Bishop who?
Now that the Desmond Tutu moment is in the past, let me say, on the other hand, notice that Josh Rosenau linked to YNH just last Saturday – long after it should have been blindingly obvious to any reasonable person that it was not a truth-telling or fair or decent blog. He did partially admit that, but he linked anyway.
You’re Not Helping has been on a roll lately about that latter point, rightly criticizing various folks who criticize such calls for prayer without offering any alternative. While I think YNH has lately become less helpful than they used to be, their highlighting of the work being done by Mississippi Atheists, and of opportunities to donate to ongoing Gulf efforts by groups including the Audubon Society and Unitarian Universalists, certainly do help. If you want to help folks out in the Gulf, those are good places to start.
Rosenau, like so many critics of explicit atheists, likes to portray himself as part of The Nice Faction, but his Niceness tends to desert him when it comes to explicit atheists.
And Massimo Pigliucci linked to YNH last Thursday, which is also long after a reasonable person should have concluded that Here Be Bullies.
Are the New Atheists the New Martyrs?
He should feel stupid about that link now. G Felis (thinkmonkey) offered him the opportunity to say it was a mistake, but he (Pigliucci) didn’t take it. Neither he nor Rosenau has bothered to withdraw the endorsement of a blog that has now admitted telling large falsehoods about people it was angry with. So that’s what they’re like.
I wouldn’t expect either of them to own up having been duped, or to retract their endorsement. They’ll either ignore it, or offer some version of “yes, but some of the points were valid, and it doesn’t matter who wrote it.”
People like Massimo and Josh R will never admit it, but they’ve got an obvious emotionally driven agenda against explicit atheists. They really, really don’t like them, and they routinely discard fairness and honesty when they find an opportunity to take a piss on them.
Hmmm… I just clicked over to YNH and got the wordpress error…
The authors have deleted this blog. The content is no longer available.
Whuh?
Yes, I showed up in the comments to Rosenau’s post (see comment #5 here: http://scienceblogs.com/tfk/2010/06/missing_the_point.php). And in reaction to reading The New Martyrs post (before the YNH meltdown documented by Oedipus Maximus, also linked in my comment), I was amazed that Rosenau was willing to link YNH.
And here, Orzel links to that same post: http://scienceblogs.com/principles/2010/06/insults_are_easy_community_is.php#comments
You’ll notice my comments, pointing out that Orzel’s claim that a comment was denying the concept of good works was false. I noted it twice, asking if he was perhaps referring to another post or if a comment had been deleted, but my comments seem to have been ignored.
Rosenau has a followup post, responding to PZ’s reply here: http://scienceblogs.com/tfk/2010/06/what_is_religion.php
The post ends with a glib “so where’s the beef?” He appeared to think that since Americans don’t know much about the Bible (true), doctrine is relatively unimportant in religious communities (mostly false). I explained the errors in comment #14 on this post.
I’ve had similar experiences with Rosenau before. Starting at this post, which was a reaction to Rosenau/Orzel’s defense of excluding non-accommodationists from the World Science Festival panel: http://scienceblogs.com/evolutionblog/2010/06/science_and_faith_at_the_world.php
After another defense post, Rosenau gave a partial concession: http://scienceblogs.com/tfk/2010/06/a_fair_point.php However, he stuck with his misrepresentation of the non-accommodationist, i.e., non-accommodationists just want to scream “NO DIALOGUE POSSIBLE” while the theistic scientists are trying to have a nice conversation. His concession was in regards to the wording of the intent of the panel.
I am disappointed to say that Rosenau (and so far, Orzel to some extent though I’m less familiar) have shown some resistance to factual correction. The careless linking of the YNH slander is a particularly bad example, but there is a general unwillingness to treat New Atheists as individuals as opposed to caricatures. The “nice conversation” and “understanding” and “dialogue” preaching appears to apply to everybody except New Atheists and possibly Republicans.
There is an all-to-obvious eagerness to embrace every possible negative image of New Atheists with little to no care for or consideration of the truth of the matter. I can understand objections to PZ’s “tone” and use of framing terms like “faitheist”, but if my experience is any measure, it is very clear that “tone” and other side matters are not the motivation for disliking New Atheism/non-accommodationism; they are the rationalization. They’ve made up their minds that we are not helping, and all of the facts can be accommodated to this position.
The blogger confessed and removed the site.
*Note: My apologies if my previous comment actually made it through and this is a double post, but it’s been a bit and it’s still not showing up, so…
I even provided the documentation for this concern in my first comment on Rosenau’s post. I’ve seen him take a lot of time to make corrections before (see his “a fair point” post) while still missing other important ones, but really… this is a no-brainer… at least for some sort of clarification.
I’ve seen Orzel and Rosenau respond similarly to corrections concerning New Atheists. They seem very hesitant to admit any error when talking about them. It’s an ugly thing, but unfortunately we have to expect it. I’ll continue to read and try to comment on Rosenau’s blog (I’ve only recently started looking at Orzel’s), but I have very low expectations that my comments will be taken seriously on any matter relating to New Atheists. The World Science Panel fracas comes to mind as stronger evidence supporting the reflexive nature of their dislike for New Atheists.
Endorsing an argument != endorsing the blog. If the argument is wrong, make a counterargument. But I think it’s clear from what you quoted that I was not endorsing the blog, and you mislead your readers to claim otherwise.
Two additional points. 1) I was traveling last week and not keeping perfectly current on the personal lives of every blogger out there. 2) The sockpuppetry of YNH doesn’t affect the merits of the argument I was discussing, nor does their rudeness toward other bloggers. The author behaved badly, but claiming that the argument is wrong because of its author’s misbehavior is the logical error of argumentum ad hominem.
@Josh:
What argument? “Without offering an alternative”? What do you mean? The alternative is to do nothing, the point being that it’s equally constructive.
Or you could go down there with a Q-Tip, take one swab from a dying seagull, and have accomplished at least marginally more than you would have by praying.
But anyone who makes a big show of praying about this obviously thinks they’re helping the situation. The point of the argument is not that they shouldn’t be allowed to waste their time however they want. The point is that they should be told that they are wasting their time. If they know that prayer is a waste of time already, then there’s no problem. If they don’t, then they should be told that what they’re doing is not an effective means of ameliorating the problem, at which case they can make a choice: continue wasting time by mumbling under my breath (which, again, is totally fine as long as they don’t think they’re actually helping anything) or maybe try out the Q-Tip idea.
To be a little less snide about it, let me try to explain why the notion of praying the oil away irritates some atheists.
Suppose that I, as an atheist, were to announce very publicly that since efforts to stop the oil spill have been unproductive, I’m going to get a bunch of people together to sing Woodie Guthrie songs. No problem, right? But what I was doing this under the aegis of “helping”? What if I was explicitly making the claim that anyone who joined me on the common to sing “This Land is Your Land” was actually doing something to help stop the spill?
Would you object to this situation? My claim that singing Woodie Guthrie songs is actually helping rather than just making participants feel a little better about the situation?
