Scraping the bottom
And speaking of fundamentalists v liberals, this piece by Stuart Jeffries is truly disgusting. It’s a whole new level beyond the usual mewling Guardian drivel about religion. It’s really contemptible.
Today, it’s the religious on one side, and the secular on the other. Britain is dividing into intolerant camps who revel in expressing contempt for each other’s most dearly held beliefs. “We are witnessing a social phenomenon that is about fundamentalism,” says Colin Slee, the Dean of Southwark. “Atheists like the Richard Dawkins of this world are just as fundamentalist as the people setting off bombs on the tube, the hardline settlers on the West Bank and the anti-gay bigots of the Church of England.”
That’s a revolting, outrageous, immoral thing to say. Reading it, I keep wishing Colin Slee were in front of me – tied down, naturally, or else very small and weak – so that I could punch him.
“You have a triangle with fundamentalist secularists in one corner, fundamentalist faith people in another, and then the intelligent, thinking liberals of Anglicanism, Roman Catholicism, baptism, methodism, other faiths – and, indeed, thinking atheists – in the other corner. ” says Slee.
Oh, right – it’s the Anglicans and Catholics and ‘other faiths’ who are intelligent and thinking, along with thinking atheists as an afterthought. Does Slee take himself to be an example of a thinking liberal? After that comment?
There’s a great deal of nonsense, then a resoundingly stupid conclusion.
What should such a public square be like?…[I]t could be based on respectful understanding of others’ most cherished beliefs, argues Spencer: “We should be more willing to treat other value systems as coherent, reasonable and even valuable rather than as primitive or grotesque mutations of liberal humanism to which every sane person adheres.” It is, at least, a hope…
But what about ‘other value systems’ that in fact are not coherent, reasonable, or valuable? Why should we be ‘more willing’ to treat them that way if that is not in fact the way they are? Why should we not be allowed to note that ‘cherished’ is one thing and ‘coherent, reasonable, and valuable’ are others, and that there is no necessary connection between them? Why are we being told to engage in some masquerade in which we pretend that every moth-eaten ridiculous ‘belief’ anyone has must be treated with respect as coherent, reasonable, and valuable? As if everyone were four years old and would cry boo-hoo if someone said ‘That’s crap’?
I leave it to your wisdom to determine.
OB, I read that on the way home on the Tube and was mainly (un) impressed by how he simply took the faith-heads word on it all. Touchy feely inclusive journalism without any thought behind it.
I also guessed you would throw a (justified) wobbly about it. However, threatening violence is a bit to out there, even for you. (Or was that mean to ironic and I missed it?)
bignose
We seem to be getting aggravated by the same things. Here’s my take. (Just tell me if I’m plugging too gratuitously!) The “coherent, reasonable, or valuable” stuff is… errm… similar!
You independently echoed the thought I already left on this piece’s posting on the Dawkins site. Right, let’s make a point of treating other value systems as coherent, reasonable and valuable, without ever examining them to see if that’s what they actually are. That makes as much sense as saying we should be more willing to set sail in cardboard replicas of boats without paying attention to their obvious unseaworthiness.
People talk of the religious having to compartmentalise the smart bits of their brain well away from the parts that believe utter shite. Looking at the way some of them are reacting to Dawkins and the sheer quantity of illogic they deploy in doing so, I think some of the shite has leaked out and contaminated the bits that were supposed to be functioning more rationally.
Heh! Yeah, the ‘coherent etc’ stuff is similar, isn’t it. Well, not surprising; it is obvious enough. I mean to say – suppose we all went around issuing orders that everyone treat everything we say as coherent, reasonable, or valuable, no matter what, sight unseen, regardless of what we actually say. The objections to that plan would be obvious, and swiftly forthcoming.
BJN, I wasn’t threatening violence, I said I wished the Dean were here so that I could punch him. That’s not a threat. It’s aggressive, perhaps too aggressive, but not a threat.
There are only two choices with me. It’s like a water faucet – you get hot, or you get cold; you don’t get purple or raspberry. With me you get snippy or aggressive. Not much of a range of options, but there you go.
I like Stuart Jeffries. He once said nice things about a book I was involved with writing.
That makes him a cool guy. With impeccable taste.
Yes, yes, I know, there’s probably some kind of informal fallacy in my reasoning here.
