Say anything
Once again I’m startled at the casual malice of Andrew Brown. No charge is too unsupported to make, it seems. No inhibition causes him to pause and ask himself, ‘Wait, do I really know any of this? Am I just blackguarding a whole category of people on the basis of nothing in particular? Should I perhaps rephrase things by adding a ‘some’ or a ‘may sometimes’ in places just to be fair?’ – no sense of shame prompts him to stop making things up about a group of people he dislikes. Why is that?
Oh well, the pope does it, Kevin Padian does it, so why should a journalist hesitate?
At any rate, he doesn’t.
It’s obvious that in the US, the new atheism is a reassuring fundamentalism for the college educated: it provides them with the assurance of a brighter future and with an enemy (“The religious”) on whom can be blamed all the bewildering and humiliating changes in modern American society…
No it’s not obvious. It’s possible, and it may be true of some people, but it’s not obvious, and Andrew Brown just spinning words about it doesn’t make it obvious.
How can we maintain the distinction, so essential to civilised life, between ourselves and the readers of the Daily Mail? The new atheism supplies a clear and simple answer. Subscribe to a set of pious hopes about reason and progress, read a few of the right books, and you have found a clear social identity…Obviously, it is no longer done to sneer at the working classes for being idle, brutish, smelly, and breeding too much. But it’s perfectly OK to sneer at “faith heads” for all these things: that shows you’re enlightened. It’s pure coincidence that the despicable believers are for the most part lower class as well.
Is it perfectly ok to sneer at Andrew Brown for being exceptionally vulgar? Because he is. It’s sheer vulgarity to abuse people on the basis of your own fantasies that way. That’s not to say that there is no possibility that atheism can sometimes be tainted with intellectual snobbery – but that doesn’t justify Brown’s trashy raving.
Somebody should do a vulgar hit-and-run pseudo-sociology job on why Andrew Brown is the way he is.
My absolute favourite line is: “But they all ended up in the House of Lords.”
It’s gotta be that line that really hammers home the point that atheists are in it for the snobbery.
Funny, I am sitting here with a union card (IBEW local 2327)in my wallet and I still think believing in imaginary friends is a load of crap. And I don’t think I’ll ever wind up in the House of Lords.
No no I’m sorry Barney we can’t have that – no working stiffs in the New Atheist Movement – it is strictly for the boor jwa zee.
That lets me out; I ain’t got the income.
Sinlge mother student (and atheist) here. I grew up with five siblings and my dad was a cleaner and my mum stayed at home. We had a small house in a poor suburb. We didn’t have money, but we had interesting dinner-time conversation. Now we’re all atheists except for dad who has some fuzzy mystical ideas.
I really don’t think atheism is a class thing at all (well at least not here in Australia). To call ALL atheists classist and snobby is a despicable ad hominem attack levelled at a very diverse group of people. I’m sure there probably are some classist and snobby atheists, but there’s nothing about atheism per se that is classist and snobby.
Quite so. I’m perfectly willing to believe there are some such, and I’m also willing to believe it’s an ever-present trap – that one has to watch out for feelings of smugness and superiority and so on. But that’s not the same thing as just hauling off with a big belch and saying all atheists are like that.
The Group It’s Okay to Hate.
By the way, I loved that acid remark about the cock forest. Well done!
I attended a meeting of the local atheist group in and around my town. I can now laugh and laugh at Brown for saying that atheists are a group of elites. The local group consisted of 100% middle class working people (except for me though, being the King of Neptune and the Supreme Ruler of the Rigel system).
I’m reminded of a passage from one early modern political philosopher where he talks about how an entirely helpless bunch of animals (say, tribbles) have no rights due to the fact that they can’t defend themselves. Fairness is something that occurs between those with human powers; the powerless are to be pitied, but that’s about it.
Evidently there’s a similar feeling going on here. The very fact that atheists don’t share a common identity, and most don’t meaningfully define their life projects out of their atheism, gives critics the license to think their criticisms risk nothing, and therefore no reason to be charitable, coherent, etc.
Wow, I’m an intellectual snob! Do I get my own ivory tower? Even better, honorary PhD from the New Atheist University? No? Bollocks!
My dad got sick when I was a young kid and we went from comfortable middle class to poverty line. In part because my parents thought the being catlick meant you had to have 10 bloody kids but mainly because dad couldn’t look after himself and mum couldn’t look after 10 kids, a sick husband and work full time. They should have stopped at 7 kids, after yours truly was born. Anyway, I got my degree while milking cows. Getting kicked, pissed and shat on by 500 annoyed cows at 5 in the freezing morning for a few years to support myself while I studied off campus probably doesn’t make me a total intellectual snob. I guess I should hand in my membership. Oh well, why would I want to belong to any group that would accept a ratbag like me as a member in any case?
