Let’s get snitty
Just to be thorough about it, I also disagree with Hemant Mehta. (I’m not crazy about his title, for one thing – it implies that atheists in general are not ‘friendly’ and perhaps that they are hostile and mean and crabby.) He starts out well, pointing out that ‘aggressive’ and ‘friendly’ atheists actually want the same things and aren’t as distinct as Stephen Prothero claims. But then…
The difference is that the “aggressive” types don’t care who they offend. They’ll go after religion in all its forms — it doesn’t matter if they criticize the Vatican or the local church down the street or your sweet neighbor who happens to be religious.
That just isn’t true. It just isn’t true that we ‘go after’ sweet people who happen to be religious. We do go after people who do horrible things for religious reasons – but that can’t be what Mehta meant by people who are sweet and happen to be religious. He has to have meant sweet people who are not made cruel by their religion. Well we don’t ‘go after’ people like that! We don’t refrain from disputing religious truth claims on the grounds that people like that exist – but that is not the same thing as ‘going after’ them. It does get pretty tiresome to have people constantly accusing us of being more sadistic than we in fact are.
The “friendly” types are willing to do some triage here. They’re not going to spend the same amount of energy going after a local pastor or national politician who happens to espouse a personal belief in a god. There are more important battles to fight.
But what has the local pastor done? It depends, doesn’t it. If the local pastor is just the local pastor, most ‘new’ atheists also don’t spend much energy going after her. The national politician is another matter – national politicians in a secular democracy really shouldn’t be ‘espousing’ a personal belief in a god, and it doesn’t take a whole lot of energy to say so. Of course there are more important battles to fight, but so what? We can multi-task.
I would much rather keep as allies those religious people who do things like support sound science, fight for equal rights for the GLBT community, and believe in separation of church and state.
But why is it one or the other? Why would religious people who support sound science, fight for equal rights for the GLBT community, and believe in separation of church and state stop doing those things merely because some atheists (or all atheists for that matter) are explicit about their atheism? I don’t believe for a second that they would. Who is that stupid and petty? People who support sound science, fight for equal rights for the GLBT community, and believe in separation of church and state are probably already not the kind of people to change all their views and actions because they’re in a snit. They might even be so reasonable and fair-minded and sensible that they really think atheists have every right to be public about their atheism. They might even be interested in the arguments!
I know others prefer a no-holds-barred approach, but I think that’s counterproductive when dealing with the people we want to reach out to the most — those who are on the fence.
What fence? Which fence are we talking about? And who’s ‘we’? What is this imaginary ‘we’ that accommodationists always have in mind? The always-right secular but friendly but atheist but civil but liberal but soft-spoken…Everyliberal? Or what? Why is there a ‘we’ who wants to reach out to people on the fence – why aren’t the people on the fence a ‘we’ who want to reach out to us, but find us too boring and anxious and timid to bother with? There’s something weirdly patronizing and de haut en bas about all this grand strategizing and we-invoking, as if all accommodationists were best buddies with David Axelrod or something. Why do the ‘friendly’ atheists think they have some heavy responsibility for what they perhaps think of as ‘the atheist community’ and how it appears to everyone else? I don’t know – but it makes me so huffy that I think I will become a conservative evangelical Republican, just to punish them.
Not true. A secular democracy does not imply that politicians can’t have religious beliefs or espouse them. They just cant use it to determine policy.
Love it!
Where are these aggressive atheists, anyway? If they’ve been picketing Episcopalian churches or attacking ministers in the street, I must have missed it.
At most there are people giving talks, writing books and articles and weblogs, occasional poster and billboard campaigns, and every so often a lawsuit. A few of us even sport bumper stickers. These are utterly civil activities, however much they might upset the devout.
“These are utterly civil activities, however much they might upset the devout.”
Exactly, bad Jim. Even at their snittiest, I have never EVER heard a “new” atheist advocate any act of violence. I don’t think any religious believer can truthfully claim the same forbearance.
I beg your indulgence. I got around to reading Hemant Mehta’s piece and ran into this:
The problem is that we never will be able to answer questions like “What is God’s plan for me? Why was I made, what is the purpose or the meaning of life?” These are non-trivial questions for a great many people, unfortunately. There are reasonable responses but they all boil down to “You’re asking the wrong questions.”
We don’t have an easy answer to injustice in this life because we can’t offer compensation in the next. We can’t give everyone a one-size-fits-all narrative that makes everyone a hero. Arguably, we could do better than Come over to the dark side: we have cookies!, but how much better?
Apart from sushi, say.
“it makes me so huffy that I think I will become a conservative evangelical Republican, just to punish them.”
Brilliant! It’s so absurd.
That point about “friendly” is spot on. This very morning while shopping I saw a Christmas book for children titled “The Friendly Snowman”, and was puzzled for that very reason – it seemed to imply that the titular snowman was atypical, along the lines of “Casper the Friendly Ghost” – whereas I’ve never considered snowmen in general to be unfriendly. Atheists are snowmen.
No, we’re strawmen, in most arguments.
This is why I like Gould’s NOMA. It’s indisputable that religion informs us in ways that science couldn’t, like why eating cheeseburgers is forbidden. It acknowledges that theological disputation belongs in the same room as arguments about the comparative merits of Debussy and Manet. “That’s very nice, but could you please leave the rest of us alone?”
OT
One of those stories that leaves one too angry to comment:
http://www.timeslive.co.za/news/article227620.ece
Oh, Ophelia! I sincerely thank you for this offering, as it is a ‘blessed’ relief for me in at least two respects:
1. It encapsulates my feelings about faitheism in general, and Hemant’s somewhat odious version of it, in particular.
2) I now know that I am ‘not alone’ in my very mixed feelings about his contributions.
I am thinking about penning something on the divide between what I see as
‘political short term goals that might be achieved via white lies for those infected by the faith meme’
and
‘truth and reality’.
If one’s physician were to suggest that if one need only be nice to one’s Ebola virus, and it will volunteer to not harm one, I submit that one would be justified in having this physician sent immediately to an asylum for the mentally insane.
But that is effectively an extreme case of what the faitheists are trying to tell we who care about truth, and whom give short-term outcomes little wieght.
Vis: The long-term effectiveness of
* Accomodationsim
vs.
* Truth
Perhaps you might have already so done, in your inimitably and admirably direct style?
Though when it comes to pseudoscience, seems Hemant has no trouble posting stuff like this: http://friendlyatheist.com/2009/12/07/sanjay-b-jumaani-is-full-of-shit/
“it makes me so huffy that I think I will become a conservative evangelical Republican, just to punish them.”
I suspect you haven’t read the latest from Josh Rosenau.
http://scienceblogs.com/tfk/?utm_source=bloglist&utm_medium=dropdown
This is one of the most bizarre conversations ever imagined. A few years ago you could be an atheist and express yourself as you would, and no one would have said boo. (I could even used Richard Robinson’s An Atheist’s Values in homilies as an example of clear thinking.) And now, suddenly, we are surrounded by people who are going to tell us what atheists may and may not say.