I suspect you’d want to disabuse me of any notion that gathering with a bunch of hippies to sing folk songs actually stops oil from spilling out of a hole in the bottom of the ocean. While organizing a sing-along isn’t hurting, it’s certainly not helping, and if I delude myself into thinking I am helping, then I’m lying to myself and everyone else. I suspect, in this situation, you might say something like, “If you want to help, you should either donate money or go volunteer your time to actually do some work. Singing’s fine and all, but you shouldn’t fool yourself into thinking it helps stop the oil spill.”
Which is all the anti-prayer contingent is actually doing, as far as I can tell.
It’s true that endorsing an argument is distinct from endorsing a blog, Josh. However, you were told by myself and Ophelia in the comments that there were concerns with linking a blog that focused largely on personal attacks and conflation. You were given an opportunity to clarify, but you ignored those concerns. So yes, after you link and people object, followed by your ignoring the objections, it does come across a little differently.
As for (1), I did your work for you. You didn’t have to keep up with/track down personal events… they were sent to you. The sockpuppetry was a side issue for me, as yes, you can evaluate arguments independently of who gives them. You seem to have noticed (with “less helpful lately”) that there were serious problems with the honesty and credibility of YNH postings. Does that do it for (2)?
Nobody claimed that the sockpuppetry undermined the argument, by the way, so I’m not sure why you’ve felt the need to remind us what an ad hominem argument is.
And by the way, is there really an absence of alternatives for community organizing with regards to the oil spill aside from prayer? Do we really need to list them? This was a silly argument to begin with, YNH or not. YNH took it as an opportunity to slander New Atheists, Ophelia particularly, and you hopped on board that train without taking care to qualify.
But it isn’t my place to complain on Ophelia’s behalf. I’ll leave her to it.
In your follow up post (“What is religion?”), you’ve stated that prayer events over national disasters are community organizing almost independent from religion. I explained the problem with this view in the comment section (in particular, basing this view off of American ignorance of the Bible).
Here’s the sequence of the argument as I see it:
PZ/New Atheists: Boo on calls to prayer. Do something else instead that actually works.
YNH/Rosenau: It’s about community, really, and little or nothing to do with actually thinking prayer works. And by the way, New Atheists, you’re not helping!
PZ/New Atheists: Yes, they do think prayer works. (Not cited by anybody I read, but here I note studies on belief in intercessory prayer generally).
Rosenau: Religion is almost entirely about community and little to do with belief.
New Atheists/Benson: Uh, no, not necessarily. In more pluralistic churches, sure, but that’s certainly not the general case. Hey, what gives with linking YNHs personal attacks and not correcting after complaints were made, by the way?
Rosenau: I was busy. You’re making ad hominem arguments!
… Is there something I’m missing?
You’re hilarious, Mr Rosenau. Don’t you realise that your all-too-predictable response makes you look like a weasel? Bad judgment is forgivable. Trying to weasel out when called on it, not so much.
Josh, I did make an argument, in comments on your post – I even made an argument partly agreeing with you, or at least partly disagreeing with someone else’s disagreeing with you. This post was separate from that – it wasn’t about your argument, it was about your choice of blogs, and about your refusal to cop to that even after the blogger admitted to rampant lying. That’s pretty smelly, frankly. People pointed it out to you, and you simply ignored it. Smelly.
And I did not mislead my readers; I said that you partially admitted the blog wasn’t top notch, but I also said you linked to it anyway. Well you did. That’s not misleading my readers.
As I said, your team is supposed to be the Nice one. But it isn’t. It does shit like this, and then tries to weasel out.
You really are a piece of work Rosenau. And you’re not at all nice, honest, or reasonable when it comes to “new” atheists. You play dirty.
Josh
Great. So the next time people complain about New Atheists and their tone , I expect you to be telling them the above.
I second Mr. Slocum’s post. Josh, you’re always banging on about how nasty the NA’s are, but you are far nastier and snarkier than they are. And of course in your hypocritical campaign to improve the tone of our discourse, you carefully refrained from criticizing your allies at You’re Not Helping, who were about as nasty as they come. Worthy allies, indeed. . .
Adding to Deepak’s comment… wasn’t one of the side arguments (New Atheists aren’t helping either!) a form of ad hominem as well?
This goes back to something I’ve said on Rosenau’s blog and others numerous times… the “tone” issue has been obscenely skewed against New Atheists. I’ll repeat the basics:
1) Sometimes, some New Atheists can name call and be unnecessarily rude.
2) Sometimes, some accommodationists can name call and be unnecessarily rude.
3) This is a side issue which has been used incessantly against New Atheists, frequently in the absence of discussing any of their arguments.
4) Therefore, it’s more often than note a distracting sub-issue in the overall debate that is related to the overall debate, not any “side”.
Can we treat this issue realistically now? I agree that it’s an issue, but it’s an issue in serious need of perspective…
Yes, and in any case, as I hinted in my reply, it’s only an ad hominem if you use it instead of an argument. But I wasn’t making an argument of the form that Josh said I was, that is, “YNH is bad therefore its argument is wrong.” It is not any kind of ad hominem to say “YNH is bad therefore Josh should not endorse it, even with a stipulation that it’s flawed.”
And Josh can’t possibly say YNH is not all that bad now that its owner has made clear that he hates it so much he hopes it will disappear without trace.
Note Zach’s post (number 3) – it was in the spam filter for awhile so it’s out of sequence.
Thanks for the note, Ophelia.
For the record, Pigliucci’s offense was far more severe… “The New Marytrs” post was what caught me on to the problems with YNH. Rosenau linked to an objectionable post (and the “on a roll lately”) seems to endorse previous, related posts that involved a host of attacks, but nothing so bad as the post Pigliucci endorsed. The comments pointed the problems out to him, but he seems to have ignored them.
Ophelia: I linked to a blog when that blog made a point I thought was valid. The post I linked said nothing about you, Ophelia, so I don’t see why it would have been germane to bring up ways they’d mistreated you in other posts. But they did mistreat you.
I guess I’m not seeing the point of the OP. I’m not supposed to quote a blog which is later shown to be engaging in sockpuppetry? I’m not supposed to agree with a valid point made by people who behave badly? In what sense is it an “endorsement” to say that YNH had become “less helpful than they used to be”? In other words, what did I do that was inappropriate in agreeing with a post at YNH, an argument that you acknowledge was at least partly correct? What is the “shit like this” you’re referring to? Where’s the “endorsement”? That’s what I find misleading.
Unlike you (Ophelia and Jerry), I don’t think that linking a blog confers an honor on them. I consider talking about someone else without linking them inappropriate, a violation of basic standards of blogging. I found it uniformly petty the way certain bloggers would talk about YNH without linking to it, as if depriving readers of context was meritorious or useful, and not an act of rank pettiness at odds with standard blogging practice.
I used to read YNH, I still read B&W, I sometimes read Pharyngula, and I even read WEIT now and then. I disagree with each of those blogs in different ways at different times, I think each of them violates standards of good discourse at various times and in various ways, but it does not strike me as inherently unacceptable to read and link blogs with which I disagree, or which engage in behavior I find inappropriate.
Jerry: Snark is the native tongue of the internet, and I make no apologies for employing it. The notion that I’m snarkier than you, Ophelia, or PZ, is hogwash. As for nastier, I privately apologized to you for some nasty language I used last year, and you ignored my attempt to talk through our disagreement privately. I don’t think I was nastier than you at the time, and I’m sure I’ve been less nasty than you since then. To mention a few examples, I have not wrongly accused anyone of accepting bribes, have not mounted a campaign to oust a public official for writings undertaken in his private life, and have not outed pseudonymous bloggers.