(Mind you, Dawkins really is a bit daft sometimes. I’ve just read some interview where he’s complaining because some Christian woman has a stupid looking face. Come on now, I’ve got a stupid looking face, and I’m not… errr, actually, never mind.).
If only the religious would tone their aggression down to atheist levels. Somehow I have difficulty visualising a demo in which the banners say things like “Those who mock the Prophet will be punched.”
Puts me in mind of a very tasteless thing floating around on Youtube, “purporting” to be the outtakes of the videos released by terrorists.
The stupid face thing probably wasn’t the most tactful thing to say and it’s boomeranging on him mercilessly. Speaking of which, though, have you guys noticed what Dawkins’ opponents have done in their desperate effort to prove he has an abusive manner? They’ve taken the video of an anecdote he told (I think it was at “Beyond Belief”) in which he quoted (I think) the editor of a science magazine who said (approximately) “I think science is interesting and if you don’t you can fuck off” and shorn the line of all context so that it sounds like Dawkins telling his opponents to fuck off. And that is one of the “proofs” of his intemperance and intolerance currently making the rounds.
“it’s boomeranging on him mercilessly.”
Really. I’ve missed all this (too busy watching Neighbours). Tell me more.
I know, about Dawkins. The Jeffries article mentioned the stupid face comment, which I have seen quoted in a lot of places. He shouldn’t have said that, he shouldn’t say things like that, but it’s not fundamentalism for chrissake (it was quoted as such in the article), it’s rudeness, which is a different thing.
Heh. Crossed with those two last. I’m guessing the boomeranging refers to what I said – that comment gets quoted a lot. Well, he shouldn’t have said it, for tactical reasons as well as moral ones.
‘Beyond Belief’? But that hasn’t happened yet! It’s not until July. Or did I fall asleep and skip a year? That would be embarrassing.
I was really annoyed by this (as Ophelia knows) – particularly as it wasn’t on “Comment is Free” so no immediate right of reply.
I have already sent a letter to the Grauniad, stating quite clearly that I am a buffoon.
God damn it Tingey – now I have to open the damn database. Five minutes of extra work just for you. You are such a fokking pain.
There, that’s much better.
I thought “Beyond Belief” was in November and “BB II” is now in the works. Or am I all screwy?
Since everyone hasn’t jumped on me, screaming “That’s old news!,” below is a link to the first place I found it. Further down in the discussion, someone posts the clip with its original context. It’s below-the-belt dirty tactics, but I put nothing past them. Dave Scot on the Dembski blog tried to attach to significance to two shooting sprees taking place on Darwin’s birthday, commenting “Any day in the U.S. with a mass murder is unusual. But two in one day – what’re the odds?” When even their crowd complained that he was getting a bit loopy, he elaborated: “Mass murders (defined as 4 or more victims at one time/place) are rather rare and most of those are people who wipe out their own families which is a separate class unlike either of the two mass murders that ocurred on Darwin day.”
How could they have lost the Dover trial?
http://www.yayhooray.com/thread/102300/Dawkins-is-a-smartass
Have to agree about Colin Slee. I’m sure he’s a perfectly nice man, theology close to my own, very amiable, etc. but failing to draw a distinction between people with bad ideas and people with murderous ideas and the willingness to carry them out does not say much for his judgment.
“it’s rudeness, which is a different thing.”
Arguably, it’s also indicative of a certain kind of mindset. It just wouldn’t occur to me to say such a thing. And not because I’m a nice guy or polite (as you know).
I’ve just attacked Dawkins on the new TPM blog! :)
It’s time to take sides! (Which side am I on again?!)
JS, following just posted on TPM blog:
But Jerry, is he (himself) linking condescension to truth? I don’t see the problem in his pointing out that there are such people who think religion is necessary for people less intelligent than they are. And I know he’s not strawmanning here, because I have encountered precisely that attitude in person.
When I first heard the “stupid face” quote I tried to find the original source. It was in some Australian rag. It’s not there anymore though. I seem to remember the context made it look a *bit* more reasonable. But he still said she had a stupid face.
‘Which side am I on again?!’
The side of pulling out the rug from under everyone impartially!
