Be really nice to the people who are telling you to hush
Stephanie Z has an excellent comment on Josh Rosenau’s post about how I’m totally wrong about what he means by “the New Atheism.”
It’s worth remembering where this debate came from. Atheists, only recently starting to stand up and be counted in any number, are seeing the people who have been saying the same things that atheists have been saying for centuries (as noted in comment 5, then largely ignored) being told to hush up because they’re being noticed for once and that’s making trouble. These are frequently also the people who gave your rank-and-file atheist the courage to come out and who provide sympathy when coming out results in the crap it always results in. But hush, because what these other people are doing is really important.
Of course, it is important. But so is being supported and encouraged as an out atheist. So is being able to tell people how religion hurt you or those you love without having to put bows on it. So is being able to tell other people that they have a real choice to get out of abusive religions. So is being able to run for public office. So is being able to keep your job. So is being able to keep your kids.
But hush. And be really nice to the people who are telling you to hush. Be nice to the people who are telling you that you matter less than what they’re doing. Be nice to the people who are doing good work but only talk about why people like you are bad. Be nice to the people who might, someday let you eat at the grown-up table if you stay quiet enough at the children’s table first (and when there are no more grown-up problems you might interfere with). Hush and trust them, despite the fact that they’re calling you the problem.
Yeah, no. Atheists are being aggressive, in part, because they’re being told to go back to being passive. They’re being argumentative because there’s a constant onslaught of messages leveled at them and everyone they have to deal with that becomes the unquestioned social background if they don’t. They’re being rude because everybody is rude sometimes, and they’re not going to be left out if you’re not. They’re being condescending because you’ve been told this before in some form, but you can’t seem to move past the fact that someone insulted you in order to hear it.
For the second time in as many threads, I have a comment being held in moderation at Josh’s blog. (The previous one went to moderation and never came out.) Oh, well—I was pretty much just agreeing with Stephanie and quoting a few paragraphs from Paul W.’s classic Comment #29. Censor away, Josh.
What the accommodationists and religious folks do not understand is that we are already using self-restraint. We may be elbowing our way up to the grown-up table and having our say, but we haven’t tipped the table over or smacked anyone with a turkey leg. What we have done, and they don’t like this, is convinced some people at the table to give up their superstitious nonsensical conversations and join us in a rational dialogue. Now they are throwing a tantrum and looking more like children, than children.
Your comment is there now, Rieux. But hell, why the need for auto-moderation? It’s fairly diagnostic of gnice accommodationists.
I don’t think there’s anything to moderation thing. Comments always pop up eventually even if it takes a while.
I think the dinner party situation is a useful illustration. If you had no prior experience of gnu atheists apart from the descriptions of them by accomodationists you could be forgiven for thinking that inviting a gnu to your dinner table will lead to an evening of sneering at the stupidity of the average religious person or ‘shouted laughter’ in the face of any believer present. The reality is that the average gnu probably wouldn’t think of mentioning religion unless as a reaction to a discussion that involves it. The average believer has nothing to worry about from gnus in that sort of situation just like the average owner of an inflatable doll – not unless you choose to openly request unconditional approval.
The immaturity and childishness on display by the accommodationists is part of their mentality. It is because they’re not engaging their reason. They will swing from parental outbursts to childish tantrums and sulks.
See for yourself as Roger Stanyard reacts to an open letter by Jerry Coyne et al:
http://www.forums.bcseweb.org.uk/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=2629#p26542
Interestingly, believers hold a very similar immature mentality, which makes them hypersensitive about any criticism.
I notice Josh wants to play “no you too” in his childish response to Ophelia.
A really lovely comment by Stephanie. Maybe I haven’t gotten around much, but this is the first time I’ve seen her post, and it’s a good beginning!
Just sitting back quietly watching with awe and amazement and occasionaly making hushed and reverent comments at the almost ubelievable progress the Acmo(TM) movement is making at removing all the discrimination, the misogyny, the violence, the emotional and sexual abuse, the guilt, the repression, the fear, the fraud, the mind control, the corruption, the political manipulation the the the.
Who Gnu they could achieve all that? Staggering.
Hey, that’s cute, Clod: “Who Gnu?”
Ugh, I’ve just read through the comments on the last two posts at TFK. I need a bath.
It’s like someone didn’t think The Intersection was awful enough as it was so they just invited the most intellectually dishonest bunch of hacks (led by that esteemed Liar for Woo, Anthony McCarthy) and – just for laughs – dragged along that sad, insane clown John Kw*k over to their house and got them all liquored up so they could write down the stupidest, most disingenuous things they said.