Josh Slocum: I’ve scaled back my tone-based criticism since this, where I freely acknowledged that my own snark had not moved the discussion in healthier directions and had made me a poor messenger for that valid message. Ultimately, I’m playing the game I see New Atheists and everyone else playing. I don’t see a point in unilaterally disarming, and I do see value in laying down a marker when I see bad behavior.
Dan L.: As I said in my posts, I would object to people praying instead of taking other actions to remedy the effects of the gusher and aid those whose livelihoods have been destroyed by it. I see no evidence that anyone is suggesting prayer as an alternative, rather than as a supplement. Even PZ acknowledges that prayer advocates are also encouraging people to donate their time and money to the effort, so the notion that prayer is mutually exclusive with such work is a nonstarter.
Rosenau,
Here’s from the article you linked:
<blockquote>
Yeah, you read that correctly. Instead of volunteering your time to help in the cleanup, throwing in some coin to a reputable organization involved in the cleanup, or even voicing activist support for alternative energy, all you’ve gotta do is bitch to people about religion!!! Whine a little bit in your local paper, and your job is done. Oil spill solution achieved.
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
You see how the Do Nothings work, these fools who only really care about whining about religion but are so dishonest and fifth-rate that they’ll conflate whining into “action,” when the real action is something they’re not even close to? The Do Nothings are getting their asses kicked in the action department by even most religious groups, and it’s only making atheism look like a giant ass in itself.
And the Freedom From Religion Foundation appears to be among the worst of the lot. They might as well be on their knees at the altar.
</blockquote>
Ok, saying something like “it would be nice if they also recommended charities” is one thing… But the above? I would call that “objectionable.”
You also said they were “on a roll lately,” so I took your link as referring to previous posts as well. But I’ll take your comment as disavowal of that. From another post on the same day (‘mixed agreement’), let me know if you find this accurate:
<blockquote>
The FFRF even makes the implicit assumption that, if you’re praying, you can’t help things by any other actions – they actively pretend that those who pray can’t do anything else at the same time (or they ignore what those people are doing).
</blockquote>
It also has includes as “whiners” bloggers from the “see all evil” post, including Ophelia. I won’t stray into the comments here. No, YNH had not been on a roll… it had been on a long, misguided screed, attacking the FFRF (and bloggers in passing) for <i>not advocating a specific charity</i>. As I’ll restate from my above comment, this is all still relatively slight compared to what Pigliucci was linking.
Rosenau@20: ” a post which modeled good behavior”
…. yeah, no. Granted, among the other posts you could have chosen, this was probably the best, but certainly not good.
As for the point of the OP, I think it mostly relates to the nonresponse over concerns raised in your comments section. I don’t think that the linking was a GREAT AND TERRIBLE CRIME!!!11! or anything, but the unresponsiveness is what got me. And no, I don’t think that “busy” is an excuse… you had plenty of activity in the period from which you received our comments and the time of this post. If you missed them, that’s fine, just say so and don’t say things like ” I was traveling last week and not keeping perfectly current on the personal lives of every blogger out there.” That comes across as dismissive and… yes… weaselly.
Side note: from Rosenau@19: ” I’ve scaled back my tone-based criticism since this, where I freely acknowledged that my own snark had not moved the discussion in healthier directions and had made me a poor messenger for that valid message. Ultimately, I’m playing the game I see New Atheists and everyone else playing. I don’t see a point in unilaterally disarming, and I do see value in laying down a marker when I see bad behavior.”
That was a good response. Credit where due, etc.
Who are you claiming did this? Citations needed.
It’s not about snark, it’s about fairness and accuracy. You’ve got it in for outspoken atheists. You dislike them so much that you contort yourself (with much prolixity) to ignore the substantive arguments they make. You ignore those substantive arguments, or you mischaracterize them, in service of your agenda. You let accommodationists off the hook by interpreting everything they say in such a ridiculously charitable light as to be scarcely believable, and then you reduce the arguments of their critics to a caricature.
You shift goal posts. You mischaracterize your opponents’ arguments. You bend over until your spine cracks to excuse ethical missteps and conflicts of interest (yes, taking Templeton money is a journalistic conflict of interest, and it is a bribe and it is not “to be congratulated) on the part of people like Chris Mooney. You claim “someone has to stop the fighting,” but it’s always people like Ophelia or Jerry. They have to take your version of “the high road” (which means abandoning well-documented and reasonable objections) while Mooney et al get off scot free.
You’re a partisan bullshitter, Rosenau.
Another little note that’s relevant:
Josh, what is it exactly that the FFRF does? What is their “big thing”?
I’ll give you three keywords to use in your response: government, endorsement, religion. Their release made no claims to solving the oil spill by complaining or anything else. Maybe I’ve missed something, but the FFRF doesn’t like calls to prayer by government officials. I’m not sure why this was taken controversially or as a “solution,” as YNH characterized it.
YNH aside, this is a bad argument and it comes across as a inventroversy of convenience to bash FFRF/PZ/et al. That certainly seems to have been the case for the YNH blog. That YNH would do something like that should have been obvious to you.
Even if you didn’t endorse the blog (which I agree is a valid position), you have endorsed a poor argument from a shoddy source.
I’ll also second Slocum on this: there is an important distinction between snark and misrepresentation. For the former, it generates offense, the latter, false impressions. Though I agree with you on many points — most, actually — your posts relevant to accommodationism have consistently left me with an impression of New Atheists completely alien to the impressions I get from firsthand experience. There’s a disconnect here that goes beyond the ironies and sarcasms seemingly inevitable in online debates, and a conclusion of partisanship is forced whenever we consider the pattern of your factual errors and mistakes on these matters; the deviation is consistently sided, not random.
I do not believe that you’re cynical. I plan on continuing to read your blog and consider it a solid resource. And importantly, you do show a willingness to correct errors. However, you make them too casually, too directionally, and correct slowly and partially, as though unwillingly, dragged and bent steadily there by your critics, until, at last, you concede as small an error as possible.
So my question is this: what do you really dislike about explicit atheists? Why consistently side against them?
If my observation is incorrect, I’ll accept correction and be glad for it. Otherwise, I am sincerely interested in what got you to where you are now. Do you know? I know that sometimes I find myself busy crafting a defense of a given group without good call to do so, and in these cases, I have to correct myself. It’s a natural tendency, and I wonder if you’ve let yourself fall into it.
Email me (zachvoch@gmail.com), make a post, or comment here. I am interested.
Another thing that fails to get mentioned often enough, and Josh should recognize this given his position, is religion is the biggest factor in not accepting evolution in the United States. These religious believers are not even close to being all fundamentalists or even evangelicals – they are mainline protestants and catholics an many are well educated otherwise.
Josh, Zach has done most of my explaining for me. Yes, it was the “on a roll lately” part especially, since the roll YNH was on at the time was mostly to do with slamming me, mostly with falsehoods. And yes, it wasn’t (apart from the above) the post so much as the ignoring of comments.