I hate to disappoint Andrew Brown, but my atheism precedes my college education by a rather wide margin. And I’m pretty sure I had no conception of class and class identity as a 12-year-old when I decided that the whole God thing was a massive put-on. But if I had known anything about class back then, I’d have known that my factory-working parents who’d lost our family home to unemployment and bankruptcy didn’t exactly occupy the upper rungs of the socioeconomic ladder.
What sociology – even absurd, half-assed pseudo-sociology consistent with the low bar that Brown sets – could explain how someone comes to be such a pompous, pandering, pin-headed prick? I don’t think social forces account for Brown’s shortcomings as a human being; those spring from his own choices – such as his choice to suck up to popular opinion by taking every possible opportunity to bash atheists.
I think you are all missing the point.
No true “New Atheist” would avoid embracing intellectual and social snobbery.
You’re right, Tom. The “New Atheists” are as chimeric as Terry Eagleton’s “Ditchkins” character, so the “New Atheists” are whatever the “New Apologists” say they are, seeing as they invented them.
Well stone the crows. That WAS me! I just noticed a reference on Russell’s blog to it, then searched Pharyngula for the comment, scrolled down . . . and there it was! I remember making it now. *blushes madly*
I dunno if it’s the same article as my click through isn’t working, but Shuggy took Andrew Brown apart recently:-
http://modies.blogspot.com/2009/09/on-motes-and-beams.html
It’s a strong field in which to compete but I think Andrew Brown’s argument here that the ‘New Atheists’ are a bunch of snobs has to win the prize for the most inconsistent and absurd attempt to claim the class card for one’s position that I have ever seen.
He begins by acknowledging that adherence to religion has no class element in this country, unlike the US (this in itself a dubious proposition). Not a particularly strong basis on which to argue that atheists are really just social elitists in drag, one would have thought? To compound his difficulties, he then goes on to describe the motivation behind working class atheism with a truly breath-taking condescension:
“But in this country, unlike the US, the poor are not devout. They’re hardly atheist on principle; they just reckon that “it’s all rubbish”, along with every other system of organised thought. This means that not going to church does not function in itself as a class marker here in the way that it works in the US.”
I appreciate this will be difficult to believe but he then moves from here to claim the solidarity with the poor card for his particular brand of patrician Anglicanism:
“Obviously, it is no longer done to sneer at the working classes for being idle, brutish, smelly, and breeding too much. But it’s perfectly OK to sneer at “faith heads” for all these things: that shows you’re enlightened. It’s pure coincidence that the despicable believers are for the most part lower class as well.”
Amazing, isn’t it? One can form an argument based on a contradiction of what you yourself have already said in the previous paragraphs of your own goddamn article and still pick up a pay-check from Guardian.co.uk.
Hahahaha – yup Par that was you. [applause]
KB Player,
I was just about to link to Shuggy’s excellent take down of Brown.
Damn, every time I try to comment on B&W these days I find that someone else has done it sooner and better.
For the record, I stopped believing in god as a working class 13 year old, partly thanks to a devout but intellectually honest sunday school teacher who took doubt seriously and wouldn’t lie.
At what point would it become appropriate just to send him a note that says ‘oh, fuck off’?
Dave,
Christmas?
It took me until I was 17 years old to get kicked out of Lutheran Sunday school. Rather it took me until then to run out of ways to pretend I was going along with it all.
That guy Brownie is doing a hell of a job of going along with it all. What a snotty jerk.
Very interesting note in the next thread up (Independent World Report) that really belongs here.
Andrew Brown is such a terrible ass that I have found it impossible to read him anymore. He is not only vulgar; his ideas are repulsive, and his ability to think negligible. What confirms this, and makes it so interesting, is that he hasn’t noticed!
Okay I’ll paste it in here so that it won’t get overlooked.
I am without a doubt working class, an ex-miner, sheet metalworker, flat cap and whippet guy. After reading that I very much doubt that Andrew Brown has ever met a member of the working class. I can count on one hand the number of religious people I know. This preoccupation with an invisible friend seems to be very much a middle class thing. Around my neck of the woods you are considered a bit weird if you profess a belief in god. It’s just something that most folk here don’t even think about, an echo from the past.