When O’Hair smiles
Ho hum. The “help help those god damn pesky atheists are ruining everything” campaign keeps rumbling along. Christopher Stedman covers the “interfaith” outreach branch, and we already know who covers the “how is this helping?” branch; now we have a new branch, the “skepticism isn’t atheism” one, courtesy of Jeff Wagg.
I can see how Vic Stenger’s talk could be appropriate for a skeptics conference, but this really looks like an atheist conference to me…In fact, it looks like an anti-Christian conference.
Aha – the ever-popular move from atheist to “anti-Christian” – the ever-popular insinuation that disagreement with religion and religions is actually hatred of and aggression against religious people. The ever-popular pretense of superior niceness while in fact making a quite filthy accusation against perceived enemies.
…
to conflate atheism with skepticism dilutes atheism and destroys skepticism.And I fear the damage has already been done. I see a lot of good people leaving the skeptical community because they’re uncomfortable with the tone and disappointed with, frankly, the lack of skepticism presented by many people.
He says, in the process of doing his best to turn lots more “good people” against atheism.
PZ is not much impressed.
Skepticon does have a strong anti-religion emphasis. So? This is a subject open to criticism, and it’s perfectly fair to apply skepticism to religion as much as we would to dowsing or Bigfoot. If someone had organized a skeptics’ conference with an emphasis on, for instance, quack medicine, I doubt that anyone would have squawked that “it’s harming the cause!”, “it’ll make skeptics who believe in homeopathy uncomfortable”, or “it’s diluting medicine and destroying skepticism”.
Nathan Bupp, on the other hand, is impressed. Nathan used to work for the Center for Inquiry; lately he’s been posting a lot of “new atheists are horrible” commentary on his Facebook page. He posted one on PZ’s response today. I find it noticeably…tendentious.
Well lets see PZ, you and your gang have already hijacked the humanist movement, why not the skeptics movement as well. Let’s just turn everything into a crusade for atheism. What movement to subsume next? Madalyn Murray O’hair must surely be smiling…..*somewhere*
What gang? What hijacked? What movements? Since when is PZ a humanist anyway? Since when is disputing religious truth claims “a crusade”?
But the jibe about the famous hate-figure O’Hair is the real clincher. Gnu atheists are endlessly shouted at for triggering a “culture war” but what is the invocation of O’Hair but a really nasty (and unsubtly misogynist) dog whistle?
Invoking O’Hair as a dog whistle (nice one, Ophelia) is particularly outrageous and offensive. Every atheist in this country – and millions of schoolchildren – owe her a debt of gratitude. She got state-sponsored prayer out of schools, which also initiated the modern era of establishment clause interpretation that’s far less favorable to religion than it had been prior. She got the first national atheist organization off the ground, and her brash personality, combined with her passion, raised the issue to one of broad public discussion.
It’s one thing to be a dainty wall flower who hates confrontation. But this is a step too far. You are not allowed to discard the real accomplishments of one of the most important people in 20th century atheism. You are not allowed to dress her up in straw.
And this from someone who used to be the PR guy for the Center for Inquiry. It’s no wonder there was so much argy-bargy there for a time.
I could imagine people being a little disappointed at going to a convention expecting to hear about Bigfoot and instead seeing endless panels on Jesus (that is until you get wind of just how interesting it is to compare real history to Biblical history). But I wonder if it isn’t the skepticism only people who aren’t being a little disingenuous. They want people to come in, whether they are religious or not and learn critical thinking, which is just as key in becoming an atheist as it is in rejecting ghost or conspiracy theories. I personally became an atheist in part through this method, but through authors like Carl Sagan who didn’t pretend for a moment that they were going to spare Jesus from the same razor they used on Bigfoot. Its as if the Wagg-style skeptics definitely don’t mind if people become atheists through this route, but want it to be kept on the down low. Which seems both wishy washy (aren’t you proud of being an atheist?) and just as off putting (lets sneak them into being atheists!). Maybe they really are far more concerned about Uri Geller than fundamentalists, but I don’t know why not believing in Jesus suddenly means I lose credibility when I criticize psychics. If anything I think atheism lends credibility to such endeavors, since the whole foundation is firm and agrees with itself.
Vic Stenger’s talk is titled The Abuse of Physics by Theists and Spiritualists and probably involves one of Stenger’s specialties: analyzing the pseudoscience behind what’s been called “Quantum Flapdoodle:” quantum consciousness, quantum healing, quantum homeopathy. But I think that Mr. Wagg forgets that a lot of theists think God is hiding in quantum as well. Where is the division between pseudoscience and religion? It’s all connected.
As I mentioned at PZ’s, if mind-body dualism, ESP, and PK do not exist, then God is gone. The whole point of God and religion is the primacy and centrality of Mind to reality. You simply can’t separate religion from pseudoscience unless you get rid of the supernatural claims and just focus on a having a community which tells metaphorical stories to promote secular ethics.
Christianity is the predominant religion in America, and any skeptics convention in the US, if its participants can be counted on to remain true to the cause of skepticism, should be expected to make the questioning of Christian beliefs a priority. These beliefs are part of a hugely popular and fairly self-contained belief system that affects public policy and social life in America. Failing to evaluate these beliefs and the legitimacy of Christian ideology as a whole would be a failure of skepticism.
I think this is the key point, Ophelia. Time and time again the religious as well as those who allow emotional value-judgments to supplement scientific truth have demonstrated a reticence towards differentiating between attacking ideas and attacking people.