But I agree that was a great comment by Stephanie Z – funny how none of the anti-gnu poo patrol tried flinging anything at her…
“Stephanie Z” appears to be a feminist atheist blogger named Stephanie Zvan, and if my quick scan of her latest posts is any indication, she writes terrific stuff.
And oh hell, she’s another Minnesotan.
That BCSE forum is entirely frustating to read. Whoever danny is, he has the patience of a you know what.
The Josh thread is also frustrating to read, but there’s some light in there.
Getting pretty sick of:
Just substituting some religious terms does not an argument make. How many bazillion times does it have to be said?
I hereby declare myself an apathist agnostic reader of Rosenau’s blog: henceforth, I don’t care what the hell he’s saying, and I don’t claim to know what the hell he’s saying.
Wowbagger – ha.
Stephanie – I’ve read her before – at Greg Laden’s I think. In fact it was during the “who is this You’re Not Helping sock person?” fuss chapter 1 – about a year ago. She had good things to say.
I know who Danny is, he emailed me a couple of hours ago. (No big mystery, not PZ in disguise or anything.)
Stephanie blogs at http://almostdiamonds.blogspot.com if you’re interested. :)
Erm. Sorry. Yes. Rieux beat me to it. Do read her, she’s wonderful.
I agree with Polly O!
(Because no one else has said it yet, and it can’t very well catch on if no one says it!)
I agree with Polly-O!
And Rog – and Hammill – and the horse they rode in on.
The other thing that bothers me about a couple of the posts over at the BCSE forum is (and since the site won’t load for me right now, I’m guessing on the name) Peter somethingorother’s dismissal of NA agendas because the existence or not of a God is beside the point.
That’s a slight of hand. Coyne et al aren’t spending all their days in this discussion talking about evidence for God, or not. (See the recent discussion with Grayling for ruminations on that) If I wanted to take Coyne and other “NAs” at their broadest, it’s an argument about ways of knowing, knowledge and how decide; and if we want this discussion at it’s narrowist, it’s mainly an issue where God or the supernatural gets inserted where “I/we don’t know” should go. Scientists shouldn’t do theology, apparently, but theologists get to make empirical claims (which is the point where Coyne would take issue) and then tell the scientist to not “do theology.”
Ken Miller is getting mentioned a lot. And he’s righty commended for doing a lot of good anti-creationist work (and the lecture linked in one of these threads is GREAT), but there’s no escaping that his stance, even if it is a lot further down the line, ends up with a point where God creates. It’s certainly not YEC, by any stretch, but it’s slipping in God where “I don’t know” should go, isn’t it?
There’s no avoiding that, and any argument that that’s not the case is based on pragmatic/politcal reasoning, not whether it’s true or not.
I may have just stated the obvious, I’m not sure, but amongst all this talk, the obvious doesn’t seem so obvious.
I wish both sides of this debate would take a chill pill. As an atheist who doesn’t have a state in either side. Both sides turn to insults too readily and don’t seem to actually listen to the arguments of the other side. I could be wrong since I don’t read everything. Both sides just seem to get a snide, sneering tone way to easily.
I get the feeling that many accommodationists think that only what they have demarcated as the middle matters. Those on the extremes either atheist (remember Josh adamantly refuses to be labeled an atheist) or conservative religious are beyond the pale. They feel free to subject these “extremes” to abuse because they don’t believe them to be capable of persuasion. They have no problem attacking religion if fits their definition of extreme. If they truly believe their aggressive attack on fundamentalism is not an attempt to persuade, then the attack is just gratuitous.
On the other hand, I think the new atheists are much more likely to think that if one can provide a good argument and make people think about what they believe, the individual just might change. Sometimes individuals need to be jarred into contemplating their beliefs by seeing how misconceived they are. I might be cynical about the capacity for someone to change, but still not give up trying to educate that individual.
Kudos to Rieux for his comments over there. Great stuff, as usual.
All I can do right now is shake my head. But I guess that’s too rude, outspoken and condescending, so maybe I should think twice. Can I say “F them with a spork”? Or would that set the cops on me for making a threat?
No, Badger3k, they won’t call the police. I think they know they’d be laughed at. They will, however, continue to repeat it on the intertoobz for years to come. It will be stripped of all context, and they will use it to support their claim that it’s typical of Gnus to advocate serious sexual violence against the sweet innocent mild-mannered faitheists. (Trust me, I know from experience!)
