Mix information with vitriol
People are discussing the uses and abuses of irritation, or anger, or zeal, or dickishness, or baying for blood. This is prompted by a talk Phil Plait gave at The Amaz!ng Meeting a couple of weeks ago. He took an informal poll, Matt D tells us:
Let me ask you a question: how many of you here today used to believe in something — used to, past tense — whether it was flying saucers, psychic powers, religion, anything like that?…Not everyone is born a skeptic. A lot of you raised your hand. I’d even say most of you, from what I can tell.
Now let me ask you a second question: how many of you no longer believe in those things, and you became a skeptic, because somebody got in your face, screaming, and called you an idiot, brain-damaged, and a retard?
Not many hands. But as lots of people have pointed out…so what? Hardly anyone does get in people’s faces, screaming, and call them idiots, brain-damaged, retards. Many people do various things that are well short of that, some of which could be considered alienating to some; excessive; tactless; and so on. But that’s not a very exciting claim. Some people are tactless and alienating. Well yes, how true. And?
Stephanie Zvan notes that sometimes a blast of well-directed anger is exactly what’s needed.
a friend gave me Flim Flam. James Randi told me how people had lied to me under the guise of nonfiction, under the guise of science. He was, in fact, kind of a dick about it. That’s not a very nice book by any definition of the word. It uses name-calling. It sneers.
But oh, it was exactly what I needed. I needed it both for the information it gave me and for the anger and vitriol. Without Randi’s vitriol, I wouldn’t have been able to make the clean break in thinking that I did.
PZ says again that things aren’t as simple as mean bastards v wonderful nice people.
Everybody seems to imagine that if Granny says “Bless you!” after I sneeze, I punch her in the nose, and they’re all busy dichotomizing the skeptical community into the nice, helpful, sweet people who don’t rock the boat and the awful, horrible, bastards in hobnailed boots who stomp on small children in Sunday school. It’s just not right.
The awful, horrible, bastards in hobnailed boots who bay for blood and stomp on small children in Sunday school. Let’s have the complete picture here.
Arrrgh! I can’t read Pharyngula at the moment, and that’s one of the posts in my backlog.
But yeah, that’s what strikes me about (what I’ve heard about) that talk as well. Just who are these people who scream and make a fuss? (Well, aside from me when arguing with my Catholic friends (I even let them use my bathroom).)
Oh you know who they are – they’re people who make comments on blogs. Some of them. A few of them. They’re a few of the people who make comments on blogs. Of course they stand for all non-apologetic atheists! How could they not? Mind you even they don’t scream in people’s faces and call them brain-damaged…but…um…oh gee, is that the time? I gotta go.
I did change my mind due in part to the skilled mockery of skeptics. At one time I was a half-hearted audiophile who tended to give the benefit of the doubt to all kinds of antirational notions about audio quality and hifi equipment. When you examine the issues involved you see many of the same assumptions of a dualist nature enable hifi mysticism as in the other kinds.
After participating in a number of heated debates I gradually shifted to a more skeptical position more in line with the rest of my views. But before this happened I hated those guys! Now I feel grateful to them. No one called me an idiot, but a couple of my opponents did say or imply that my views were idiotic, and they were right. Audio mystic have very weak arguments which they tend to defend by questioning the motive and behavior of skeptics in a way that would be quite familiar at B&W.
Related/orthogonal: one of the things that strikes me again and again about this is how very hearsay this is on yet another level:
As in, on level one, as is more generally discussed: yes, honest depictions of what people actually are saying to and about believers are few and far between. Calm, measured Dawkins is portrayed as a wild-eyed zealot, and saying such startling things as ‘Y’know, it really doesn’t strike me that teaching people stuff for which we’ve exactly no evidence is a really good idea’ apparently makes you some kind of secular extremist…
But on level two, and as to that related bit: it’s also never especially systematically demonstrated even that being a dick, to use the storied phrase, is even such a bad idea, so terribly ineffective. Plait’s bullshit straw poll there–complete with a question a push pollster would probably balk at pulling out on election day–is a comparatively *strong* demonstration that way, insofar as at least he took a *shot*, however contrived, at demonstration…
And that’s incredibly pathetic, really. When that’s the best they’ve got.
It’s always argued as just intuitively obvious. Of *course* you catch more flies with honey. *Everyone* knows that…
But one thing that seems really odd here, at least to me, is: it’s *not* intuitively obvious. Not from here, anyway. Actually, my intuition, for what it’s worth, says it’s bullshit. *My* intuition, for what it’s worth, doesn’t buy it for a second.
