Wassup with ‘the new atheism’?
Julian wrote a piece arguing that the ‘new atheist movement’ is destructive. It got linked at Dawkins’s site where commenters greeted it with intemperate hostility – until Russell Blackford posted a comment informing them that Julian isn’t actually as wicked as all that, which calmed things down a little. Julian later commented too, pointing out with some justice that the intemperate hostility rather bore out his point.
I want to take issue with some things Julian said, however – though I will of course do so in a very reasonable and measured way.
He starts off by saying, with deliberate impudence, that he has an opinion about the four chief Newatheists, despite the fact that he has not read any of their books.
That does not, however, disqualify me from having an opinion about them. Let me defend both apparently intellectually disreputable confessions. Not reading The God Delusion, God is Not Great, Breaking the Spell and The End of Faith is perfectly reasonable. Why on earth would I devote precious reading hours to books which largely tell me what I already believe?
There’s a problem with that, as I (very civilly) pointed out on the Dawkins site. If Julian hasn’t read the books he can’t know that they largely tell him what he already believes. If he hasn’t read them he really can’t know what they tell him; he can’t know that they don’t tell him about facts or consequences or arguments that he hasn’t thought of. It’s not particularly reasonable simply to assume that they largely tell him what he already believes. That might be the case, but he can’t know that without at least skimming them.
In fact, I think atheists who have read these books have more of a responsibility to account for their actions than I do my inaction…God’s non-existence is a fact atheists live with, not something that they should obsessively read about.
But there may be (and I would say there are) implications to God’s non-existence and/or other people’s belief in God’s existence that are worth reading and thinking about. Just ignoring the whole issue is certainly one option, but it’s not self-evident that it’s the only reasonable option.
Hitchens goes so far as to explicitly say that “I am not even an atheist so much as I am an antitheist.” This antitheism is for me a backwards step. It reinforces what I believe is a myth, that an atheist without a bishop to bash is like a fish without water. Worse, it raises the possibility that as a matter of fact, for many atheists, they do indeed need an enemy to give them their identity.
Does it? I don’t see why. It’s possible to be opposed to various things without depending on the things to give one an identity. I’m opposed to corn syrup in pasta sauce, but I don’t get my identity from that. I don’t even think about it, except when I’m looking at the ingredients list on a jar of pasta sauce, which is not very often.
But more important, it is necessary to be opposed to some things, even at the risk of getting part of one’s identity from that opposition. We’re all opposed to some things after all, and if that is part of our identity, well, so what? The issue is the quality, the rightness, of the opposition, not the mere fact of opposition.
The new atheism has also, I think, created an unhelpful climate for atheism to flourish. When people think of atheists now, they think about men who look only to science for answers, are dismissive of religion and over-confident in their own rightness.
Some people do, yes. But much of that is because ‘the new atheism’ gets misreported a lot and also gets scolded a lot, much the way Julian scolds it in this very piece. Furthermore, many other people don’t think of atheists that way but rather as refreshingly honest and unapologetic after years and years of tactful silence. What Julian fails to take into account, I think, is that many people long for a more uninhibited outspoken uncringing discussion of religion, and are pleased to get it. I think he overlooks the sense of liberation many people have gotten from the revival of explicit atheism.
Do the so-called New Atheists call themselves by that name, as in “Mr. R. Jeeves joined the New Atheists the other day, and learned the secret handshake.” Or is this a name applied by others?
Is the glue that holds the N. A’s together applied from the inside out or from the outside in? Because it sounds made up from the outside to me. It almost sounds like a label some talk radio entertainer might have come up with for easy scolding or ranting purposes.
My first reaction to the new atheists several years ago was that of Julian. After all, Bertand Russell had said it all, with more wit and elegance, 50 years ago or more. However, with time I’ve come to see what OB points out in her last sentence, the sense of liberation that many people have gotten from the revival of explicit atheism. An analogy would be when the “black and proud” movement first appeared: “Say it loud, I’m black and I’m proud”. The new militant atheists are saying: “say it loud, I’m an atheist and I’m proud”.