Badger3K wrote:
One of the funnier aspects of this incident is when I, after taking Kw*k to task for his continued lying about the incident, asked him why he didn’t report the original ‘threat’ to the police if he considered it to be serious; his response was that he knows the police are too busy, since they failed to help him recover camera equipment he got scammed out of.
Where did he generously send this equipment without getting payment in advance? Nigeria. I kid you not.
@25: you’re lucky I’d finished my coffee, or you’d owe me a new laptop :)
I am rich Nigerian ahteist Umbwula Mwmbezi. My portforlia of Gnu Properties requires a holding account in order to transfer £2m dollars of prime monies of which 10% will be dornated to the Rikard Donkins Fundamentals of Reeson in Sceance. Please be sending bank account details now in effect of ungodly transfers to much benefit of you in person.
When atheists start burning people at the stake, conducting pogroms against ethnic minorities, launching crusades and jihad against non-believing countries, blowing themselves up in crowded public places, flying planes into buildings, discriminating against and killing homosexuals, censoring works of art that they find objectionable, killing doctors for performing abortions, harassing and jailing women who exercise their rights to reproductive autonomy, raping children and aiding and abetting the perpetrators, blocking scientific research into promising new stem cell medical technology and forcing people to die in pain and misery by not allowing them personal choice in dying and when the religious stop doing all these things, then, and only then can the accommodationists tell us to be polite and shut up.
I’m grateful for the accommodationists, because every time I get weary of speaking out against religion, making the same arguments over and over, I hear one of the hand-wringers telling me to tread lightly and pipe down, and I get all inspired to kick some pompous theist fanny again. So much for the accommodationist’s alleged skills at persuasion, eh? Maybe they should try accommodating us and see if that gets us to change.
Thanks, Jim!
Yes I had a phantom-coffee-snorting experience too when I got to the punchline of #25. V good.
David M.,
“If I wanted to take Coyne and other “NAs” at their broadest, it’s an argument about ways of knowing, knowledge and how decide; and if we want this discussion at it’s narrowist, it’s mainly an issue where God or the supernatural gets inserted where “I/we don’t know” should go. Scientists shouldn’t do theology, apparently, but theologists get to make empirical claims (which is the point where Coyne would take issue) and then tell the scientist to not “do theology.” ”
Well, a big issue is that Coyne et al often do what really is theology and then turn around and denigrate the entire field, forgetting that a) they’re doing it themselves and b) that in a lot of cases they don’t know a lot about it. And let’s not forget that oftentimes they are as protective of their field as others are, insisting that their opponents simply don’t understand science if they disagree with them. Now, in some cases that’s true, but it’s true on all sides, and argumentation must be advanced to show that. Which, to be fair, some of the time NAs do and some of the time theologians do not do. There’s a lot of room for bad behaviour on all sides.
Taking your broad view, I’m not convinced that a lot of the NAs have thought enough about worldviews to make interesting claims about them; too often, I can reply to concerns raised by people like Larry Moran —
whomwho I, nonetheless, think has the best argument about this — and Jerry Coyne and others by pointing out that by their definition of incompatible worldviews philosophy and science are incompatible, but it’s obvious that that would be an incompatibility not worth worrying about. And on knowledge, Dawkins talks about it in “The God Delusion” but doesn’t understand it because he insists that it requires certainty and philosophy rejected that idea long ago. Taking the narrow view, they have to justify why they’re right about where “I don’t know” should go, and I’d welcome discussions on this but have seen little. There are open issues here; these arguments are not, to my mind, settled.Michael Fugate,
“On the other hand, I think the new atheists are much more likely to think that if one can provide a good argument and make people think about what they believe, the individual just might change. ”
And yet, it is an oft-repeated NA saying that you cannot reason someone out of a position that they did not reason themselves into, kinda belieing that.
Speaking personally, I find that many of the NAs rely more on browbeating people into accepting positions than in just making them think about their position. Aggressive tactics promote defensive responses, not thoughtful ones.
Stephanie is kicking butt on Josh’s thread.
Too right.
Rieux – hey so are you. I was just saying on Comment 29 that a blog – however threatening if it reduces your commentary here – would be a place to archive comments like yours on that thread.
Verbose, sure, you can reply to people by saying “that’s not a concern worth worrying about”; so can I, so can anyone (as Hotspur said), but that doesn’t make it convincing or persuasive. It’s just saying.
As for making interesting claims – well there again, it’s just saying. You’re saying you’re not sure the claims are interesting. Noted. I’m not sure your claims are interesting, either.
