Who you calling crude, buddy?
It’s a funny thing how the ‘athests should shut up’ crowd is constantly passing back and forth this old crumbling shredding battered item labeled ‘atheists use intemperate language’ and then when you look at them turn out to be so unpleasant themselves. They’re a vituperative bunch to be giving advice to other people about not being so foghorn-like.
Look at Mark Vernon for instance. He’s always boasting of his own superlative and superior uncertainty, his better than anything else agnosticism, and yet when it comes to characterizing people he disagrees with, why, he throws uncertainty to the winds and just gets right down to name-calling.
Julian Baggini was asking militant atheists to turn down the volume in the Guardian yesterday. What I think Julian hasn’t quite realised is that this movement, from which he wants to distance himself, is evangelical in nature – which is to say loud in nature, and crude and ultimately dehumanising.
Well same to you, bub.
Moreover, and ironically, he won’t understand it unless he uses religious categories to analyse it. It will tarnish anyone who wants to use the word ‘atheist’ of themselves, much as fundamentalist Christianity or Islam does for Christians and Muslims.
That’s Mr Agnostic, Mr Uncertain. Nice, isn’t it? ‘Militant’ (you know, bomb-throwing, bus-exploding, mass murdering) atheists are evangelical in nature, loud in nature, crude, dehumanizing, a source of tarnish, like fundamentalist Christianity or Islam. That’s civil, that’s temperate, that’s fair, that’s reasonable.
He then jokes about Julian calling him ‘fluffy.’ Quite right; I wouldn’t call him fluffy either; I would call him just plain nasty. But unlike him I offer genuine quotes to illustrate why.
I confess that I find Mark Vernon’s writings to have much the same effect on me as fingernails scraped down a blackboard.
Case in point: his recent review of Mark Haddon’s interview with Joan Bakewell. Vernon ends up with:
“Haddon’s position struck me as a good example of a kind of secular fundamentalism, though one that is in his case entirely benign, even compassionate. His absolute conviction in the materialism of the world meant that he was prepared to reinterpret everything, even his life’s work – writing – in order not to shake that conviction”.
Somehow, I wonder if Mark Vernon knows what it is to shake his own conviction?
I’m not sure what Mark Vernon means when he says ‘religious categories’ and I don’t think he does either. I’ve never met anyone generically ‘religious’. They always tend to follow one specific religion. Urging people to analyse belief from a Christian (or Muslim, Buddhist etc) doesn’t seem very agnostic to me.
It’s possible you could argue for privilege so that to study Christians you have to be Christian, but that would seem to kill Comparative Religion. It could enliven lectures on Aztec archaeology though.
You would think smug self-certainty would be incompatible with agnosticism. Instead, it is very close to being diagnostic.
That isn’t just an off-hand barb: My direct personal experience with people who proudly claim the title ‘agnostic’ is that a solid majority exhibit strong signs of the same dogmatic rigidity about their agnosticism that Vernon displays (though by no means ALL of them). What’s that about?
I suspect there’s some basic epistemological failure lurking beneath the surface here. Most atheists I know are also science-minded skeptical types: I (and the other atheists I know and those whose works I’ve read) don’t claim absolute certainty about anything, and all of my beliefs about the world are subject to revision based on new evidence and reasoning. Extraordinary claims would require extraordinary evidence of course: If God started talking to me (and if my cognitive capacities were otherwise in order), I would suspect hallucinations or pranks before supernatural causes – and then look for evidence!
