Knock the corners off
Michael De Dora has replied to his critics. He’s much more responsive than Mooney, but I still disagree with him. I disagree with the underlying ideas.
I see that we are right, philosophically speaking — but I also care about collective, democratic, evidence-based discourse and progress (just as, say, Chris Mooney cares about scientific literacy). To that end, I think rallying around atheism presents problems both inherently (the word doesn’t say much) and in presentation and interaction with the 95 percent of the public who are not atheists.
One, ‘rallying around atheism’ isn’t really the issue, or an issue. I don’t know of any atheists who are atheists to the exclusion of everything else. I suppose attending conferences could be considered ‘rallying around’ – but it shouldn’t, really, because again, it’s not to the exclusion of everything else. The idea seems to be that if too many atheists are too interested in atheism then…the other 95% of the (US) public will not like atheists. That idea appears to me to be too flimsy to be worth worrying about. Two, what is all this about presentation and interaction with the 95 percent of the public who are not atheists? Presentation of what? I’m not presenting anything. I don’t have to hone and shape and style my ideas so that they come across better to 95% of the US public. I have no ambitions to make myself acceptable to 95% of the US public. They can take me or leave me; I don’t care. I’m not interested. They’re not my problem. I’m not running for office, I don’t work in advertising – I just don’t have any occupational or social need to file myself down to a more conforming shape. Not everyone does. De Dora seems to assume (he’s like Mooney in this) that we all do. Well why? What business is 95% of the US public of ours? Most people don’t meet 95% of the US public, we just meet people we know. We don’t creep around consulting polls in an attempt to figure out if the people we know will be able to put up with us. De Dora seems to think like a very hardened and worried politician, but here’s the good news: nobody other than politicians and their helpers has to think like that. We get to just think what we think and get on with it. We don’t have to be thinking about some amorphous ‘strategy’ all the time.
I murmured some of this, and Michael answered:
I am admittedly thinking about all of this through the eyes of a diplomat (that’s at least what I’ve been called), so that might be creating the room of disagreement between us. I have no interest in trying to stop people from critiquing beliefs; I do have an interest, however, in trying to set the conditions in which that is best done.
Aha; a diplomat. That could explain it. But why? Why think about atheism through the eyes of a diplomat, unless you are in fact a diplomat? We don’t all have to act like consular staff. We don’t have to tiptoe around, we don’t have to apologize for opening our mouths, we don’t have to placate and mollify and soothe. And as for trying to set the conditions in which people critique beliefs – that seems to me to be merely presumptuous. It’s not up to anyone to set the conditions in which people critique beliefs; we get to do that ourselves, each of us.
It’s a mug’s game. It’s just conformity and majoritarianism, that’s all. 95% of people don’t like the kind of thing you say, so stop saying it. No. One, 95% is way too high, and two, I don’t care anyway. We really are allowed to say things even if the majority dislikes them.
I am still not sure as to why Massimo added him to “Rationally Speaking.” Most atheists are more concerned with protecting the secular nature of a free society than we are with being promoters of atheism.
That 95% don’t believe in the same god in any case, no matter how much the more ecumenical might pretend. Are they tiptoeing around each other like diplomats? Or are they saying ‘I’m a Christian/Jew/Muslim/Hindu/Whatever, curb your behaviour around *my* beliefs or you are a hater’?
So De Dora is trying to be a politician or a diplomat, he thinks.
No, he is the little kid looking for approval. Sally Field: “You like me, you really like me!”.
Oh yes, his 95% is actually more like 75% and in 50 years will be 50% as long as accommodationists like De Dora are ignored.
I’m not going to defend him in any full-blooded way, but I do think we should maybe go easy for now. Bob has a point with the “little kid” commment: Michael de Dora seems to be quite young and inexperienced at this level of the debate, though doubtless thoughtful and smart. The posts that people are objecting to really look to me like someone feeling his way, trying desperately to say something salient in a large, complex debate that’s been around longer than he has. They don’t look like diehard accommodationism. Give him a while.