And not only that. We are told that how we say it will determine how the religious will act. If they are intolerant and unkind, domineering and dictatorial, well, it’s because of the atheists. After all, when they don’t feel threatened, religious people are warm and cuddly folks who wouldn’t hurt a fly!
Well, it’s not true! Religions go on being religions, and hurting little people, and people not so little too. They suppress, and they prevaricate and they arrogate to themselves authority based on the supposed deliverances of gods and goblins. And we are not supposed to say a thing, because someone might take it amiss, and become intolerant and violent, and kill a few people because an atheist simply told it the way that she or he sees things.
Well, I’ve been surrounded by religious people all my life, and, while it’s true that some of them are very nice people, very kind and concerned about justice, they very often have a short fuse where beliefs go, and are ready to go off like bombs if you question their certainties, certainties, by the way, which are as unstable as nitroglycerine.
Why else do you think they respond with such intensity to the merest suggestion of a question whether what they believe is true, and can be shown to be true? Why else do they elect popes who live in a bygone age, or why else do theocratic states band together and tell the rest of the world that they represent the best society?
And as for people on the fence. That’s the problem! Most religious people are on the fence. That’s why many – especially leaders of faith communities – respond in the way that they do to any question of their beliefs. If people weren’t on the fence, their leaders could simply let them rest peacefully in the lap of faith, and not think twice about the spoilsports who demand proof. The problem is, there is no proof, and so, in order to hold onto faith at all, you have to show that you really are a person of faith – I mean, really and truly are – by responding with anger to anyone who challenges those vast undefended frontiers of faith which slope off so naturally into unbelief.
The idea of Abraham’s unquestioning faith (the Akedah) or Thomas’s doubt, are vital to the idea of religious faith. Blessed are those who believe – without any reason, without any proof. You don’t really need to defend belief, if you’re really sure, and have reason to be. But how can you be really sure of something that has no basis of proof? (If there were such a basis, do you think you could gather 220 ‘faith traditions’ (nice term that) from 80 countries to celebrate faith at a Parliament of Religions?! Imagine that parliament being in session for more than a few days!) The only way to keep the fence sitters inside the corral is to raise the social cost of jumping off. Contrary to what many people apparently think, the furious defence of religious faith, of belief in belief, signifies the gradually diminishing grip of the dead hand of the past. Just imagine how Moses or Mohammed would have responded to questions and doubts? And if the religious could only burn people at the stake, or slaughter them like Moses or Elijah, they’d have no problems (or at least fewer of them) with religious believing either. Wouldn’t make it sincere, of course, but that’s another issue entirely.
Besides, Ophelia, you couldn’t even pretend to be a conservative Republican!
Let me start out by saying that I’m a big fan of both Hemant and Ophelia, so I don’t really have a “side” in this dispute. Also, I really like it that Prothero’s boneheaded claim that to make atheism “nicer” there need to be more female voices is being challenged vociferously and aggressively by someone who is — *shock!* *horror!* — female.
Hemant’s blog entry seems to me to be endorsing the “multiple voices” approach, which I actually agree with. In fact, some of the points Hemant makes are exactly why I think Mooney and Kirshenbaum are so full of shit. No one is in a position to declare their own voice to be THE voice. Diverse audiences require diverse voices.
It’s unfortunate that Hemant, by labeling himself the “friendly atheist”, is portraying his own voice as superior to the “angry atheist”, but I can forgive him for that.
Hemant seems to be using “we” because he’s a part of movement atheism, something I’ve been iffy about for a while. I’m certainly an atheist, but I’m hesitant to adopt atheism as a movement and start playing identity politics with it. I’m not sure if that’s the best approach. But, for better or worse, that’s Hemant’s approach, and it lets us know who the “we” is in his blog post. Atheism is a political and cultural identity for Hemant.
To understand what Hemant means by those who are “on the fence”, it’s helpful to look at his own background. He goes to churches, as an openly atheistic person, and discusses atheism at the pulpit. It seems to me that he views religious people who are open to atheists as “on the fence”. That may or may not be the best characterization, but I have to admire his courage in marching into a church proudly announcing his own atheism. Ultimately, I think what he’s doing is good. It will at least make people less willing to discriminate against unbelievers, because Hemant puts a human (and friendly) face on atheism.
Anyways, none of this necessarily contradicts anything Ophelia said. I tend to be more on the “angry” side myself. But I also admire and respect people like Hemant, so I feel obliged to stick up for him.
Hemant’s ‘friendliness’ hasn’t meant he is immune from attacks of religious bigotry. On several occasions there have been concerted efforts to get him fired from his teaching job for the simple reason that he is an atheist. In the old days these sort of attempts might have succeeded. These days, primarily through the actions of a number of outspoken atheists a it is widely recognized that violation of the rights of atheists carries legal consequences. Does anyone think this change in attitude has come about through the actions of the ‘Don’t-Ask-Don’t-Tell’ atheists and moderate christians or through the actions of outspoken atheists who were brave enough to take these sorts of cases to court and fight for their rights?
I gave up reading Hemant’s blog long ago, primarily because of the commenters there (at the time, at least) who were largely of the ‘boo to a goose’, apologetic unbelievers, sort. I had expected more of this kind of thing, and sooner, from there.
I hadn’t actually previously noticed the unfortunate implication of his ‘Friendly Atheist’ moniker, which I’m sure is unintentional. I’m personally of the mind that if you’re not angry, you’re not paying attention; and not just concerning religion.
To me, Richard Dawkins is a mild mannered old-school British gentleman, Sam Harris is wry and composed, Hitchens… is deliberately provocative, that’s his thing. Anyway, my point being that even the most super-nice, accommodating, attractive person openly and reasonably criticising religious belief is going to be called aggressive, or strident, or Hitler, or whatever; and have those insults published and broadcast by the Buntings, Wrights, and Mooneys et al. Religion must be relegated to at least, and preferably beneath, the level of politics when it comes openness to discussion and criticism.
Wes – Sure, the overall endorsement of the multiple voices approach is fine. But the attribution of active nastiness (picking on the sweet neighbor) to ‘new’ atheists is not so good. It often seems as if anyone who doesn’t self-identify as a ‘new’ atheist is simply incapable of characterizing them (us) accurately – and this fact, if it is a fact, is all by itself symptomatic and depressing.
Michael, you’re welcome. :- )
I think I did talk about the short-term, political approach versus the other one, at some point last summer, during the protracted wrangle over the Mooney-Kirshenbaum campaign – though I think not in a separate post.
I’m curious what sorts of things Mehta thinks I may have done that constitute “going after” people like his sweet neighbor who “happens to be” religious.
I’m guessing it means participating in public discourse in the same way that religious groups do all the time. Because I can’t think of anything else I, or anyone else, might have done.
Has some atheist out there been picketing Mehta’s sweet old neighbor’s home? Speak up if you have, you’re giving us a bad name.
You know, Patrick, how most New Atheists knock on their elderly neighbor’s door to make fun of her family bible? Or, how at the Thanksgiving table, we mortify our extended family by calling them stupid, gullible, and challenging them on their choice of church?