So it is simply not the case that I’m dead certain beyond all possible doubt that there is no God: Rather, I have yet to encounter any evidence or reasoning whatsoever that supports the conclusion that such an entity exists, and I have encountered overwhelming evidence and reasoning which suggests that people invent imaginary beings like gods and become convinced they are real for all sorts of irrational and subjective reasons. Thus, I don’t believe any God or gods exist, period. Yes, I am an atheist – but that’s subject to change, just like any other belief produced by evidence and reasoning. Of course, it is also massively unlikely to change: My evidence and reasons for rejecting gods are every bit as well developed as my evidence and reasons for accepting other very-solid-but-technically-subject-to-change beliefs, such as my belief that the Earth rotates on its axis and revolves around the Sun, or my belief that the operations of natural selection on reproducing organisms are primarily responsible for producing the life forms I see around me. And, just as I would say that I know something about evolutionary biology and basic solar system astronomy, I’d say I know there is no God. But saying the word “know” does not imply dogmatic certainty about that any more than when I say it about an ordinary empirical claim.
Anyway, enough about me (and most atheists I know) – back to agnostics (or at least the dogmatic ones like Mark Vernon). They are, generally speaking, as capable as me of seeing all the flaws in the arguments for God’s existence: You won’t hear Mark Vernon defending the embarrassingly bad Ontological Proof or citing the Bible as evidence for God’s existence, for example. Agnostics are also capable of recognizing that people have a lot of emotionally and culturally powerful reasons for clinging to belief in God even in the absence for independent evidence that such beings exist: After all, if they thought there were enough evidence to simply believe, they wouldn’t be agnostics.
Nevertheless, agnostics reject the conclusion – atheism – clearly supported by the evidence and reasoning that they can and do recognize. Generally, their rejection rests on some variation of the claim that “We just can’t know that God doesn’t exist!” But why are agnostics fetishizing the word “know” in this way? They consistently (mis-)interpret atheists’ knowledge claims as a rigid conviction of absolute certainty and hold themselves superior to such “dogmatism” – and they willfully ignore it when atheists say the sorts of things I’ve said above about beliefs being subject to change based on new evidence and reasoning. Also, agnostics are not (in my experience) agnostic about *all* conceivable knowledge claims: They don’t say things like “You are free to believe that the Earth rotates on its axis and revolves around the Sun is, but you can’t really claim to know it, and I for one must maintain principled agnosticism about the matter.” They are cordoning off some beliefs – God beliefs – for special dispensation, which is always a bad sign.
Of what is it a sign, though? I cannot help but think that agnostics of Vernon’s sort maintain a strong emotional desire to keep the door open to God belief: They know there are no good reasons to believe in the existence of gods, but they really really want to believe, so they fixate on and fetishize uncertainty. Their “principled” uncertainty becomes an identifying characteristic with a great deal of emotional investment, and anyone who questions or challenges their uncertainty or the “principle” behind it is thus challenging their very identity – which generates all-too predictable defensiveness.
Of course, Mark Vernon becomes defensive well in advance of any direct challenge and apparently goes out looking for offenses to his “principled” agnostic identity, which makes him an especially egregious case of the common malady. But that’s because he is, as Claire points out, “a big doody-head.” :-)
*standing ovation*
Like what G said.
If Agnostic were really honest about their uncertainty, half of them (statistically speaking) should routinely be run over on the street while frozen wondering if the approaching automobile really exists or not.
‘Generally, their rejection rests on some variation of the claim that “We just can’t know that God doesn’t exist!”‘
Which simply ignores the far more relevant fact that we have vastly more and better reasons to think God doesn’t exist than we have to think God does exist. Our situation is not complete epistemic stasis, frozen in a stupid shrug and ‘I dunno!’ Yet that is Vernon’s position – we’re supposed to say, with him, ‘I just have no idea, I can’t imagine, I have no opinion one way or the other, and anyone who does is a dogmatic noisy evangelical elbow.’
[elbow: new generic non-sexist term of abuse via body part; interchageable with poopoo head, doody head, etc.]
There is another kind of agnostic: the “I couldn’t care less type”. They are not dogmatic at all; for one reason or another, they’re not interested in whether God exists or not. While Mark Vernon is obsessed with God’s existence, the agnostic of the type I’m describing just couldn’t care less. They are often practical, not intellectual although not necessarily not intelligent, skeptical about all big questions. You’re not likely to find them in philosophy seminars.
