More and more and more and more
See, here’s yet another one – yet another apparently grown-up responsible person who apparently feels quite comfortable saying things about atheists that are not true. I bet she would not feel comfortable saying things that are not true about Other Races, or gays, or Jews, or Muslims, or immigrants, or foreigners. But atheists? Well you say they are bad people, so it’s all right to say untrue things about them. That would appear to be the thinking, at least.
Coming a year after London’s city buses were plastered with adverts that stated flatly, “There’s probably no God. Stop worrying and enjoy your life,” New York City’s subway trains were plastered with similar ads…
But buses weren’t plastered with the ads in either city – that would mean the ads were all over the place, and they weren’t. That’s only the second paragraph. That’s exactly the kind of misrepresentation by silly exaggeration that atheists are subject to all the time these days, starting with all the indignant complaints about a ‘deluge’ of atheist books when the deluge amounts to maybe ten or twelve if you count generously, spread over a few years. Yeah right, atheist books are crowding all other books off the shelves and every bus in the city is entirely covered with atheist ads.
It’s the latest promotional push by a special interest group that has grown increasingly vocal.
‘Special interest group’ nothing – that’s a bit of political rhetoric that doesn’t mean anything except perhaps ‘group with an agenda I don’t share.’ But more to the point is the pointing and frowning at atheists’ daring to ‘grow increasingly vocal.’ More to the point is even mentioning at all, as if it were abnormal and obviously bad.
But not all atheists are comfortable preaching the gospel of the nonbeliever. After all, the New York advertising effort could be seen as something most atheists consider repugnant: evangelizing.
It could be seen as that only because people like Lauren Sandler, and Lauren Sandler herself, keep portraying it like that. This is reminiscent of Chris Mooney’s lamenting that journalists ‘go on impressions and what they’ve heard’ and so keep thinking of Dawkins as Mr Big Atheist, when Mooney has done so much to train them to do just that. The advertsing effort doesn’t really resemble evangelizing very much – but it’s very fashionable to say that atheism looks just like religion only the other way around.
She does it again a few paragraphs later, after chatting to Paul Kurtz and Tom Flynn.
[A]theism, for all its progress, needs to do something to change its image…Even if more than 15 percent of the population believes in what the word represents, they may be loathe to embrace a label that is often preceded by the adjective “rabid.”
She says, doing her bit to make the prophecy self-fulfilling.
Yes, quite irritating, but this article didn’t piss me off *quite* as much as the dreck from Mooney or Ruse: While Sandler is definitely playing up the controversy in that annoying “controversy sells!” way, and she certainly uses slanted language to describe the controversy in ways that massively favor one side, at least she didn’t write anything that outright misrepresents the outspoken atheist position. And she does bother to use actual quotations instead of distorted misrepresentations, mostly – although the sly transformation of Dawkins’ use of the word “zeal” into an admission of “zealotry” was rather smarmy.
Still, better than Mooney. Which is a bit like saying that being stung by mere bees is better than being stung by hornets: Still better not to be stung, innit?
Here’s a nice response to the recent textual diarrhea from Greg Craven:
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/the-new-crybaby-theists-20091105-hyyc.html
I’ve made some obligatory comments there.
It’s a bit odd to say that the London adverts stated something ‘flatly’ when there is a ‘probably’ in there. ‘Stated tentatively’ would be more accurate, but of course accuracy is not important here.
If something is abhorrent to one, then the merest whiff of it can be expressed as “plastered” everywhere. Hell, even we would probably be fed up with atheist advertising if it had equal time with the religious variety!
As comfortable version of what OB characterised as a Movement Atheist in her Guardian piece, I’ve been accused of evangelising and what kind of startles me is why the hell is it a term of abuse?
Okay, in at least one sense it is, but it does seem to me what people are actually objecting when they say that is they’re objecting to the fact that I believe Atheism is true and will attempt to convince someone of the case. I’m not sure where in that account I’ve done something wrong.
Another way to point out the problem is that the Evangelicals aren’t wrong because they’re trying to convince people, they’re wrong because they’re well, wrong and also because they explicitly use dishonest tactics which is a very different issue.
Hey, you start moving the Overton Window and people react. Sounds like we are starting to see the onset of the anger stage.
There are 4 things that a commentator can say which, in my opinion, should completely disqualify them from the grown-up table of discussion.