Really, it’s not even funny to me anymore. It’s a damnable slur, and it’s out of line – even more so coming from people who claim to be our “allies.” That’s what gets up my nose about people like Mehta, and his calling himself the “friendly” atheist. I should not have to put up with being characterized by default as “unfriendly” by people who take a softer approach. I don’t want to change Mehta or his approach – I only want him to stop making things up about people like me, and to stop libeling us to create his own brand.
And you know, I don’t even think he means to. I think he’s a genuinely good guy. But that indicates how deeply this automatic prejudice runs – even folks on our side can’t see they libel us by default.
I’m going to suggest that part of the reason for the common strawmanning of the so-called New Atheist is an unfortunate and unintentional byproduct of what Wes called “movement atheism” — belonging to atheist groups, going to atheist conventions, hanging out in atheist forums. I’ve done that, and what happens is that you now and then run into a few good old-fashioned village-atheists who do fit the stereotype.
I met a guy at one convention who actually pickets churches: he brought his signs along. “Grow Up — There is NO God!” He doesn’t, from what I could tell, picket a particular church he has some specific grudge against. No, just churches in general. He was trying to get up a group that Sunday, to go out and find a church. Word got around later, that he managed it. Most were appalled. And these were atheist activists.
I’ve met other people who boast about breaking into private conversations, or talk about bringing up atheism in social situations which have nothing to do with religion, just to do it. They’re unsophisticated and ham-handed and crude and more than a little nuts … and out there. I’ve met them; Hemant has met them, because I’ve met Hemant at a few of these conventions, too. If you hang out on any large atheist forum (ie Pharyngula), you eventually learn to pick out the odd one or two regulars or visitors who rant wildly as they tell tall tales about spitting in the faces of passing nuns, or some such nonsense. Enough people, you get the bell curve, with outliers falling off the end.
These Village Atheists aren’t the “New Atheists” as defined by D&D&H&H. They’re cut in the old mold of Mad O’Hare, and they’re a distinct minority. But they do fit themselves proudly under the label anyway, because they have very high standards of aggression, and love the “no more quarter given to religion” rhetoric. For them, it means something different than to the rest of us.
They are, when you meet them, memorable. Try to argue for rational balance, and they will call you a faith-loving wimp — or, now, an accomodationist. Sometimes gruesome personal stories spill out. They have “issues.” They make you wince.
So, what happens when atheist-group atheists talk about tactics is that the crazies are an unforgettable part of the background knowledge, and so they’re set off as the example of the extreme, to be avoided. But, to those who have never actually met any of these folks (most atheists, probably), it will simply sound as if they’re doing the familiar old bashing of Dawkins’ “militancy.” They’re not, but it’s going to be the automatic assumption, because that’s what faitheists do. You have to be careful.
Maybe Hemant isn’t being careful enough? Just a possibility.
Exactly. And all the endless repetition and repetition and repetition just entrenches the automatic prejudice that bit more – which is why we have to keep pushing back all the time.
Oops, cross-post; that ‘exactly’ referred to what Josh said.
I met a guy at one convention who actually pickets churches: he brought his signs along. “Grow Up — There is NO God!”
Why that sounds exactly like G. Tingey! Which is why I’ve told him some 50 thousand times to stop commenting here (I can’t block him) and why I delete the comments he rudely persists in making. He is indeed an Awful Warning – he often seems like a horrible parody version of me, a thought which causes me to want to go into retirement and never type another word anywhere on any subject ever. Anyway yes – the unstoppable bore does exist and does fit the description of the ‘new’ atheist-haters. But the rest of us don’t!
Sastra, great comment as always. You’re one of the first people I think of when the topic is “reasonable, incisive, on-target, and unassailable” when it comes to this issue.
You’re right that there some stupid, immature Village Atheists (even I wince a little saying that though, wondering if I’m duplicating the criticism against people like me, just shifted up the Overton scale). I’ve run into them.
But I’m less willing to cut people like Mehta slack. No, I don’t think it’s reasonable for people like him to allow these walking stereotypes to characterize the rest of us. Yes, I do think people like Mehta are smart enough – and that they have an ethical obligation – to distinguish between the occasional bratty loudmouth, and the rest of us. It’s not that hard.
So, respectfully, I’m not inclined to cut him as much slack. If he has a legitimate point that atheists need to discern the crazy fundies from the more reasonable religionists (a contentious point anyway), then surely he can be expected to do the same among his allies. Isn’t that obvious?
“wondering if I’m duplicating the criticism against people like me”
No. That way madness lies. We really do have to distinguish. Boring repetitive shouting is not just like us only a bit more so. Barking slogans over and over is not the same thing as making arguments.
You’re right. If much of The Official Internet survives for any length of time, it’ll be a fascinating exercise for researchers to document the Rise of the Instant, Publicly Available First Draft!
Josh Slocum wrote:
Yes; I think he was careless (and unfair) not only in how he characterized the “aggressive” type atheists, but in how he allied himself with Prothero, who really wasn’t talking about “aggression” so much as “proselytizing” — and equating the two. I don’t think Hemant means to do that. He talks about the friendly-type trying to persuade the religious to change their minds about religion, and not just about atheists. That’s a line.
There is a point where one’s style can become so polite and nonthreatening that one backs down from confrontation and becomes willing to regard truth claims, as matters of taste. You have yours, I have mine, and let’s just agree to disagree. No debates. Relax.
That’s not just a difference in style; that’s a difference in content. I think one of the defining characteristics of the so-called new atheism is its insistence that religious beliefs are hypotheses, and bad ones — and that it matters. To Prothero, the “friendly” type atheist would not want to persuade others that atheism is the most rational point of view (as Hemant suggests) — they’d only promote it as a point of view which merits respect because we ought to respect people, and atheists are people.
In other words, we’ll be forbearing, if you’ll be forbearing, too. And if I were religious, I’d really like that. Because I’d need it. I’d need to promote the idea that crushing an argument, is just like crushing a person — because my views will otherwise get crushed. And I’m going to want to insist that it’s really just about getting along together. Even if the atheists reject God for incomprehensible reasons, we can still forbear enough to get along.
Sastra wrote:
You’ve summed this up accurately. Yes, many religious people do need to mischaracterize disagreements on content as personal attacks . This helps them deflect responsibility for justifying their beliefs by appealing to how “mean” their interlocutors are.
And, I know (an unfortunately large) number of atheists who agree with the mildly religious that “proselytizing,” in other words, arguing your position in an attempt to persuade your conversational partner, is the sin itself. I disagree. Most strenuously. It is not the act of trying to persuade conversational partners of your position that’s “wrong.” It’s the incessant imposition of one’s parochial views on the legal system and upon other peoples’ civic freedom that’s wrong.
The soft-spoken types cannot distinguish the “damage” of sharp rhetoric and ideological disagreements from the inappropriate, dangerous practice of using unjustified parochial beliefs to restrict the speech and rights of others under law. There’s a HUGE difference.
