Oh noes, it’s the new atheists
Oh look, a new Chris Mooney, just what the world needs. He’s here to tell us the ‘problems’ he has with ‘the radical atheists.’ You’re excited already, aren’t you! And rightly so. He tells a thrilling tale.
Starting in 2005, American public was hit with a fresh wave of secular thought openly criticizing organized religion and religious faith…Many have called these authors and their followers the “New Atheists” – practitioners of a form of atheism that is outspoken and brash in its condemnation of religion and religious belief. These atheists were not content to disbelieve and go on with their lives; they also wanted to let religious beliefs know they were wrong (though it should be added it is not like these men broke into homes; they sold books and wrote blog posts). But this new, bold assault on religion did bring many secularists out of the woodwork – and what made wave perhaps unique was a call by men such as Dawkins and Myers to organize around atheism and sharp rhetoric.
That’s not the most elegant writing we’ve ever seen, but never mind, it’s easy to spot the Mooneyisms – the accusation of ‘openly criticizing religious faith’; the sneer behind ‘brash’ and ‘assault,’ the bizarre notion of organizing around sharp rhetoric. We have been here before.
[I]t is generally agreed that some good did come from these books in that they pushed important issues to the public. However, an issue that received less focus was a more strategic one: the fact that many atheists define their entire lives around unbelief and critique of theism.
No they don’t. And what makes Michael De Dora think he knows they do? He doesn’t say. He perhaps means that many atheists give a lot of time and attention to critique of theism – but he said more than that.
Atheism isn’t enough. This is the first argument against atheism. It is not a philosophy or a worldview, it is a lack of a specific religious belief, and that isn’t enough to carry us forward in any meaningful way.
That’s an argument? For what? That doesn’t look like an argument to me; it looks like a free-standing assertion which doesn’t say much of anything.
This brings us to the second argument: atheists tend to view religion as either the problem, or the cause of the problem, even when other problems are apparent. But while theism is a problem, it is not the problem, and while atheism might be correct, atheism is not the answer.
Oy. Who thinks anything else? No one, that I know of. That is some heavy-duty strawman.
The third argument against the march of organized atheism is it’s tendency toward an angry, uncompassionate line of attack. It is argued that the general approach to the matters taken by, foremost, Dawkins and Hitchens is one of sneering at religious belief…However, there is something to hearing these men speak, and reading certain of their writing, that sends the message they have a short temper for religious belief…Yet the problem isn’t necessarily the arguments, but the tone. There is not enough room or time here for an exhaustive sampling, and a quick visit to Myers’ blog, or YouTube to watch some clips from Hitchens or Dawkins would give you a better insight…
And we’re off, into a long and screamingly familiar laundry list of things Michael De Dora doesn’t like about MyersDawkinsHitchens…including, of course, ‘Myers has publicly desecrated a communion wafer and called the WWII Pope Pius XII a “sniveling rat bastard”’ – which, also of course, does not bother to say why Myers did that.
This brings us to the fourth argument: this view of the world divides people rather than bringing them together.
As does all disagreement, which is why in the New Dispensation disagreement will be forbidden and we will all be Brought Together. Disagreement shall die and from the ashes shall arise a brand-new Buick furnished with a beaming nuclear family and their dog Spot, driving off into the sunset of togetherness.
Anyway. There’s a fair bit more, but you get the idea. I dislike it. I dislike the rhetoric, I dislike the sly tattle-tale manner, I dislike the coercive conformism, I dislike the anti-intellectualism. It gives me the creeps. And this is the Center for Inquiry.
So how do you get access to publish articles with the same publications? Is it ‘oh noes they are discriminating against atheists in access to media’ or is it by crafting sellable controversies that pitch the needs of the readers and editors?
Once crank memes are accepted as sellable (like the ‘oh noes atheists aren’t always nice’ has been) it creates a potential market for responses in the same oped pages. Just needs sellable names and text that serves the needs.
‘Atheism isn’t enough. This is the first argument against atheism. It is not a philosophy or a worldview, it is a lack of a specific religious belief, and that isn’t enough to carry us forward in any meaningful way.’
It’s not a lack of a ‘specific religious belief’, it’s a lack of *any* religious belief – otherwise a lack of Christian belief would make Muslims atheists or a lack of Buddhist belief would make Jews atheists, etc.
‘ But while theism is a problem, it is not the problem, and while atheism might be correct, atheism is not the answer.’
Well, fuck me sideways – I’d never thought of that! And there I was thinking atheism cures cancer.
