Kinds of Atheist
Norm quotes Freeman Dyson reviewing Dennett’s new book.
There are two kinds of atheists, ordinary atheists who do not believe in God and passionate atheists who consider God to be their personal enemy.
No, that doesn’t cover it. There’s more to it than that. There are atheists who, independent of what they consider god to be, are (probably, in terms of what Dyson is talking about) not ordinary atheists who do not believe in god and are not fussed about it: there are atheists who, whatever they think of god, feel a certain sense of outrage, or perhaps violation, at being urged or commanded to believe in something there is no good reason to believe. It’s not so much god that is their personal enemy (though that may also be the case) as the presumptuous demand that they accept a belief that there is a lot of good reason to think is false, that is their (our) enemy. Now, it’s true that the god of the Bible and the god of public belief and discourse (the one that punishes some people with hurricanes and earthquakes and tsunamis while saving a few, the one that answers some prayers and not others, the one that hates fags, the one that’s a man and has a low opinion of women, the one that didn’t lift a finger during the Holocaust or the Great War or King Leopold’s romps in the Congo or centuries of slavery in the US – that god) strikes me as being a repulsive guy; yes, he’s my personal enemy, but of course that’s really the doing of the people who dream him up and then try to force him on everyone; so he’s my personal enemy only in a rather peculiar sense. But the hostility to the demands for belief is much more straightforward. I don’t think people ought to chastise or rebuke or lecture or whine at people who refuse to accept truth claims about a giant powerful person who really exists in the world and really makes things happen, on the basis of no proper evidence. That is where the, shall we say, vehemence of my atheism comes from. I do not like being ordered to believe fairy tales. It pisses me off.
The first example Dyson gives actually seems much more like an example of the kind of atheism I’m talking about than what Dyson calls it. In short, his illustration doesn’t illustrate his own claim: the guy he’s talking about, he says, “had always disliked religion in general and Simpson’s piety in particular.” But disliking religion and piety is not the same thing as considering god one’s personal enemy. In other words, there are other reasons for disliking or indeed hating religion than considering god an enemy. Dyson’s formula conceals and belittles those other reasons. It’s an irritating little bit of rhetoric. I noticed it when I linked to that review in News on June 9th, and made unpleasant faces at it, but didn’t bother commenting. But that is just the kind of thing that makes atheists of my kind just that little bit more the kind of atheist we are – that rather sneering implication that we can’t have any good or rational or understandable reason for disliking religion and its attempts at imposition. So we get that bit more hostile, and the Dysons get more sneering, and round we go.
Norm points out that there is another issue:
But for both believers and unbelievers there’s another issue that is probably more important in determining their belief and unbelief, respectively. It’s the issue of the truth or otherwise of religious belief. Here Dyson opts for a standpoint that puts the issue beyond the reach of any rational adjudication. These are just two incommensurable types of knowledge…
It is indeed the issue of the truth or otherwise. I think it would have been more civil if Dyson had taken that aspect into account. But it’s the fashion to talk as if atheists are more or less loony.
It seems to me that what Freeman Dyson and other “spiritual” types often fail to appreciate is how often the same kind of arguments are made against people who actively question or attack pseudoscience, pseudohistory, pseudoarchaelogy, etc. And at some point, these groups would include THEM.
Argue against psychic powers and you’re a raving materialist with a closed mind which fails to appreciate wonders. Write a book against homeopathy, you enjoy harming people with unnecessary and dangerous “allopathic” pills. If you write an essay against the theory that space aliens built the pyramids, you secretly hate the visitors from other worlds. Or you hate people with new ideas. Or you hate the idea of the little guy going against the experts. Or you are just a nasty kind of person, against nice things in general.
It’s never that the issue itself is wrong: something about YOU is wrong. You’re an extremist. You’re against, against, against. That’s so negative.
The proper response is presumably a shrug. Truth should matter, sure — but why get so worked up about it? Is astrology your personal enemy? What about if they propose teaching it in the science department of your university?
They might have an answer for that themselves, once they’re on the “other” side.
I think there are a couple of things going on in Dyson’s “two kinds of atheist” sentence, possibly not at the same level of his consciousness.
One hears about the passionate kind, because they are the ones who let themselves be heard. An ordinary atheist just doesn’t believe and has the good grace not to interfere with the smooth running of religion-based society by mentioning his non-belief. As such, I suppose one could grant him the status of honorary theist.