I don’t care, in one sense, if a bunch of Jehovah’s witnesses want to preach to me. I don’t care if they write Op-eds. If they show up on my doorstep too many times, I might warn them not to come back, but I’m not quaking in my boots that their siren songs will beguile me, “insult me,” or “do me violence.” I know my own mind.
Conversely, they ought not care if I argue for rationalism as vociferously, in the same venues. They do care, obviously, but I’m not about to shut up, and I’m not about to grant their “offense” anything more than mockery or dismissal. I mean, grow up already.
Sometimes it’s about getting along. For example, when you’re at the dinner table. Or, more debatably, when you make common cause with those who don’t agree with everything you say in service of a higher goal. An example, for me, would be my support of most of what Americans United for Separation of Church and State does. They do good work that benefits atheists and the religious, and I’ve supported some of their efforts.
But it isn’t always about “getting along.” I have no problem supporting Americans United, and I also have no problem telling the Rev. Barry Lynn that his theological “beliefs” are rubbish, and unsupported. Boo-hoo.
I don’t think the reaction against the “New Atheists” has anything to do with the outliers. The faithful are outraged by Dawkins, a mild-mannered Oxford don. They object to the message that “We’re here, we’re godless, get used to it.”
A columnist in a local paper took umbrage at my brother’s “God Is Just Pretend” sticker, complaining that it was inappropriate at Christmastime; my letter noted that our pagan ancestors were celebrating the season long before Christianity arrived. God Jul, y’all, happy Yalda.
We have no reason to apologize; in fact those of us who are Americans have reason to complain about God on our currency and in the Pledge of Allegiance and so forth. I’m not going to worry about angry atheists until I read about them threatening violence as much as the godly do.
I’m afraid I don’t understand a lot of this conversation. Of course there are bores, and people who insist that their voices be heard no matter what, and who go on and on and on about the same thing. But this applies to anyone defending anything.
And the Village Atheist trope doesn’t really match anyone anymore. The village atheist was the one who challenged the consensus, and since he was the only one, and had to insist on his point of view in the face of a solid consensus that there is a god, he may have tended to become a bore.
However, most religious people – even the sweet ones – are aware nowadays that there are lots of people who have doubts about straightforward religious belief. Half the people in ‘her’ congregation (I don’t mean to be sexist. I could easily be a man.) probably have doubts, and she may share a few of them herself. There aren’t all that many sweet religious folks who haven’t entertained a doubt or two.
It’s really the village fundie that has become the great big bore, and they go on and on and on about the same Bible verses, and express mock horror that some people don’t share their convictions. And with those people, if you’re going to make a response at all, you have to become a bore, because answering the same questions always calls out (at least roughly) the same answer.
Mehta is describing a situation that doesn’t really exist any longer. You don’t have to shelter the seet theistic neighbour. She doesn’t exist. She’s heard all the questions before, and expressed some of the doubts herself. If she’s still playing the faith game, it’s because she doesn’t know how to play any other, not because the questions have never occurred to her.
Village atheist = ‘only atheist in the village’? i.e. deludedly pursuing the idea a] that they are isolated, and b] that their particular brand of extreme self-display is the only appropriate one.
Or did one have to watch ‘Little Britain’ to make that association?
I am not familiar with ‘Little Britain,’ and my point is simply that the trope, which has been used to refer snidely to the “New Atheists”, is simply irrelevant. Atheism is not only something professed by atheists; it is something that almost all religious people are faced with. Fundamentalism is, I believe, a desperate attempt to quiet the very strong feeling that the religious have that religious beliefs are really empty.
Most of the religious people that I have known over the years – and I have known many – have doubts, very serious doubts, but they hang onto religious belief because they don’t see anything that will replace it. That’s why the liberal wing of the church is all vague and uncertain about the meaning of certain locutions, beginning with ‘god’. So the idea – put about by unbelievers as much or more than believers – that we shouldn’t be forthright and strident about unbelief is really a nonstarter. The only people who express it with any energy seem to be atheists themselves. The religious, of course, speak about the stridency of Dawkins et co and then they go on stridently to deny that anything that these people say could possibly be true, when they know very well that most of the people who read their books, read them because they need to be constantly reassured that their religious beliefs are not for nothing. And reassuring them is an incredibly big industry nowadays.
So I don’t understand the problem of stridency and directness of those who choose to follow in Dawkins’ footsteps. Many religious people express equally oppposing views, sometimes with exaggerated vehemence, because they really fear that the atheists are right. Since I have wandered away from the sheepfold, any former parishioners who stay in touch say that they are only there for the community. These are their friends, and they do not want to abandon them, but, as for belief, that was gone a long time ago. I think this applies to more religious believers than most people, both believers and unbelievers, are willing to accept.
So, no, my use of ‘village atheist’ is not based some silly presuppositions or associations. It is based on what I know of the believing community. And I wonder what all the excitement is about. It’s media hype more than a true reflection of what is going on out in religious country – as Hitchens’ journey’s through the American South ought to have shown us by now.
Check out what this community of ‘sceptics’ think about accommodationism:
http://skepchick.org/blog/2009/12/ai-my-god-i-dont-care/
Ophelia,
Hemant’s use of the word ‘Friendly’ atheist is not meant to imply that other atheists aren’t friendly. He is trying to counter the negative stereotyping of atheists. That is, he wants the word atheist to have positive connotations.
I haven’t notice that he soft-peddles his points of view on religion in order to not offend. It is more that he seems to seek engagement and conversation with religious people to show the religious that atheist, while holding different beliefs, are not the bogey men they are sometimes made out to be.
Cheers,
Blair
*sigh* I’m finding it incredibly difficult to keep up with all the various silly things the assorted “faitheists”, “cuddly atheists”, “accommodationists”, “really, really super-nice atheists who actually think religious folk are all lovely because the ones they’ve ever met were, and why can’t that nasty Richard Dawkins see that?” keep saying.
I’m a single parent with very limited free time (trying to resurrect my musical career eats up most of it, not with any great success, but ya gotta have a dream, right?).
So, for the benefit of folk like myself, is there any chance we could just employ an operatic tenor to turn up and sing “straw-MAAAAAAAAAAAN!” very loudly every time one of these dafties opens their gobs in public?
(like they did in ‘Scrubs’ with “mis-TAAAAAAKE!” – in fact, why don’t we see if that tenor’s available, he’d be perfect for the job)
please?
Blair –
Thanks; that makes sense. I haven’t read the FA much at all – I should catch up.
I think the title is unfortunate though, even if he didn’t intend the ‘other atheists are not friendly’ implication…
By the way, back to the beginning – Deepak –
“Not true. A secular democracy does not imply that politicians can’t have religious beliefs or espouse them.”
Well I didn’t say they can’t have them or espouse them, I said they shouldn’t be espousing a personal belief in a god. I still think that. I think in a secular democracy politicians should keep their theist beliefs to themselves.
Sorry Blair, I don’t buy it, not only because he mischaracterises ‘aggressive atheism’ in his latest post, but because of this quote from his book about selling his soul on Ebay. (No, I didn’t read the book. The quote comes from a review.):
This is soft-peddling squared, in my book. And if you say this kind of thing, and then suggest that aggressive atheists attack sweet religious people down the block, then you’ve got an agenda, and not a harmless one.