Jeff Wagg said:
And the available evidence for a god is….
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Skeptic South Africa, Ophelia Benson. Ophelia Benson said: When O’Hair smiles http://dlvr.it/909S4 […]
But wasn’t it nice to see J. Craig Venter on Sixty Minutes?
Every scientist should be so straightforward.
Recognizing the appeal of The New Atheists, especially to the young, christian leaders are cleverly countering the perceived threat to their livelihood by coopting friendly atheists and agnostic writers to attack the “militant, strident atheists” who are “harming both of our causes.”
And the friendly atheists/agnostics (we call them accommodationists) are blissfully unaware that they are being played for suckers.
These people will be pleased to know that my offer to talk at the TAM conference in Sydney, which is practically at my doorstep, got nowhere. I won’t be doing the two-hour drive next weekend, but will stay home and work on my book.
I think that we should be sceptical about important stuff like religious systems and moral systems, but apparently some folks think we should only be sceptical about the likes of Bigfoot and astrology, which is a lot of fun, admitedly, but kind of like shooting fish in a barrel.
Nathan Bupp did a new Facebook post to boast/complain of this post (I’m not sure which). Stedman joined in. They’re funny – frothing at the mouth with hatred of gnu atheists, all the while saying they’re no such thing.
Phooey, Russell. TAM’s loss.
@10 Russell:
Sorry to hear that. Lots of people at TAM would have loved to hear from you.
Being skeptical of Bigfoot and astrology is safe—that’s the thing. And you know what’s also safe, what has also long been perfectly acceptable?—talking smack about atheists. No one, Christian, Jew nor Muslim (nor accommodationist skeptic now, apparently) will call you “intolerant” for being intolerant toward atheists. These “except-for-religion” skeptics are kind of doing what they do, you know?—it’s safe to take on astrologers and psychics, and it is also safe to unfairly criticize “outspoken” atheists. The only people who come to the defense of astrologers, are other astrologers. So too with outspoken atheism, sadly. “Intolerance” is only what atheists say about others, never what others say about atheists.
Yep. Nathan seems to have a whole persecution thing going now, where humanism has been marginalized and it’s somehow the fault of the gnu atheists – as if atheists were the party in power! Give me a break.
Hijacking liberalism, humanism, communism, scepticism, reason, science, natural philosophy… we atheists just can’t help ourselves. We detoxify everything with stuff like truth and reason, diluting poison and making it all harmless, how dare we.
Skepticon 3 was great.
And as someone living in town, I’m pretty certain that religion is far and away our biggest problem. We don’t exactly have a flurry of Bigfoot sightings, and those certainly aren’t excuses for passing laws. Besides, how do you fight gullibility without tackling the largest source of it?
PZ and others seem to be pretty clear they don’t want to boot out skeptics who aren’t atheists or anything like that. The argument I hear is simply that if you’re hanging out with skeptics you don’t get to tell everyone else that they can’t criticize your favorite unexamined belief.
So, to me, the attacks about being too atheistic are rather nutty. But there are way too many ‘you’re doing it wrong’ attacks. Or even ‘atheism is boring’ attacks. Maybe other areas in the country have different priorities, but it sure isn’t boring here with the headquarters of the Assemblies of God and a church on practically every block.
And let’s not forget – this overwhelming dominance of atheistic topics at TAM – 3 out of 15 panels. 20% means we’re being outnumbered by the ebil atheists! Fascinating, though , very similar to the point at which people in formerly homogenous neighbourhoods start to feel threatened by “those people” moving in.
Exactly – that’s what’s so odd about it! It has a horrible ring of “those people” stuff, and it’s coming from people who should know better. It’s not calm, measured disagreement, it’s spitting rage and hostility.
Nathan has just commented that the O’Hair comparison was “tongue in cheek.” The hell it was! The whole (brief) post was energetically hostile; that last line was no joke.
The entire notion is perplexing. At a meeting where skepticism is the raison d’etre, those who display skepticism toward a ‘soi disant’ deity, a deity whose worshippers claim, with zero evidence, created and holds sway over the entire universe, are castigated for their skepticism.
Fascinating.
Let’s be fair, though: there were many more than 3 godless talks, and in fact the majority did have much to say about atheism. The 3 atheist talks brought up were just the ones Wagg saw from the titles were going to be clearly godless.
Wagg and the other complainers, of course, did not attend, did not plan to attend, and still don’t have a clue about what was said. This is another case of someone sitting on their butt outside the clubhouse whining about the bad things going on inside.
These accommodationists remind me of a fragrant remark made by Mr. Bennet (the father) about Mr. Collins, the vicar (or whatever his title was), in Jane Austin’s Pride and Prejudice.
Bennet, reading Collin’s introductory letter, said something to the effect that Collins was the perfect combination of servility and self-importance.
Servility and self-importance: describes accommodationists rather nicely.
The attitude of the accommodationists seems to be “Does it really matter what these affectionate people do — so long as they don’t do it in the streets and frighten the horses!” as though godlessness was a dirty little secret about scientists which must be kept quiet lest the general public turn against the entire enterprise in revulsion.
It isn’t exactly a secret, though. That evolution doesn’t need God is widely understood and accounts for its rejection by the American public. There’s plenty to be done opposing non-religious forms of superstition, but we’re not going to make much headway without dealing with the mother of all superstitions.
Maybe he’s waiting for a vision.
I guess the decades long assault by the Christian supermajority has worked; even atheists now believe US Christians are an oppressed minority. It just shows what relentless PR will do for your cause.
