I mentioned that interview I did for Humanistpodden the other day; here it is. Johan is remarkably knowledgeable about inter-atheist quarrels, among other things.
Update: And another thing, as long as I’m in me me me vein. I’m now a columnist for Free Inquiry. The first column will be in the August-September issue.
Chris Stedman is bizarrely indignant that some people disagree with him. Apparently if he writes an article for the Huffington Post, it’s somehow wrong and out of line to write a blog post that disputes it. Why would that be the case? What rule says that Chris Stedman’s articles on the Huffington Post are off-limits to disagreement? I thought it was pretty well known by now that if you write something that gets posted on the internet, there’s always a chance that someone will disagree with it.
Chris did three updates at Facebook to express this “you disagree with me! you really disagree with me!” outrage, along with a good few comments on same. The first, on my post, says
Hmm. Some of the comments on this… Well, I’m glad my “personality flaws” are diagnosable over the internet! Who needs therapy? Hey, at least I’m a master in jedi mind tricks? Okay, but seriously: I’d respond, but I’m about to give a talk at Carnegie Mellon. Perhaps some people who actually know me have some thoughts they’d like to share? Or, you know, perhaps this is best left alone. #dontfeedthetrolls
The second says
Um, woah. Came back from giving a speech / having dinner with the awesome folks at Carnegie Mellon Aha!: Atheists, Humanist, Agnostics to find myself at the center of SIGNIFICANT DISAGREEMENTS all over the atheist blogosphere.
The third (as I mentioned in a comment) says
Who knew that calling people to the ideals of love and compassionate action could ignite controversy?! Oh yeah, Jesus. Lulz. Oh internet, let’s move on to more important things now, shall we? (Like, you know, acting in love and compassion…)
That last is a funny question. “Who knew that calling people to the ideals of love and compassionate action could ignite controversy?!” Think about it.
Ok I’ll bite; I knew. I can explain why, too – one reason is the implied claim that the speaker is good and the recipient of the message is not; that the speaker is loving and compassionate and the recipient is something else. There are others: the suggestion to stop doing one thing and do another instead; the backround campaign of vilification of gnu atheists which makes this kind of positioning seem at least suspect; the fact that that kind of pious advice has more than a whiff of churchy missionary sanctimonious versions of “compassion” that not everyone admires; and so on.
Here’s a blunt statement to motivate Chris to make more outraged updates: not everybody wants “love and compassion” from strangers. As a matter of fact I think most people don’t want that. Love and compassion from strangers is intrusive and presumptuous; it’s too much; it’s not what’s needed or wanted. Chris probably knows that, actually, at some level – I don’t suppose he approaches people saying “I bring love and compassion!” But he doesn’t seem to know that talking about it in the way he does is too close to doing exactly that. There’s a vanity and self-display to it that is really not all that admirable. Check out Matthew 6:3 if you don’t believe me.
Creative figures like Ai Weiwei and his colleagues are often the only ones with the courage to speak truth against the lies of tyrants.
Science recognizes the strong human motivation to believe what we want to be true, and that that drive is a serious impediment in finding out what really is true.
“In our increasingly secular society, many religious people feel their voices are not heard.” Cherie Blair for example.
You don’t say!
Gut-wrenching.
My article on the Afghan Koran protest – an unfortunate incident which left over 20 people dead and many more injured – generated many comments and criticisms on the internet. In fact somebody said the piece was informed by ‘racism and islamophobia’. Well I guess this fellow thought I was a white or a Christian or someone living in the West.
I do not in this article intend to respond to issues raised by those who read the article. For me let the debate continue. I have made my point. What I said in that piece – and in this very one – applies to many Muslims, not all.
So, once again in reaction to the protest over the Koran burning in the US and to other similar violent reactions of our Muslim friends to actions and expressions which they consider provocative or ‘an insult to Islam’, I say : learn to tolerate offence and dissent. You cannot expect to live in a world where nobody offends or disagrees with you.
Yes, Muslims should learn to live with actions and expressions which they find provocative or annoying.We live in a world of diverse religions and beliefs, so Muslims should not expect that nobody will do or say anything that will offend them. Look: that is not possible. And for those of them who think otherwise now is the time to realize that they are mistaken. Now is the time for them to have a change of mind and attitude for the sake of humanity and civilization.
