aristotle, a measly meal compared to the hearty Greek buffet of speculation. What mattered most was the rejection of revelation, for which religion can never claim the credit.
Nietzsche made the point most spectacularly:
Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for Everyone and Nobody (Oxford World’s Classics) (Graham Parkes’s translation), Second Part, Section 4, by Friedrich Nietzsche, as translated by Graham Parkes
Dying for a belief doesn’t make it true. It does appear to be effective in spreading irrational ideas. I think there’s a relationship between the unverifiability or incoherence of an idea and the use of violence against oneself or others to propagate it. If you can demonstrate the truth of an idea you just do that. If you can’t you appeal to emotion.