The name is applied by others, and it’s a pejorative, but the glue is some of each, I would say. Julian has a point about the Dawkins site – it does have some cringe-making aspects, and there certainly is obvious groupthink in the comments. (Not like here! No! This is not groupthink! There’s a lot of agreement, yes, but…short of groupthink.) (Okay it’s groupthink, but – um – ) But there’s also plenty of external application of glue – and in fact there’s a hell of a lot of groupthink in the glue-applications, too; they’re remarkably similar and predictable and repetitive. Julian’s is better than most of those, but…I do think it has some holes in it.
Yeah.
The funny thing is, Julian knows that. We all (he and Jeremy and I) talked about it at CFI a couple of years ago, and they talked to people who told them all about that sense of liberation. But maybe the impression has worn off since then.
While I own a copy of Julian’s Brief Intro book that I often recommend to friends (and will to continue to recommend), I was also a bit disappointed with that article.
Why is it that nobody I have seen questioning the tactics of the four horsemen actually addresses all four of them? Granted that he hasn’t read the books, but even so, the “fourth horseman” of Dennett does deal with some of the subtleties and does engage the moderates, as Julian advocates.
It also strikes me as odd to let the perceptions of the people a criticism is aimed at be the guide to evaluating that criticism. Maybe it’s a cultural thing, but here in the US it has been the Christian right that has been most vocal in perpetuating the idea that the “New Atheists” are so mean.
I found Dawkins to be very frank in stating what he believes, but invariably polite while stating it. But then, I’m relying more on the books themselves rather than interviews, so perhaps he has come off more mean spirited in a more informal setting that I missed.
Harris and Hitchens come closer to meeting this caricature of the bullying atheist, but for some reason get much less ink. Even in Julian’s article Dawkins gets quoted more than the other three combined. And Dennett, who least typifies the supposed attitude barely gets mentioned.
And don’t even get me started on the last little throwaway line about reason modifying our approach. My reason tells me that a variety of approaches, from the confrontational to the conciliatory, can be called for in specific circumstances. To deny the efficacy of direct, in your face confrontation of B.S. is to deny the history of every civil rights movement I am aware of.
I’m glad you did an NC on Baggini’s piece, O. I was genuinely surprised at – and really disappointed in – his article. I should think by now (and for a thinker like Baggini) that it’s crystal clear the nicey-nice, don’t ever criticize faith approach just hasn’t worked. I know, I know, Baggini would say that’s *not* what he’s proposing; he’s merely criticizing “arrogance” and “shrill” tones of voice. I’m sure he believes that, but it’s not so. As Dawkins and many others have aptly remarked, the same sort of criticism we use for political positions and other matters of public import are perceived as outrageous and beyond the pale when directed at religion. I think Baggini has fallen for that trap, though he doesn’t recognize that.
Also, it makes me quite cross when an academic (and a very keen thinker like Baggini) forgets he’s in the ivory tower. Articles like this recent one reveal to me that even some of my favorite thinkers really aren’t breathing the same air as the rest of us. The religion-in-public-life-front really is just as oppressive and disturbing as the “new atheists” (ugh) make it out to be. I’m sorry that Baggini can’t see that, but it’s an elementary mistake for someone as bright as he is to forget the comfortable world of academia, the intellectual breathing room he enjoys, just isn’t the norm. It makes me cross because then I have to say things that make me sound like some yokel who hates them thar pointy-headed intallekshuls, when that’s not the case.
I *do* feel liberated, discursively speaking. I *am* grateful the public conversation on religion has shifted, just a bit. It *does* make me feel like a weight is lifting from my shoulders. I *don’t* want the tempered, polite (read: deferential to religious people) atmosphere Baggini wants. Well, maybe I do, but only after the religious have been put back in their place. The same place the rest of us occupy. No special privileges, no discursive get out of jail free cards. Once we get there, I’ll be happy to live in Baggini’s world. But academic hand-wringing sure as hell isn’t going to get us there.
An atheists vs. atheists battle, wets (Mr. Baggini) vs. dries (Dawkins & his crowd). As a wet, I am annoyed by the excesses of the dries, such as the bus-adverts campaign. Yet this annoyance pales besides my anger at the religiously-excused iniquities of a chunk of the Godly.
