Month: October 2009

I’ve been tactfully silent about Chris Mooney lately, but I have to murmur a few words about stories and anonymity and credulity and skepticism and how we know what to believe and what not to believe and how necessary it is to pay attention to the difference between the two.

The background is a post a few days ago quoting an anonymous commenter at The Intersection saying

Many of my colleagues are fans of Dawkins, PZ, and their ilk and make a point AT CONSERVATION EVENTS to mock the religious to their face, shout forced laughter at them, and call them “stupid,” “ignorant” and the like – and these are events hosted by religious moderates where we’ve been ASKED to attend. They think it’s the way to be a good scientist, after all.

I saw it at the time, and was tempted to comment, but didn’t. But if I had commented I would have said that I find that anecdote highly incredible on its face (even before we get to the issues about the reliability of the witness). It just sounds stupid. It doesn’t sound like the way real people really behave in public places – it sounds like someone’s bizarro-world idea of how mean horrid nasty wicked ‘new’ atheists must behave because they’re so new and mean and wicked. It certainly doesn’t sound like the way academics behave in public gatherings with conservationists, even if the meetings are held in churches or temples or mosques. It sounds like the way children behave when they’re excited and acting up – but it does not sound like the way sane adults who have jobs in reputable universities behave.

And the commenter is in fact anonymous – but he insists that he is a biologist at “a large, well-known research university” and he expects everyone to take his word for it. But there is no reason for anyone to take his word for it, and it is not reasonable to expect people to do so, and people refused to do so. Hence Mooney’s new post on the subject today.

Last week, the New Atheist comment machine targeted the following post, in which I republished a preexisting blog comment from a scientist named “Tom Johnson” (a psuedonym). In the comment, Johnson had related how some of his New Atheist-inspired scientist colleagues had behaved toward religious folks at bridge-building conservation events. The comment obviously reflected one individual’s experience and point of view, and nothing more. But it struck me as worth highlighting, in light of my many well known concerns about the New Atheist movement.

No, that won’t quite do. The comment ‘obviously reflected’ one anonymous individual’s account of a purported experience, an experience which was implausible on its face. Chris Mooney is a professional journalist – surely he ought to know this very well indeed. Surely if someone phoned him and in a heavily disguised voice gave an avowedly false name and told an implausible story about a controversial subject – he would know that the story was not automatically reliable. Of course he would! Yet this is taken at face value, and not only that, but a group that Mooney dislikes is given a carefully offensive epithet for being skeptical about this story.

So we have a journalist, a member of a profession that is supposed to be trained to be skeptical of anonymous stories that don’t ring true, and one who has just co-written a book about science literacy. Basic science literacy surely ought to include knowing when skepticism is called for!

But mere credulity and verbal abuse (‘the New Atheist comment machine’) aren’t enough – there’s an even more sinister implication.

I’m a bit surprised how much hoopla the simple elevating of a comment into an individual post, with minimal additional commentary, has caused. Clearly, Johnson really touched a nerve. Accordingly, my post unfortunately subjected him to various attacks; fortunately his real identity remains unknown (though I am aware of it).

Geddit? Anonymous Johnson was subjected to attacks by those violent belligerent atheists, but fortunately his identity is still a secret, because otherwise those new atheists might go burn down Johnson’s house or kidnap and torture Johnson’s children or tear Johnson into little pieces while laughing their fiendish laughter.

Nasty stuff.

I’ve had my disagreements with Steven Poole, but his review of three pop-philosophy books is really funny.

I put my theory of the dentist’s waiting room – at once social microcosm and place of interminable transition – to an attractive young woman beside me who was holding the side of her face and wincing. When she did not reply, I embarked upon a lecture on stoicism. The woman scowled and told me to piss off. She was quite ordinary after all.

It’s all worthwhile, because once armed with suitable wisdom, ‘one may face down absurdity and the inevitability of death in all those locations that irresistibly evoke them, such as airports, dentists’ waiting rooms, gyms, dog kennels, and hot-air balloons.’ Quite.