That stuff about not linking to YNH is total bullshit. It was not in the least petty. I knew YNH was riddled with fakery. Don’t you get that? I didn’t know it in a court of law way, but I knew it because of a million tiny things that didn’t add up (but would have been way too much trouble to find and copy and show to J J Ramsey or anyone else) – I knew it because of style and echoing and speed and things like that. It was complicated to demonstrate, but it convinced the hell out of me, and as it turns out, I was not wrong. I had absolutely no intention of linking to it or naming it because I thought it was both vicious and fraudulent. I did talk about it, rarely, in a mostly hopeless attempt to neutralize some of its lies about me. See? It was hell bent on trashing me, and it was (unless it was faking its hits, and I don’t know if that’s possible) quite popular. It’s not much fun to have a pack of liars systematically trashing you. There was nothing remotely petty about refusing to link to it, or about talking about it without naming it or linking to it. The fact that you would claim there is – to me, for fuck’s sake – shows there is something badly wrong with your judgement on this kind of thing.
That said, it’s true that you did that ‘You have a point’ post recently, and I did appreciate that. But. I think you share the habit of the anti-“New”-atheist faction of putting a heavy thumb on the scale.
I should have included the passage – because it really is outrageous.
You say that as if you’re proud of it – as if you think you were right. But you weren’t right, because YNH was the one that was “at odds with standard blogging practice,” not to mention ethics and legality. (Some of what it said about me was libelous. I’m not going to sue, but it was.) So there was no “rank pettiness,” and your tone of self-righteousness is totally out of place. YNH is no one’s victim and never was.
Just a little addition about YNH’s popularity. It may have been genuinely popular with some, but every time I looked I saw the unique views counter had jumped and knew that quite a few of those were myself and others who had noticed a major scandal unfolding and were keeping tabs, as it turned out we were quite right to do, so it was by no means only people who thought it was good or believed it had something worth hearing to say who were bumping those figures up.
Many fell for the scam, but that still doesn’t mean it’s something in which to take pride. And those who did not fall for it often had more than gut instinct to go on. They followed links, checked the context of quotes etc., and saw in how many cases it didn’t add up. Those who continued to think YNH was legit neglected to do this.
Quite. It was by no means just gut instinct – there were real clues, in abundance – but it was just way too complicated to demonstrate – at least, if one wanted to get anything else done, which I did.
Hitch and Dave W and Oedipus did the demonstrating, for which effort, much thanks.
I think Rosenau’s point—actually the whole conversation—is forlorn due to the vague, shifting nature of what religion is. It’s like a Rorschach blot or a lump of clay. It can be shaped into whatever form you wish for the argument at hand.
So Rosenau brings up the social aspect of religion, saying, AHA! Now a counter can be made using any of the hundreds of other aspects of it. It will go on like this forever until someone is more specific.
Oedipus,
I have some disagreements about the emphasis on your comment, at least. I think he went a little further than “[bringing up] the social aspect.” There are several associated points here that Rosenau attempts:
1) (basically) nobody actually believes that prayer will directly help to solve the oil spill crisis.
2) Bloggers/FFRF criticized the calls to prayer mistakenly by (1), and further, they didn’t offer any helpful alternatives. (The point being, I suppose, to show that we aren’t serious about helping and are only interested in ripping on religion. This is how it was put by YNH, at least.)
3) Religion is almost entirely about community and the doctrinal part is largely negligible.
The responses are as follows:
a) (1) is just false. You can see my comments on his post for details, but I note studies on belief in intercessory prayer. As an anecdote, my own dear mother, a sweet lady and by no means a fanatic or even regular church attendee, pulled a Pat Robertson about the gulf yesterday relating to voodoo practices. Afterward, she also said that we should stop wasting money and effort and pray, as that’s all we can do. Granted, that’s just one anecdote, but this is not a rare sentiment, and I feel that it is worthwhile to speak against it.
b) (3) is also false, depending on the community. His comments about religion were certainly not representative of American religiosity. These are ideological communities. The degree of importance of doctrine varies, but it is an important aspect.
I’m not sure if you were saying something similar to this, but I feel that the resort to community was a bit of sophistic or else careless vagueness on Rosenau’s part. I’m happy to grant that it was probably careless, since as he said, he’s from a more liberal and pluralistic area than I am.
Oh, I forgot to list the responses to (2). So for reference purposes:
c) This was an unrelated, rather disconcerting item that seems to have been latched on just to have a dig at New Atheists. I’ve mentioned this before, but the whole “you didn’t mention a charity!” argument strikes me as disingenuous. Rosenau took YNHs listing of charities as some sort of implied moral superiority to those criticizing calls to prayer. Sure, listing the charities was a good thing, and of course I wouldn’t mind if the criticized bloggers took the opportunity to recommend their own, but this point was a bit of anti-them tactics and little else.
Zach: Yes, I suppose it is objectionable, but objectionable the way most of the internet is objectionable. The lines crossed in that post are lines that many blogs don’t respect. In writing that post, I figured my average reader would take “on a roll” not as some broad-based endorsement of all YNH’s works and pomps. I understand why Ophelia reads it that way, and I get why B&W regulars would, too, but I think people who don’t have the context of reading B&W would see it that way. If I’m wrong, I regret the confusion, because I had no intent of making any such broad endorsement.
Re: “your posts relevant to accommodationism have consistently left me with an impression of New Atheists completely alien to the impressions I get from firsthand experience” It wouldn’t surprise me if this were so. I feel the same way when reading about “accommodationists.” I see people writing about me, and associating me with a group, but mischaracterizing my views and my experience of other people I’m being lumped with in fairly dramatic ways. I obviously don’t want to do the same thing, but given that both sides seem to be talking past one another, it wouldn’t surprise me if I were making a comparable error.
Re: “what do you really dislike about explicit atheists? Why consistently side against them?”
I have no problem with New/Affirmative/Explicit (explicit?) Atheists. I’ve shared quite a few beers with PZ, Jason Rosenhouse, Greg Laden, etc. I took college classes with Jerry Coyne and I respect his scientific work. I disagree with many of arguments characteristic of New AtheisM, both as matters of philosophy and matters of political strategy. I side against New AtheisM because I think it’s a bad argument. And I hope I distinguish my disagreement with ideas separate from my feelings for the people who hold those ideas. If I fail at that, then I need to work harder.
Re: “1) (basically) nobody actually believes that prayer will directly help to solve the oil spill crisis.”
Not quite. My point is that regardless of whether some people think prayer will stop the gusher or clean the beaches, there are ways that a call to prayer serves valid secular purposes. That’s important from a broad social perspective, and from a narrower constitutional angle. Compare this to FFRF’s successful suit over the National Day of Prayer. In that case, the suit was not about a government call to prayer alone (such calls go back to the Founding Fathers and are unlikely to face successful constitutional challenge given precedents like Newdow’s Pledge suit), it was about a call to prayer for the sole purpose of endorsing religious prayer. That’s a clear endorsement of religion, while a call to pray over the Gusher can mean different things to different people. Some might think they’ll magically stop the gusher by praying, others will think that they’re strengthening their community in a difficult time. Complaining about the former without acknowledging the latter is problematic.