Remember, Mooney started out making good sense when he was younger, then went off the rails (I wonder when he’s going to announce his conversion to Catholicism). For all I can tell so far, Michael may go in the opposite direction once he finds his sea legs.
And it’s not as if there’s no merit at all in what he’s saying. It’s just that the things he’s trying to say that have merit are well known. E.g., yes, we do need to ally with liberal Christians and Jews on some issues. (But that doesn’t mean we have to shut up and never criticise them.)
Like I say, let’s give him the benefit of the doubt for now and (continue to) engage with him kindly. (We can always become more aggressive later if it’s really warranted.)
Russell, I was thinking the same thing, and just stopped what I was going to post because you already said it:) I found Michael’s original article disorganized (both intellectually and mechanically), and he really does need to attend to that. But it did occur to me that some of this is youth and inexperience.
When reading his latest, I was thinking to myself, “See, if you’d experienced feminist/race/gay rights struggles from 10/20/30/40 years ago, you wouldn’t equate outspokenness with making your cause the sole focus of your life.” But since he’s obviously too young to do so, that’s understandable.
The question is, how do you explain this in a way that someone like Michael understands that, is open to it, and doesn’t feel like you’re being patronizing and dismissing him for being “too young?” I often felt miffed at that suggestion when I was younger, but it really is true that age and experience change one’s outlook.
Of course, I’m well aware there are many here 20, 30 years my senior who may look (justifiedly) at me that way.
There is a book that has just come out. I read it to review it but I think it is a more effective rebuttal of this sort of “diplomacy” than anything I could say myself.
Nathan Geffen’s Debunking Delusions. It follows the story of the TAC, one of the more effective protest groups in South Africa.
Without meaning to I think it sets out a strong blueprint for how atheist activism should be thinking right now.
I didn’t know about de Dora’s follow-up on his Center for Inquiry blog, but I wound up trying to engage with him on his ridiculous “We mustn’t offend the faithful even by so much as calling ourselves atheists” position in the comments on Massimo’s announcement that he was adding de Dora to Rational Inquiry. I tried to give de Dora the benefit of a doubt and make it clear that I was reacting to what I perceived him to be saying (to give him room to clarify or explain better or backpedal), but this stuff about diplomacy makes me think he’s going to remain totally clueless on this point. It makes me want to put the point less diplomatically.
—–
Dear atheist concern trolls who keep telling we more outspoken atheists to “tone it down,” and “be more diplomatic,” and various other semi-polite ways of telling us to STFU:
I certainly don’t think there’s anything wrong with making every effort to be diplomatic in some circumstances. Given a certain set of primary aims and a certain sort of public role (for example, Executive Director for the New York Center for Inquiry), diplomacy is not only recommended, but required. On the other hand, it is a clear FAILURE of diplomacy for you to go around telling us, your natural political allies, that we should all strive to be exactly as diplomatic as you are, in essentially the same way as you are. Not only is this undiplomatic, it is outright rude, presumptuous, and bossy.
Of course, it would not be rude, presumptuous or bossy if you were to present reasoned arguments in an attempt to convince us to take a diplomatic approach closer to your own, but you seem to prefer attempting to change our ways with cheap rhetoric, browbeating, and unsupported assertions – most of which appear to be borrowed from those we both admit are our natural political enemies. Unsurprisingly, we find this approach irritating in the extreme, and it does nothing to mitigate the rude presumptuous bossiness inherent in telling us how to behave in the first place.
Moreover, even when you do offer actual arguments instead of (or, more usually, in addition to) the cheap rhetoric, browbeating, and unsupported assertions, you never answer any of our objections. Of course, the most obvious objection (besides the objection that you lack convincing positive evidence and arguments in support of your contention) is that your diplomacy may be necessitated by your primary aims and public role, but we do not all have the same primary aims and/or public roles as you. It’s a big world, with room for lots of communication from lots of different people aimed at lots of different audiences to advance lots of different goals, and everyone who might share some goals need not share all goals, nor need they all take the same approach to achieving their respective goals – even those goals which they share. Even if your diplomacy is useful or even necessary for you, you have yet to make any case at all that the same sort of diplomacy is necessary for everyone else in the world who happens to share some overlapping goals with you.