Mary Wakefield assures the nervous frightened Anglicans who can’t stand the thought of female bishops but aren’t quite sure about this Catholic church thingy either even though it does do an admirable job of keeping women in their place – Mary Wakefield assures them, I say, that the only thing they have to fear is fear itself. That, and the sharks, of course.

Well, come on in, I say. The water’s warm. I converted two years ago now, full of cowardly fear about what people might think, and to my surprise, I haven’t regretted it since. But though the water is warm, I’d be lying if I said there weren’t a few sharks around.

Ah. There are sharks around, but come on in? Er – thank you for the thought, but I’m busy that day.

As Catholicism seeps back into Britain (St Thérèse of Lisieux’s UK tour this year, the Pope’s in 2010, the probable beatification of Cardinal Newman, etc), so too our national rage against Catholicism is on the rise…Yes, the church’s history is bloody and corrupt, but so is England’s, and that doesn’t preclude patriotism. Like most other powerful institutions, the church has done some appalling things, but it has also championed women’s rights, campaigned to end slavery, opposed the Iraq war, fed and clothed the poor and sent more and more effective aid to Africa than any other charitable organisation.

Championed women’s rights? The hell it has! It has issued papal declarations that women are Special and Different and Must Not try to deny their femininity and be like men. That’s not championing women’s rights. And how much campaigning to end slavery has it done, when, where? It’s news to me that the catholic church has been prominent in this struggle – and I have a feeling Wakefield is making it up, or just assuming it must be the case. Everybody campaigned to end slavery, nobody supported it, it was all just a big fluke, so of course the catholic church must have been right out there on the front lines next to William Lloyd Garrison.

Anyway that breezy little skip past ‘Yes, the church’s history is bloody and corrupt’ won’t quite do, since a lot of the bloodiness is very very recent, not to say on-going, and the corruption isn’t altogether over either.

I inched towards the Catholic church, baulking like a nervy horse. From the outside, it looked crazy: a mix of dodgy doctrine and arcane ritual. But the closer I crept, the saner, the more light-hearted I felt, and once inside, even transubstantiation made perfect sense.

Once inside – well yes. That’s the problem with going inside.

Karen Armstrong is awfully bossy for someone who talks so much about compassion.

Homo sapiens is also Homo religiosus. As soon as we became recognizably human, men and women started to create religions. We are meaning-seeking creatures. While dogs, as far as we know, do not worry about the canine condition or agonize about their mortality, humans fall very easily into despair if we don’t find some significance in our lives. Theological ideas come and go, but the quest for meaning continues. So God isn’t going anywhere. And when we treat religion as something to be derided, dismissed, or destroyed, we risk amplifying its worst faults. Whether we like it or not, God is here to stay, and it’s time we found a way to live with him in a balanced, compassionate manner.

That’s a terrible non sequitur, it seems to me – the quest for meaning continues, so God isn’t going anywhere. Eh? The quest for meaning doesn’t necessarily end up at God; God is not the only kind of meaning there is; one can ‘quest for’ or construct meaning without resorting to God. Besides – if the quest for meaning continues, then God must not be much of an answer to the problem, or the quest would have ended, because meaning would have been found.

Anyway, I always hate those ‘like it or not,’ ‘it’s always been this way and always will,’ ‘you might as well get used to it’ announcements. They piss me off. You don’t know what’s always going to be around, you don’t know what can or can’t be changed, and you don’t get to tell me what to get used to and put up with and quit struggling against. My quest for meaning involves fighting doomed battles, okay? You might as well get used to it.

I like PZ’s take.

In some ways, I’m always flattered by this argument that we need to define humans as a species by their religious beliefs, because I don’t have them…which means I get to claim that I, and my fellow atheists, are a new species. Let us go forth, my fellow Homo smartiepantsius, and take over the hominid niche.

Yeah! I’m a new species! Beats being a new atheist any day.