Here’s the relevant passage:
Hmmm. “There is something very pompous in his stile.” No, Locutus, when you read this passage in context, I don’t think it quite fits. There’s nothing pompous about that interfaith business. Nothing at all.
Religion is more than the “mother of all superstitions”– it’s the vector whereby trusting children get this insane idea that faith is a means of knowledge– that religion is a humble practice– and belief is a salvation-worthy attribute. Religion is the institution which instills fear of skepticism and bigotry against those who disbelieve the stories or their prophets/gurus/shamans,etc. Religion exploits our fear of dying by telling us we have (are) eternal souls– but then it tells us that these eternal souls can suffer forever– unless we believe the right unbelievable story with enough fervor to please the invisible guy who wants nothing more than our faith. Religion glorifies the delusional, makes the sane wonder if something is wrong with them, and threatens agony to those who disbelieve. It’s insidious in that it even gets nonbelievers roped into “protecting the faith”. Religion encourages people to trust (and never question) liars and, at the same time, it teaches them to distrust the truth-tellers who’d gladly share detailed evidence of hard-won wondrous truths humans have been discovering over the years– for free!
Jeff Wagg is a self-important weenie. Instead of attempting to silence the outspoken atheists, maybe he ought to tell his religious buddies to thicken their skin if they want to hang out with skeptics. I suspect more people have shied away from skepticism because of people like Jeff Wagg than the new atheists he claims are driving away prospects. I certainly know a number of skeptics turned off by TAM (and JREF’s) increasing gnu atheist bashing. It turns my stomach that Jeff is, in essence, enabling and encouraging the root of all woo when he attempts to “tone down” those that are more even in their application of skepticism than he. Make no mistake, Jeff and the other accommodationists are asking that skeptics treat religious woo differently than we treat other woo, and they will denigrate all those who fail to comply.
If woo-believers are bothered by people who are skeptical of their beliefs then maybe the problem is their beliefs and not the people who deride them. (Say, maybe they ought to examine their faith through the same lens that they are examining other pseudosciences, superstitions, and supernatural claims!)
I’d like to see the numbers as to how many people have become more skeptical of supernatural beings (such as gods, demons, and souls) from Jeff’s’ religious-accommodating/atheist-bashing methods compared to those he criticizes. I suspect Jeff thinks much more of his approach to skepticism than the majority does. And I have no doubts that those shrill atheists he criticizes are doing more to spread rationality than all this accommodationist whining, slandering, and attempts at silencing gnu atheists. When you coddle the faithful, they just get the idea that faith is something worthy of coddling.
Skeptical conferences should be one of the places where atheists can speak freely without having to worry about the magical beliefs of other attendees. Atheism is big, strong, part of the skeptical movement.; the movement shoots itself in the foot by trying to silence them.
I suspect a lot of this atheist-bashing is sour grapes. If only the faitheists had as many fans as those they are imagine are “hurting the cause”.
The funny thing about O’Hair was that she, unlike the people who use her as a bogeyman, was effective.
By maintaining creationism as being philosophically valid, when actually if you look at it philosophically it rests on assertions of authority and other fallacies that even us laymen can spot, the NCSE not only gives it more credit than it is due it maintains the most popular narratives of anti-science bullshit.
The claim that science cannot answer every question is a valid one in the trivial sense, however it needs to be added that what science doesn’t answer, isn’t answered by religion either. Religion is often credited with granting life meaning – no it doesn’t. It just posits authorities over life. Religion doesn’t explain love, it doesn’t explain morality, it certainly doesn’t explain the meaning of life.
All it does is raise its arms and say “Goddidit” which is hardly effing meaningful and leads to the same eternal regress as “from whence God.”
And by ceding moral authority to the supernatural they maintain the authority of those who would ban stem cell research, shoot abortion doctors and try to force creationism into science classes, after all, science can’t answer everything.
O’Hair had her flaws, but at least she cut the crap, leading to her achieving positive gains for the positions she militated for, instead of an ever more precarious stalemate.
So, ‘Skeptic’ appears to mean ‘willing to listen to hours of tosh about stuff sensible people agree isn’t real, but unable to cope with rational argument’? Must go change my dictionary…
re: Andy’s comment (#13) on safeness.
It really is the thing. Accomodationists and “skeptics” who won’t touch religion both have this in common: both seem to want to be seen as being new and bold, and doers of important things that need doing, but if they want to avoid being critical of religion and don’t mind painting out-of-the-closet atheists in a bad light, then they’re doing exactly what the status quo they claim to be trying to change prescribes: fencing religion off from criticism and declaring open season on non-believers. To say it in “the bleeding obvious” way, if you want to change something, you’ve actually got to change it.
I am not a humanist, but humanism may be the reason why accommodationists want to play good cop with the religious and bad cop with the uber atheists. Humanism is a religion, it just doesn’t have God at it’s realm or scriptures, and when we start criticising the majority of humans on our planet, then my friends, we’re being super blasphemous. My advice: opt out of humanism and opt into naturalism.
I have no problem with being a humanist. I’m all for being nice to my fellow humans–though my definition of being nice is disabusing folks of certain illusions if and when they become the topic for consideration. I’m not critting the person, I’m critting the ideas.
Hmm, that does have echoes of religion, hating the sin and all that.
I’m with you Egbert.
I may be off target, but it seems to me that humanists are by and large accepting of the notion of uncaused free will and moral responsibility. That view leaves room for the ambition of self-righteousness.