Since you have no answers for these objections, and since you rarely even offer evidence-based arguments (instead of assertions and rhetoric and browbeating) in the first place, and since continuing to tell us how to behave when you have failed to provide convincing arguments can only succeed in pissing us off, and since your insistence on more diplomacy from us is based largely on the principle that pissing people off makes it difficult to ally with them when it’s useful to do so, and since we are your natural allies on almost all of the goals that are most important to you (and so are by your own principle exactly the people you should least want to piss off), then perhaps it would behoove you to stop telling us to be more diplomatic and thereby undiplomatically and counter-productively pissing us off.
Seriously. Y’all just need to stop it. Just. Fucking. Stop.
I think he’s now actually busy making things worse in his comments. He pretty much appears to be saying that there’s something wrong with being an atheist and daring to say so out loud.
@G Felis: yes, these diplomats always seem to only want to please the people they want to persuade, not the people they claim to represent.
Russell – yes – I do (try to) keep in mind that he’s young, and I try to persuade and explain rather than rebuke. Some of the time. Other times my exasperation runs away with me.
I haven’t seen the stuff at Rationally Speaking. I was too depressed by Massimo’s decision and introduction. Must look.
Hey, I’m willing to give a kid a break, but he also has to make sense, and, I’m afraid, this guy simply doesn’t. He says:
I guess my question is: Does he know what he’s talking about? Has he met any atheists whose lives are centred around their atheism, that is, people the core of whose lives consists simply in saying no to gods? I bet he doesn’t. He’s erected a straw man, and yet says that he’s only interested in the truth.
What he’s talking about is a very different thing from being concerned about religion and religion’s effects. These are serious concerns – just look around. So, the critique of religion is central to any reasonably peaceful future – even liberal religious believers know this. Saying no to gods is pretty small stuff compared with the real critique of religion, which is, arguably, of enormous importance for the future. Does De Dora not know this? After all, stop the critique of religion, and religions will just walk in and claim the citadel. They’re doing it now. Every time you open a newspaper, there’s something there from a deeply religious point of view, whether it’s anti-abortion, anti-euthanasia, anti-secularism, or just some incredibly stupid thing about the age of the earth or the equal but different status of women.
Maybe we do need to ally ourselves with liberal Christians or Jews, but I played the liberal Christian card for years, and watched the church subvert everything that I thought I stood for. I’m not impressed with liberal Christianity, or liberal religion of any kind. If it’s a so-called ‘revealed’ religion, it’s always got the tools to subvert liberalism right there in the word, and like it or not, there’s always a significant proportion who take the word as read. It’s as simple as that. And diplomacy, at that point, is useless. De Dora needs to grow up a bit before he tries to publish his thoughts. Right now, he just makes me cross. I’m quite prepared to cross verbal swords with practically anyone, but not with someone who thinks he has a mind and doesn’t.
“If it’s a so-called ‘revealed’ religion, it’s always got the tools to subvert liberalism right there in the word”
That’s the crucial thing. I can see (if I try hard enough) the possibilities of using an idea of ‘God’ or of an abstract something that is better than humans and thus a way to inspire and motivate. But as long as it’s pinned to a Holy Book, it’s just human all too human, and illiberal besides. It has to be cut loose from any human instantiation to be free enough to be genuinely better than humans. And even then, for lots of people, ‘better than’ doesn’t mean kinder, more generous, more loving, more dedicated, more helpful – it means more pure, more ascetic, more family-valued, more conservative.
Hmm. Now that I’ve looked at the comments at Rationally Speaking (and done other things – I haven’t been reading those comments for three hours), I’m not so sure about the benefit of the doubt for tender youth. He’s pretty aggressive. He makes a lot of harsh accusations, and they’re inaccurate, and he seems to be quite unembarrassed about that. It’s the McCarthy thing all over again. Point, whine, shout, smear; ignore all corrections; repeat. I’m really sick of that kind of thing – and I don’t think it’s just some kind of over-excited blunder. I think De Dora should be able to see what’s wrong with that kind of thing without waiting until he’s a few decades older, or, if he’s not, he should be more bashful and hesitant about the kind of thing he posts. If he’s clueless and just learning the ropes and feeling his way – then he could at least stop naming names. He could at least quit energetically smearing particular people and groups.