Agnostics are in thrall to the popular misconception that knowledge requires certainty.
Considering that there is ample epistemic justification for the atheist position, the only way the agnostic claim – that is it is impossible to know one way or the other – could be true is if god actually exists. That way atheists would have beliefs that are justified but false, and theists would have beliefs that are unjustified but true.
That means any argument that justifies the agnostic position would simultaneously undermine it by justifying belief in god, and thus making is possible to know that god exists!
G: Yes, I’m up on my feet with Owen. Hear hear!
I would add this: If God exists, then there will be no doubt in his mind that I exist. Why then, under those conceivable circumstances, couldn’t he have returned the compliment? Or would his position on me be that of Laplace: ‘Does Ian MacDougall exist? I have no need of that hypothesis’;
which in the circumstances postulated here, I would find discourteous.
We can therefore rule out God’s existence. If he did exist, he would have better manners. Call it the Etiquettal Disproof if you wish.
“If God started talking to me (and if my cognitive capacities were otherwise in order), I would suspect hallucinations or pranks before supernatural causes – and then look for evidence!” It is generally taken that way by observers looking on. But if those experiencing such were capable of doing the same, there would be no such disease as schizophrenia.
I read a news report once in the early 1960s. Pope Pius XII was guest of honour at some public meeting in Italy when a man rushed towards him proclaiming in a loud voice to be Jesus Christ returned. He was very smartly grabbed by the guards and trucked away to the slammer.
That brought all sorts of possibilities to mind.
“If he did exist, he would have better manners. Call it the Etiquettal Disproof if you wish.”
That’s pretty much exactly my claim in Russell’s and Udo’s book. I called it a deal-breaker. I think it is.
Perhaps the agnostic position is not really based on ‘not knowing’ on accumulated evidence but on social reasons such as refusing to adopt a position where you are forced to choose between parties to an obnoxious disagreement you have no personal stake in.
Added to this is that although they have no scientific evidence for God’s existence, they do have quite a lot of Argument from Authority and personal anecdotal evidence that to most people is very influential.
But then agnostic is the wrong word. (I don’t know what the right one would be.)
It seems to me that the essential debate between the atheists, agnostics and the religionists is pretty much the same debate humanity has been having with itself for thousands of years, except that in the West the advance of science has seen the forced retreat of religion, which I think is an excellent thing. But perhaps Mark Vernon is right that some contemporary public atheists are displaying bad manners at times (although he is wrong to characterise the entire movement as being bad-mannered).
Good manners aren’t fluffy. Fallacious reasoning and wishful thinking are fluffy. Kowtowing to fallacious reasoning and wishful thinking is fluffy. But aren’t personal attacks (body parts or not) not only bad manners, but also fallacious (the Ad Hominem fallacy)? Is it really that much different to call Vernon “nasty” as it is to label the atheist movement evangelical, crude and dehumanising? In my opinion, both epithets are unfair and one-dimensional and side-track the debate away from decent philosophical inquiry and into mud-slinging (which might be fun sometimes, but it does little to advance the plight of humanity). And I don’t think a chorus of “they started it!” will help much.
Maybe I’m just naive, but I’m assuming all sides are genuinely engaging in this debate to advance the plight of humanity, so perhaps if both sides recognised this and left off the insults and name-calling then maybe it would be a little more productive and enjoyable for all? Sharp reasoning does not have to equate to a sharp tongue.
Actually, Rose, every insult is not an ad hominem fallacy: If one proffers insults to the person presenting an argument instead of presenting a reasoned criticism of their argument, that is fallacious. If one proffers the occasional insult in addition to presenting reasoned criticism of the position of one’s opponent, that’s just rhetorical flourish.