It goes without saying that one can’t seriously have a personal enemy in whose existence one doesn’t believe. Dyson could easily have defined passionate atheists in a way that spoke of their attitude to religion or belief in god, yet he chose to define them in a way that posits god as real. Or, possibly, in a way that suggests that anyone doing so much protesting can’t be doing it against something in which they really don’t believe. So, if you will, that sentence implies he’s got the world split into three: a) believers; b) ordinary atheists who keep their traps shut, thus collaborating with theism; c) passionate atheists who hate god so much that we can’t take their loud claims to non-belief seriously.
The feeling that “atheists should be neither seen nor heard” was much in the forefront of the negative reactions to the two Dawkins programmes; one solitary voice against religion was focused on as something requiring more balance, as if the airwaves weren’t already awash with open religious propaganda, with nary a sobering disclaimer in sight.
The second part of his review, where draws conclusions about relgion and education is just loopy. I didn’t know about Huxley’s role in the initial setting up of state education in the UK so I can’t comment on this, but Dyson’s description of the present day set up bears little relation to reality. How can he fail to mention that one third of schools are controlled by the churches, teaching religion as truth, not as part of ‘the english culture’? Its like he’s just made this whole section up.
Like Stewart and G I noted the pathetic logical flaw in Dyson’s opening statement and realised as I read on that once again religious apologetics were being marketed as rational criticism.
It’ll never stop so I guess we just need to get used to it and make sure we don’t get taken in by it.
“I guess we just need to get used to it and make sure we don’t get taken in by it.”
That might be more appropriate if it were the case that after many centuries of reason and enlightenment this kind of stuff just started to pop up (and represented a curious abberration, rather than a resurgence of something old and tyrannical). Even if we sometimes get disheartened by the inroads religion keeps making in our relatively new-found freedoms, we ought to keep in mind that our being free to speak openly against it (most of us, at least) represents enormous progress. I hope Chris won’t object if I amend his sentiment to “I guess we just need to get used to having to speak up about it and pointing out what nonsense it is to make sure that neither we nor anyone else are taken in by it.”
“I do not like being ordered to believe fairy tales. It pisses me off.”
What pisses me off even more is that I’m allowed to laugh only at adults who believe certain fairy tales (like Santa or Tooth Fairy), while those others who believe in GOD deserve “respect”. I am not allowed to laugh at them or point out to them that their beliefs seems ridiculous. It’s even considered inappropriate to ask them to justify their beliefs. It’s not very nice.
God/s are not my enemy, religion is.
What really makes me spit is theists who, patronisingly, seem to consider atheism a soft option. “Oh, you have to have faith!’- as though faith is more than the wishfull thinking it really is,and that atheists don’t put a hell of a lot of damn hard effort and reasoning into their godlessness. They seem to think, with a certain smug pride at their own credulousness, that wishfull thinking deserves some respect, as though it’s noble. While I despise all religion equally, Xtians seem to have a monopoly on this sort of smug pride at their own piety- what could be more appauling than the term ‘…having a simple, Christian, faith.’
Why do they put so much value in faith? Lets face it, it’s all they’ve got.
Dammit, now I’m all angry.
If this little bit of Dyson gets under your skin try reading his book “Infinite in All Directions”. Just reading the introduction almost made my head explode. I’m about halfway through it now. For a noted, and generally respected scientist, even his science is a bit suspect when he dumbs it down for a general audience.
Sad…
Well, to be fair, I think the line about atheists who consider god their personal enemy is at least partly a joke. I doubt that he fails to realize that it’s odd to hate someone you don’t believe in. It’s like that Kingsley Amis line that I have quoted so often (don’t stop me if I’m boring you) – when Yevtushenko asked him ‘Atheist?’ he answered ‘Well, yes, but it’s more that I hate him.’ The nonsensicality was, obviously, deliberate.
But of course it’s also not nonsense, because it is possible to disbelieve in the existence of the horrible creature people believe in and still think that that is a horrible creature that they believe in.
Yes, all this stuff that everyone is so irritated about is very irritating. Good, glad we got that straight!
While that may be the case for him, I’m sure many theists would take it quite seriously. After all, they have ‘faith’ that god/s exist, and that they are right, so therefore atheists hate god/s because for them, gods exist and we are just denying it because we have no ‘faith’. QED.
Yeah, true. I suppose I was assuming a bit more sophistication in readers of the NYRB.