Author: Ophelia Benson

A couple of thoughts on the hunting of the snark.

One thought is that I always wonder why the focus is so exclusively on the evil gnu atheists. To put it another way, I always wonder why the standard is so double. I wonder why the filter has only gnu atheist-shaped holes.

I wonder why the sustained activities of “Tom Johnson” are ignored in favor of shining a spotlight on something someone said five years ago. Gnu atheists are sometimes irritable, sometimes sarcastic, sometimes rude. “Tom Johnson” is a malicious misogynist liar who put great energy into attempting to smear several chosen gnu atheists. Why so much heavy breathing about the former and nothing at all about the latter? It’s not because the latter is irrelevant – he’s an enthusiastic partisan in the “gnu atheists are horrible” campaign. He is in fact the source of a lot of specific “gnu atheists are horrible” claims.

Like this one, which I had forgotten about. Milton C, May 27 last year. I didn’t know at the time that Milton C was “Tom Johnson” and all the YNH bloggers and all the YNH sock puppets, who were many.

The Ruler of Comment Overmoderation whines about comment moderation. Hm.

The irony – it BURNS.

See? That’s the confirmed confessed liar who filled whole threads at The Intersection with tirades about new atheists under different names, thus creating an impression of lots of haters of new atheists, then did the same thing with his own brand new blog. He’s accusing me of “comment overmoderation” – which is something he had been accusing me of via the YNH sock puppets for several weeks by that time. It’s a pack of lies.

Then this, after I retorted.

idk, Ophelia. I’ve been a “lurker” here for some time, and I’ve seen you engage in ‘total banning’ on some people who have made comments that really didn’t get too offensive or inconsiderate but that you just took personally…but I’ve also seen you engage in ‘total banning’ when people have been purposefully inconsiderate and offensive, too.

Complete and utter falsehood. (How can one “see” people engage in banning anyway? All he had seen, of course, was himself saying that under different names at my place and at his place.)

That’s morally repugnant, if you like. It’s a good deal more morally repugnant than sometimes being irritable under one’s own name and for truthfully-stated reasons. Yet the shock-horror is reserved for the latter. I consider that peculiar.

The other thought is about this comment – #4 on yesterday’s –

Well, it’s certainly a little ironic that the very same bloggers who leaped to condemn Sarah Palin’s incendiary rhetoric (perhaps with justification) are quite content to use this sort of language. Wasn’t there a suggestion somewhere that people on the “accommodationist” side of this debate, should be called “Quislings”? It’s classy stuff.

That’s for me. If you google new atheist quisling, I’m the first result. I did it.

Or I did and I didn’t. I didn’t do it in a Sarah Palinesque way. I did it in a hedged way.

Here is another…can we say quisling? If they call us aggressive new atheists, can we call them quislings? Here is another quisling atheist moaning about how boring and boring the gnu* atheists are. It’s Caspar Melville of the New Humanist, I’m sorry to say – I like the NH.

The real irony though is that Caspar was so horrified by my morally repugnant remark that he invited me to write an article on the subject. In other words, he probably did think it was a bit much, but also probably not the nadir of verbal wickedness.

Jason Streitfeld says some very cogent things on the subject of public displays of atheism.

For atheists like me, there is one issue that matters most in all of this: the role of religious authority in society. I’m not saying atheists are concerned with this issue above all else. Not at all. They might be more concerned about global warming, say, or human rights violations in third-world countries. What I am saying is that, for many atheists, atheism is first and foremost about the rejection of religious authority. Public atheism is first and foremost about putting religious authority in its proper place. For us, to be a public atheist just is to deny that there is any objectively valid moral authority which religions could claim and to deny that religious authority is similar to, equal to, or in any methodological or philosophical sense compatible with scientific authority. If we cannot argue these points in public, then we cannot be public atheists in the way that is meaningful to us.

Indeed; and more: atheism is first and foremost about the rejection of religious authority, in an existing context in which religious authority is not just not rejected, not even just welcomed and embraced, but made all-but-mandatory. If religious authority weren’t always being shoved at us, it might seem otiose to bother rejecting it, but that’s not the situation we’re in – not in the US and not entirely in other parts of the Anglophone world either, let alone more frankly theocratic states. The pope thinks he has every right to order women to bear children they don’t want to bear, and to tell hospitals not to save the lives of pregnant women if it takes an abortion to do that.