Yes, our Muslim friends need to drop this idea that anybody who says or does something which offends them should be killed – beheaded, executed, imprisoned – or penalized. If we were to make that a universal law then nobody would be alive today; or most of us would be in jail. And if ever such a sharia law obtained in the past or during the days of prophet Muhammed then Muslims should know that it is out of place today. If that is what their Koran teaches then they should know that this time around Allah (or whoever must have put such an injunction into ‘his’ mouth) got it wrong; that on this issue they should disobey the Koran.
Because if we are to go by that sharia law we will find ourselves in a situation of perpetual conflict. Muslims or Islam will be on a collision course with humanity and civilization as is the case in some parts of the world. We will find ourselves in a situation where everybody including Muslims will be in jail or will be dead. In fact all human beings will go into extinction.
Our Muslim friends should learn to accomodate criticisms or caricature of Islam, of the Koran or of prophet Muhammed. They should know that not all human beings are Muslims. Not all of us are believers in Allah. Not all human beings revere the prophet Muhammed as Allah’s messenger. Not all of us believe in the Koran as the revealed word of Allah. Just as the actions and expressions of Muslims are in line with their beliefs, some other people’s actions and expressions are in line with their unbelief.
So Muslims should not expect non-Muslims to treat Islamic beliefs and the prophet the same way they do, just as one should not expect Muslims to revere other religious beliefs. That means some people are bound to make irreverent remarks or expressions about Islam and its doctrines just as Muslims also make or can make irrevent remarks – or remarks which others consider irreverent – about other religions or beliefs. And that is what freedom of religion is all about. If our Muslim friends in Afghanistan were aware of this then the Koran burning in the US would not have generated the violent protests it did. It would have passed without any incident. But it did not.
Meanwhile, I don’t think protests – violent or otherwise – would stop anyone who wants to burn a Koran or a Bible or any book at all from doing so. They will not. Not everybody who wants to burn books – sacred or secular – goes public as the US pastor did. Surely the pastor was not the first or the only person who has burnt or destroyed a copy of the Koran. On the contrary, violent reactions like the ones we saw in Afghanistan often make some people, who ordinarily wouldn’t have wanted to burn their copies of the Koran, to do so.
Books are people’s personal property which they dispose of in any way they deem fit. Violent protests by Muslims cannot stop them from exercising this right or power. Muslims must understand this and learn to ignore or react in any other civilized way when anybody decides to publicly dispose his or her copy of the Koran in a way they (Muslims) may consider offensive or an insult to Islam. Instead of saying ‘Kill those who insult Islam’ or ‘Behead those who defile the Koran’, Muslims around the would should begin to preach and propagate in their mosques and Koranic schools this saying: ‘Ignore those who defame Islam’. Or better ‘Dialogue with those who criticize Islam’.
For me that is a more civilized approach. As long as Islam remains in the public sphere, it cannot be shielded from public scrutiny, examination, criticism or caricature.
The same is applicable to the cartoons of prophet Muhammed. Those cartoons did not warrant the bloodletting we witnessed across the world at all. They did not! In fact it was Muslim clerics who made those cartoons an issue and brought them to the knowledge of the world. If Muslims had ignored those cartoons and the artists behind them, and had not reacted as they did, most people wouldn’t have known about the cartoons. In fact it was the riots that made me know that it was such a taboo to draw an image of Mohammed. When I heard about the cartoon riots, the question that instinctively came to my mind was “Who is prophet Muhammad that he cannot be cartooned?”
I still find it difficult to comprehend why Muslims reacted the way they did. Because if Muslims believe Muhammad cannot be cartooned, there are others who believe he can. If Muslims refrain from drawing the image of Muhammed or from cartooning him in any way out of belief, others draw his image or want to cartoon him in various ways out of unbelief.
And as we saw, the violent protests did not stop people from cartooning prophet Muhammed. In fact the protests by Muslims led to more cartoons, more printing and reprinting of the cartoons. I guess the way Muslims in Afghanistan reacted to the Koran burning in the US would make or might have made some people to burn or consider buring their copies of the Koran – in counter-protest.
So our Muslim friends should learn to tolerate anything they consider offensive to them or their religion. They should learn to register their anger or opposition in civilized ways without violence and bloodshed. Because some of these ideas, expressions or dissenting opinions which many Muslims consider offensive are actually bitter truths which are urgently needed to realize Islamic reformation, and the enlightenment and intellectual awakening of Muslims in this 21st century.
Read the whole shocking thing.