I am, quite frankly, astonished at Julian Baggini’s excoriation of the four horsemen, so-called. They are at least more benign than their originals, War, Pestilence, Famine and Death. Besides, not having read them, and to criticise them for the effect that they have had, strikes me as irresponsible. In addition, he has missed Hitchen’s great wit, Harris’ passion, Dennett’s cunning, and Dawkins’ clarity.
And if Baggini thinks there is no reason to be up front about atheism, all he has to do is look around the world to see the depredations and injustices of which religion is the immediate cause. One would have thought that Baggini could have seen the value of publicly exposing idiocy such as that of the pope, or the multiple offences against good sense and justice of the Islamists if not Islam (though I would go for the latter, if given my choice).
Given the present machinations of the OIC and loyal subordinates, we may find ourselves without a voice, the internet a memory, and the freedom we now enjoy a dream. What on earth could have led Baggini to choose this moment, of all moments, to voice opinions about the destructiveness of four books?!!!!!
“One reason why Dawkins gets standing ovations when he speaks in the US is that many have never before heard a public, unashamed acknowledgement of athiesm.”
Yeah. This is the aspect that surprises me most, because as I mentioned above, I know Julian knows this; he met some of those people in July 2007 (and probably other times too, but I don’t think he comes to the US very often).
Sadly, he sounds all too much like Matthew Nisbet.
“Sadly, he sounds all too much like Matthew Nisbet.”
Come on, Ophelia, did you have to ruin a perfectly nice evening with red wine by mentioning he who must not be named?
Spot on, Tim, and bravo. To the rest of you, too. This is one of the reasons I like B&W, and have a certain affection (if I can say that about people I know only electronically without sounding silly) for the regular commenters here. Sure, it’s nice to talk with people who often agree with me – who doesn’t like that – but it’s awfully nice to have good, solid conversations (and sometimes disputes) with people of good will who honestly care about the issues on more than a surface level.
The problem with your last sentence, OB, is that “explicit atheism” isn’t the same as obsessive atheism, atheism that oversimplifies religious history and practice, or over-confident atheism. And yes, some of the perception of the Dawkins-Dennett brigade as that sort of atheist is due to misreporting…but a lot of it is also due to stuff they actually say, or inherent assumptions of their approach.
Baggini himself is an “explicit atheist,” after all. He makes no bones about his atheism. I don’t think his problem is with open atheism, explicit atheism, or unapologetic atheism. Rather, it’s with behavior that can be described as monomaniacal, or gloating, or smug. The line between being unapologetic and being smug is sometimes hard to draw, but it needs to be drawn nevertheless, and I think Dawkins and Dennett cross it from time to time.
Hitchens always does. But I find Hitchens hugely overrated for other reasons. I don’t think he should even be mentioned in the same category as Dawkins or Dennett.
Of the five books, Julian’s is the best. Either he had a better editor, or he’s a good self-editor. But his article on the delightful Norwegian website gets some things wrong, I think.
Yes, atheism/generalised naturalism is first to be defended as the best worldview, on its own merits. But all the mainstream big religions need relentless, reasoned, forceful criticism. Not only are the core tenets of mainstream Christianity completely unverified and wildly implausible; but also, if anything like the god of mainstream Christianity existed, it would deserve our defiance and contempt.
It also needs saying much louder and more often that if the core tenets of mainstream Christianity are even vaguely true, Islam is completely false, and vice versa, and likewise for any pair of the big religions. Honest religious folk used to say this, and the evil Ratzi almost said it and then was cowed into unsaying it. Now they fawn about talking meaninglessly of mutual ‘respect’.
Also, all philosophers of ethics, both theist and atheist, cannot point out too often or too stridently that, even if any gods exist, human morality cannot be based on supposed revelations from these gods. Euthyphro, of course.
I think Julian is right to question new atheism’s “error theory”, which is needed to explain why, if atheism is indeed the view evidence and reason demands, so many very bright people are still religious. Dennett attempts this at length, of course, and I wish Julian would at least skim through Dennett’s book. Dawkins tries also (unconvincingly, in my opinion).
Personally, I find talking to intelligent Christian friends deeply puzzling. They seem, to me, to be able to compartmentalise their minds, so that they apply completely different standards to their god, and are willing to forgive it anything.