Also – he may be young, but he is after all the Executive Director of CFI New York. This seems like a big mistake on someone’s part, but there it is. He’s kind of given up the right to be treated gently.
G – oh so you did! I’d forgotten your moniker, so I didn’t realize it was you while reading. JJE was good too. Who is JJE, anyway? Always good, whoever it is. Never comments here. Philistine.
Russell, I am appalled at your suggestion that we treat De Dora kindly. How will he learn except in the Crucible of Fire? That’s a very un-ungodly idea, you know.
Oh well now you would say that, PZ – you’re one of De Dora’s top head chief supremo major Bad Guys. You’re one of the Leaders of the Movement. What’s the hold-up with my orders then?!
Why are we supposed to assume that the godhavers will act more politely if we concede to them and avoid ruffling their feathers, anyway? Look at something like the US health care debacle—even though months of “concessions” and “bipartisanship” saddled us with a watered-down woman-punishing joke of a product, the Tea Klan continues to behave as if we’d just nationalized the hospitals.
You can’t accommodate absolutists. Any step which is not towards their camp is not acceptable.
Yep, de Dora is starting to grate more. He doesn’t seem to be taking on the legitimate, well-delineated criticism G Felis, Ophelia, and others have put in front of him. It’s so tiresome dealing with people who Stick to Their Guns (TM) no matter what. Almost as tiresome as picking my jaw up off the floor after yet another organization dedicated to inquiry treats people like me as the problem.
Eh, I’m still willing be patient with Michael de Dora for at least some while longer. As Massimo Pigliucci discussed not too long ago, it’s really hard to avoid the main obstacle to critical thinking and progress in rational argument – simply not wanting to be wrong. I know I’m still working on it. :-)
So I continued my carefully articulated and more-or-less politely worded arguments against de Dora’s position some more today on his CFI blog (after starting them earlier at Rationally Speaking). I’m certainly not going to hold my breath that he’ll be convinced, but perhaps seeing different versions of the arguments laid out repeatedly will start planting the proverbial seeds of doubt in his mind. One can still hope: De Dora doesn’t seem remotely as intransigent, ego-driven, and unwilling to even consider objections as Chris Mooney has repeatedly proved himself to be. Meanwhile, I’ve thought through some of these issues and articulated my own position more clearly, which is of benefit to me regardless of whether or not the repeated whacking with a clue bat ever penetrates Micheal de Dora’s skull in any discernible way.
True, true. Thinking about why we don’t all need to think like diplomats was of benefit to me, to name just one item. I’m interested in all these back-door ways of trying to get people to Act Like Everybody Else Already.
Besides, my copy of Free Inquiry just arrived, with my review in it, so I’m in a good mood.
I don’t see why we should give De Dora a break because of his age. He’s an adult, he should be able to play with the grown-ups now. Besides, he’s only a few years younger than I am anyway, and I’d be insulted if someone suggests going easy on me because I was still young.
However, if it was meant to be an insult, go right ahead. Remarks like “But atheism is not about reason and evidence.” make me want to reconsider any benefit of the doubt I might have been willing to give him.
Not meant to be an insult to him, but the posts I read seemed like someone struggling to say something meaningful and desperate to make some sort of original contribution. Sort of how I might have been when I was 19 (I realise he must be a helluva lot older than that; I’m talking about his style of writing more than his actual age).
I mean, the 19-y.o. me had a lot of things going for him … I was pretty smart, had even read a lot of stuff, was sufficiently grown-up to make my own life decisions even if my inexperience led to some mistakes. I’m not knocking young people, and I generally hate to see the way they are infantilised (particularly by the godly). I’m just saying that there was something about this guy’s style that seemed to be the result of inexperience rather than malice … so I was hopeful that he might improve over time.
Maybe I was wrong, but y’all know what a charitable sort of fella I am. As PZ sez, it’s ungodly of me, but what can I do?