Your idea of heaven would be a giant space full of toppled sprawled people and you with a pile of rugs over your arm, grinning fiendishly.
cackle
Looked again at the “stupid face” comment in context. Yes, he should have known what would hit the fan after saying it, but he used it to preface a stupid comment the woman made. If he’d done that first and then said she was stupid for saying it, there’d have been less to-do about it. He did call her stupid afterwards as well. If we read a stupid comment and then see the person who made it, it’s probably rather difficult not to read the stupidity into the face. He got the order wrong and said something that was gratuitous and subjective. Fortunately, tube bombers are generally free of such vices. In fact, come to think of it, I can’t offhand come up with any terrorists who called anyone’s face stupid. What a wonderful world we live in.
But Stewart, is it the kind of thing that you can imagine yourself saying?
I think there is an interesting psychological thing here. I really cannot imagine that I would ever respond that way. (I mean I never have – it just seems such a strange thing to say…).
“But Stewart, is it the kind of thing that you can imagine yourself saying?”
I can’t guarantee I wouldn’t confide the opinion to friends, but I would probably try to avoid saying it to a reporter. That point conceded. And then, with humility, I would like to put myself in Dawkins shoes for a second. On the strength of his scientific record, I will grant him intelligence that, at least in many areas, exceeds my own. Few people would deny him the adjective “brilliant.” And yet, now, because of the task he has decided to take upon himself (and I see no evidence that his concerns are anything but sincere) he finds himself incessantly dogged by the worst examples of the ignorance and poor thinking he is fighting. If this is one of the worst things he has done when beset by all that, that he has momentarily snapped and let his exasperation with the idiocy that thinks it knows it all come to the surface in an intemperate comment, I can forgive him. In general, I see his opponents making a point of stooping to a level Dawkins tries very hard to avoid. And they have the advantage, in the sense that Dawkins requires clarity for his message to be understood, while his opponents thrive primarily on confusion.
Stewart
I take Dawkins’s books “The Selfish Gene” and “The Extended Phenotype” (especially) to be the best popular science books ever written. So I’m absolutely a fan.
But I just do think there’s an issue with his tone. That article I’m citing on the TPM Blog. It’s full of scorn for people who say “I’m an atheist, but…”.
But that is a perfectly intellectually respectable position to hold. It doesn’t deserve to be scorned. To suppose that actually there might be some things lost with the absence of religion (which isn’t to say that one should keep religion).
Obviously, I should say that I’m not (necessarily) defending his religious opponents. Many of them are scurrilous.
For the benefit of B&Wers, here’s what I just pointed out on the TPM blog:
I think it is important to remember that Dawkins has never come out against anyone’s private right to believe whatever they want. The religious aren’t insisting on equal time with Dawkins; they’ve had almost exclusive time till now. They want him to “shut up” (as two-thirds of the infamous CNN “atheism” panel put it).
Just to say I think who is speaking actually makes a difference to how violent words should be understood.
OB – being female with no record of actual violence and speaking in the hypothetical, – gets a clear pass.
By contrast a commenter was moderated in another forum. He was a male speaking against an objectionable female activist, and he said she should be ‘bitch-slapped’ (meaning in debate). Utterly unacceptable, in my opinion, because of the gender switch and the implied power relations that offend the sense of just relationship between male and female.
In the context of Islamic bodies protesting formally to Claire Colege about insults to Mohammed, delicate mention of possible consequences can be either read as threats or delicate hints that it only takes one nutter, and they have sufficient grief without people gratuitously provoking nutters.
Re stupid face etc.
Wasn’t it Churchill who said something along those lines when somebody complained about him being drunk?
…..”yes I might be drunk, but the honourable lady is ugly, …and tomorrow I’ll be sober”..
Anyhow, to me such utterances is a matter of (lack of) politness. Such a lack of politeness (for C, more or less permanently I’ve been told, or for R.D.,in rare occations) does not look like a good indicator of *fundamentalism* to me.
I usually find myself on the sceptical side of the Dawkins discussions on B+W because I also often find his tone peculiarly strident and his obsession with religious believers to be a bit, well, silly. But I must admit this Jeffries article sat me on my arse. To pretend that there is an equality of intolerance between those who mock the idea that every word in the Koran (for example) was written by a supernatural being and MUST BE OBEYED and those who think the mockers should be excecuted is plainly daft. It’s an example of the masochism that Amis was talking about recently: crawling up the bum of people who want to kill you. Horrible.