Josh Slocum: Re: “oust a public official…” See Coyne’s various posts on Francis Collins (e.g.), calling for Collins to resign over an essay written before he became NIH director and published during his tenure in that position.
Re: “taking Templeton money is a journalistic conflict of interest, and it is a bribe” I disagree, and have explained why. Replying with an argument by vigorous assertion is uncompelling. Bribery is a word that has clear definitions, including legal definitions and codes of journalistic ethics are available far and wide. Cite a source and make an argument. The evidence at hand is that Templeton fellowships go to people who submit a plan to conduct research and write a book/article/movie/whatever. That’s pretty common. Groups like ProPublica and the Nation Institute do the same. Has any Templeton fellow claimed that a quid pro quo was expected, beyond an expectation that the money be used for the project approved (an expectation authors would also find from book publishers or magazine editors to give authors an advance or travel expenses)?
Let’s turn it around. If a group of atheists hired a journalist to investigate Templeton, to dig up dirt on it, with the aim of damaging the reputation of the foundation and its fellows, would that “violate journalistic ethics” and constitute bribery? Because according to The Nation, that’s what Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins are doing: “Project Reason hired British science journalist Sunny Bains to investigate Templeton and build a case against it.”
To my knowledge, Templeton places no restrictions on the conclusions their fellows draw, but I find it hard to believe that Bains would get paid – or her research published by Project Reason – if she didn’t turn up dirt. That seems closer to violating journalistic ethics than anything anyone has shown Templeton doing, but there’s no outrage. And frankly, beyond the hypocrisy, there’s no reason for outrage.
Ophelia: See my comments above about the “on a roll” issue. I honestly don’t think the average TfK reader (who I do not assume reads YNH or B&W), would see the comment as an endorsement of things YNH wrote about you, not least because I wasn’t talking about or linking to things they said about you. YNH talked some serious bullshit about you, and should be ashamed.
Re: “That stuff about not linking to YNH is total bullshit. It was not in the least petty. I knew YNH was riddled with fakery. Don’t you get that?”
Fine, but how does not linking them fix that? I don’t think linking to someone confers any honor, endorsement, love, support, nobility, notability, or whathaveyou, on someone. I don’t link for the benefit of people I link to, I link for the benefit of my readers. When I was learning the blogging ropes 6 years ago, the ethic that was instilled in me was that you link so that your readers can make up their own mind. They get your interpretation, but the link is a sign of respect to readers, that you think they are smart, skeptical folks who deserve to be able to check your sources and see whether their assessment matches yours. By talking elliptically about YNH without linking them, I felt like you were disrespecting your readers, not all of whom have the broad context gained from reading the blogosphere as widely as you do. I explain at length only because I think we’re talking past each other, and I want to clarify where I’m coming from and what I’m talking about. Your sense of fakery was clearly justified, but I don’t see why it argues for not linking at all, rather than linking disagreeably or disrespectfully.
This just shows you really don’t understand much about religion or the arguments of new atheists. As I mentioned earlier, if it weren’t for religion we wouldn’t need the NCSE. You must know this Josh – you really must. Your religious friends can tell you that ID and creationism are bad theology, but how would you or any one know they were telling the truth? ID and creationism supporters are just as religious as your friends. Also, if it weren’t for religion we wouldn’t be worried about sex ed or gay marriage or sex roles – we would look at the evidence and see that sex should be discussed, that homosexuality is perfectly normal and women are just as capable as men.
“Yes, I suppose it is objectionable, but objectionable the way most of the internet is objectionable. The lines crossed in that post are lines that many blogs don’t respect.”
Yes, that’s true, but modeling good behavior? And again, though this comes down to our disagreement on the argument, would you really endorse the post that you linked as a fair criticism of the FFRF? I’d like to know if you still maintain it so that we could pursue it, though it is a side issue.
” I figured my average reader would take “on a roll” not as some broad-based endorsement of all YNH’s works and pomps.”
Ok, here’s where my previous comments and Ophelia’s comment comes into play about the reaction being primarily to the ignored comments. Let me quote the beginning of comment #12, Ophelia’s, on your post: “To be fair (which is slightly hard for me at the moment, given Josh’s endorsement of a set of posts that repeatedly called me a liar while claiming I said things I didn’t say)”.
Your post very much was taken as endorsing associated posts. Again, this could have easily been corrected. You might have missed the beginning of her comment, in which case, stating so and clarifying… etc. Now of course we know that you do not endorse the associated posts.
“I obviously don’t want to do the same thing, but given that both sides seem to be talking past one another, it wouldn’t surprise me if I were making a comparable error.”
That’s a fair enough admission. I’ll note again that you identify with a side and that it is generally a problematic thing to do.
“If I fail at that, then I need to work harder.”
I would say that you do. Unless I take more care with it, the charge remains a value judgment on my part.
You were right to put the emphasis on the M’s in that paragraph as well. It would have been more accurate to of me to say that you appear to consistently aside against New Atheism than New Atheists.
“Not quite. My point is that regardless of whether some people think prayer will stop the gusher or clean the beaches, there are ways that a call to prayer serves valid secular purposes.”
From the “What is Religion” post: “How does [PZ know that they really hope that God will miraculously stop the oil spill]? No evidence is offered that people attend these prayer events because they think their prayers can stop the gusher. He might be right, he might be wrong, but he’s not offering evidence to back up the claim. Which leaves us both speculating without evidence.”
While it’s true that PZ didn’t cite evidence for his claim, I took your saying this as contesting the claim. If you agree that it is likely that a significant percentage of people attending these or other similar events believe in the efficacy of prayer, we’ll move on. Otherwise, let me know. As far as I’m aware, nobody said that calls to prayer have no redeeming secular value whatsoever, so I didn’t mention this as part of the argument because I never saw it as a point of disagreement, more of emphasis. If I’m wrong, correct me.
“Complaining about the former without acknowledging the latter is problematic.”
Why? This, like the absence of charities in an FFRF release, doesn’t seem to me to be a matter of contention. Though this is an exaggeration on my part, it’s like demanding that PZ/FFRF includes “And we don’t want to host public burnings of Christians” in every blog post.
I’ll leave the things said to Ophelia and Slocum to them.
As a “let’s wrap this up” appendix to the YNH linking discussion, I want to refer you back to my comment #21: ” And no, I don’t think that “busy” is an excuse… you had plenty of activity in the period from which you received our comments and the time of this post. If you missed them, that’s fine, just say so and don’t say things like ” I was traveling last week and not keeping perfectly current on the personal lives of every blogger out there.” That comes across as dismissive and… yes… weaselly.”
I think you’ve made it clear to Ophelia/others that you don’t approve of the personal attacks against her/others committed in the YNH postings, so that we can check off the board. However, I am still a little ugh-feeling about your initial reactions to this post. In any case, it might clear up talk of weasels (which I would partially regret because it’s a fun word).
Zach: I think we’re at the point of agreeing to disagree, and so will only pick up a couple points you raised. I think it’s fair to criticize FFRF on the grounds discussed above because I think the people of the Gulf need all the help they can get, that the call for prayer was motivated by good intentions, and that using that as a basis for an abstract and divisive debate about the role of prayer in civil society does not bring good intentions. Bluntly, it makes nontheists look like dicks. The release quoted suggests “this case [is] an opportunity to prevent future such catastrophes” by examining deep water drilling more generally. Which is a good point to make in San Jose (where Nye spoke and where I also gave a presentation) or in DC, but it’s not a good point to make in Alabama, because it overlooks the rather more immediate problem faced by Alabamans.