In the case of Mark Vernon, to label him nasty isn’t even an insult – it’s an observation characterizing the consistent style and content of his writings. If he doesn’t want to be called nasty (and worse things), he might try not saying nasty things about everyone he disagrees with. As OB points out in the post you commented on, she doesn’t simply call Vernon nasty – she illustrates his nastiness with his own words.
Simply calling someone a jerk is uncalled for, and accomplishes no good at all. Calling someone on it when they act like a jerk is a different thing entirely: We hold people accountable for their bad behavior precisely because we want to discourage that sort of thing. In order to successfully discourage bad behavior, however, you have to be able to tell the difference between the two.
So to answer your question, “Is it really that much different to call Vernon ‘nasty’ as it is to label the atheist movement evangelical, crude and dehumanising?”
Yes, it is very much different. The difference is whether or not the adjectives are accurate and warranted.
As to your broader point about good manners, I think you are either being lured in by or simply perpetuating the double standard discussed in OB’s prior post quoting Mill, which I urge you to read (or re-read). (I also suggest reading the excellent comments – to which I contributed almost nothing, so I’m not tooting my own horn!) In actual practice, people writing and speaking in defense of any traditional majority opinion are given free reign to be as nasty as they want, and all the public pressure to be polite and conciliatory is put on those who dare to buck majority opinion. Giving in to that pressure does absolutely nothing to alleviate it, of course – because it’s motivated by the desire to silence minority opinion, not by any actual commitment to good manners. In contrast, I would argue that forthrightly and publicly standing up to that pressure – and calling attention to the decidedly uneven standards of courtesy while doing so – makes it harder to maintain the manifestly unfair double standard.
@ amos (several comments back):
As I said, not ALL agnostics display the kind of smug dogmatic certainty that characterizes everything Vernon writes on the subject. I’m not sure the people you’re describing even count as agnostics though. The term I’ve heard going around for a few years, which I really like, is apatheists. Nicely self-explanatory, that word – and it rolls off the tongue.
Strictly speaking, decrying the morals of one’s opponent is no flourish, it goes to the heart of forensic rhetoric, which is generally concerned with demonstrating that one’s opponent is a liar.
Meanwhile, what we seem to have with these so-called ‘agnostics’ looks to me like a classic case of dogmatic scepticism – “I know you can’t know, so how dare you suggest otherwise”. It also infects many alleged ‘postmodernists’. Against this needs to be placed a more thorough Pyrrhonian scepticism, which says we cannot be certain of our ignorance, therefore it behoves us to consider the actual evidence with an open mind. I believe even Richard Dawkins would, for example, concede the possible existence of a supernatural power if he saw it turn, say, Lake Geneva into whipped cream and Mont Blanc into a giant meringue.
Apatheists, that’s a good description of the one or two whom I know. They just don’t attach any importance to the question of God’s existence.
Rose, what G said, plus a bit more.
“But perhaps Mark Vernon is right that some contemporary public atheists are displaying bad manners at times (although he is wrong to characterise the entire movement as being bad-mannered).”
But Vernon isn’t and can’t be right “that some contemporary public atheists are displaying bad manners at times” for the simple reason that that’s not what he said. He can’t be right that X when he didn’t say X. It may be true that X, but that’s a different thing. What he did say is what you said he is wrong to say – and that is all he said.
So, no – calling him nasty for saying what he said is (as G pointed out) not the same as his casual and wholly evidence- and example-free assertions about ‘militant atheists.’
G and OB, I find the label “militant atheist” irritating and unfair too, and I agree with you both in the main. If I remember rightly, there was a fashion in the media about ten years ago to label feminists “militant” as well, or shrill or strident, very similar to the way the outspoken atheist movement is being characterised by people who disagree with it.