Also, I am quite capable of remarking on the ‘stupid faces’ of people I disagree with or don’t like (so long as they have stupid faces, of course). It wasn’t tactically sensible of Dawkins but but I don’t think it signifies much.
Most real fundamentalists don’t piss around with just being rude though.
Errr. Just in case this is relevant… I’m not for a moment suggesting Dawkins is like a fundamentalist. I haven’t actually read the Stuart Jeffries piece, so I’m not sure what he says there.
But I still find the stupid face thing interesting.
About the BA crucifix woman. Stupid face, stupid voice, stupid woman if you ask me.
I believe it was Lady Astor (the Churchill remark).
There’s more on Jeffries’ piece, and the idiocies therein, over here:
http://davidthompson.typepad.com/davidthompson/2007/02/more_clerical_u.html#more
And here:
http://modies.blogspot.com/2007/02/for-secular-fundamentalism.html
How long till the 9/11 conspiracy theory sites start filling with the name “Dawkins?” After all, it was his reaction to 9/11 that may be considered the opening shot in this campaign. What more evidence does one need that he masterminded the whole thing? And how much easier to arrange from an office in Oxford than from a cave in Afghanistan.
Examination question for Colin Slee:-
Discuss the meaning of “explosive” in terms of a) Richard Dawkins’s style of speech; b) a suicide bomber’s actions.
Discuss the meaning of “a short fuse” in terms of a) Richard Dawkins’s style of speeach; b) a suicide bomber’s actions.
Then write, in no more than 100 words how a) compares to b.
The words “metaphorical” and “literal” must be used at least once and correctly.
Ah, how those men bring out my inner headmistress. . .
Speaking of conspiracy theories, Stewart, I do believe that Dawkins can be singularly blamed for G.W. Bush’s re-election. After all, he participated in that awful “tell a stupid American to vote Kerry” campaign organized by the Guardian, which backfired enough for the Ohio county in question to swing to Bush :-)
He also caused the floods in 1947.
“But that is a perfectly intellectually respectable position to hold. It doesn’t deserve to be scorned.”
Hmm. I really think that depends. It can be a perfectly intellectually respectable position, but in reality it isn’t always, and it’s often somewhat bullying. Over here, especially, there’s an immense amount of pressure to shut up lest one offend theists who might vote for a Democrat. Sometimes – often – the ‘I’m an atheist but’ beginning goes on to ‘we mustn’t antagonize the swing voters’ or some such. Tactics war with perceived truth; that may be politically respectable but I’m not sure it’s intellectually respectable.
“But that is a perfectly intellectually respectable position to hold. It doesn’t deserve to be scorned.”
Well it is perhaps a more intellectually respectible position in the sense that it isn’t predicated on an apparent falsehood, but for many people (and I’ll include myself in here, as well as Dawkins) they are not that intellectually respectable because we rather strongly disagree with them – just as you seem to be saying that Dawkins position on I’m-an-atheist-buttery is not intellectually respectable in turn.
I think the property of “intellectual respectability” is perhaps a little too fuzzy to serve the function you want here.
“When I first heard the “stupid face” quote I tried to find the original source. It was in some Australian rag.”
Well, I think the original source is an interview in The Sunday Times (see http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2092-2517334.html).
And while I think Dawkins provided himself as a hostage to fortune, seeing the photograph that was used in the press of Nadia Eweida, I can well understand his intemperance.
Although personally I would have judged that the photograph showed her to be the epitome of self-righteousness. Those pursed lips speak volumes… (see http://www.angryatheists.org.uk/html/body_tobias_jones__guardian_06_01_0.html)
“they are not that intellectually respectable because we rather strongly disagree with them”
Which raises the whole interesting question of the difference between positions that we strongly disagree with but consider intellectually respectable nevertheless, and those that we strongly disagree with and consider just plain goofy. The first is perfectly possible though. I don’t think even strong disagreement is enough to consider a position not intellectually respectable.
I think this is part of why I’m so suspicious of Ian Buruma’s recent articles, come to think of it. The fact that they’re so riddled with places where he avoids specificity seems to signal that he’s not himself fully convinced of what he’s arguing. Surely if he were he wouldn’t need to resort to vagueness.