Jenavir: You might add Buddhists to the category of the flexible crowd.
I know a Unitarian-Universalist minister online, from the Bible belt, and he’s definitely secularist, pro-Darwin, politically progressive, and while he may not read Dawkins and Hitchens (he might read Dennett about cognitive science), there’s nothing in Dawkins and Hitchens that would bother him particularly. In other words, Hitchens and Dawkins might be the radical fringe of the pro-secular liberation front, but they would not
make an alliance with the flexible crowd impossible.
Jenavir, true, explicit atheism isn’t the same as obsessive atheism – I chose ‘explicit’ somewhat hastily, in an effort to avoid the more familiar and tendentious pejoratives, and it wasn’t an ideal choice – but then I don’t think ‘obsessive’ is a very good choice either, and I think Julian’s rather snide remark charging atheists with ‘obsessively’ reading about atheism was…well, rather snide. I don’t really know what ‘obsessive’ atheism is – ‘obsessive’ being one of those irregular conjugations, of course. I’m interested, you’re keen, she’s obsessive. In other words it can be, and I think in Julian’s piece was, just an abusive way of saying ‘more interested in X than I am.’
Good point about secularism though. If only Julian had made it! I agree with much of what you say, but I don’t agree that that’s what Julian actually said in that article.
@Jenavir: I agree that the bigger battle to be fought is for secularism, but the distinction between angry secularist rants and angry athiest rants is fuzzy at best. Arguing against a privilege historically bestowed will be perceived by the privileged as a direct attack on their beliefs. To take a silly example: companies simply switching their end-of-year advertising slogans from “Merry Christmas” to “Happy Holidays” sustains the belief among many Christians that they are a *persecuted* group in the US. Imagine what their reaction would be like to a firm argument for a secularist position, particularly when the political question, as in stem cell research, has a significant moral dimension [“Those hateful, militant athiests!”]. When people argue that abortion should be outlawed because it violates the right to life bestowed by God, the dynamics of the discussion make angry secularist and athiest rants indistinguishable.
Apparently the “old atheism” wasn’t a threat to our “faithful” for a few hundred years
“Christianity is the most perverted system that ever shone on man.” -Thomas Jefferson
Yet our “faithful” find the “new atheism” a threat to them?
ROFLMAO
I have not read any of the books mentioned in this thread, and know only of them via reviews. (That BTW has got me through the odd exam in times past.)
G’s point about faith is interesting. The adherents of each of the Abrahamic religions, and the adherents of Hinduism, Zoroastrianism and certain others, are required to accept that everything recorded and described in holy text took place as described. Such stuff is easily dealt with.
But certain other ‘religions’ such as Zen and Yoga are about exploring one’s inner being, very much in keeping with the old Delphic maxim ‘know yourself’. Interestingly, their theoretical frameworks do not take priority over their practice, which works, in the sense that it lives up to its claims.
For most people, whatever religion they have is a culturally acquired ‘faith of our fathers’. In all of the Abrahamics, there is a hefty dose of ancestor worship.
While religions like Christianity and Islam are easy meat for rationalist critique, the likes of Zen and Yoga offer a bit more of a challenge.
“I have not read any of the books mentioned in this thread, and know only of them via reviews.”
Which is of course entirely blameless – as long as one doesn’t then go on to pretend to know what is in the books.
“Hitch has always been kind of a prick.”
Well, maybe, but that can be a good thing at times – when he’s our prick, so to speak. The prickier the better when it came to Kissinger, for instance. He was a good prick there. So I suppose I cut him some slack the rest of the time – not infinite slack, but some.
I presume when Julian says he hasn’t read any of the ‘Four Horsemen’ he means their explicitly atheistic works since I’d be surprised if he hadn’t read any Dawkins or Dennett.
I think he does have a point that many non-believers would or have learned nothing from popular books about atheism by Dawkins and co – I have to confess that I find their work (I’ve only read Dawkins’ book, and some of the shorter output from the others) tells me nothing, and provides limited entertainment. There are also specific trains of argument used by the likes of Dawkins that I think are blind alleys and make me a little uneasy when I read them, but I’d rather see a confrontation of those arguments rather than an unconvincing blanket dismissal.