I guess there are a few definitions of the term humanist. I think it can mean anything from a sort of wishy-washy unitarianism that includes a belief in some sort of God, to a pretty standard new atheist approach. My own take on humanism is that it is a somewhat arbitrary elevation of members of the human species above other species. In other words to be a humanist means one must also be ‘speciest’.
And thats OK with me. It’s really a political decision over where to draw the line. I remember there was one notorious occasion where Christine Odious, in a debate with Dawkins, posed him the question about a hypothetical scenario where a human baby was about to be trampled by the last elephant – who do you save? Dawkins chose the non-speciest option – which I suppose rules him out as a strict humanist. To me its simply a non-brainer – I’d save the baby.
I’m going to branch off and take issue with what might have been only a throwaway line by Wagg: “[T]o conflate atheism with skepticism dilutes atheism[.]” No, on the contrary, it grounds atheism in something rational, rather than something like “I don’t like my religious upbringing” or “I don’t like when priests molest kids.” Injecting skepticism into organized atheism would probably help it avoid becoming simply anti-religious.
But then, we all know he’s not actually interested in discussion or arguments. He just wants atheists to go back to sitting down and shutting up, because that makes his work easier (less challenges from the religious) and makes him less uncomfortable.
@Sigmund,
There are indeed various definitions of humanism, to the point that it’s more an umbrella term rather like paganism. But it does seem to have an identical relationship to a sort of Christianity, where we love our enemies and love our neighbours. But this is all a ruse as far as I’m concerned. The same moral fractures happen, where people are classed between human and inhuman. So Professor Dawkin’s hypothetical moral action would be perceived as entirely inhuman.
All I’d like to say is: Is humanism rational? If yes, then how? If no, then why are we calling ourselves humanists and also claiming to be rational? This is why I reject humanism, because I fail to see any rational justification or even any meaning in the term.
Humanism gets in the way of what we’re trying to achieve. We use the term ‘humanism’ because we have no coherent philosophical basis for connecting our atheism to ethics or politics. I think there is a coherent philosophical basis within naturalism, that can connect with ethics and politics, but we’ve only begun to scratch the surface of this new kind of application of science.
I look at today’s humanists as a sort of weird breed of leftist ‘new labour’ type (think of those awful people like Tony Blair or Lauren Blooth), that would most likely promote ghastly terms such as ‘inter-faith’ and ‘tolerance’ and ‘respect’ while actually venting a sort of hatred and resentment to everyone who does not subscribe to interfaith, tolerance and respect.
Because I don’t see accommodationists as at all rational, and yet they claim to be atheists, or humanists or secularists, as if they’re all the same thing. They seem to be running on the same fuel as marxists or monotheists, a subtle underlying hatred and resentment burning beneath a superficial layer of rationality.
What is it that links all these atheist accommodationists? Is it humanism? Perhaps? Maybe?
The accommodationists don’t like it when skeptics are skeptical of their claims that “outspoken atheists” are “hurting the cause”. They do not like people challenging their imagined expertise on disseminating the tools of critical thought.
What is our cause? Yes the cause of the accommodationists is of course the cause of humanity (is it not?) And is not that the same cause as our cause? No, not exactly. What about bees or the environment, or ‘humanely’ slaughtered meat? Aren’t all those things also our cause?
Yes of course, accommodationists are pseudo-sceptics who do not analyse their own position (whatever position that is) and sound somewhere similar to religious believers with their tolerance and respect. And so yes, they’re not helping, presumably with the cause, just exactly what is our cause again? I thought we were on the side of reason and not only humanity, am I right?
What a strange thing. Gather together some nonbelievers (i.e., non-religious people) so that they can celebrate their humanity, and try to convince others that this is worthwhile thing to do, and someone comes along and says, “If you’re an atheist, and you form an association to further human flourishing without religion, then you’ve made a religion.” Don’t get it myself. Humanism is a famous alternative to religious belief, and is none the worse for being organised in order to further the goals of non-believers. To my knowledge, humanists do not take Jesus’ teachings as in any way authoritative, so they probably don’t believe in loving their enemies, though they may think it worthwhile to try to encourage peaceful resolution of problems, difficult as that sometimes is. I simply find it incomprehensible why this sort of collaboration on human themes and projects gets to be called a religion. And if it is, then there are surely some forms of religion which are defensible.
Of course, that’s a bit off the topic of the atheists vs. sceptics nonsense. Sceptics have been, since the very start, sceptical about religion, though a strict Pyrrhonism would demand a suspension of judgement. However, do sceptics simply suspend judgement about ghosts, unicorns, fairies, goblins, etc.? I somehow doubt it, so, while Sextus Empiricus may think that supension of judgement about such entities is the strictly appropriate thing to do, we have in fact advanced in our understanding of the world, and how we come to know more and more about it, and such things simply do not seem to find a corner where they could exist, so scepticism about them is bound to be a simple negation of their existence. Where there is a reasonable chance that, given the right circumstances, we can imagine ways of confirming or disconfirming hypotheses, then perhaps suspension of judgement is in order, but mythical beings seem to stand firmly in the mythical realm, meaning that there is no intelligible way of thinking about their confirmation or disconfirmation. In this case, denial is best. So, in all honesty, surely, sceptics should be atheists. Grayling has a nice argument about Russell’s agnosticism (and how it amounts to atheism) in his To Set Prometheus Free.