I wonder how people would respond if the argument went along the lines of:
“I’m not a racist, but, people need ‘outsiders’ to hate. What are you going to put in its place? How are you going to channel that aggression?”
Would that be ‘intellectually respectable’?
“Although personally I would have judged that the photograph showed her to be the epitome of self-righteousness. Those pursed lips speak volumes”
Aha. I had a look. Her lips aren’t pursed, actually, that’s just the mouth she happens to have. I say this with feeling because I happen to have a mouth like that. It’s about the size of a pinhead, and it turns down at the corners when relaxed; the result is that all my life I’ve been accosted by strangers and ordered to smile. Tiny mouths routinely get described as ‘mean’ and the people who have them also – as if we got to decide what kind of mouths we have, for fuck’s sake, or as if our characters are somehow demonstrated by the size and width of our lips. Phooey. The queen has the same problem – I read somewhere that she says she has to smile constantly when in public because when her face is merely relaxed she looks ‘cross’ – as she does. Same with me: I look like an absolute witch when my face is merely in a neutral (and perfectly cheerful) state. So never mind about Nadia Eweida’s face, it’s not as if she designed it herself!
No, that wouldn’t be intellectually respectable (in my view), but it’s not the same argument, so I’m not sure of the relevance.
A different version of that is part of what Jerry is arguing in his book, I think – not, I hasten to say, as an ought, but as an unpleasant fact.
Dawkins is of course not perfect, but I recently realised that with his uncompromising and forthright attitude he seems to have done something brilliantly well, whether or not it was fully, consciously intentional. If we sketch out a kind of spectrum ranging from fundies through moderates to agnostics to in-the closet atheists and all the way to the openly atheistic, we can then ask how someone of Dawkins’ prominence could affect each or any of them them with a) the attitude he has taken and b) with the carefully non-antagonistic attitude many (e.g. Michael Ruse) think he should have taken. Firstly, we can lop both ends off the spectrum, because the fundies are almost totally immovable and the atheists are the converted. If he were to take the “soft” approach, he might not antagonise the moderates, but he would do nothing to embolden the folks in the closet, so practically nothing changes. With the harder sell, he might piss off the moderates, but he gets people out of the closet and has a fighting chance of significantly enlarging the group of the openly atheistic. If we view this as something that might happen by stages, the larger this group gets, the more it can erode the rest, by, for example, fielding candidates. The other thing that seems to be going on is that a lot of people are taking time to try to rebut Dawkins, even, as we know, writing books that have no other aim. As someone pointed out on a recent thread on the Dawkins site, time spent on defending against Dawkins is time not spent on complacently continuing to missionise etc. All in all, whether or not it was calculated to that degree, something is moving and changing (have any of you noticed how often the Dawkins site has had to upgrade its server to keep up with demand?). Dawkins has stated consciousness-raising as one of his main goals and you’d have to be living in a cave not to see clearly that that aim has been achieved beyond, I suspect, most of his hopes.
“it’s not the same argument, so I’m not sure of the relevance.”
Well it has a similar form – There is a belief system that I personally regard as false, but that I believe others have some “need” for, I think this need is somehow an argument against trying to convert people from this belief.
I’m wondering how generalisable this rule is (or isn’t). i.e. would I ever buy this form of reasoning, and would it’s proponents ever reject it?
Stewart, yup, I mean real strangers. It doesn’t happen all that often, to be sure, but it happened a lot when I was a child and even occasionally when I was in my 20s. I vividly remember walking down Kensington High Street and being told by some passing guy, ‘Cheer up, it might never happen.’ It’s quite remarkable, that kind of thing – apart from anything else, for all he knew it had just happened, for all he knew I had just come from the death bed of my best friend in the world. I of course immediately wished I’d told him exactly that. But it’s part of being female, I think – to a lot of men, women are simply public property, to be told how to look and how to act and what their grade on appearance is.
That’s one reason I hate the hypersexualization of women and girls, I suppose: it just reinforces and re-entrenches that idea – that women are public property.
(Then again…London was nothing like the lesson in that fact that Paris was. I was dumbfounded by the way I was treated in Paris – dumbfounded and horrified and furious. I just couldn’t move around freely – I was subject to constant, persistent harassment – not just the odd look or word, but being followed. It was a nightmare.)