News flash: The public already thinks atheists have no moral compass. People just don’t understand these issues, but they think they do. That’s the real problem: people are ignorant of their own ignorance. The public needs exposure to what atheists actually think–not in an inaccessible, academic way, but in a clear, practical and relevant way. Right now, they’re mostly relying on misinformation when they criticize atheists.

And, sadly, they’re getting even more misinformation, and old misinformation repeated and re-enforced, by some atheists. Even some atheists are telling people that atheists are rude, mean, intolerant, bullies, dicks – you name it.

Jean’s argument ultimately rests on the claim that people cannot learn what many atheists want them to learn, and that, at best, our efforts at education will be fruitless. This is what Coyne seems to be bothered about. It’s not just Jean’s conclusion. It is her argument that is so upsetting. Atheists like me are less willing to settle for the status quo. We are far less satisfied with the public’s current perceptions of atheism. Furthermore, we would rather give the public the benefit of the doubt. We are optimistic that the public can learn a whole lot more than Jean seems to think. Of course, atheists will continue to be misunderstood and misrepresented for a long time to come. But the discourse might move forward nonetheless. It certainly won’t help if we stop trying.

The status quo aspect is key. The mantra that atheists should be careful of what they say in public (and when in doubt, err on the side of saying nothing) is just more of the same. We already have that arrangement, and we think it’s a bad arrangement, and we want to Fix It. It’s the status quo, and we want to change the status quo, so that things will be better.

Tower Hamlets Council is shocked shocked by those anti-gay posters that appeared recently. So is the Mayor, so is Dilwar Khan, Director of the London Muslim Centre, so are the chairs of Rainbow Hamlets LGBT Community Forum.

Andrew Gilligan says some of the shock shock is bogus. Guess which part.

…the East London Mosque speaks with forked tongue. Yesterday, it was due to demonstrate its deep commitment to “standing together against homophobia” by hosting a gala dinner with one Uthman Lateef, a homophobic preacher who has stated: “We don’t accept homosexuality… we hate it because Allah hates it.”

Why does the East London Mosque say one thing while it means another? Because it can. Because it works.

There is a part of liberal white society which would rather ignore or deny the problem of extremism, hatred and bigotry in some parts of some Muslim communities. The lies give them a form of permission to do so.In that same council press release, the chairs of the Rainbow Hamlets LGBT Community Forum, a local gay group, condemned the anti-gay posters but added: “We also condemn those who use these incidents to create a moral panic and stoke up racist or Islamophobic sentiment. At present the people responsible cannot be accurately determined, but it is clear that whoever is responsible, they do not represent any of the local communities.”

Really?! It is clear? How can it be? How can that possibly be “clear”?

Well it can’t, and it’s obvious that it can’t, but the rainbow people apparently think they have to say it is, lest they stoke up “Islamophobic sentiment.” Apparently they find themselves stuck with having to toady to a group that lives next door to them and hates them with a lively and religious hatred.

I think I would move to Ealing, or perhaps Merton.

The pope has been telling doctors to straighten women out on something the poor deluded darlings are hopelessly confused about. What – that homeopathic “polio vaccinations” are real vaccinations? That their most important job in life is to have flat abs? That they have to be “spiritual”? No.

Pope Benedict XVI has urged doctors to protect women from the “deceptive” thought that an abortion might be a solution to social or economic difficulties or health problems.

Has he indeed. How, I wonder, does he know that that thought is deceptive? If a woman or a couple doesn’t have enough money to have a child, how is it deceptive to think that an abortion might be a solution to the problem? And what the hell does he know about it? He has all the money he needs, and he’ll never have to bear a child. He has no experience of being up against it in that way. How does he know he knows better what is and is not a solution than people who do have that experience?

As for health problems…well if the pregnancy itself is proving to be fatal, then an abortion in fact is a solution to that particular health problem. In that particular case, the pope is just lying when he says it’s not. What he means is that it’s a solution he won’t allow a woman to have, if he can prevent it.