My intuition–and more critically, my experience–says more that being direct, being a dick–to use the storied phrase–and being *right* is more often infuriatingly memorable. It’s effective exactly for that reason. It’s powerful. It’s persuasive. It gets under people’s skin. They sit there fuming, as you tear apart their bullshit, realizing they’ve got squat as an answer, however much they flap their jaws and windmill their arms, and they never forget it. Yes, they get defensive, yes, they get pissed, no, they’re not real likely to admit to your face when backed up against a wall like that that they’re wrong…
But they’ll remember. They’ll replay it in their heads. They’ll go off and try to prove you wrong, and they’ll have to think about what they’re saying, and they’ll watch what they fucking say next time…
And sometimes, that process means: they’ll talk themselves out of their bullshit. It won’t even be your job anymore. And they’ll do it because they feel they have to–because they don’t want you to make them look stupid again.
Adding to this–and I’ve said it before, will say it again–I continue to suspect–partly because of this disconnect, this strangely systematically unexamined blanket claim about what’s effective–that much of the argument for ‘civility’ isn’t about people really wanting to do what works in the first place. It’s more about people wanting to do what’s easy for them, personally. Because being a dick is difficult. Because being direct is risky. Especially to someone you like, just saying, directly, ‘Look, you’re incredibly wrong’ is scary. And even more especially when there’s an existing hegemony whose bullshit ‘wisdom’ it is you’re challenging.
So people will take any excuse not to do it. And that’s why they’re arguing such nonsense about it. That’s why the silly caricatures, the striking lack of evidence, the striking lack of coherence. My take is: it’s not really about what works, and never really has been. It’s about excuses, and it’s about cowardice.
One thing I think may be under-estimated is the impact of the inane reactions to straightforward secularism. I spent many years identifying as a Christian nonbeliever. (I could have offered elaborate rationale but, really, I just wanted to be thought of as a good guy.) I wasn’t persuaded to abandon that identification by anything any new atheist said; I already knew, and agreed, with all that. Ultimately, it was the ridiculous, duplicitous, mendacious replies (think Bryan Appleyard) which convinced me that, despite my fantasies, Christianity would never evolve beyond theism and that I could not, in good conscience, stand with these folks.
If these fools had never been provoked, I may never have recovered my spiritual integrity.
There’s a big difference between calling every single person who believes in something supernatural an “idiot, brain-damaged, and a retard” and attacking those who peddle these beliefs by repeatedly ignoring or lying about the relevant science or rationale.
I wonder what the result would have been if his second question was:
That might have raised a few more hands.
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Tom Broadbridge, Ophelia Benson. Ophelia Benson said: Mix information with vitriol http://dlvr.it/2tQLQ […]
I didn’t change my mind about religion when someone got in my face, slapped me around the head, and screamed that I was stupid and worthless. No, I’d changed my mind long before Brother Hernon did that. (It did confirm a few suspicions I’d had about religion, though.)
I changed my mind after reading Bertrand Russell when I was twelve. He used the same non-strident, non-yelling, reason-based approach as most other (Old, New & Middling) Atheists do
Phil Plait could also have phrased his question less negatively and asked what it was that made people realise that what they’d believed was nonsense. We could then look at those answers and see how many people claimed to have seen the light because they were told their nonsense was compatible with everything else we now know.
Hi there.
If I am allowed to mention my own experience, as someone with, hmm, a “religious sensibility”, let’s say, and who has participated in quite a lot of these debates “on the other side” to most here, I think it is worth reading the original question… “and called you an idiot, brain-damaged, and a retard?” This actually happens all the time. I would estimate it’s usually by about the third comment or question from the floor that one gets called stupid, or indeed an idiot or retard. Now this isn’t just “being direct”, or even “rude”, but something I worry is actually dangerous, as it seems to define any differing opinion as less intelligent. I really (hope that I) don’t mind being called wrong, ignorant, morally bankrupt, impractical, dangerous, irrational, evil; these are all up for discussion. I don’t mind swearing, shouting, anger or rage as it is good people care about what is important. What I say may well be nonsense, gibberish, badly supported, unworthy of respect. But the original point was, and I repeat this comes up time and time again, that you get “stupid”, “dumb” “moron” “retard” “idiot” thrown at you as a person, or (very commonly) the point repeated in a slow deliberate voice with an added “is that simple enough for your brain to understand?”