I’m going to disagree with Chris Stedman again. Let me preface my disagreement by saying he’s obviously a good guy, a better one than I am. There that’s out of the way; now let me shred him.
No but seriously. He’s a good guy but being a good guy isn’t enough. One has to learn that people have their own plans and projects and ways of doing things. Chris seems to have a missionary streak that prevents him from understanding that.
the last ten years have seen me change my philosophy in several dramatic ways — from born-again Christian to rejectionist atheist to my current work as a Secular Humanist and interfaith activist —
What’s a rejectionist atheist? It sounds nasty. Is it meant to sound nasty? Yes, I think so, a little. It probably means “an atheist who rejects theism” and is meant to contrast with the kinder, gentler, warmer sort of atheist who is an interfaith activist. And this is where the missionary note creeps in, already – this hint that rejecting atheism is not ok because the right thing to do is “interfaith activism.” Atheists who do interfaith activism are a rare breed, though, so I think Chris is being a little too stringent here.
As the Interfaith and Community Service Fellow for the Humanist Chaplaincy at Harvard, I had the opportunity to collaborate with the Humanist Graduate Community at Harvard to plan and lead a service trip to work at the CRYP last month.
And they did good things there, and that’s nice, but…
But it’s not the only way to make the world a better place, and it’s not something everyone wants to do, and the reasons for that are not just laziness or callousness or worldly ambition. I, for one, am uneasy about the noblesse oblige aspect. I don’t like it; it makes me feel squirmy. That’s just one angle on all this that Chris overlooks. He likes up close and personal stuff; good; but not everyone does, and more to the point, not everyone wants groups of Harvard students moving in.
Just a few days ago, I organized and ran a community service project for the American Humanist Association‘s (AHA) annual conference — the first time the AHA has featured one at its annual conference. After years of attending interfaith conferences and Humanist/atheist conferences but only encountering community service events at the former, I realized that if my community wants to be seen as equally ethical individuals, we will need to make good on our values. That we must actualize our commitments to justice and compassion — for our own sake, if not in respect to how we’re perceived by others.
But community service events aren’t the only way to do that, and maybe they’re not the best way. “Charity” isn’t the best way to deal with social problems. It may be more uplifting for the participants, but that’s a seriously crappy reason for thinking it’s the best way.
This is a call to Humanists and atheists everywhere: Can we set aside intellectualizing and debating, even just for a moment, and start putting our money where other people’s mouths are?
This is a reply from one atheist: Different people have different talents. Division of labor is a good thing. And to be perfectly honest, I don’t really want to be told to stop doing one thing and do another instead.
There are serious questions about how millions of dollars have been spent, whether Mortenson is personally benefiting, and whether the stories are even true.
It’s not clear what good work Mortenson has done, with schools that don’t exist, schools built by other people, empty schools, and schools that are cabbage sheds.
“It turns out that Mortenson’s books and public statements are permeated with
falsehoods.”
Another thing about Ruse’s claim.
Most of all I detest the New Atheism because I think it is playing into the hands of the Religious Right.
But if you decide it’s Forbidden to say certain things lest you “play into the hands of the Religious Right” then you are already playing into the hands of the Religious Right. If you give up the right to free speech as a precaution against theocracy then you are already in a theocracy. It doesn’t make sense to give up secular rights in order to hang on to secular rights.
I don’t want the religious Right deciding what I can say. I don’t want to defer to their sensitivities or their unreasonable beliefs. I don’t want to check what I say for acceptability to the religious Right before I go public with it.
Ruse is arguing for burning the village to save the village. No thanks; I’d rather just hang on to the village.
Dave Barash made a similar point on Ruse’s post:
The argument that we shouldn’t call out the incompatability between science – any science, including evolutionary biology – and religion for fear that this will compromise our constitutional right to teach the former strikes me as logically fallacious, legally naive, pedagogically vapid and intellectually cowardly.
I couldn’t possibly comment.
It was a library book.
About theocratic misogyny, “compassion” and religion, gnu atheism and the backlash.
Thugs shredded Serrano’s “Piss Christ.” Gallery is leaving the destroyed work on show “so people can see what barbarians can do.”
As an ideology, strong atheism tends to emerge under the threat of theocracy.
“Atheism clearly isn’t natural.” Wha?
Many of the 370-plus anti-abortion bills now wending their way through state legislatures are simply about creating misery, anxiety and fear.