I think “humanism” includes both the accomodationists and the gnu atheists, so obviously from my perspective the problem can’t be humanism. I suppose it depends, like many things, on how you define your terms. If you’re defining ‘humanism’ more narrowly, keep in mind that others may not be doing so and your point may be lost.
I’ve been a member of all 3 Big Skeptic Organizations for many years (JREF, CSI, Skeptic Society) and the same accusations made against the gnu atheists are routinely made against skeptics. People believe in the paranormal with religious fervor and castigate critics with the same arguments and complaints used against atheists. Before he wrote Breaking the Spell, Daniel Dennett wrote this in the introduction to Nicholas Humphrey’s Leaps of Faith: Science, Miracles, and the Search for Supernatural Consolation:
So skeptics are supposed to be “meanies” about psychic forces in general, but forbearing and generous about THE Big Psychic Force? Apparently we can argue against faith-filled methods unless someone has slapped the label of “religion” onto their woo of choice. But they can do that to all the woo! There’s no significant dividing line between what’s been called ‘the religious supernatural’ and ‘the secular supernatural.’ And going after the supernatural with science and reason marks you as an insensitive meanie among the believers.
Do not let the believers get away with that.
The multiple definitions and uses of “humanism” are among the reasons I don’t call myself one. The way it’s being used by atheist-hating humanist-atheists at present seems to be something like “non-theist but hyper-friendly toward theists and vehemently hostile toward explicit atheists.”
Good one. Except I would prefer “respectful towards theists, hyper-friendly towards deists”.
I think many people, perhaps the majority, are hard-wired to need to belong to something larger than themselves. Jonothan Haidt of UVA (video presentations on Youtube) has conducted research on the conservative vice liberal brains.
Anecdotal accounts seem to confirm this. Many people join the military, church, or political parties to be “a part of something bigger than me.”
Thus, although I am missing that particular urge, I can see the appeal of Humanism for people who have the need to belong to “a group with a larger purpose” but realize that god is a fictional construct.
Just an observation.
I had a quick look at the sceptic magazine/society website. Hmm. I read the manifesto and introduction. Sounds awfully like empiricism to me, or otherwise naturalism.
http://www.skeptic.com/about_us/manifesto.html
Um okay, let’s just cut to the chase. That’s not scepticism, that’s naturalism. And for good reason, because I’ve read Outlines of Scepticism by Sextus Empiricus, and I’ve read The History of Scepticism from Erasmus to Spinoza by Richard H. Popkin, and I know that modern scepticism is not ancient scepticism, or anything like it, but in fact no different to modern empiricism, science or critical thinking. So that’s pretty clear, modern sceptics are in fact naturalists.
Now Paul Kurtz has done an awful lot setting up various sceptical societies (CSI) but he has recently gone Mr Kurtz–in a Joseph Conrad sense–with his Neo-Humanist manifesto (http://paulkurtz.net/) and he doesn’t like us new atheists much:
Of course we’re overly zealous in our scepticism and our naturalism, but hold on: state communism is not atheism! It’s not naturalism nor rational nor scientific! And so why has one of the better known advocates of modern scepticism gone off into the realms of unreason and hysterical misinterpretations of actual real bonified modern sceptics that are new atheists. Well the reason in his case is very clear: humanism.
Yes, I know many confronationists see themselves as humanists as much as accommodationists. But, that doesn’t mean humanism isn’t the problem, I think it might be. I think it might be clouding people like Paul Kurtz’s judgement. People like Chris Mooney, who thinks spiritual woo among atheists makes us all as human as spiritual woo among believers, all brothers and sisters for humanity. Perhaps also it clouds Christopher Stedman’s thinking too. Humanism just might be those pink-tinted rose glasses covering the eyes of otherwise rational naturalists.
What other explanation could there be for accommodationism? Accommodationists like Michael Ruse, for example, who think that science (naturalism) can happly co-exist together with religion (supernaturalism or irrationality). Because naturalism, supposedly, does not answer ‘why’ questions, or doesn’t provide ‘meaning’. But oh wait, Ruse hates humanism. Oh hum.
These are not intelligent or rational excuses by the accommodationists, but bat-shit crazy excuses. Naturalism is everything. It is a method or worldview that explains everything in terms of natural causes or processes, and so the idea that religion is valid at answering questions is false.
Jen McCreight over at Blaghag.com is also slugging it out with tone trolls and accomo-skeptics. Apparently she is, to paraphrase some, unlearned in both skepticism and science.
It occurs to me that it used to be acceptable to bash atheists. Then, more recently, it became fashionable (and often profitable). Now it seems out-and-out scapegoating is the new thing. Having trouble getting fundies to accept evolution and respect science education? Must be those damn new atheists, stirring the pot, “turning off” religious folk. Did the last skeptic conference not go exactly as you would have liked? Well, that must be the fault of those pesky outspoken atheists, always “hijacking” the festivities.
Once again, since atheists have never been popular, it’s easy to do this. There is absolutely no risk of being called intolerant when you badmouth atheists. Ironically, saying intolerant things about gnu atheists is a great way to appear “tolerant” and “nuanced.” In the case of someone like Mooney, this desperate desire to appear nuanced/nice/savvy by throwing atheists under the bus is so transparent I can’t believe it.
@ Tezcatlipoca
Jen McCreight makes exactly the same point about scepticism as I just did.
http://www.blaghag.com/2010/11/why-atheism-is-most-skeptical-position.html
Sceptics are in fact naturalists or followers of the scientific method. And scepticism does not lead to either theism or deism, as she points out. Good for her. So atheism and scepticism and naturalism are the default position.