“you identify with a side and that it is generally a problematic thing to do.” It’s true that I identify with a side to some extent, but partly because I’ve been lumped with that side frequently in the discourse. I agreed with the basic thrust of the framing argument back when, and I agree with John Wilkins and Chris Mooney and Chad Orzel that New Atheist arguments are philosophically iffy and pragmatically unhelpful for efforts to improve science appreciation. We don’t coordinate our message, we don’t strategize, and if we weren’t slapped with labels like “appeaser” and “accommodationist” and “faitheist,” I doubt we’d self-identify as “a “side.” It’s like the Will Rogers joke about not belonging to an organized political party.
As to the “ugh” feeling, my objection was to the notion that my linking to YNH and agreeing with one particular argument, and then stating they are “less helpful than they used to be,” constitutes an endorsement. Not where I come from.
Finally, as a mammalogist I must say that weasels are noble, intelligent, and lovely animals, and I’d be hurt if you were taking their name in vain.
Michael Fugate: It’s true that “if it weren’t for religion we wouldn’t need the NCSE,” but it’s more true to say “if it weren’t for certain religions, we wouldn’t need NCSE.” When I was first getting into the creation/evolution fight as a grad student in Kansas, I knew professors who sent their kids to Catholic schools because they’d learn evolution there, and might not in public schools. One of the board of education members who worked hardest to keep evolution in the standards and to block bad revisions was open about her personal belief in a God who creates, but also made it clear that she wanted nothing of that taught in schools. Those sorts of religion do not require the existence of NCSE. What unites the forms of religion that do the bad things you describe is an authoritarian mindset, and I choose to focus on fighting authoritarianism, whether driven by religion, nationalism, economic ideology, or whatever. To the (limited) degree our problems are monocausal, I think that cause is authoritarianism, not religion per se. There’s plenty to be said about the interrelationship of religion and authoritarianism, of course, but that’s for another day.
” I think it’s fair to criticize FFRF on the grounds discussed above because I think the people of the Gulf need all the help they can get, that the call for prayer was motivated by good intentions, and that using that as a basis for an abstract and divisive debate about the role of prayer in civil society does not bring good intentions. Bluntly, it makes nontheists look like dicks.”
I noted before and still maintain that yes, FFRF <i>could have made a better release</i>, but that it’s the sheer difference between “also, recommend a charity, say that prayer has a secular component that’s dandy” and what YNH posted that is striking. I stick by my earlier judgment that this is an inventroversy. As we’ve been over all this, we can agree to disagree at this point.
“It’s true that I identify with a side to some extent, but partly because I’ve been lumped with that side frequently in the discourse. I agreed with the basic thrust of the framing argument back when, and I agree with John Wilkins and Chris Mooney and Chad Orzel that New Atheist arguments are philosophically iffy and pragmatically unhelpful for efforts to improve science appreciation. We don’t coordinate our message, we don’t strategize, and if we weren’t slapped with labels like “appeaser” and “accommodationist” and “faitheist,” I doubt we’d self-identify as “a “side.” It’s like the Will Rogers joke about not belonging to an organized political party.”
I understand this, but what I want to stress is that this shouldn’t (though it does, for about everybody) result in directional errors (bias) or adoption of inconsistent standards in judging positions. And of course the label slapping has waxed ridiculous (I use “accommodationist” — sometimes “compatibilist”, but this has its own confusions — because it is understood where applied, not as a pejorative, but as I’ve seen it treated like “New Atheist,” of course it isn’t neutral).
“As to the “ugh” feeling, my objection was to the notion that my linking to YNH and agreeing with one particular argument, and then stating they are “less helpful than they used to be,” constitutes an endorsement. Not where I come from”
I was referring to what I quoted. Your initial posted points here come across as dismissive (1) and weaselly (2). When you add that to the missed comments… yeah just giving context for the reaction at this point. It’s become a historical note. As for that to which you did refer, I agree that it’s clear <i>now</i> that you didn’t intend for that. My remaining ugh-feeling was related to your nonreaction (happens) followed by your early reaction to how it was taken in this post.
“Finally, as a mammalogist I must say that weasels are noble, intelligent, and lovely animals, and I’d be hurt if you were taking their name in vain.”
Guilty as charged… but the word really is so fun to say…
This next bit is completely unrelated, but please make a post about authoritarianism as “the main problem” soon. I have lots of pent up thoughts and I want to hear yours.
Whether or not the Catholic Church now accepts evolutionary theory (it does so with qualifications) is a relatively minor issue in the scheme of things. The point is that its doctrines are (1) not intellectually supported, and (2) functioning as a force for evil in this world. Yes, Josh (Rosenau), the Catholic Church gives its qualified acceptance to evolutionary theory, but it condemns homosexuality and contraception as a “sins”, opposes abortion rights, and on and on. It’s a nasty cult of misery, and the world would be better off if it were totally discredited. Of course, it’s managing to do that for itself to some extent, but only because of the suffering that it’s caused to children in the past, which is hardly what anyone on our “side” wants … plus, of course, its morally obtuse handling of that issue now. Far better to discredit it with the force of argument and satire directed at its doctrines and its less obviously vicious practices and pretensions.
Now you don’t have to agree with the above, or join in. There’s no compulsion for you to become a “New Atheist”. You could decide that the effort to discredit religion, including Catholicism, is not your fight, and just concentrate on getting out a message in support of science. None of us would object.
But you seem to be unwilling to do that. Instead, you waste your time and ours by attacking us and undermining us (whether it’s PZ Myers, or the FFRF, or whatver) at every opportunity. You’re running interference for our opponents. It’s not a matter of unilaterally disarming; you didn’t have to get into this fight in the first place. You are not our target except insofar as you give aid and succour to the people and organisations that are.
And you’re so one-eyed about this that you’ll even stoop to the level of giving your support to a vicious, unfair hate blog that had no real purpose but to attack us, and especially Ophelia (which was obvious by the time you linked to it). You didn’t only link to it with a recommendation – which helps its reputation in the blogosphere, sends traffic its way, and generally adds to its credibility and impact – but actually praised it as being “on a roll lately”. In fact, it was only on a roll in making unfair arguments against the FFRF and carrying out a vendetta against Ophelia in particular (even the blog owner now accepts that this was the case). Mate, you could have written on a million other topics that day. Instead you chose to give your support to a hate blog. Can you really not why we get upset by this kind of behaviour?
When called on it, you write long comments in which you still stubbornly refuse to concede the point. So yes, this is all very lovely, intelligent, and noble of you. You have, indeed, displayed the loveliness, intelligence, nobility, and other characteristics of Mustela nivalis in your behaviour on this thread. Well done. (I must admit, though, that Mustela nivalis is an attractive animal, so continue to take this as a compliment by all means, if it pleases you.)
As for the general of air of moral superiority that your side gives off, please spare me the sanctimony.
