Wot’s it matta?
What does it all matter? I’ve been engaging in a couple of blog discussions of that question – about why people get so riled about Mooney and Kirshenbaum, what’s at stake, whence comes all the heat. (I’ve also lost a friend over it, a price I resent paying.)
One way of explaining is to quote a little of the preface to The God Delusion. It starts with Lalla Ward’s misery at school and her parents’ asking why she never said she wanted to leave and her reply: ‘But I didn’t know I could.’
Lots of people don’t know they can, and it is worth letting them know: you can. (You can even invoke ‘Yes we can’ if you want to. Why not?)
Dawkins goes on to talk in particular about the US and its religiosity:
There are many people who know, in their heart of hearts, that they are atheists, but dare not admit it to their families or even, in some cases, to themselves. Partly, this is because the very word ‘atheist’ has been assiduously built up as a terrible and frightening label…The status of atheists in America today is on a par with that of homosexuals fifty years ago…The reason so many people don’t notice atheists is that so many of us are reluctant to ‘come out’…Exactly as in the case of the gay movement, the more people come out, the easier it will be for others to join them. [pp 3-4]
There: that’s part of why. It’s because of that. It’s because of social pressure, majoritarian pressure, the pressure of public opinion and rhetoric and ‘framing.’ It’s easy for me to be an atheist, but I’m a nerd living in a big coastal city; the fact that it’s easy for me doesn’t mean it’s easy for everyone. It’s not. It’s hard for a great many people – it’s not a live option – or if it is it’s one with a huge price tag attached. And that’s bad because there is nothing wrong with being an atheist. It’s not a crime, not even a thought-crime. So Dawkins is right – people in the US at least need to know they’re not weirdos marooned on Planet Theism, and the only way for them to know that is for it to be true, and the only way for it to be true is for more and more atheists to be openly atheist as opposed to bashfully apologetically silently atheist.
This has started, partly thanks to Dawkins’s book. Sure, there’s a lot of irritating bluster along the way – but that’s not the end of the world. There is also a fair amount of worthwhile discussion of what we know and how we know it, and that makes a nice change from legless chat about what ‘God’ wants us to do. M&K have a fixed idea that all this will cause Americans to hate science, or to fail to stop hating science, or to hate science more than they already do, or something like that – but M&K have yet to offer a coherent argument for exactly why they think that and why the rest of us should think it too. Nothing daunted by the lack of an argument, they are trying very hard to persuade everyone that they are right and that atheists should go back to being bashfully apologetically silent. But we don’t want to do that. That’s the whole point – we want to stop doing that and do the other thing instead. We think M&K need a much, much more compelling argument than anything they’ve offered yet to convince us to go back into our little pens.
So that’s what it all matters.
Absolutely! It matters a lot! Besides, M&K can’t give a good reason why we should all make nice. It’s all about freedom and truth. Even if openness about atheism by atheist scientists made science less attractive to the religious, it would still be important to maintain this openness. It’s simply a matter of telling the truth, as they know the truth. Why would anyone suggest that they should not do this? Do M&K really have so little confidence in liberty?
The losing a friend bit is the worst part, though if this person dumped you over an intellectual disagreement on one specific issue – however important – then I have to question how much he or she was a real friend in the first place.
Russell – yes, quite.
“And that’s bad because there is nothing wrong with being an atheist. It’s not a crime, not even a thought-crime. So Dawkins is right – people in the US at least need to know they’re not weirdos marooned on Planet Theism, and the only way for them to know that is for it to be true, and the only way for it to be true is for more and more atheists to be openly atheist as opposed to bashfully apologetically silently atheist.”
The term I use for this is ‘unapologetic atheism’. Not strident, not militant (although we are called these things by others, I don’t call myself them), just unapologetic. As in, there’s nothing wrong with being an atheist, and I have nothing to apologize for. I will not hide it, because there’s nothing to hide, nothing to be ashamed of. Also, I will speak out when theism oversteps its bounds, or when atheism is blamed or scapegoated. I am an unapologetic atheist.
It has an interesting double-meaning, as ‘counter-apologetic’. Like tie and untie. If you try to tie me up with apologetics, watch out, cuz I’ll untie your arguments with my unapologetics. Essentially, it means I’m an atheist who knows the arguments well enough to say that they’re all garbage.
Sorry to hear that you lost a friend because you disagreed over M&K.