The first is describing “crackergate” as some sort of unprovoked and heinous attack on religious people, religious belief or Catholics by PZ Myers, without mentioning that it was a response to death threats directed at a student for the heinous crime of biscuit abuse.
I mean, come on! Death threats for biscuit abuse? And it’s the blogger who never sent a death threat to anyone who’s the bad guy?
The very fact that, given the choice between a group who send death threats to somebody for ANY reason and a college professor who publicly hurt a little cracker, there’s this group of people who think the college professor is the villain is one reason that religious thinking is seen as so dangerous.
The second is pretending that there is some sort of “deluge” or that we’re being overwhelmed by atheist books when the output of the entire “new atheist” movement would hardly be the size of a pixel when placed alongside all the religious literature, films, TV programmes, radio programmes, podcasts, etc., that have been released since the End of Faith came out. It is truly ridiculous, especially when there’s a thing about motes and beams right there in the magic book.
The third is referring to the atheist bus campaign or any other atheist advertising campaign as if it’s some sort of crazy, intrusive and aggressive slap in the face to all non-atheists while ignoring the almost total saturation that far, far more intrusive religious adverts enjoy 365 days a year.
The final one, of course, is describing atheists as rabid, fundamentalist, shrill, arrogant or whatever for promoting their views when they’ve done nothing even remotely as bad as the things religious believers routinely do when promoting their views.
Is it really so difficult to fairly represent a situation? I suppose it is when you really want to complain about something but have absolutely nothing to complain about, unless a tiny, short-term challenge to your privileges is something to complain about. Which it appears to be for some.
Oh, and if using religious terms to describe atheists was ever funny, it’s not funny anymore.
The reason they get annoyed is because they’re crap at debate. They’ve had so many years to get used to a ‘respectful hearing’, the truth comes as a terrible shock. That 95 per cent of the people who gave them that respectful hearing thought they were talking bollocks. And now they’re prepared to say it in the public forums. Tough.
I’m suprised the bus drviers could even see out of their windscreens, the buses being plastered with atheists ads.
In my home town of Melbourne, Australia, atheist tram ads were pulled at the last moment, deemed “offensive.” Meanwhile, there are plenty of billboards around town proclaiming Christianity, and our skyline is dotted with gleaming golden mosques and church turrets and spires.
Also this line, “[A]theism, for all its progress, needs to do something to change its image” is stupid, because atheism is not a bloc, and getting them to do anything is like herding cats. And what does she even mean by atheism’s “progress?” The author of this piece is just jumping blindly on a particularly thoughtless and inane bandwagon.
Here’s what Mooney said about Dawkins in the post you linked to.
“Now, should the public and the media know the difference? Hell yeah. But is that the world we live in? Hell no.”
Here’s what Mooney [and Nisbet] said in the WaPo article he linked to in that very same post:
“Dawkins, who rose to fame with his lucid expositions of evolution in such books as “The Selfish Gene,” has never gone easy on religion. But recently he has ramped up his atheist message, further mixing his defense of evolution with his attack on belief.”
Mooney was one of the “journalists” to blur the difference, and he turns right around and blames everyone else for something he did himself.
This tells us two things: Mooney argues in bad faith, and Mooney thinks his readership are stupid and lazy.
it’s also interesting how some – I think the Christian Institute is one culprit – try to make out that atheists want to carve out the agenda for themselves by silencing Christians. No, no, bloody no. All atheists and other freethinkers want is to see everyone on an equal footing, without one group having privileges over another. Christians, believe away! I don’t give a shit. Some of you are very nice people. But those who aren’t seem to believe that there’s is the platform by default, and other groups are trying to knock them off it by merely wanting to stand up there with said Christians (and I include all others among the Deluded Herd).
Correction: I meant to say “theirs is the platform”, not “there’s”. Bloody keyboards. I blame the Christians.
As irritating as this article is, I think it is as much a case of lazy journalism as casual bigotry. Atheist schism is the churned out think piece du jour. The story can be summed up easily, research is not extensive as this is not an enormous mass movement, and any opinion can be attributed as there is no actual figurehead or structure that can officially rebut claims.
If you are paid by the word, this is a goldmine. Bear in mind as well that page rankings for religious/atheist arguing are very high, so the money can really roll in.