I think part of the problem here is that there ARE some people who define themselves as atheists or feminists who at times HAVE said certain things that sticks in the public mind and makes it easy for detractors to sling mud at an entire movement (which is what Vernon is doing, he says as much himself). Think Andrea Dworkin claiming that all sex is rape, or Christopher Hitchens, in the Four Horsemen DVD, stating that Muslims should be extirpated, and I have seen Richard Dawkins make allusions that theists are ignorant and uneducated on an interview on YouTube. Public intellectuals need to be aware of PR just as much as any other public figure and be considered about what they say in public, so as not to make it too east for others to fight against them unfairly.
It just seems to me that mud is getting slung from both sides. I’m a card-carrying atheist (you’d think I would be seeing as this is one of my favourite websites) but I just don’t want to see the debate getting bogged down in mud. Maybe Vernon really IS nasty, but surely OB, you could have made the point without seemingly attacking him personally by calling him “just plain nasty”?
I don’t know, maybe I’m just fluffy myself . . . a big fluffy left-wing militant atheist feminist pussy.
I dunno how fluffy you are, Rose. I’m told I’m a bit girly myself, which isn’t easy for a 240lb bald man ;-)
But your position is fluffy and naive in this sense: Compare your own examples. Hitchens is the most vituperative of all public outspoken atheist, and a noted warmonger quite aside from his atheism (because, like a few other otherwise intelligent commentators, he went way the fuck off the deep end after 9/11). And you cite something hateful he said in an interview for a documentary you saw. Do you have extensive and repeated quotations of him saying overheated and rude and foolish things in his book about atheism? Has anyone else produced such quotations? Richard Dawkins has multiple books on atheism and related subjects. And yes, he was once recorded making a rude comment about some woman who asked him an incredibly stupid, dogmatic (non-)question. In his many-times-many recorded public comments and his gigabytes of text on the web and in print, and he once said of some woman that she had “a stupid face” (after she had in fact said something manifestly stupid). Oh, the horrors! (And, incidentally, Dawkins felt rather badly about that comment afterward and said so.)
Yes, someone who is more or less constantly in the public eye will sometimes be cranky, and possibly even outright rude or unfair sometimes. So? You seem to be holding atheists to an absurdly high standard from the standpoint of either courtesy or PR.
Meanwhile, Mark Vernon, Maddy Bunting, and countless other god-botherers and defenders of god-botherers write essays every other week or so maligning atheists as rude and militant and what all, and they don’t even bother to give any actual examples of things atheists have said or written to back up those accusations.
So let’s compare: On the one hand we have a handful of published atheists – a few of whom have, over years of outspoken public discourse, on a few occasions come across as rude or intolerant, but who overwhelmingly stick to reasoned argument and often even bend over backwards to be nice.
On the other hand, we have people who regularly and willfully publish insults, lies and calumny directed towards the atheists with whom they disagree, generally without offering evidence or arguments at all, or only egregiously bad ones. They use every underhanded rhetorical trick in the book, writing screeds dripping with (actual) ad hominems and cheap emotional ploys and slanted language, and generally don’t make any effort to be polite or meet anyone half-way.
So why do you feel compelled to come along and tell EVERYONE to play nice? Your refusal to acknowledge the massive, obvious, repetitive and manifestly unjust double standard of courtesy at play in this area is, frankly, puzzling to me.
I personally don’t think it’s a precondition for saying “be nice” that each side has been equally unnice.
But as to how unnice Mark Vernon is–not actually so unnice. I know him and regularly read him (including his books), and I’d say this particular passage is unusually pointed. He does have the view that atheism is a flawed outlook, and that can be maddening, but he usually expresses it with civility.
I’m just guessing, but I’m going to speculate that Mark was more acerbic than usual in this passage because he had been called part of “the fluffy brigade” in Julian’s Guardian column. That’s what this little blog entry was responding to.
So–he was called a name, so he called the atheist movement some names, so now people here are calling Mark names. Is it really so puzzling for Rose to say “enough with the name calling?”