Personally, I think M&K have lost so much credibility among their peers that it’s a waste of time and energy to continue pointing out their faulty logic, partisan presentation of facts and rickety logic. The fact that Mooney got enormous exposure on national media is par for the course — annoying, unfair but unavoidable.
The perils of atheism in general and science accommodationism in particular are serious issues with repercussions in the real world. However, the ideological positioning of Mooney per se is small potatoes unless he ends up dictating national policy. Giving him 40% of your articles in one month is paying him way too much attention.
Oops! Pressed Send without editing!
The sentence with the redundancy should have been “faulty logic, partisan presentation of facts and suspect motives.”
Well, yes, but then all my articles pay way too much attention to whatever it is they pay attention to, so that’s just how it goes. I pay way too much attention to stuff; it’s a hobby.
M&K’s message of “it’s ok to be an atheist, but shut up and be respectful of religion” reminds me of when people say “I don’t have a problem with gay people as long as they keep it to themselves.” In both cases, whoever says it has a problem.
The rights of atheists, like gay people, should not be under condition of silence. Religious people and straight people don’t have to shut up to live freely and openly, so why should atheists and gay people?
Because atheists and gay people are offensive and annoying and a nuisance. That’s why. Next question?
I’m sorry you lost a friend over this.
I think the gay analogy is frankly nuts, but the basic point of that passage is correct.
Society in general still has this enormous double standard; if your attitude to religion is positive, be as loud as you like about it and no one’ll ever suggest you’re doing something out of place. If religion is at all appropriate for discussion in the public sphere, those cheering it ought to be made to feel just as self-conscious as M&K want to make atheists feel.
“But I didn’t know I could” has haunted me ever since I first read it, as it pretty much sums up the greatest source of misery in my early life. It really is about not feeling alone anymore – about knowing one isn’t the only one who doesn’t buy all the fairy tales. It doesn’t bear thinking about how many children are now suffering in situations like that and our being visible – and audible – may be the only thing that gives them hope. So, dream on M&K, this is one landslide that is beyond stopping.
‘our being visible – and audible – may be the only thing that gives them hope.’
Yeah. I’m equally haunted by Dennett’s story of the high school kid who told him (after a school talk in which he [DD] mentioned being an atheist) that he (the kid) had thought he was alone and weird. Also by similar stories people told at CFI in 2007.
Are you talking from an American perspective? My sense in the UK is that the religious keep their beliefs fairly quiet, and are slightly apologetic when they say they spent the weekend doing some church related activity. There just doesn’t seem to be the heat over the issue that is generated in the USA (or so I gather, from reading B&W).
No, I’m not coming from an American perspective, but I’m being influenced by what comes through the internet, which has a pretty significant American component. The whole M&K business is American, after all.
KB – even in the UK, though, the religious aren’t all that quiet (or retiring or careful or ‘respectful’ etc etc), wouldn’t you say? Bunting is in the UK, Andrew Brown is, Mark Vernon is; Giles Fraser, Theo Hobson, Karen Armstrong, the bishops and archbishops…
I was thinking of the ordinary British public. Tony Blair, for instance, had to tone down his religiosity as his PR people knew it was not good PR. Church attendance is much lower here than it is in the US. A politician does not speak about his religion in the way that seems to be obligatory for US politicians. A PM thinking God is on his side scares us to buggery, whereas a President seems to be able to get away with it. As for the archbishop of Canterbury, he made everyone furious for his remarks on shariah law. The job of an archbishop is ceremonial and to make the occasional ignore moral pronouncement. I was reading that in a lot of places in the US people will ask newcomers what church they go to. I don’t think that is true here.
Yeah – that’s what I thought you meant.
I’ve heard that about ‘what church do you go to?’ too. I’m happy to say that I’ve never had that experience – but then I live on one of the coasts, and so far north that it’s practically Canada besides, and anyway I’m a nerd so I don’t meet new people and when I do people don’t ask me questions because I look too frightening. So I’m all set.
“So where’s the limit in M&K’s proposed shut-up strategy?”
Exactly. I was asking about that (on another blog) just yesterday. The argument was that it’s not all that odd to suggest for instance that people not talk about the merits of rationing health care in the US right now while there’s so much nonsense flying around. Sure – but that’s a very clear goal and a very limited suggestion. M&K are, as you say, inviting us to shut up forever for the sake of a whole range of goals, many of them quite vague.