That agenda is turning some atheists in bogeymen, and that’s not particularly helpful, especially if you’re as soft as mush yourself. Of course, he can soft-peddle all he likes. I’m generally not in favour of attacking sweet religious people, but I know some really sweet folks who are pure steel beneath the silk and lace. And I have at least heard atheists who are widely described as strident and aggressive coming across with calm sweet reasonableness. The whole distinction is an empty one, to my mind, as I have already tried to say in some detail. Time just to say so, and get on with subverting the religious project every chance we get.
[Hemant]… not simply as an atheist, but rather as a person with questions about faith, an openness to evidence that might contradict my current beliefs,…
Does he write anything that doesn’t have an underlying mischaracterization of atheists? I doubt there is a single atheist in the world that wouldn’t change their view if actual evidence of a god showed up. And, of course, it would be simple for any god to provide incontrovertible evidence of its existence – it just doesn’t feel like it.
Well, Blair, I don’t know. I’m not very taken with the name he’s chosen for himself either. He clearly makes a distinction between himself, and … well, who? That’s not clear. He mentions Dawkins and then says he won’t talk about that right now, leaving the suggestion hanging there that, perhaps, he’s not, well, angry, but perhaps, ‘angry’. And then to claim, as would any self-respecting atheist – I don’t like that word, and use it only hesitantly, because it gives too much away – that he would change his mind on the basis of evidence. Well, who wouldn’t? And the answer to that is: almost everyone who believes in god.
Sorry, I think he creates an ill-defined group of atheists whom he calls aggressive, without really saying who he has in mind, though he mentions those who would go after the ‘sweet neighbour who happens to be religious’. Who? That’s not at all clear, but he allows for enough space between himself and Dawkins or Myers that none of their bad karma is going to rub off on him, because he’s the ‘friendly atheist’.
And he does it all this by innuendo and suggestion, without saying anything definite. I don’t like that at all. The truth is important to me, and if Hemant’s willing to temporise with the truth with the kind of verbal smoke that his post is wreathed with, then he’s merely obscuring things, not being the clear bright flame he professes to be. No, he doesn’t fit the stereotype. He makes sure that nothing fits.
As Ophelia says: Let’s get snitty!
Still…I agree that he’s nowhere near being a Mooney!
Well, I agree with Ophelia of course.
BUT … a kind of not-so-friendly atheist is starting to emerge. I’m talking about the sort of people who would actually suppress religion, or at least some kinds of religion, if they got their hands on political power. Some people over on Richard Dawkins’ blog are currently arguing in favour of the recent move in Switzerland to prohibit the building of minarets … and their argument seems to be that Islam, or some kinds of Islam, should be suppressed by the use of state power.
I’ll be as non-accommodationist as y’all like, in that I’ll argue until I’m blue in the face for the epistemic incompatibility of traditional religion with science and reason. And I’ll likewise argue that we should stand up and criticise religion openly, as 50 Voices of Disbelief encourages people to do.
But I part company with anyone who wants to use the coercive power of the state to ban religious doctrines or practices for the sake of doing so. (I am NOT, of course, talking about well-justified laws of general application that prevent a religious practice as a side effect … as, for example, the law against murder would, as a side effect, prevent the activities of a neo-Aztec cult devoted to human sacrifice. I realise, of course, that there are grey areas, but courts make workable distinctions within grey areas all the time, so that doesn’t worry me.)
Ayaan Hirsi Ali seems to have reached a point where she favours state coercion to assist in the struggle against Islam – a struggle that would be fine if it were purely a struggle of ideas using reason and persuasion. If that’s so, I’m not going to follow her to that point, and I think it’s worth saying that this is where I draw a line. Let’s be as assertive as we like in putting our views, but if some atheists advocate that we do exactly what the religionists do, i.e. attempting to gain influence over the state, so as to impose our views by fire and sword, I’ll be opposing them.
I’m not suggesting for a minute that OB or any of the regular commenters here take that view, but I’m shocked to see that the point is a controversial one in the discussion on Dawkins’ site, and it’s simply worth noting that there really is a position now being adopted by some atheists that actually is immoderate, illiberal, and worthy of being opposed. I wish it wasn’t so: such a view has no realistic chance of being successful, but every chance of creating an unwanted distraction.
I agree, Russell, and I squirmed reading her piece. She’s so on-target in much of her writing, but this was a disappointment. It seems she’s lost perspective on this point. . .perhaps it’s all too personal for her to see it more broadly.
Eric,
I agree with you that he does a poor job defining what he means by aggressive atheists. Maybe he has someone in mind, maybe he was just being sloppy in his writing.
That being said, I think the condemnation coming down on him here, in the context of all his writings is a bit harsh and misplaced. As Ophelia says above he is nowhere near Chris Mooney’s position.
No, I never suggested that Hemant was close to Mooney’s position, but that’s mainly because it’s not clear that he has one.
I’m also reluctant to take up the use of state power to control Islam and its expressions. However, I suspect that Ayan Hirsi Ali knows something about Islam that we do not know, and she apparently feels that the Swiss are perhaps right to express their dismay over the growing influence of Islam on their society. I don’t know how this expresses itself, but to the extent that Muslims refuse to accept the democratic consensus, so that they tend not to live merely as citizens, insisting on special rights for Muslims, just because they are Muslims, then I think I understand the Swiss decision. As I say, I don’t know the political realities in Switzerland, but given what Muslims elsewhere in Europe have demanded and how they have lived, I’m not at all surprised to find that some Swiss are uneasy about their presence.
Not long ago there were real fears that fundamentalist Christianity and its dominionist movement were in danger of taking over the reins of power in the United States. They came very close. That would have been a disaster, and somewhere along the way, if not controlled by a resurgence of some kind of ‘liberal’ movement, which seems somewhat in danger now, it might have been necessary to assert public controls over the excessive presence of religion in the public sphere.
Islam is by its very nature, at least nowadays, a religion given to extremes. It is, so far as these extremes go, a political ideology, not so different, in many ways, from fascism. We don’t know how widely this kind of Islamist extremism is held by European Muslims (Salman Rusdie thinks them complicit, because of their silence, in acts of extremism), but widespread silence in the fact of the expressions of their most outrageous representatives is troubling. It wouldn’t surprise me to find that, at some stage in the future, we might need to exert some mind of state control over the expression of this religion, just as, were a Hitler to pop up now, we might think ourselves justified in forcing his paramilitary forces off the streets and out of uniform.
I fear, personally, and perhaps my fears are unfounded, that Islam in democratic countries poses a threat to democratic institutions. It’s just an inchoate fear just now, but it’s real, and I don’t see much from Western Islamic communities that is mitigating that fear.