‘The third argument against the march of organized atheism is it’s tendency toward an angry, uncompassionate line of attack’
Angry and uncompassionate – from people willing to murder cartoonists in front of their grandchildren?
‘This brings us to the fourth argument: this view of the world divides people rather than bringing them together.’
Religion has always brought people together, if only to throw stones at each other.
Amazing how many of these “arguments against atheism” boil down to “PZ Myers’ blog is mean”.
This brought tears to my eyes. Really.
At this point, Mooney is not even worth the energy of specific counterargument or criticism where the subject of atheism is concerned: One might as well debate science with Ray Comfort. In fact, I cannot think of anything that could express my contempt for Mooney more fully than the following sentence: May he have much joy of the largesse granted him by the Templeton Foundation.
Yeah. Pretty lame, Millhouse.
For myself, I’m interested in people who are willing to give arguments, instead of “arguments“. There’s an obligation to be attentive towards reasonable people. Mooney doesn’t really deserve that attention (apart from critical mockery, which is good fun).
That’s why I’ve been concentrating on Julian Baggini’s TPM article on Dennett for a while now. He more or less asserts (3) and (4). I find that perplexing, and I think I’m not alone in finding little meat in Baggini’s arguments. Still, I think that’s well worth the attention as a direction for the dialectic.
Already left a comment there (#19).
The thing is, he could have easily made this into a much better article by not dragging the New Atheists into it. It’s a perfectly good point to make that we need more than just atheism, and an interesting discussion could have been had about this topic.
Interestingly enough, by arguing against the New Atheists, he’s even ignoring his own advice:
1) he’s being divisive in the atheist and freethinker community
2) he spends way too much time arguing against someone else’s position, instead of putting forward his own.
I also have to wonder why people like De Dora and Mooney always seem to accept the characterizations that theists have given to labels like “atheism” or events like “crackergate”, instead of the characterizations that the atheists themselves have given to them. Somehow the opinion of theists is still more relevant than that of atheists, even to people who are supposed to be their allies. I can’t say I really understand why.
I find it interesting that De Dorka apparently thinks these new atheists only consist of men. Or maybe he thinks that only men’s views count. Either way, it grates.
Oh, I’m quite interested in the coercive conformism, but I have an alternate proposal: how about everybody has to agree with me all the time? What, no takers? Well, then, all that divisiveness is on your heads. Shame, shame, shame.
Quite so – all who is not agree with me all the time is divissssive and we hates those people.
It was a double-italics. :)
I’m struggling with the organised atheism and ‘it’s tendency toward an angry, uncompassionate line of attack.’ The first person who came into my mind was Linda Smith, former president of the British Humanist Association. The effectiveness of her satire was precisely that she was warm, compassionate and caring. Then I thought of Douglas Adams, and he’s video of the week on TED at the moment. You can see his talk on Last Chance to See at YouTube.
The BHA currently has noted angry man Stephen Fry on its banner as well as Ariane Sherine. I know the names Dora Jr. is reaching for, but his view of organized atheism doesn’t seem to get as far as anything like an organisation.
There’s lots of reasons why someone might want to use the phrase ‘militant atheism’, but even the most cynical and wrong headed reasons would be to say an author was aiming to deflect the inevitable rebuttals by saying their screed was against militant atheists. In contrast I can’t recall anyone seriously using the phrase ‘militant accomodationists’ or ‘militant faitheists’.
Are there accomodationist critics of Dawkins etc that have anything to offer other than a snarl?
Alun, absolutely. People forger that comedians like the late lamented Linda Smith, and Dara O’Brien, and Ross Noble, and many others, are often the sharpest critics of religious guff and nonsense. This is because comedians are equipped with professional-grade bullshit detectors so they can do their jobs properly.
Well that’s just silly. In the set of god hypotheses, atheism is H0, it’s not supposed to do any work.
And besides which, it’s often better to not go forward at all, if the alternative is going in the wrong direction.
Mooney’s still not listing his Templeton fellowship in his blurb or bio. The man is a snake. He’s found people willing to pay him for ditching intellectual honesty, and I can’t imagine he’ll make more of an attempt at fairness now that he’s been rewarded financially for his efforts.
Oh, a nice quote that Mooney reposted from an old PoI interview (with him as guest):
I learned was that if you go out there angry and attack religion all the time, people won’t like you very much.
Funny, he doesn’t mind going out there angry attacking atheists all the time. Funny how as he aged he simply found the more socially acceptable target to attack and went at it with gusto.
Quite. ‘Must be rude to somebody – let’s see now – there are lots and lots of believers – much better to be rude to atheists, they’re still a tiny minority and most people already hate them anyway. Game on!’