In other words there’s more saying than substance in your comment. You do a kind of Dance of Seriousness, but it doesn’t produce anything.
Ophelia,
Um, when I say “say”, I do mean “prove”. I didn’t want to go over it in detail, but I will now.
Taking Larry Moran’s view, he says that science is rational, empirical and skeptical, and religion/faith rejects at least one of those, so they aren’t compatible. However, everyday reasoning is not skeptical, and so it would be incompatible by the same argument. Philosophy is not empirical — it doesn’t reject it, but doesn’t limit itself to it either — and so it would incompatible, too. I hope I don’t need to prove that based on common experience everyday reasoning and philosophy are not incompatible with science in a way that actually matters to anyone, do I?
See, the problem here is that instead of asking me to justify why I consider it uninteresting — which I am more than willing to do — you are simply turning the argument around in a “Well, so are you!” kind of argument, and then declaring my comment void of content. But at the very least you should have seen a potential problem with claiming that philosophy and science are incompatible in a way that’s worth the sort of worrying that goes on between science and religion and THEIR incompatibility.
If you want or need more details or substance, feel free to ask.
At the very least I should have seen a problem with a claim that wasn’t made? I don’t think so.
Ophelia,
At least you should have seen that if I was right that their arguments provided an incompatibility that could be equally shown to exist between philosophy and science that that would call into question whether that compatibility was worth worrying about. So, I did claim that, and you addressed that claim, it seems, with your first sentence where you said “Verbose, sure, you can reply to people by saying “that’s not a concern worth worrying about”; “. I only said that in reference to the philosophy/science incompatibility that I argued their arguments also supported as repeated here:
“too often, I can reply to concerns raised by people like Larry Moran —
whomwho I, nonetheless, think has the best argument about this — and Jerry Coyne and others by pointing out that by their definition of incompatible worldviews philosophy and science are incompatible, but it’s obvious that that would be an incompatibility not worth worrying about. “.So, let me ask you straight out: is it not obvious that a definition of incompatible worldviews that also would mean that philosophy and science are incompatible worldviews is an incompatibility not worth worrying about? If not, why not? What’s missing?
You hadn’t said that. I shouldn’t have seen something that you hadn’t said.
Yes of course it’s obvious. If you define terms in such a way that they mean X and X is absurd then yes of course X is absurd. It’s the way of defining terms that’s the problem.
Ophelia,
Um, what is it that you’re saying I didn’t say? I quoted my comment to show that yes, I did say that, in pretty much those words.
As for definitions, I was using theirs, not mine, as I demonstrated in my first reply when I expanded on how Larry Moran’s view seems to get there. Unless you’re disagreeing with me that everyday reasoning is not skeptical and philosophy does not limit itself to the empirical, but those seem to be facts, not definitions. And I would welcome an argument that I am wrong about those facts; I don’t think I am, but readily admit that I could be.
I will, however, apologize for my use of the term “uninteresting”. I didn’t mean it in the “boring” sense, but more in the sense that if it turns out that the incompatibility argument ends up resulting in the claim “They’re different ways of knowing/worldviews” that would be argumentatively uninteresting because, well, everyone pretty much accepts that.
Verbose Stoic–
Everyday reasoning isn’t always skeptical, but it <i>doesn’t inherently reject skepticism.</i> We test paternity claims. We demand to see the money. We don’t usually accept “The dog ate my homework.”
There are brands of religious reasoning that explicitly reject that. There are Christians (and possibly other theists) who will say that it’s unreasonable to ask them to prove claims like “Jesus is an actual person who really lived in the Roman Empire.” They say that the question “Does God exist?” is unreasonable to ask: and then demand that people assume that the answer is yes, and that they know what God wants.
That sort of reasoning is incompatible with skepticism. Not because people say “A man named Jesus lived in such-and-such a place and said X, Y, and Z” but because they consider any requests for evidence to be unreasonable. Not because they can’t prove their god exists, but because they refuse to even try, but expect people to behave as though it’s a fact.
Vicki,
Okay, here is where it will indeed get into definitions. I tried to come up with a reasonable definition of “skeptical” that was fair to both sides — ie it gave them both room to be somewhat reasonable — and said that at the heart of it a skeptical viewpoint says “Doubt unless given good reason to believe” and a non-skeptical viewpoint says “Believe unless given good reason to doubt”. This does seem to reasonably outline how science and faith operate, at least to me. But by that I’d argue that in all of your examples there are good reasons to doubt, but that if those good reasons to doubt did not exist everyday reasoning would accept it even without good reasons to believe. We don’t ask for paternity tests if we’re given no reason to think that the mother is lying about paternity. We don’t ask to see the money unless we have reason to think that the person is shady or untrustworthy. We usually dp accept reasons that seem at least possible for missing homework.