Of course I may well be stupid. I’m pretty sure a lot of my “axioms for living” are stupid, just on a pessimistic meta-induction that doubts I’ve “got it right”, without of course knowing which. I don’t think I’m stupid, an idiot or retard, I’ve got a fistful of degrees if that counts & am a qualified science teacher, but apparently claiming a different grounding for one’s ethical positions to another person can be evidence of idiocy or retardation. And I can’t change my attitude to life in response to being called “idiot … retard” as clearly if I were, then I wouldn’t be able to see the strength of the view being propounded.
Apologies for the length…
Sounds to me as though people are talking past each other here. For example I have simply never ever seen behaviour of the type Jon describes at #10, so naturally my views about this will differ from his. Could some of the posters perhaps give more details of the bearpits where the bad people hang out? Where are the venues where someone might shout “retard” into my face?
Now, Phil Plait, let me ask you a question: how many in your audience were born believers in something – Santa Claus, the Easter bunny, religion, you name it. No one is born a believer, Phil; we are brainwashed from the craddle on. I think I spot a genetic fallacy.
There’s not much you can do about this online but, if that’s happening in a public forum, it’s shameful if it goes unchallenged. Nobody should tolerate this.
Hi Jon
Where is this? The third comment or question from what floor?
That does happen in blog comments, I agree. I rebuked someone for doing that here a few weeks ago, and he got angry and hasn’t commented since. But anti-“New” atheists attribute that kind of thing to all “New” atheists and to “New” atheism as such, and that’s just absurd. So, I don’t dispute your claim that that kind of thing happens, but I do dispute generalizing that to all “New” atheists and to “New” atheism as such. Do you think that’s wrong?
Chalk me up as yet another person disappointed in Phil’s frankly stupid comment. As has been pointed out, it’s a pretty laughable straw-man as-is. In fact, it’s probably *worse* than a straw-man, in that it’s often the true believers who do the screaming and yelling at the skeptics.
Now, if he had asked a more reasonable version of that question (say, “how many of you became a skeptic because somebody was direct to the point of rudeness”), I might have raised my hand. In hindsight, I’d say it was South Park that led me down the path to skepticism, specifically the episode where they called John Edward the Biggest Douche in the Universe. That’s a “dick” move by any standard, no?
I didn’t convert on the spot or anything remotely that dramatic, but their “dick-ish-ness” got my attention and got my brain juices flowing. I can’t imagine that my situation was rare; I’m sure shows/people/books like South Park, Bullshit, Randi, and the ‘four horsemen’ have struck a similar chord in tons of people.
Strange, isn’t it, that telling somebody their beliefs is being ‘in yer face’ but marching up and down the street with a sandwich board proclaiming The End Near is a great way of persuading people to repent.
Look at these nasty people making fun of Fred Phelps. I presume that Phil Plait would have a conniption over this. This kind of ridicule is just rude! How can it possible convince anyone?
Pooooooor Fred Phelps, it’s so unkind.
Those folks aren’t just unkind… they’re strident!
Jon, people can behave terribly on the internet. It’s like road rage: they’re generally nice people, but get them into a discussion behind a veil of anonymity and suddenly they’re psychotic. But Ophelia’s right, it happens with every issue on the internet, politics, environmentalism, the fashion and celebrity blogs . . . But the vitriol and insults are not the hallmark of the “new” atheists, they are the hallmark of the anonymous internet blogosphere, and social networking sites like facebook (I’ve had to block a few people for insulting and swearing at me, sometimes over fairly benign issues). It’s a shame though. It’s ugly, childish and unproductive.
As I said on PZ’s blog… maybe you didn’t change your mind because somebody got in YOUR face and called you a retard, but maybe you saw somebody get in somebody ELSE’S face and call them a retard, and that changed your mind.
I know at least one person who was basically intellectually an atheist, but still self-identified as Catholic… until she saw Bill Maher getting in people’s faces and calling them retarded in Religulous. No, Religulous is not some finely-argued carefully-reasoned highly-convincing work of art — it’s one guy being a total dick to religious people. And it turns out that was just what my friend needed to jostle her out of her habitual way of self-identifying. She didn’t need the carefully-reasoned arguments (she was already there intellectually), she just needed to see somebody loudly and rudely pointing out the Emperor’s nakedness.