The only thing I disagree with in the analysis from some of the people on “my” side is that there’s too much granted to you regarding that post in which you grudgingly conceded a point to Ophelia. Most of that post was actually nonsense, particularly the idea that there is some kind of academic consensus that religion and science are compatible because of some statement on the internet by a group who claim to be the experts. I can assure you that in the established academic discipline that studies whether religious claims are intellectually viable in the light of science – i.e. philosophy, particularly philosophy of religion – there is no such consensus. On the contrary, many philosophers who’ve studied this conclude that there are serious intellectual problems for religion. Even Michael Ruse, who strives to take an accommodationist line, admits that there are real difficulties in doing so.
The line taken by Dawkins, etc., is not in breach of some consensus within philosophy of religion: it is a perfectly legitimate position to take in that field. If you think that Dawkins, who has “only” written a best-selling book on the subject and does not have academic training as a philosopher of religion (but neither did anyone else on the panel as I recall), lacks the appropriate gravitas, there are plenty of philosophers who do work in philosophy of religion and could have been called on to explain the real problems in reconciling the scientific image of the world with various religious images of the world. We’re not just making this up.
Daniel Dennett, for one, could have done that job. Philip Kitcher for another (even though, or perhaps especially because, Kitcher is very sympathetic to non-literalist forms of religion) … and many others.
But that’s a story for another time; I’ll be away for a week at a fairly intensive conference, so we’ll see how this all looks when I get back.
I thought that was very well put, Russell, but don’t hold your breath. There is a telling fact about this YNH business. It hadn’t even been on my radar till Ophelia’s post on it, which was about the same time as the Oedipus story broke. So one of the first things I saw was the long thread that ended with Oedipus being banned. I am honestly of the opinion that you can’t read that thread properly without realising, at the very least, that a number of people were in cahoots to gang up on someone who questioned them and attack him for whatever he might say and back each other up to make him doubt his own take on what had been written, even if not everyone understood that they were all one person. Bluntly put, “our” side did not ignore the evidence which was powerful enough in that one thread, but our opponents did, and I don’t think the excuses that can be made for that are very good ones. To put it down to mere confirmation bias seems a little weak.
If the accomodationists don’t like being pigeonholed, they might do well to remember that the “New Atheist” label is not one we chose for ourselves. I share Zach’s curiosity about what it really is that makes their animosity seem to go beyond mere disagreement. That was also the one thing I’d wanted to hear explained by William on Oedipus’ blog and you may have seen his reply, which was that he didn’t really know himself and that the best he could do was to call it an overreaction to criticism that got to him.
The kind of restraint the accomodationists want from us now is not that different from the forced silence we had to endure during many centuries of religious stranglehold on the world and what progress we have made since then has not been achieved through acquiescence. This is a point I’m not seeing addressed by the accomodationists (I’m prepared to be corrected there if there’s something important along those lines I’ve missed). A right you’re supposed to refrain from exercising is not a right you really have, is it? Russell referred to “running interference,” which seems a very apt way of putting it. If both sides want to engage in discussion and argument, why should that be a problem? The really unpleasant thing the accomodationists are doing is sidetracking the real arguments in favour of one about whether or not we ought to speak our minds at all. Even if they don’t succeed in shutting us up, what they are doing, with some success, I fear, is trying to deflect the conversation away from the issues that do need to be addressed. Whether or not we may speak our minds is not such an issue. It’s a right we have. End of story. Can we please talk about something more interesting for a change?
Josh R, thanks for the clarifications.
About linking. Yes, ordinarily of course linking is done for the benefit of readers (though it can also be done to give someone a boost at the same time), but in the case of YNH I decided not to provide that benefit because I simply did not want to send them any traffic or enhance their google ranking or give them a boost in any way.
About your reply to a question about your claim about “a campaign to oust a public official for writings undertaken in his private life –
That’s very misleading, because it doesn’t mention the fact that when Collins first became director of the NIH, Coyne did not campaign to oust him because of his writings; on the contrary, he argued for giving him a chance, waiting to see how he would do, and the like. The post you linked to was many months later, and it was about not an essay but a whole book,edited and with an intro by Collins – which in a Google search repeatedly shows up as simply by Collins, thus fortifying the impression the director of the NIH wrote a book called Belief: Readings on the Reason for Faith. Furthermore, Coyne wasn’t campaigning for Collins’s ouster in that post; he concluded it by saying he should step down.
You think what’s a bad argument? What is “the” argument of “New Atheism”?
Do you mean the argument that it is not wicked and immoral to argue for atheism as opposed to being tactfully silent on the subject? If so, why do you think that’s a bad argument? I don’t mean why do you think that’s bad strategy, because I know that, I mean why do you think it’s a bad argument?
I think Stewart put it very neatly. “A right you’re supposed to refrain from exercising is not a right you really have.”
I find it extremely weird that the accommodationist Rosenau continues to insist that believers do what they do for the indirect benefit of community, and that I’m making baseless claims when I say that no, believers really do believe in an interventionist god who can carry out miraculous rescues, if he really wants to.
And somehow I’m the one who disrespects religion.
Josh Rosenau wrote:
<blockquote><i>Yes, I suppose it is objectionable, but objectionable the way most of the internet is objectionable. The lines crossed in that post are lines that many blogs don’t respect.</i></blockquote>
Is that not a classic <i>tu quoque<i>? Everyone else behaves badly, therefore we should cut one particular person some slack when he behaved badly. It’s utter crap.
I think the whole discussion should be somewhere completely differently. “New Atheism” is turned into a bad label. Why does that happen? Well there are really two groups. One are believers who see it as politically advantageous to paint atheists negatively and because that is a new visible term and describes much of the visible present, lets make that bad. That is hardly surprising at all.
What is much more interesting is that there is apparently the same movement from “within” so to speak (in the sense that this is hard to pin down for unheardable cats.
Is any casual reader get the nuance of New AtheisM vs New Atheism? Nope. It is still part of the “New Atheism is bad” campaign.
The question of strategy is a very interesting one and one that should be discussed directly. I’m a very soft-spoken guy who doesn’t like to use strong language even when I am upset.
But here is some facts to consider: We tried the nice approach. Secular humanism, a very nonconfrontational positive label with nice, positive, non-confrontational thinkers attached. I would say that atheism was largely conciliatory until the “New Atheists” came around.
What was the outcome for atheism in the USA? Well the Minnesota study showed that atheists had the worst possible image. Yes that’s right. So atheists were nice, quiet, non-confrontational and what we got was a higher rejection rate than recognized stigmatized groups in the USA such as Muslims (even after 9/11), gays, African Americans etc.
I’m sorry but we have tried the nice, quite, non-confrontational approach and it is not working. It lacks visibility. It fails at lifting atheist’s image.
To me that does NOT mean that we have to be confrontational, nasty and loud. But it does mean to me that we have to work very hard to be both visible and have a positive image.
Now let us consider this:
Atheists snipe against other atheists over strategy and by that process reinforce the predictable backlash by the believers.
Does that help? My answer is not at all. Atheists who use “New Atheism” in the same negative stereotypical way as the believers who try to discredit any visible/outspoken antheism are not helping at all. What it serves to do is reinforce the image that the detractors want reinforced.
Let me give an example:
Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens are routinely painted as if they want to see Muslims killed. They are New Atheists. With that easy claim in a broad sweep all New Atheists are angry, aggressive, dangerous and almost Nazi-like.