Christianity could pose equal dangers, but it’s had a long time to learn to know its place, although, because of Islam, it is beginning to make claims to recognition that have not been made in any significant way for over a century. Islam hasn’t learned about secular space yet, and so Islam may pose dangers like the ones posed by the church in 18th century Europe, where people were right to fear the church’s continued power and the way that it continued to use that power to diminish the freedoms that people were beginning to recognise as the rightful possession of each partner in the social contract. Islam has showed itself quite prepared to engage in its host societies as brutally and as mindlessly as it does in places where it now has state power. As Christianity further decays – and I think it will – we have to make sure that Islam doesn’t rush in to fill the vacuum that is left. That is what they are poised to do, and they are quite prepared to back it up with the state power of Eastern theocracies.
I don’t consider myself a benighted racist, but I have some very real fears that our freedoms are in danger, and while I don’t think draconian methods to protect them are in order now, we need to have in the back of our minds that the power wielded by Islam in the West is unaccountable, precisely because Muslims have largely failed to integrate, and, as we see frequently today, they are being actively supported and encouraged in this by regimes over which we have no control. I think this is the kind of thing that Hirsi Ali has in mind, and I suspect that she has a deeper insight into this than those who do not belong to the communities which comprise Islam’s presence in the West. I haven’t read the posts on the Dawkins’ site, and I am not proposing anything particularly severe, but a little bit of unfriendly atheist intolerance of religion might be a useful contribution to present political realities.
I agree with Russell about using the power of the state ‘to ban religious doctrines or practices for the sake of doing so.’ That’s why I haven’t linked to coverage of the Swiss referendum except for Hirsi Ali’s piece, which I had qualms about but also thought was newsworthy.
There are grey areas though, that seem to have no good option – the Finsbury Park mosque being perhaps the best example. What is the solution to mosques that promote violent jihad against all liberal values? Government monitoring of mosques and temples and churches is anathema to liberalism – but violent jihad against all liberal values is not exactly liberalism’s friend either. What’s the solution? I have no idea.
And what about the thousands of madrasas in Pakistan? They’re an absolute nightmare – but what can be done about them without highly illiberal interference with religion?
It seems to me that this is a brick wall.
tomh. I didn’t mean to go soft on the ‘Christianists’. Their increasing involvement in public policy decisions is a matter of concern to all people who are concerned about liberty. I see it increasingly in Canada, for instance, where it has not been an issue until very recently. I am dimly aware of the very serious problems of religion and government in the US, and this should be a concern to everyone, since America remains very powerful and influential. Obviously, religion is playing an increasing role in government in Britain. So, I do not mean to minimise the seriousness of the problem, nor the extent to which Christians contribute to it.
I agree with Ophelia that this seems to be a brick wall – that is, how to deal with the increasingly intimate relationship between government and religion in democratic jurisdictions – although I’m not really convinced about Pakistan’s democratic credentials. I understand her hesitation regarding Hirsi Ali’s piece about the Schweizer Minarettverbot, but surely, in this case, the reservations that ordinary people have regarding the role that Islam is beginning to play in Swiss society is not an unreasonable concern.
This is possibly the only way that this kind of concern is going to find expression. Governments, apparently, dare not do anything. It may seem illiberal, but the obvious illiberality of all Muslim majority jusrisdictions, and the attachment of many Muslim immigrants to very conservative forms of Islam, is bound to raise concerns about the future of democratic freedoms. After all, if distant threats can force Yale University to self-censor, freedom is already seriously under threat. Why should ordinary people not feel threatened as a result. I do.
Reservations about the role of Islam are highly reasonable (though they can be shared by highly unreasonable people, unfortunately), but banning minarets does seem like a very peculiar approach. Almost Dadaist, in fact.
The trouble is that it does no good to the general cause of political liberalism in general if we start to use state power to suppress views that we see as intolerant or as having totalitarian/apocalyptic tendencies. 1950s communism had all those tendencies, too, but the McCarthy trials were still a bad idea, as was the attempt in Australia (thrown out by the courts) to ban the Communist Party.
I do acknowledge that a situation may be reached where the danger is so clear and present that it may be necessary to ban a religion or a political party, or whatever, or to ban its symbols or its propaganda. But I think we should be very reluctant to conclude that that stage has been reached in any actual case. Like Ophelia, I don’t claim knowledge of the Swiss situation, but I’d be surprised if it had reached that stage.
We should also bear in mind the prudential point that, once it’s accepted that it is legitimate for governments to enact such bans without very compelling reasons, atheists become vulnerable. In the real world, the banning of atheist books and symbols is likely to be proposed – and to get a lot of popular support in some places in the US for example – once there is a culture of banning things. We are already falsely accused of being motivated by hate, etc., etc., so bans are not far away if the bulwarks of political liberalism start to break down.
My strong inclination is always to take the advice of John Locke, that the sects are likely to soften somewhat in a society that forbids jockeying for state power to impose or suppress religion. Over the years, that has been pretty good advice, even if the sects haven’t softened enough for us to stop criticising them strongly.
There’s an issue as to whether Islam has the internal resources to join in a society marked by political liberalism. After all, it puts far more emphasis on a compulsory way of life, and far less emphasis on an individual relationship with God, than does Protestant Christianity, so it is less able to distinguish an area where it is best for political force to withdraw. We certainly need to be aware of this issue – and to resist being labelled as Islamophobic when we raise it. Still, robustly democratic societies have managed to get by with even the profession of Nazi views not actually being banned – though anyone who expresses such views is rightly shunned.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali has experienced some terrible things, some of the worst of what Islam offers, but many people have also experienced terrible things from communists, Nazis, and even the harsher kinds of Christians. We can control some of the worst things with soundly-based laws of general application, such as laws against female genital mutilation, while also allowing minarets and not attempting to suppress Islam itself.
Anyway, I’m derailing this thread to an extent, but I can see this being an problem that we’ll need to return to from time to time. Leaving aside Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who at least expressed herself with some care, we do see atheists on some of the sites putting a view that goes far beyond non-accommodationism to advocacy of coercion. Although those people are fantasising, they have the potential to make things more difficult for the rest of us.
No question, banning minarets may seem peculiar, but it isn’t really. Minarets are like church bells. They are expressions of power. I remember the church I went to had a carrilon system, and they used to fire it up at 7:30 on Sunday morning. I put a stop to that. What right does the church have to blast out its music in the neighbourhood? Same with minarets. They are for calling to prayer. What right do they have to call out to prayer five times a day in anyone’s neighbourhood? I understand a ban against minarets. I’d ban church bells too – even grandsire triples! I hate listening to other people’s music, TVs, radios, etc. If I want to listen, I’ll listen to my own.
I don’t disagree with you Russell, or with you, Ophelia. I don’t think coercion is the way to go either. I still think Mill’s principles expressed in On Liberty are best.
However, the unfortunate part about the introduction of Islam into Western democracy is that, instead of the churches standing firmly on the side of the idea of secular public space, they’re playing exactly the same game, which makes reaching an accommodation with Islam that much more difficult. Indeed, one of the problems with the secular public space is that it is the perfect environment for atheists, and Christians have begun to say this loud and clear – hence the disparaging remarks about human rights by both the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Pope. This is becoming a clear and present danger to the secular public space on which we all depend. And the erosion of secular public space (I think AC Grayling is right about this) is largely a consequence of the “intrusion” of Islam into the secular space of Western democracies, and the response of other religious bodies to this, demanding that their voices be heard as well.