I think Julian makes too strong a claim for what atheism means – he may summarise what the majority of atheists believe, but that doesn’t mean that atheism means monism and materialism – I;d have thought Julian would be more careful than that given what he then goes on to accuse the new atheists as believing about religion!
The lines about rationalism and reason in atheism versus theism seem like so much relativism to me.
The claim that there is ‘much more to religion than metaphysics’ while true is pretty weakly supported by such a vague and ephemeral list of things like “orienting oneself to the transcendent” (whatever the fuck that means) or “cultivating certain attitudes”. This is a rather tangential version of the old defence of religion that it may have some beneficial effects even if it is based on untruth. That may be true but I think you’d have to be ready to withstand a counter argument that this is the sort of patronising advocacy of ‘soma’ for the people that we’d expect from the objectivists.
Finishing on a plea for engagement with moderate religious groups for secular aims probably highlights the emptiness of Julian’s position since people like Dawkins have always adopted this position in practice (e.g. his letters with his Bishop mate) while engaging in criticism at a metaphysical level, like grown-ups.
It pains me to say it but I’ve always felt Julian’s position has had a rather contrarian character – and I think he’s rather opportunistically taken advantage of that contrarianism parasitising the ‘new atheism’ to help his own profile (I’m sure I recently saw he was doing a talk on the ‘new atheism’ and why it sucks).
It goes without saying that the claim that you can attack something you haven’t read based on the “general tone and direction the new atheism they represent has adopted. This is not a function of what exactly these books say, but of how they are perceived,” is absolute bollocks of the highest order, and something julian really ought to be ashamed of writing.
It’s a bit like me claiming that this ‘Islam’ I keep hearing about really ought to be condemned based on some stuff I’ve read about it in the Daily Mail and the Sun.
[Also – what’s so ‘new’ about the ‘new atheism’? Dawkins and Dennett have been explicitly and publicly atheist for years. The current focus on atheism and atheists may be new, but they certainly are not.]
“I presume when Julian says he hasn’t read any of the ‘Four Horsemen’ he means their explicitly atheistic works since I’d be surprised if he hadn’t read any Dawkins or Dennett.”
No, quite right, he has of course read other books of theirs. (I know this because of for instance editing an interview he did with Dennett for the mag; interviews always start from reading the work.)
“I think he does have a point that many non-believers would or have learned nothing from popular books about atheism by Dawkins and co”
Well, he could have a point if he knew what is in the books, but I don’t think he really can have a point without having read or at least skimmed them.
I wouldn’t have objected if he had said for instance ‘I’ve never felt motivated to read them because from what I could gather they sounded like popular accounts of a subject I’m already familiar with, so I didn’t think I would learn anything from them.’ He could have put the claim more carefully and reasonably and that would have been fine. But to say, rather irritably, ‘Why on earth would I devote precious reading hours to books which largely tell me what I already believe?’ when he doesn’t know what they tell him is just…1) inaccurate and 2) rude. As I’ve murmured…I really don’t think he would like to be discussed in such terms himself. I think if a reviewer said ‘Why on earth would I devote precious reading hours to Atheism a short introduction which tells me what I already believe?’ after admitting not having read the book at all – Julian would be irritated, and rightly so.
“I’d rather see a confrontation of those arguments rather than an unconvincing blanket dismissal.”
Exactly. Especially a blanket dismissal in the absence of having read the books.
JB: “This is most evident when you consider the poverty of the new atheism’s ‘error theory’, which is needed to explain why, if atheism is indeed the view evidence and reason demands, so many very bright people are still religious. The usual answers given to this are not good enough…Either many religious people are not as irrational as they seem, or atheists are not entitled to assume they are as rational as they seem to themselves.”
How strange! I actually thought it was a rather good article!
And, as Baggini notes in the quotes above, I find some of the “new athiests”, at times, rather too sure of reliability of their reasoning.
OB: “If Julian hasn’t read the books he can’t know that they largely tell him what he already believes.”
No, he can’t “know”.
But he could make a reasonable guess.
I have read TGD. There’s nothing terribly novel or surprising in it (aside, perhaps, from the “child abuse” statement).
