Fresh deep boundaries
Andrew Brown spots another opportunity to piss on “the new atheism” and pounces on it with his usual cheerful malice.
…the new atheism, with its constant use of “religion” as a term which means something (nasty) is an attempt at social construction. In particular it’s an attempt to make fresh deep boundaries between ingroup and outgroup.
Yes, in some senses, and partly. But one could say the same thing about the civil rights movement; about science; about feminism; about scholarship; about liberalism; about conservatism; about any human endeavor with actual specific articulated ideas or truth-claims. And it might and should occur to Brown that religion too is very often an attempt to make fresh deep boundaries between ingroup and outgroup, but for worse reasons and with less warrant. But Brown is much too hostile to atheism to give that sort of thought any space in his head.
Well, of course atheism (like ‘religions’ too) is a social construction, or at least a human construction. What else should we suppose it to be? Every world view, entertaining some general descriptive propositions about what the world is like, what it contains, and how we are related to it, is a social/human/intellectual/emotional construction, and to the extent that it defines a group at all — all those who share belief in those propositions — it defines a in group (those who accept them) and an out group (those who don’t). What point exactly did Brown think he was making? That somehow describing the world is based on thought and description? Well, bravo for Brown!
But he didn’t address John Wilkins’ point, that religion doesn’t exist. It’s a mishmash. It has no clear definition, and no one seems to know what it includes or excludes. This has been long known, of course, though it hasn’t stopped people from talking about it — religion, that is. Some people, like Karen Armstrong, think religion is a kind sigh about life and love, ill defined, but always warm and fuzzy. Others think it includes beliefs in supernatural beings and doings. Most of them think that it includes interfering in other people’s lives — with their definition of course. But the whole things a social boondoggle, wasting a lot of time, money and effort, including people like Brown at the Guardian.
Strange thing, Sloan Wilson thinks religion (presumably he thinks it can be defined and that it exists) is a successful evolutionary strategy for group survival. I won’t get into the evolutionary controversy here — I suspect he’s outvoted by most evoltionary biologists — but does he think that group survival is a particularly important thing just now? Or could he possibly see that an emphasis on group suvival might be, in the long run, pretty destructive in our overpopulated world? But I take it that Sloan Wilson is still left with trying to define what religion is– just to make sure that he is studying something!
And many people simply stipulate ‘religion meaning X for the purposes of this discussion’ when they criticize it, thus making Brown’s miniature point entirely otiose. But no matter; the more otiose Brown’s points are, the more they trigger comments and page views, thus monetizing the blah blah blah
Like Andrew Brown ‘s mind, I guess.
Which of the not-at-all-new atheists ‘constantly’ uses ‘religion’ as a term which means some [particular] thing (nasty)? On the contrary, Richard Robinson, for example, in An Atheist’s Values (1964) explicitly recognizes that ‘religion’ is a complex label, and that a religion can provide comfort. It’s (religious) faith which is nasty, and which sustains all of the competing and mutually annihilating big religions.
I notice that Brown is making an argument.
You know who else used to make arguments?
(etc.)
Ophelia Benson
May 31, 2010 at 11:35 amI read Brown for a while, until it struck me what an utter moron the man is. At first I thought the whole thing was simply him trying very, very hard to object for the sake of the holy Jellyfish defence (I am atheist/black/female/gay etc… but not one of those atheists/blacks/females/gays etc…) but as time went on I found that what I thought was complete and total wankery with a high level of outright lying – was actually that he must have been bounced off of his head a few times as a small child.He consistently misses the point and seems to have a problem with differentiating from what people said and what he imagined they said. I suspect he is geniunely not-right-in-the-head.Which is why basically I have chosen to not read what he writes – it is generally genuinely bullshit, but I suspect he can’t help but bullshit – it is all he can write. Thus all a response does is drive his hit-count up.
dirigible – that made me laugh.
Bruce…I know, about driving the hit counts up. But sometimes a blatant piece of foolery just calls out to me. A woman must labor in her vocation, Hal.