Of course the reality is that Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens get quote-mined, the quotes pulled out of context to make them appear radical and violent and that’s it.
Who is doing this? Well such people as Wilson. This is not religious apologists trying to throw dirt. It’s people who would self-identify as being secular.
So why are decent people not seeing that is going on here. Why are atheists participating in what can at best be described as intentional misquoting to create a negative image?
Frankly I do not know the answer. But the effect of it is that legitimate criticism that isn’t negative at all is thrown into the same bucket as outright misquotes about atrocities.
I initially though that YNH had legitimate points. But frankly after a while it became clear to me that his narrative was to say anything negative about “New Atheists” and paint them as a group by picking some example. It’s wasn’t just a smear campaign against 3-4 bloggers, it was also there to reinforce the broader image. Dawkins really calls people who discuss positive aspects of religion Nazi-appeasers (when he main point was strategy in science education).
But negative memes run wild within atheists circles criticizing new atheism. I think the blogosphere is much more aggressive than the book new atheists for example. Some comments on a PZ post are made into a poster example of how violent New Atheism is, and yes there are blog posts with much stronger and more ad hominem language than I personally would ever want to use.
But, and this is the key, the image of atheism overall and the image of “new atheism” is much worse than it deserves to be.
What is good strategy? Things that lift the image of both atheism and new atheism or strategies that say “be nice, be quiet, use non-confrontation, use positive labels like secular humanism” when that in fact has been proven to not work?
My own view is that we need to be as visible as possible, but also as positive and as united as possible. This internal sniping and negative stereotyping, especially against the label that is broadly understood such as “New Atheism” is not helping at all.
I personally don’t care about the whole “accommodationist” deal. It’s the wrong discussion. We are all accommodationists to some degree. But it’s irrelevant. The broad public has never even heard the word. But they sure as heck have heard of new atheism, and how even some atheists hate it because it’s angry and aggressive.
My view is that the “book” New Atheists Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris. Dennett, Stenger have overall used a very non-angry non-violent non-aggressive tone. It’s very visible and assertive though. I have my minor quibbles but those are irrelevant in the larger picture. New Atheism has already succeeded at giving atheism more visibility. Billboard campaigns are actually working, and local Fox News channels discuss how the phrase “under God” was not on the money and the pledge before the 50s (news to the vast majority in the country who are fed propaganda claiming that this is a Christian nation).
No, the brand New Atheism is important for atheists and we should move to protect it, not snipe against it. If people call others unfairly aggressive, we should counter this, not reinforce it.
Yes it is a question of strategy, but I am inclined to think that the reality we have is poor strategy not because some blogger use some language every now and then or dare to criticize prayer as ineffective.
Rosenau, why do you think you can get away with dishonesty? Why do you think no one will go behind you and check your claims? Do you understand that the Internet has done away with the memory hole? I realize Ophelia’s already pointed out your “errors,” but I think they need to be more fully laid bare.
Let’s compare your claim about Jerry Coyne with what Jerry actually wrote. You, Rosenau, posted right in this thread that Jerry “mounted a campaign to oust a public official for writings undertaken in his private life,”
Here’s what Jerry Coyne actually wrote:
You can read the whole post here:
http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2010/02/24/francis-collins-cant-help-himself/
This is what you call mounting a campaing to oust a public official? Really? Jerry Coyne remarks that in his opinion Francis Collins should step down, and you characterize that as a “campaign” to “oust” Collins?
Here’s what I’d like to know: are you genuinely blind to these failings until they’re pointed out to you, or do you consciously and deliberately misrepresent other peoples’ positions? I find it outrageous that you impugn the motivations of your opponents by flagrantly misrepresenting them. You are not a credit to NCSE.
Nor have I “outed any pseudonymous bloggers”. Don’t know where he got that.
Sigh. At risk of piling on – there’s another item. Josh it really would help if you would make an effort to be accurate.
Hitch said: “
However, I am still a little ugh-feeling about your initial reactions to this post.”
You said:
The notion you referred to was me saying:
And, at the end:
In other words I did specifically say that you partially admitted that YNH was flawed. But you specifically said that YNH had been on a roll lately, ” rightly criticizing various folks who criticize such calls for prayer without offering any alternative.” That was an endorsement of those particular posts – one of which called me a liar six times. It was that very “roll” YNH was on that caused its downfall and the blogger’s apology for the whole thing. You did express reservations about YNH’s overall direction, and I did say you did, but at the same time, you did endorse that particular set of posts, the ones that mostly flung dishonest crap at me. Given that the blogger has now expressed thorough shame about them…………you look kind of stupid and kind of malicious for having given them a pat on the head. Sorreeeeeee but you do. Don’t blame me. I didn’t tell you to give a thumbs up to a bunch of posts trashing someone you disagree with; that was your idea. It’s not anyone else’s fault.
Okay so it’s point out Josh R’s mistakes hour. Can’t be helped. He makes so many of them. I couldn’t remember the “pseudonymous bloggers” reference, but I found it.
“You” at the beginning of that passage was Jerry, but perhaps it turned into Jerry and PZ and me at the end of it, or perhaps “New” atheists in general. At any rate I think the “pseudonymous bloggers” dig must be a reference to YNH. In other words Josh R is again claiming that I and perhaps other people did nasty things to YNH – that YNH was the victim and I was the meanie. If that’s what you’re claiming, Josh – well, it just re-enforces the overall point that The Party of Nice is deluded about how Nice it is.
… what pseudonymous blogger was outed?
No psuedonymous blogger was outed, Zach. That’s just a typical Rosenau exaggeration; they tend to be so egregious they’re really just made up out of whole cloth.
Yes, I just wanted to ensure that when Rosenau responds, he’ll be sure to clarify. As there are lots of responses at the moment, I wanted to draw attention to this bit.
Even if it is, as Ophelia suspects, a reference to YNH, it is still an exaggeration even then. Certainly, the sockpuppetry was “outed” and a relevant piece of evidence was the common location of the sockpuppets, but after the apology, there has been no effort to track him down so far as I am aware. Nor have I seen his personal information published, and at this point, it would be unnecessary to do so.
The other exaggerations have been dealt with in the other responses. “Campaign to oust Collins” is a rather ugly one.
And to answer an earlier question of yours, Josh Slocum, I don’t think that his misrepresentations are cynical. I think our earlier charge is more accurate: he’s a partisan.
Moving on to the charge about Harris/Dawkins and Bains. This is from the Nation article he linked:
Which of the factual charges do you contest, Rosenau? Have Harris and Dawkins committed some sort of offense by drawing attention to these items? The conclusion is a judgment, but we’ll see if you agree in your next bit; you say this:
This is interesting. So what you’re saying is that those who receive payment from Templeton have no conflict of interest about the role of religion, but that Bains will be sure to dig up dirt because she was hired by Harris and Dawkins? You’re saying that the known views of an income source might influence intellectual or journalistic output because it would be “hard to believe that [journalist] would get paid – or her research published”?
For a moment there, I thought you disagreed with Harris and Dawkins. Apparently you do agree, just in a very partisan way.
I tried to stop it, but I had to pile on again. In my defense, I’m at the bottom of the pile.