Jean, with all due respect, the passage isn’t just pointed – it’s abusive, and it’s abusive in a vacuum. It’s mere name-calling. I consider mere name-calling (by which I mean name-calling in a vacuum – name-calling out of nowhere, name-calling with no example or evidence at all) to be nasty, and I consider it legitimate to say so. I think Rose’s equivalency is odd – on the grounds that my name-calling wasn’t mere, it was in reply to something specific.
If you’re right and Vernon was more acerbic (I would call it rude, or nasty) than usual because he was annoyed at what Julian said – then it is if anything ruder than ever to transfer his annoyance at Julian to the group that Julian was chastizing, who hadn’t called Vernon anything.
“So–he was called a name, so he called the atheist movement some names, so now people here are calling Mark names.”
Let’s re-word that. So – he was called a name by Julian, so he called the atheist movement (who had nothing to do with Julian’s name-calling apart from being the chief object of it) some names, so now people here are calling Mark nasty.
Yeah, we are. Is that so puzzling? It’s not generally considered grown-up or polite to transfer irritation at an aggressor to a bystander, particularly when the bystander is in fact the chief object of the aggressor’s aggression.
Say Jones writes a piece scolding ‘militant’ feminists, and in the process calls a fellow enemy of ‘militant’ feminists, Smith, ‘fluffy,’ and Smith reacts by calling the ‘militant’ feminists a bunch of names. The ‘militant’ feminists call Smith nasty for calling them names. Are the ‘militant’ feminists really on a par with Jones and Smith here? I say no, they’re not. I say Smith’s reaction was nasty and the objects of it have every right to say so.
To be sure, I could have called Vernon’s reaction nasty rather than calling him nasty – but I think for the time it took him to write that post, at least, he was nasty. So I’m not very regretful.
But wait, but wait…I think “nasty” is a fairly descriptive word, not a name, but “big doody head”? I took it that was the kind of thing Rose thought was going a little far. But I’ll stop trying to read her mind. I’m sure she’s capable of speaking for herself.
I was mainly responding to G’s point that there’s a pattern of abusiveness in Mark Vernon, but not in Dawkins. I think that is not so. I do suspect Mark was miffed about being referred to as part of “the fluffy brigade,” and (yes) he didn’t want to fire back directly at Julian. So,he fired back at “the atheist movement” instead. He does have long-standing objections to atheism, so this isn’t a one off thing, but there’s a sort of insulting hyperbole here that goes beyond his usual objections.
Maybe he should have just called Julian a big doody head.
Ha! Well doody-head was a joke. But I don’t think Rose was talking about that, since she specifically said in both comments that she thought my ‘nasty’ was excessive.
I do think there’s a pattern of at least…excess, in Vernon; of uncritically buying into the whole meme that atheists are too dogmatic, too certain, etc etc. I’m pretty sure he has said this over and over (to, frankly, the point of monotony as well as annoyingness) at Comment is Free as well as his own place, and that that’s why I’ve written Comments about him before.
So now I suppose I’ll have to find some examples, to back that up…
But anyway…look: if you’re right that Vernon didn’t want to fire back at Julian so fired at the ‘new’ atheists instead – I’m sorry, but that just is nasty behavior. I’d be willing to bet a large sum of money (if I had one) that you would not be happy to see one of your kids do that! I’d also bet that you wouldn’t see one of them do that, because you’ve taught them better. It’s unjust, it’s cowardly, it’s weaselly, and it’s destructive of honest inquiry. It just is nasty – that’s the right word for it.
Yes, it’s naughty to attack people who didn’t say the thing you’re pissed about. I think you’re right that Mark makes that point about atheist over-certainty over and over and over again, and it always strikes me as just not true. I just think he doesn’t know what it’s like to be a bat…I mean, an atheist. He just knows what his brief period as an atheist, after leaving the priesthood, was like. I think there might be more fire and brimstone to that than there is to ordinary, everyday atheism.
I wonder if Julian put in a brief spell as a priest…
Ha!