Diplomacy is the art of lying in a soothing manner.
Yes – the style seems to bespeak a new and fairly naïve undergraduate. But then, given his job, and his presence on existing pro-rationality blogs…he kind of has to do better than that. It’s rather like George Bush, in fact. Clearly he simply lacked many of the skills and most of the learning he should have had in order to do the job he got. But given that he did get the job, and that he was in his 50s, it was sort of too late to give him the slack that one gives to a naïve undergraduate.
He’s getting steadily worse. He just claimed that atheists really don’t have it that bad, and that plenty of the negativity that is out there is due to folks like Dawkins/Hitchens/PZ/etc.
I responded with a link to that infamous survey about atheists being the most hated minority in America, and asked for evidence that someone like Dawkins is “hurting the cause.”
You definitely sniffed this out early, Ophelia. This is Mooney all over again.
I was waffling, but I finally waded in and left a comment over at CFI. de Dora will likely find it grating in some spots, though I really did try to go out of my way to make cogent points without them being perceived as insults. But, like refusing to hide your atheism when confronted with theists who want you to shut up, there aren’t that many ways to say “you’re too inexperienced to know what you’re talking about on this point” without pissing someone off. Sigh.
De Dora is right. He said it really really badly, but he is right.
But he’s right about something very specific. Which is: if you are CFI, with CFI’s agenda, is *atheism* your top priority? Is that how you self-identify, is that the basis of your organisation, is that the main campaigning focus, should you be anti-religiously sectarian?
To which the answer, of course, is: “no”. And De Dora is working, after all, for what was Paul Kurtz’s organisation: what he’s said is entirely in line with what Kurtz has always said. Except Kurtz might have been clearer.
But then, who thinks the answer is “yes”? Is the article an indication of some behind-the-scenes power struggle?
There’s nothing wrong with wanting CFI to pursue a strategy of alliances with other groups with similar aims on particular issues. It’s arguable it might be more effective that way.
So on that, De Dora could have a point.
But that’s just an argument against labelling movements for reform or rational progress “atheist”. It’s not an argument against atheists rallying under the “atheist” banner (not that many are, not even Dawkins’ organisation is labelled “atheist”).
De Dora supplies no reason (other than that he doesn’t think it’s interesting or important) why atheists who want to advance atheism – and only atheism – should not organise explicitly as atheists. And of course there is nothing stopping atheists who want to promote atheism under an atheist banner also getting involved in a wider movement for critical inquiry
I didn’t read De Dora as telling atheists to keep quiet, or any of that (though the fact that this is an *interpretation* of what he wrote is of course an indication that his prose style was problematic). I just read him as saying, “we’re a nontheistic intellectual and social reform movement; concentrating on anti-religious campaigning would be counter-productive”.
Whether that needed saying in the first place is moot. He should certainly have said it better. But otherwise: sound and fury signifying very little.
Dan
Dan
To remind ourselves of De Dora’s thesis concerning the “problems with atheism”:
1. Atheism isn’t a worldview, which “isn’t enough to carry us forward in any meaningful way.”
2. Atheists tend to see religion as “the problem”. A more comprehensive critical approach is needed.
3. Atheists can be “angry” and “uncompassionate”. What is needed is something more “sophisticated, thoughtful, and inviting”.
4. Atheism is divisive. “Defining oneself as an atheist gives off the impression to those who do not define themselves as atheists that you have nothing in common.” And “the atheist approach does not serve to unite a broad group of people together for progressive dialogue or progressive change.”
5. Atheism is “against” and not “for”. While atheism is clearly based on critical thinking, “the term atheism doesn’t tell others the reasons for critique.”
There are two things to note straight away.
First of all, none of these are “problems with atheism”. None of them say that atheism is mistaken, or unjustifiable, or irrational, or anything like that. A bit inept, then, to use language which suggested such a line.