If I make a frown people think I am smiling or smirking all because of two giveaway dimples plonked between the two cheeks. Both furrowed frown and dimples coordinate to send out the wrong message. So god help the lass with the puckered lips.
In addition, God help those even further who find themselves on the delivery end of a thwack on the rear from over – energized randy Latinos in luminous Italy. They are dishonourable for this , yeah, to some extent nontoxic, or what…behaviour.
I knew somebody who face-to-face smacked an Italian chap as they were both getting off an Italian bus.
He had tried the above jape. She practically threw him into the middle of next week. Someone should do somewhat analogous to that portentous Colin Slee, Dean of Southwark
So, it took us 52 posts to come full circle back to the title of OB’s Note…
The descriptions inevitably reminded me of what I’d seen of Israeli men when confronted with someone they thought they might fancy. No holds barred on the verbal, but I can’t recall anything like what has been described for Italy. Though personal space is in very short supply, so it is hard to avoid physical contact unless you never go out.
“I vividly remember walking down Kensington High Street and being told by some passing guy, ‘Cheer up, it might never happen.'”
I don’t think this sort of irritating comment is reserved for women or girls. I still get it from the receptionists at work and I am in no way an attractive (or even otherwise) young woman. That’s not to say that women don’t suffer to a greater degree and from worse, though. In Spain they have a cute little word for comments made by men on the street to women: ‘piropo’. Oftentimes these are just of the ‘hello beautiful’ variety but they can be quite graphic and obscene. Spanish women in my experience strongly encourage it, though, as a kind of benign local tradition. Clever or inventive piropos are especially value and repeated as some kind of prize. Mystifying to an English tourist.
What a great “punch” line – it is indeed “scraping the bottom”!
I found the bit about “a moral framework beyond shopping” a little confusing. Was this Stuart Jeffries being ignorant or Nick Spencer being ignorant?
>”For all he knew it had just happened, for all he knew I had just come from the deathbed of my best friend in the world.”, OB, A time in ones life, such as the death of a loved one is what I would liken to “the dark night of the soul”. Peripheral ghastly associations surrounding this distressing time cyclically comes back to preoccupy us when we least expect it – during the course of our lives. Notwithstanding, also the memory of the loved one.
I would find it horrifying if somebody had told me to cheer up on such a grieving mournful occasion. One is so unreservedly fragile and wired, agitated and vigilant and with thousands of diverse emotions at the same time running riot around the tortured mind all at the same time, undoubtedly, vying for space.
Re: ‘cheer up’;
http://www.despair.com/indifference.html
Don thanks a bunch for getting me to consider spending money for Christmas 2007 ALREADY.
Very funny though.
Ken: That struck me too. I guess he means “framework of virtue beyond shopping” or something. (As if the only alternative to religious “self-fulfilment” is Paris Hiltonism.)
Is it just possible Dawkins made the ‘stupid face’ remark in relation to a particular expression she had on her face at some point in an interview she gave on TV? I can see how that might have come about. It was still silly of him to say it, since people who are facially expressive will at any given point look a little odd if you freeze the picture (that’s how picture editors choose just the right expression on a politician’s face to suit the story the picture is accompanying). From what I saw of her, she looked no more or less stupid than any other middle-aged woman. Er, have I worded that right …?
Dawkins is such a hero of mine that I’d probably try to find the positive context in which to take “Hitler had the right idea” should such an utterance ever issue forth from him, but it seemed like such an odd comment that the first thing I thought of was when the science editor of the Times quoted him as saying that the ideas in an astrology book sounded interesting, when his actual response was “that’s very interesting, no doubt, but what the hell has it got to do with astrology?”
http://www.rationalistinternational.net/article/20040608_en.html
You know, the old movie post quote trick – “this film really is a terrific piece of crap” => “this film..is..terrific”.
But I may well be clutching at straws!
Since the Dean of Southwark has problems distinguishing between an evolutionary biologist and a suicide bomber (are those categories mutually exclusive?) I’ve put a 10 point guide up on my website to help him along.
http://www.rosiebell.co.uk
Very good, KB, especially about the face; calling it stupid rather than demanding it be hidden pinpoints the difference between the two beautifully.
KB, did you have to remind me of that awful Eagleton piece ? Damn it’s sickening…