I’ve just been reading the House of Lord’s Report on Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill, and some of the contributions (evidence) made to the Select Committee. Submission after submission mentions that religious belief is not a sufficient ground on which to base public policy. This is the one thing that has been changing over the last five years or so since the report was first published (though no doubt it was farther advanced in the US already). Increasingly, we are being told that religious belief has a legitimate voice in secular space, and that is, I think, a very very dangerous thing. It is dangerous not only for atheists, but for anyone who values freedom. Christians, who think their faith is all about peace and love, forget what their churches did when they had the power to do it. This has not changed, as recent revelations from Ireland and the Vatican clearly demonstrate.
Not really a derailment, or if it is, no matter; it’s worth discussing the subject somewhere.
The trouble is that there are issues well short of banning. I certainly don’t think Islam should be banned – but I also don’t think fans of jihad and a caliphate should be preaching in London (or anywhere else). I also don’t think madrasas should be indoctrinating children. Yet I don’t know of any way of preventing those situations that are not illiberal.
Eric – so the minaret ban was an acoustic ban? I thought it was just a spire ban (so to speak) – I didn’t know the assumption was that the minarets would be amplified for sound. I agree that that is ban-worthy, but it would be possible to ban the noise without banning the spire. There was that fuss in Oxford a year or two ago…
Eric MacDonald wrote:
After all, if distant threats can force Yale University to self-censor, freedom is already seriously under threat. Why should ordinary people not feel threatened as a result. I do.
The obvious answer is that you’re not an ordinary person. And in the US, with its huge Christian majority, the reason people don’t object to religious involvement in politics and government is that they think it’s a good thing. A large minority think there should be more religion in government. But they don’t think government should be involved in religion, and that’s where I differ.
As far as I’m concerned religions, whether RCC, Islam, or Christian megachurches, are all big businesses and they should be regulated just the way businesses are. Remove all special privileges, whether the privilege of not paying taxes or the privilege of letting children die when prayer doesn’t work. Minarets a problem? Let them be subject to the same height and noise restrictions that any other business would be subject to.
This has little to do with any individual’s beliefs. Who cares what anyone believes? The businesses that organize those believers are the root of the problem, and treating and regulating them like any other business would go a long way towards alleviating many of the problems.
tomh says, “Minarets a problem? Let them be subject to the same height and noise restrictions that any other business would be subject to.”
While I might want to qualify that in some way, I think it’s essentially correct.
I.e., if there’s a general problem with having high buildings, noise, and so on, then enact a law of general application that talks about allowable heights, restrictions on noise levels and allowable times of day for making noise, and so on, but doesn’t mention church bells, or spires, or minarets. (As one qualification … this can be done in a contrived way, of course, with minarets as the real target and anti-Islam sentiments as the real motivator. But courts, and indeed most ordinary people, have at least some ability to see through contrivances and get at substance.)
I’m quite sure that the Minerrettverbot was not in fact primarily an acoustic matter. But I do think it had to do with perceptions of power and the inappropriateness of more religious buildings dwarfing the surrounding houses of residents. One of the most powerful impressions of the power of churchs I have ever experienced was during a 1951 tour of England, Scotland and Wales that my wife and I did of major English churches and cathedrals, and, beautiful as they all (or at least many) were, it soon became clear that they were built to impress the parishioners with church power, and their insignificance. Acoustic problems with churches that dispense raucous noise at all hours is bad enough, but the constant reminder that you, poor soul, are only an ant in the mills of the gods is surely as good a reason not to want one in your neighbourhood. I don’t like them either, and I curse the damn things every time I pass them. Do they have to be so architecturally overpowering, and disempowering. Yes, of course, because they are supposed to lend dignity to the imagined gods that are even greater. Ban the whole damn lot so far as I am concerned. The intrusions into ordinary life, and insulting to the intelligence of the people they are planned to intimidate.
Corporate buildings share some of these qualities, and may be insidious in their own way, but there head offices are not meant to make the life of ordinary people more desperate and insignificant. A pox on all their houses of worship. Let them worship their gods in something nondescript, and so much more appropriate to the lack of truth of religious claims.
Yes, Eric, I understand that emotional reaction to the grandiose pretensions of religion … but of course you’re not seriously suggesting that the state be in the business of forming public policy by first assessing the truth or otherwise of religious claims? That’s about the last thing atheists should want the state to do.
Russell Blackford wrote:
if there’s a general problem with having high buildings, noise, and so on, then enact a law of general application that talks about allowable heights, restrictions on noise levels
In the US virtually every city has laws restricting all these things. The problem here is that religions are exempted from these laws, if not locally, then by federal law, the RLUIPA that I mentioned above, which basically exempts religions from local zoning laws. There have been lawsuits over this issue but the federal law privileging religions wins every time.
Treating religions like other businesses would solve a lot (not all, of course) of problems. I hope other countries can do it because America is pretty much a lost cause in this respect.
No, Russell, just venting a bit! Of course, I don’t want governments to get into the business of forming public policy by first determining the truth value of religious claims (although that shouldn’t take long). Of course not. That would just result in idiocracy.
But, in a country where people’s values are largely determined by irrational religious beliefs, it should not be hard to make a distinction between values which depend on religious belief and those which depend on the protection of human freedoms and rights. The values of the religious may be cherished by them: no one else need be governed by claims which have no foundation outside of unverifiable experiences (see James, Varieties or Hay, Something There.
I think of this largely, at the moment, in terms of the right to assisted dying. There are all sorts of religious beliefs about this. Each religion seems to have its own take on it. None of them should determine public policy, and yet that is what is happening; and people suffer because someone, somewhere, has had the experience of a presence of something far more deeply interfused. It’s not a great foundation on which to make law.
So, let them play games in their ornate overbearing buildings, and keep out of politics and law. The problem is, when you live in a palace you start to behave like a king. We need some way to remind the religious that what they indulge in on Sunday (or Friday, or Saturday) are games, pure and simple, and have no real applicability outside their palaces, except to the extent that what they do there makes them nicer, and kinder to others. (And it doesn’t always, and much of that was devised as a cover for beliefs with strikingly different outcomes.) But they don’t deserve power because they are nice, nor do their beliefs become true because many people hold them against the evidence, and governments, at least, should recognise these simple facts, and get on with governing, and protecting the freedoms that make life in society worthwhile.
The Swiss Minarettverbot, I believe, had to do with the perception that Islam limits rights and freedoms – not an inaccurate observation. The ordinary Swiss voter, apparently, recognised that religious architecture is an expression of religious arrogance, and decided that Christians were already arrogant enough, without superadding to another and competing religious voice the symbols of public arrogance and pretension. Christians have probably forgotten how church architecture accurately reflects the autocratic and overweening nature of religious belief. Possibly all they see now is its grace and beauty, neglecting the sinews of power they once represented and imposed.