OB: “It’s not particularly reasonable simply to assume that they largely tell him what he already believes. That might be the case, but he can’t know that without at least skimming them.”
I’m not convinced it is a unreasonable as people seem to be making out.
In fact, I think it is possible to make an argument that it is quite reasonable to make such assumptions.
For instance, I think it is quite safe for me to assume that I know what the Vatican will say about abortion, without me having to waste time reading what the pope actually says.
Keith – that’s the statement I regard as essentially relativism.
I’m also not entirely sure how to parse the sentence – he seems to think that people have the property of being rational or irrational and that this somehow then can be applied to every one of their ideas, any of their ideas not corresponding to this property thus being contradictions – which seems to me to be a rather flawed position.
Just one quick point to defend focus on “new atheism as perceived by wider public” rather than “exact content of four horsemen books”. Virtually everyone I meet who is not steeped in this stuff in some way tells me that atheists are dogmatic anti-religionists and they always cite Dawkins as an example. There often summarise what they think Dawkins believes incorrectly, of course. But my point is that if we now have good reason to believe that this is the impression being created, we should think about altering our tune.
One point worth making is that, of course, the fame of the horsemen was not the result of a co-ordinated plan. So it is hardly the fault of them that the cumulative effect has been to create a relentlessly negative and strident image of atheism. My point is about seeing NOW that this is what has happened and altering what we do next accordingly.
I probably wasn’t clear enough about that in the article, perhaps because I wasn’t clear enough about it full stop!
Me: “I have not read any of the books mentioned in this thread, and know only of them via reviews.”
OB: “Which is of course entirely blameless – as long as one doesn’t then go on to pretend to know what is in the books.”
Me: I’ll stick my neck out: bet they say God is a waste of space. With variations.
“There often summarise what they think Dawkins believes incorrectly, of course. But my point is that if we now have good reason to believe that this is the impression being created, we should think about altering our tune.”
I think you’re right that the ‘public’ has something of an (innacurate) view of Dawkins and other high profile atheists as being dogmatic religion haters – but I think I disagree that this is necessarily the fault of Dawkins and co, and therefore whether “we should think about altering our tune.”
My impression is that this view of Dawkins in particular (Dennett has minimal profile, Harris similarly in the UK, Hitchens is a bit of an all round knob) has largely been created by those opposed to him and his message – and this is because they either read into what he says their own prejudices and fears, or they seek to deliberatly mislead – I think it is a bit of both.
So, if most people are getting their view of what Dawkins says second hand from people who are not actually attending to what Dawkins is actually saying, how can he change the message to affect the image that ‘new atheism’ has got?
I think all four of the books are really not exactly about proving there’s no God. They’re really about deference. As such, I’ve read them all and found them interesting (to varying degrees) despite always having been an atheist.
Pre-horsemen, I think there was an attitude even among atheists that religion should not be blamed for anything. The attitude was that religious folk may be wrong, but their views aren’t palpably absurd. So we must be polite and respectful. We must even accept the need to remain quietly in the closet, because atheism is offensive to people. That may not be the thinking everywhere, but it’s the thinking in my neck of the woods (Dallas, Texas).
All four of the books are about questioning the rationale behind this sort of deference. Part of the way they work is through arguments (some good, some not), but part is through “attitude.” The authors question deference by being irreverent (and hilariously so, I’d say) (So that’s one reason to read them. They’re fun!!)
I think these books have been a great success, in the sense that they have moved a lot of unbelievers from being deferential about religion, and closeted. The problem is that once you’re no longer deferential, you can then go further and become hostile. The public at large doesn’t see the difference. Which isn’t really entirely their fault, because the public manner of some of these folks and their supporters really is fairly hostile.
In any case, the books are worth reading and they’ve done good, even if at this point a PR firm is needed to give Atheism Inc. a better image.
“But my point is that if we now have good reason to believe that this is the impression being created, we should think about altering our tune.”
Yeah – I see the force of that.