Jen says she feels like she’s beating a dead horse. Well it wouldn’t be necessary except that folks like Jeff Wagg are dragging it around behind a pickup and calling it dressage.
Good one, Jack!
@ 33 – Sigmund
We (the Humanist Society of Greater Phoenix) had Professor Kim Hill from the Institute for Human Origins at Arizona State University as our speaker this past Sunday. He discussed why humanity is, in fact, “a spectacular evolutionary anomaly.” His talk derived from an article in the October 2009 issue of Evolutionary Anthropology entitled The emergence of human uniqueness: Characters underlying behavioral modernity.
The notion that “humanism” should be avoided because it has many definitions strikes me as misguided; the same could be said (with greater force) for “feminism,” “liberalism,” “skepticism,” or any other “ism” that has had significant social impact.
Humanism has a distinct historical meaning, encompassing (1) placing special value on the unique qualities that distinguish humans as a species from other animals, and (2) making human wellbeing and agency–rather than obedience to the will of some deity–the focus of ethics. Any atheist who has ethics at all, and who is not a radical animal rights activist, will likely have humanist ethics. Humanism is by no means a religion, since it involves neither ritual nor supernaturalism. Some humanists may also be supernaturalists, or communal rituatlists, but it is not part of the definition. I have also never encountered anyone who thinks “humanism” necessarily means Unitarian Universalism (though I’d bet most UUs are humanists) or some other liberal, non-doctrinaire religion–but if people are using this debased definition, it is all the more reason to defend the actual meaning. Which is also what I’d say for common misconceptions of feminism, liberalism, etc.
But I didn’t say “humanism” should be avoided because it has many definitions; I said the multiple definitions and uses of “humanism” are among the reasons I don’t call myself one. Spot the differences.
I also didn’t say I don’t have humanist ethics, and in other places I have said that I do.
But the fact is that humanism is all over the place, and it just isn’t clear what is meant by “I am a humanist” or “X is a humanist” without a lot of other context. It’s far more all over the place than feminism and skepticism. Liberalism does need some further specification; I always specify what I mean when I identify myself as a liberal.
Sorry, that was a bit brusque. But I don’t really need elementary instruction in what humanism is. I’m not clueless about it. One fact about it is that it has another distinct historical meaning which has nothing to do with that one, but rather with the division between humanism and scholasticism in the Renaissance. I took a seminar in the subject as an undergraduate; it was fascinating.
I have some overlap with humanism in the sense of human-focused as opposed to god-focused, but only some. That’s another reason I don’t call myself a humanist.
Humans are unique, but so is every other species on the planet; each has unshared, derived characters that first evolved following the split with its last common ancestor.
Scientology is a religion. I would even say state religions such as state communism or state fascism are religions. Religions describe human irrational behaviour such as giving up the self for some ideal or cause. I don’t see any specific demarcation where religion must only be about the supernatural or ritual. You can have humanism as a religion, there is religious humanism, it’s not free from human irrational behaviour.
And that humanism has so many interpretations and offers only an umbrella term is indeed problematic. I would call myself a liberal but liberalism is also problematic, as is secularism. We need coherency and preferably a solid philosophical basis for our position. Since we already have that within naturalism, then why not call ourselves as such?
If you say you don’t call yourself a humanist because (whether in whole or in part) of the multiple definitions, that does logically imply that you think the multiple definitions are a good reason to avoid the term. Which is what I was disagreeing with, because I think it’s intellectually self-defeating in general.
In any case, humanism isn’t more all over the place than skepticism and feminism. Feminism encompasses everyone from Mary Daly to bell hooks to Audre Lorde to Fatima Mernissi to Judith Butler to Martha Nussbaum to Susie Bright to Catherine MacKinnon to Sarah Palin; it’s hard to get more all-over-the-place than that. Skepticism is even broader than feminism or humanism because it isn’t meaningful unless you define it in relation to a particular issue. You can’t just say “I’m a skeptic” and have people know what that means, in my experience. You have to say “I’m a skeptic about X” (X being god, healing crystals, astrology, whatever).
Basically I think powerful words should be used and if there’s fuzziness about what exactly they mean, that cries out for clearer definitions rather than refraining from use. Humanist is a powerful word, so I want to see it used more, just like I want to see “feminist” used more.
I’m also not clear on how one can have humanist ethics without subscribing to a broader humanist worldview.
Oh, and I wasn’t trying to give you or anyone “elementary instruction” in humanism, but rather to explain why I think it’s not too vague for use.
Feminism has a core meaning, despite the variety (and it doesn’t really encompass Sarah Palin, whatever she may blurt out when she hasn’t yet got her story straight). If humanism has a core meaning, I have no idea what it is. I’ve heard people use it in contexts where I literally cannot tell what they are claiming. For some people it’s just a synonym for godless; for others it means something like humane or humanitarian; for others it means classical scholarship. That’s far from an exhaustive list. “Liberal” and “skeptic” and “feminist” take less work to establish a specified meaning. Plus I’m not sure that “humanist” says anything I want to say, or that I can’t say better with other words – like maybe secular feminist atheist liberal. I don’t know what “humanist” would add to that.
A nice quote from Massimo Pigliucci, over at Gotham Skeptics:
At least Massimo admits it’s only a tactical choice—pandering to the powerful majority, basically—and that religious belief and skepticism aren’t actually compatible.
Massimo admitted that much in replies to me on that apology post he did a couple of weeks ago.