I doubt very much that the Muslims have forgotten yet. They still cherish these symbols of dominance, to magnify the importance of their beliefs in the context of political discourse, as those of the churches still seem to do (and in some cases still actually do). They hadn’t noticed that the church’s symbols are dying. The Swiss, I think wisely, decided to keep it that way. Perhaps this quixotic attempt to restrict the influence of Islam will have the effect of showing just how foolish other jurisdictions have been in allowing Muslim aggressiveness to rekindle all the old pretensions of the church. Perhaps, though, we won’t notice this at all, and just think of them as narrow-minded and xenophobic. That would be a sad lesson to learn from something of such importance.
All this is a spin-off from what Hirsi Ali had to say about the Swiss decision. What she said was very sensitive to what she knows of the ways of Muslim power. I do not think it is far from the kinds of power once wielded by the church, and its effects are not much different either. The mosque, after all, is redolent with symbolism. The dome represents the vault of heaven, under which all people are (to be) gathered, and the minarets, for calling to prayer, are as tall as required to call a certain area to prayer, thus representing the geographical space over which the mosque is taken to preside or rule. The role of the mosque is quite clear. It is an expression of dominance, like churches, but unlike churches, whose spires may intimate something of the nature of faith as a striving towards God, the minarets represent the more grandiose claim of Islam to incorporate all within its fold. And in their talk of the Ummah and kafirs (like the Jewish goyim), Islam is an exclusive and excluding religion. But while the Jews do not consign the goyim to any particular fate, kafirs are destined, inevitably, to hell. The church tried to play that game and failed. Most Christians couldn’t manage that level of inhumanity. Islam still does.
Very interesting, about the overpowering churches and cathedrals. With all my ‘antagonistic’ atheism, I tend not to see them that way.
Well it depends. I do see Westminster Cathedral that way, for instance – it’s so damn ugly. And St Patrick’s cathedral in Manhattan – yuck – too central, too new, too domineering.
But mostly the aesthetic reaction does trump the antagonism – and that of course is the point. Which is interesting.
Aesthetically it’s pretty the way Ely cathedral dominates the fens, and the way Salisbury spire soars over the water meadow. But politically it’s not pretty at all.
(Ironically, I’m a total sucker for Islamic calligraphy and mosque-decoration etc. Love the stuff. Ho hum.)
Eric, you give an erudite and eloquent account of the minaret ban in Switzerland and the possible reasons behind it. However, I can only view it as a piece of classic illiberalism and xenophobia.
“A Swiss shoe-shop owner has built a mock minaret on the top of his warehouse in defiance of a ban on the Muslim architecture.
Guillaume Morand extended a chimney, gave it the form of a minaret and sprayed it in gold paint to protest against a constitutional amendment approved in a nationwide referendum last month.
“It was scandalous that the Swiss voted for the ban,” said Mr Morand, 46, who owns the Pomp It Up chain of shoe stores.
“Now we [the Swiss] have the support of all the far-right parties across Europe. This is shameful.”
. . .
Our minaret is pretty,” he said. “You could say I’m proud of it and I’m happy that people are talking about it.” His neighbours are less enthusiastic and have showered him with racist insults since the minaret appeared this week, he said.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article6954014.ece
The minaret may be a symbol of all sorts of evils. But the ban is an actual enactment of another sort of evil.
Eric:
“We need some way to remind the religious that what they indulge in on Sunday (or Friday, or Saturday) are games, pure and simple, and have no real applicability outside their palaces, except to the extent that what they do there makes them nicer, and kinder to others. (And it doesn’t always, and much of that was devised as a cover for beliefs with strikingly different outcomes.) But they don’t deserve power because they are nice, nor do their beliefs become true because many people hold them against the evidence, and governments, at least, should recognise these simple facts, and get on with governing, and protecting the freedoms that make life in society worthwhile.”
A good way to remind them of all this is to use words – which is one reason why we should never give in to the calls from Chris Mooney and his ilk for us to shut up.
Russell Blackford:
I agree, but I also think we need some more arrows in our quiver. I believe that Grayling is right when, in Liberty in the Age of Terror he critiques Berlin’s idea that liberal jurisdictions will just have to accept that there may in fact be a ‘pluralism of irreconcilable differences.’ (163) Grayling recognises that this demand may in fact result in a society ‘at an uneasy transitional point on the way to its demise,’ and that it may be necssary, at some point, to make it clear that certain beliefs and the practices that go with them, are incompatible with liberal society. In which case we may just have to ask those who hold those beliefs and value those practices simply to go elsewhere, where they will be more comfortable with their surroundings. And this is not illiberal, but a necessary aspect of liberalism. The liberty that liberalism defends is not absolute, and it does not include ideologies which seek to subvert it, thouth those who disagree, are quite within their right so use words alone to criticise what they find mistaken. Religions, however, have shown a readiness to do much more than just speak words.
Mill’s idea of liberty is all very well, and he took for granted a fairly homogeneous society in which disagreement would not be as great as some of the demands that Muslims are making. How many? Well, we just don’t know. Some of them, of course, are integrating well. Others, however – and we probably need some more research on this – are not adapting at all to liberal society, and have no intention of doing so. It is not unreasonable, or illiberal, to suggest that, if they find liberal society so deeply compromising to their beliefs, they are welcome to go elsewhere where those beliefs are more clearly expressed in social and political arrangemnts.
Words, in the end, though certainly preferable, may simply not be enough, and there is obviously a singificant minority of people who come to believe this, based on what they see around them. If it is merely racism of a benighted sort, that is one thing, but if the concerns spring from real concerns for freedom, then perhaps those who are comfortable with words should start to draw the limits of liberal society in such a way that these fears are not aroused by a completely unplaned, untried, and unregulated influx of people who show scant respect for the society into which they have immigrated.
Of oourse, at the same time, we are still bound even to criticise the societies from which immigrants come for failing to measure up to the reasonable expectations of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. And we must continue to say in and out of season that, to be taken seriously, religious people have to start providing reasons besides those referring to their traditions, which makes the Archbishop of Canterbury’s recent lucubrations on politicians who think that religious believers are oddities particularly timely. They are, often, just idisyncratic deliverances of traditions which have no more foundation than 9/11 conspiracy theories. If he really wants to be taken seriously, he’s going to have to take the contemporary discourse of reason seriously too. So far, all he is doing is venting. When he has an idea, then he should tell us what it is, and also tell us why he holds it to be true.
@ bad Jim:
“The problem is that we never will be able to answer questions like “What is God’s plan for me? Why was I made, what is the purpose or the meaning of life?” These are non-trivial questions for a great many people, unfortunately. There are reasonable responses but they all boil down to “You’re asking the wrong questions.””
This is not a problem. Our refusal to answer these questions is a feature, not a bug. People who think they are “non-trivial questions” are MISTAKEN. The questions ARE trivial, or rather meaningless. The only way to “answer” them is to lie; such “answers” can never be genuinely helpful.
No one NEEDS an answer to such questions. One may believe that one does, but in this one would be mistaken. The BEST that can be done with such questions is to disabuse folks of their necessity. The secularist has nothing to apologize for. There is nothing genuinely useful that religion supplies that we cannot. The idea that religion is irreplaceable IS A RELIGIOUS MEME.