But so far at least, after thinking about it I always think we shouldn’t, partly because I think the whole thing works as a kind of extortion and that it shouldn’t be allowed to win. First, believers misdescribe what Dawkins and co. say, then nonbelievers heed what believers say and urge vocal atheists to tone things down, in other words to go back into the closet and shut the door. It’s the old ‘if we stop going to the mall then the terrorists win’ line – if we stop criticizing theism then the theists who misrepresent atheism win.
Just so, PM and OB. You are articulating the idea that I tried to express earlier about letting the target of a criticism mischaracterize the content and tone of that criticism.
Since some of the more vocal media sources seem to see Christian persecution as a reliable theme to attract right leaning viewers, anything short of abject surrender to their view can be painted as rude and aggressive.
I don’t like to offend people, and I try not to offend religious people, with the possible exception of Beale.
However, I’ve found that when I reveal that I’m an atheist in so many websites, I face a barrage of hostility from believers. Far from being rude and aggressive, I end up almost apologizing for my atheism, while the pro-God crowd attack and attack. By the way, I’m not speaking of fundamentalists from the Bible belt, but of believers in a deity, who may be neo-pagans, from all sorts of weird new Christian cults, but above all, hostile to all atheism. The bullies are not the atheists, but the God-crowd.
There’s a further complication, at least for me. I too don’t like to offend people (believe it or not), but at the same time I think there are subjects and ideas that people shouldn’t be offended by, and that fact disinhibits me in some contexts. I would never in a million years tell anyone ‘you’re ugly’ or ‘you’re stupid’; or use a racial epithet; and so on. But talking frankly about religion doesn’t seem to me to be in the same category (although there are contexts in which I don’t feel comfortable about doing it, and don’t do it).
The more I think about it, you could compare the new atheists to the early second wave feminists (the so-called bra burners), who were accused of offending decent family values, but were in reality reacting against thousands of years of being silenced. When a group which has been silenced first speaks out, it sounds “offensive” or in bad taste, but the aggression, historically speaking, has come from those who silence, not those who are silenced. As Jean says above, we atheists (I’ve been an atheist all my life) learned to keep silent, to “respect” religion, and when we speak out, we’re often clumsy (well, Russell is always elegant, but he was an aristocrat and had the right to speak his mind.) because we’re venturing into a new territory and because society has structured things so that “offending” someone’s faith, that is, challenging religious beliefs, isn’t within the possibilities of polite discourse. The more silenced a group has been, the more the first sentence uttered will tend to be just a scream. For example, over-worked working mothers scream a lot more than Wall Street bankers do.
JB: “…which is needed to explain why, if atheism is indeed the view evidence and reason demands, so many very bright people are still religious.”
Yes, why are bright, apparently rational, religious people NOT persuaded by evidence and reason?
“Either many religious people are not as irrational as they seem, or atheists are not entitled to assume they are as rational as they seem to themselves.”
Perhaps there are situations where it is rational to be irrational?
For instance, suppose a person lost someone very dear to them, and the trauma was so great that they simply could not function if they thought they would never see that someone again…
Might it be rational to believe in an afterlife as a mechanism for coping and continuing?
Yes exactly, amos, in fact I’ve been mulling a follow-up post on just that subject all afternoon while away from the desk. Feminists were indeed endlessly taxed with being too noisy, ‘strident,’ extreme, etc etc etc – as were abolitionists in the three decades or so before the civil war (Nicholas Beale please note).
Well I’ll just do that post instead of going on here.
but the distinction between angry secularist rants and angry athiest rants is fuzzy at best.
Hmm, see, I disagree with that. In the stuff you mentioned, Tim–the “war on Christmas,” stem cells, abortion–the religious right in America *does* target their ire to secularists, not atheists. Sure, they take it as a war on their beliefs, but in ALL of those instances the beliefs in question belong to a minority of Christians as well as a minority of Americans in general. I don’t think that’s a coincidence.
OB, I don’t think Hitchens being a prick is a good thing for the simple reason that being a prick needs to be targeted, honed, and *just* before it’s good. Hitch is rarely any of the above.
The analogy to feminism is a good one, though, especially considering the double standard: even considering the worst that Dawkins comes up with, it’s actually much milder than what extreme religious people come out with on a daily basis.
Jenavir: Yeah, I think I missed the mark in that post. Thanks for pointing it out.