This carries over to your religious examples. In all of those, they are saying that they don’t need a good reason to believe, but need a good reason to doubt. That, to me, is paradigmatic faith, and all that is required.
I don’t agree with the summary in your last paragraph. While I don’t deny that sometimes those reactions occur, it is much more frequent that the rejection of the demands for evidence comes from someone taking a skeptical view, and insisting that theists should doubt until they have good reason to believe, but that is indeed counter to faith and they — quite rightly, from their worldview — respond that they don’t need to provide evidence to the level that satisfies skepticism, since they don’t apply skepticism to the areas where they have faith.
Looking forward to reading their Manual for Polite Atheists – How To Rid The World of Religion Without Upsetting Anyone. Should be a bestseller.
#42 …and now many are saying ‘Well, you do actually need to povide evidence if on the basis of your faith you wish to determine or influence public policy.’
Clod @44:
Yes. If someone tells me that they are religious because they have faith, that’s between them, their partners, and their religion. But when their religion starts to impinge on other people’s lives, I damned well want evidence. Because most religious claims aren’t just an abstract “I believe in a benevolent creator.” If you stop there, fine.
But they don’t usually stop there. It usually goes into claims about how other people should live. If someone tells me that they have faith that the pope is correct, and therefore people shouldn’t use condoms to protect against AIDS, I want evidence. Because there is good evidence on the other side: condoms do prevent the spread of AIDS and other diseases. (Not all Catholics believe this, I know: but enough do to cause real harm.)
If they say that their minister held up a book and said that homosexuality is wrong, and therefore they aren’t going to have sex with another woman, that’s their problem. But they don’t get to meddle in <em>my</em> bedroom. And they shouldn’t be telling teenagers that their natural urges make them inherently flawed and doomed to unhappiness. I can say “they don’t belong in my bedroom” and leave it at that. I’m an adult, with good, loving relationships, and wasn’t subjected to the full force of that propaganda, but it still took me years to shake all of it. At worst, those faith-based lies kill people. Either by suicide or by encouraging violence up to and including murder.
Oh, and back to VS: yes, we often take people’s word for things, based on either past experience or the knowledge that most of the time, people tell the truth as best they can. (Memory is more fallible than most people realize.) You can’t check everything, or you would get nothing at all done. Test all your food for safety? And then test the test kit.
But “Show me” and “wait, that’s not how I remember it” are well within commonsense reasoning.
Vicki @45 Yes, that’s the point: they go way beyond their claim of a benevolent deity to deadly effect.
@VS: I’m not arguing that Jerry doesn’t discuss Theology, specifically on his website, and sometimes specifically theology, with no mention of it’s relationship to science. (See last week’s series of posts on sins.)
He’s allowed to talk about whatever he wants on his website (I nearly called it a blog, oops! :)). My comment for the most part, was more related to the point where religion and science are making claims about the same things. Certainly, as evidenced by what’s been said since, my “broad” comments can be taken in many different and interesting and uninteresting directions, but I’m talking a little more coalface with the rest of the post.
If someone says “The Bible says X so therefore Y” when science says “Y is caused by Z” is science making a theological claim which it shouldn’t be?
Ghah, I feel like I’m rehashing a bunch of stuff here that’s been said a million times before, and probably not saying it as well as it’s been said before.
Vicki,
You missed my comments on the definition; your view seems to define skepticism as ANY doubt, and that doesn’t seem to be the case for religion or faith or anything else that isn’t skeptical. We’d like either a really robustly defended definition or one that gives room to both sides, which is why I proposed the one I did.
clod,
I’ll translate your comment as “If you want to convince someone using a skeptical worldview of something, you have to provide evidence to the level and of the type that the skeptical worldview requires”, and then totally agree with it. But the converse is also true.
David M.,
In your example, the theological claim would be what it means for that religion — ie is it a legitimate contradiction, does it refute it, etc, etc — and how that religion should react to it. That differing “ways of knowing” will sometimes make different claims is a given, but if they really are ways of knowing that should work itself out eventually. To me, the better claim is that religion and faith are not ways of knowing at all, not that they are incompatible as ways of knowing with science.