Regarding the core meaning of “humanist”: most of the time when I hear people say “humanist,” they mean that they are human-centered in their ethics and priorities, which usually means both godlessness, deploring human suffering, and valuing human freedom and potential. I would say that is the core meaning, and I haven’t really done much work to decipher this. It’s just what seems glaringly obvious to me after reading a lot of people who call themselves humanists. I’ve never read anything by a self-declared humanist to throw confusion on this. Outside the specific context of Renaissance history, I haven’t heard people use “humanist” to refer to classical scholarship, so I don’t worry about confusion from that angle either.
The reason why I’d call myself a humanist and not just a secular liberal feminist etc. is that I think humanism explains all the rest. Secularism, liberalism, and feminism are justified by humanist ethics, so I think use of the term clarifies the first principles I’m starting from.
I frequently hear people make the same criticism about feminism (that people use it to mean so many different things) that you make of humanism, Ophelia. I’ve heard several people say “I don’t call myself a feminist because I don’t even know what that really means.” And I see a far greater diversity of definitions of feminism than I do for humanism. Feminism is about “choices” for some people (so being a housewife or a prostitute can’t be oppression because it’s a “choice”), about “equality” for others, about accepting “differences” for still others. So I still can’t see any support for your statement that humanism is harder to establish a core meaning for. I think any movement worth associating with is going to have a wide diversity of meaning, which means tolerating some vagueness.
That last point is why I actually care about this topic, by the way–otherwise I wouldn’t be dragging out this conversation about semantics.
Ophelia, if you’re referring to the thread at the “Apologies to Jerry Coyne (et al.)” post, I think I’m much happier with the thing I quoted.
I thought his discussion over there mixed good stuff with stuff I consider quite wrong, in particular his distinction between philosophy and science, and his insistence that science can’t address the supernatural.
He uses the Problem of Evil as an example of a “purely philosophical” argument that “isn’t scientific” and isn’t based on “scientific evidence.” He couldn’t be more wrong. It’s a 100 percent scientific argument, as well as being an important bit of philosophy (and theology). It’s a classic hypothetico-deductive refutation, rationally showing that a hypothesis would have certain observable consequences, which evidence clearly shows it does not have, so the hypothesis is evidently wrong. Surely, there’s a philosophical underpinning to it, but that’s true of every scientific argument.
The only thing that makes that not a scientific issue is when people refuse to accept the scientific evidence and argument, and coming up with weird theological dodges, e.g., that logic somehow doesn’t apply to God.
In the thing I quoted, that mess doesn’t come up, because he’s not addressing the issue of whether skepticism is “scientific” or a “philosophical” approach. (He thinks it’s the latter, while I think the distinction he makes is bogus, but it doesn’t matter to the actual argument about whether skepticism applies to religion.)
Paul W: how can the Problem of Evil be “100% scientific” when you can’t even start talking about it without first defining “good” and “evil”? Those aren’t scientific concepts.
I don’t agree that it has NOTHING to do with science, either, mind you. But it’s not a completely scientific question because it involves moral value judgments and not just factual investigations.
Paul, I was referring narrowly to a couple of replies to a couple of questions of mine, not to the whole thread. I did mean that thread as opposed to another though.
Jenavir,
I’m sympathetic to Ophelia’s non-use of the term precisely because of the things you say above. That’s many people’s overt idea of “humanism,” and I think it’s partly missing something, and partly wrong.
To me, the core sense of “humanism” is a certain philosophical sense—that values and morality are a natural phenomenon, not a supernatural one. The idea is that human morality is not of external or supernatural origin, and we can’t defer moral judgment to external or supernatural authority. (E.g., Divine Command Theory is wrong, Karma is nonsense, etc.)
That’s very different from saying that morality is about humans and specifically human suffering or flourishing. It’s about the source of morality, not what morality does or doesn’t apply to, or what it actually says about what it applies to. (E.g., that suffering is a bad thing, or what actions one should take to promote flourishing.)
It also does not, in itself, mean that there is a universal human morality that we can rationally converge to, though I personally do think that most of us can converge to a useful degree of agreement.
Here’s an example of an ambiguity: is somebody a humanist if they’re a libertarian who thinks that morality is fundamentally about rights, irrespective of goods? (E.g., somebody who values the usual libertarian idea of “freedom” even if they know it won’t actually work in practice to be the best for people overall, and who thinks that people have no positive moral obligations.)
I’d say yes, in the general philosophical sense, they’re humanists if they think their moral principles are derived from human nature and naturalistic facts. That’s a kind of humanism in the very general philosophical sense.
But that is not what people generally mean by “humanism” when they promote Humanism or “secular humanism.” Hardcore libertarians don’t count. (And neither would hardcore authoritarians, even if they think authoritarianism promotes the overall welfare because most people need a firm hand.)
Paul Kurtz would say no, that sort of welfare-be-damned or authoritarian philosophy doesn’t fit with the specific doctrines of Humanism. (I.e., of self-styled “humanist” organizations, especially his current one.) It’s inhuman! Humanists should value the promotion of others’ welfare, both at a basic motivational level and in particular moral obligations. (Self-styled “humanists” generally assume the authoritarians and hardcore libertarians are wrong—purely negative rights don’t work, and humans can govern themselves better than a dictator can govern them.)