Secondly, points 1, 2, 4 and 5 are more or less the same issue: a rejection of the primacy of “atheism” (for which read, apparently, anti-religosity) in the movement of which CFI is a part. He’s saying that he doesn’t want to be part of a single-issue atheist organisation. I don’t know who said he should be, but there you go. Point three is an expression of regret about the way some atheist express themselves, or are perceived to express themselves. But that feeds into the other 4 points because it all comes down to a desire for a broad progressive agenda with the capability to work in a united front with other (religious bodies). So naturally, a fiercely anti-religious approach won’t work. And to foreground “atheism” as a label will mislead about your agenda so that won’t work either. Doesn’t take a genius to work either of those things out.
I’m reminded of something I came across in the context of the UK miners’ strike of 1984-1985. Apparently there were a few radical activists at the time who refused solidarity to the miners because they mostly weren’t vegan. It’s important to uphold principles and values, but it’s also important to avoid unnecessary sectarianism.
All organisations which are part of this inchoate humanist/secularist/rationalist/freethought movement face the question: is anti-religious campaigning necessary or desirable?
This is an old argument. It’s never been finally settled, and probably never will be.
It’s Holyoake vs Bradlaugh echoing down the ages. Holyoake and Bradlaugh at least agreed more or less on what their cause was, but disagreed about whether or not anti-religious activity was necessary, and whether the cause required an atheist stance. Bradlaugh said that since the Church stood in the way of reform, then theology was fair game. Holyoake wanted to remove theology from the argument. But Bradlaugh also said that atheism was not necessary to secularism, although secularism would lead to atheism. Which is why the National Secular Society, despite its reputation, has never been constitutionally atheist (and still has debates about the utility of anti-religious campaigning).
Somewhere in among all of that is a thread about labels. Lots of people dislike “atheism”, for all kinds of reasons, not all of which amount to cowardice.
At one point in his piece, De Dora saying something about atheists “defining their entire lives around unbelief.” This in relation to the “Out” campaign. It’s not actually obvious to me that public acknowledgment of a rejection of belief in God is “defining… entire lives” at all. The atheist label is just a label for an opinion about theism, it’s not a label that somehow attaches to your whole being – even if you’re interested and excited about the subject (and that’s not compulsory).
De Dora is not alone, though, in objecting to making an etymologically negative word the main label for a naturalistic world view. Mind you, no other label is perfect either, including “naturalism”, which is hard to define in non-circular terms.
It’s true that atheism is apophatic. You know what an atheist doesn’t believe, but not what their values are, or how they reached that position. On the other hand, is it so easy to draw any conclusions about someone who adopts the “Christian” label? And what do you know about a “theist”, other than that they think a deity of some sort exists? You don’t know why they think that.
What characterises “our” movement (actually, who are we anyway?). Is it “naturalism”, whatever that is? Or should, as Harris suggested, we avoid any labels at all and talk instead about rooting out error (as distinct from searching for truth)? I have some sympathy with this.
But while it’s obviously correct to say that “the term atheism doesn’t tell others the reasons for critique.”, a name like “Center for Inquiry” tells you even less. Not only do you not know what the basis of the Inquiry is, or what exactly is being Inquired about, but you don’t know what conclusions the Center has come to, or even if it has reached any conclusions. For all Joe Public knows, CFI are into tracking badgers. An evangelical Protestant organisation could call itself the same thing without fear of contradiction. It might be who you call to find out other people’s ‘phone numbers.
Like the evergreen debate about anti-religiosity, the argument about labels is probably unending. To my way of thinking, you may as well adopt “atheism”, because if you don’t your opponents will anyway. Strategically, this would be immensely useful, because it would mean that both “militants” and “moderates” (I use here a shorthand I know is problematic) would be using the same label, thereby undermining the stereotype.
Anyway, “atheism” is a perfectly good word for the godless condition. I think it is better to challenge its negative connotations than to contribute to them; it also shows solidarity with those of us who do think atheism is important and don’t think it’s unreasonable to do so. I don’t thank De Dora for making life a teeny tiny bit more difficult for me in that respect.
Dan
I said somewhere (here or at one of De Dora’s posts, I’m not sure which – no, it was there, I think, because I said it to him) that I could see why his claim would make sense for CFI. But he made it a general point.
Yeah, as I read it I was thinking: why on earth are you making this a point about things in general?
Dan
Heh. So was I!