Even among self-styled “humanists,” who generally are somewhere to the left of libertarians, there’s a confusion about whether humanism is about promoting specifically human welfare. Is it particularly speciesist, or are Peter Singer and Sam Harris “humanists”? In practice, I think most self-styled humanists are not extreme speciesists—they think the suffering of other animals counts for something, but differ on how nonhuman welfare stacks up against human welfare. Still, that confusion sorta bugs me sometimes, because some people seem to think that our naturally evolved human morality naturally makes us speciesist.
I myself am more or less a “humanist” in most of these senses, though I’m not very speciesist, so I can fairly comfortably call myself a “humanist,” and I sometimes do. Still, I’m not comfortable with the idea that I don’t know what I’m communicating with the term. Usually I prefer to say something more specific, or more clearly general.
I’m often more comfortable calling myself an atheist than calling myself a humanist, because I’m pretty typical for an overt atheist—I’m not a nihilist or a sociopath, for example. Saying instead that I’m a “humanist” doesn’t add much in any clear way.
To the extent that “humanist” is just code for “atheist who isn’t a sociopathic asshole,” I’d usually rather go ahead and call myself an atheist, and debunk the negative stereotype as needed.
Does the word sanctimony have any negative aspect for accommodations? It certainly does for me. And pretending to share more common ground than I actually do with any particular religious group would be pretty close to the definition of sanctimony.
I am a lot of things. A sanctimonious tactician is not one of them.
Jenavir:
I think you’ve fallen prey to a common and seriouslly false myth about scientific concepts and scientific arguments. The reason I object strenuously to Massimo’s arguments is that he is accepting and promoting that myth. As a philosopher of science, he should be debunking the myth, rather than relying on it.
Scientific concepts are NOT generally well-defined, especially when somebody’s making an important argument about an important live issue. Scientists deal with vague and/or ambiguous concepts all the time, especially when they’re doing important science.
Consider basic terms like “life” and “species.” People did biology and talked scientifically about life and species for a very long time before we had any generally agreed clear definitions of life or species. When we did clarify what life is and what species are—a process that lasted from Darwin through most of the 20th century—it became apparent that the concepts are intrinsically ambiguous and in some cases intrinsically very fuzzy.
(Is a virus “alive”? Yes and no. What counts as “the same species” for an asexually reproducing animal like a bacterium or parthenogenic lizard? It certainly isn’t the ability to interbreed, although that’s a common criterion for species of other animals, like dogs and birds.)
Scientists constantly deal with entities that have no strict definitions with necessary and sufficient conditions—you have to understand something very well before you can even decide what could be the real definition. (E.g., scientist talked sensibly about gold and non-gold long before anybody knew what actually makes gold gold, i.e., being an element with a particular number of protons in its atoms.)
The way we deal with such things is to characterize the general intuitions behind terms like “species” or “gold,” especially with reference to actually observed things, and argue about possible specific definitions.
When philosophers do that with poorly-defined concepts like “The Good,” people often think that’s a “philosophical” thing to do, and not what scientists do. That’s wrong; it’s exactly what scientists constantly do with poorly-defined terms like “species.”
Consider the question of whether I’m of the same “species” as the tree outside my window here. There is no reasonable definition of species by which the answer is yes. If somebody insisted on a bizarre definition of species like “having a common ancestor,” such that the answer would be yes, they would be wrong—that’s just not what species really means to anybody, and is not the kind of natural phenomenon we’ve actually observed and called “species.” What people mean by “species” always has something to do with phenotypic similarity and/or genetic relatedness, and the tree and I just are not similar or related to count.
Even if somehow, by an amazing freak of nature, I could interbreed with the tree and produce fertile offspring—not likely, but conceptually not impossible—we still wouldn’t be of the same species, even though we would fit the clearest technical “definition.” We are so distantly related that scientists would still say we’re of different species, that have an utterly freakish ability to interbreed anyway. That example would show that the seemingly precise “definition” is only a rough cut at something more fundamental.
Similarly, when philosophers talk about The Good, they can talk about common conceptions of The Good that capture certain common intuitions and/or describe certain preferences we recognize as moral. Anything unrelated to those is clearly not The Good, or at least puts an extraordinary burden of proof on the person who’s saying it is. (The Good is not just what God wants, for example—that’s clearly not what people mean by God, when they say “God is Good.” What Plato said in the Euthyphro was not “non-scientific” on that count; he was doing the same kind of conceptual analysis that scientists do with any other poorly-defined concept.)
Scientists and philosophers both frequently make “case analysis arguments,” where they show that for any sensible interpretation of some vague and/or ambiguous term, their argument still works. Doing that with “The Good” doesn’t make it non-scientific any more than doing it with “life” or “species.”
Conceptual analysis and case analysis of the resulting concepts are intrinsic parts of science as well as philosophy. If that’s philosophy, and “not science,” then most science “isn’t science”—especially the most interesting and important science. That can’t be right.
Grendels Dad –
That pretty much (and neatly) sums up what I dislike about Stedman’s version of accommodationism.
“Nathan Bupp did a new Facebook post to boast/complain of this post (I’m not sure which). Stedman joined in. They’re funny – frothing at the mouth with hatred of gnu atheists, all the while saying they’re no such thing.”
Could you provide some examples of their “frothing at the mouth with hatred of gnu atheists”? I read Nathan’s comment thread but I seem to have missed the froth and hatred.
Really? Then I don’t think you were paying attention.
But I reached a truce with Nathan, so I don’t much want to beat the horse now.
Anyway I can’t provide examples now because Nathan has apparently blocked me. Not surprising, but it means I can’t see those posts any more. It also means he can go on shouting at gnu atheists without my pesky interruptions!