Author: Ophelia Benson

I saw John Shook’s Huffington Post article on “O lord how awful are the ways of thy gnu atheists” a few days ago, and even read a bit of it, but I got bored so I didn’t finish, or comment on it. But Jerry did a post on it today, and the response has been energetic. A good many gnu atheists are irritated at yet another bucketful of crap being thrown at them by another atheist.

In turn, Ron Lindsay is irritated that Jerry criticized the Center for Inquiry (where Shook works) because Shook wrote what he wrote.

Jerry Coyne: I am extremely disappointed that you would make such an unsupported and rash accusation against CFI. If you can point out one instance where either I or someone speaking for CFI in an official capacity has gone out of his/her way to criticize CFI’s “atheist supporters for stridency, hostility, and ignorance,” please do so. If you cannot, please withdraw the statement.

The trouble with that is that an onlooker would have no way of knowing that Shook was not speaking for CFI in an official capacity in the article, given that he was identified as “Director of Education and Senior Research Fellow, Center for Inquiry” at the top of the article. That looks to an impartial observer as if he is speaking in his official capacity.

The same applies to the CFI blog, even though Ron Lindsay and Michael De Dora both like to insist that blog posts must be seen as the author’s independent opinions, not anything to do with CFI.

But I think that’s an absurd expectation. Look at the CFI blog. Would anyone glance at that and think that the post that appeared below the banner at the top was nothing to do with CFI? Look at it! It’s not what you’d call inconspicuous.

It’s odd for CFI officials to try to disavow things that have their name on it in GREAT BIG LETTERS.

A beautiful takedown of Ahmedinejad by Muhhamad Sahimi at Frontline. One ludicrous boast after another countered with a statement of the reality.

“Sakineh Mohammadi has not been condemned to death by stoning”:

This is while activists have already posted a copy of the judiciary verdict and punishment for her, and the judiciary chief of East Azerbaijan province, where Mohammadi is from, has stated repeatedly that she will be executed as soon as Sadegh Larijani gives the go-ahead.

Oh – er – ah – that’s a different Sakineh Mohammadi.

“No one has been imprisoned for taking part in demonstrations”:

This is while the Tehran police chief acknowledged last year that on the anniversary of the Revolution on February 12 alone, 20,000 people had been arrested.

Oh – er – ah – um – yes but not for taking part in demonstrations. They all littered.

The archbishop of Westminster is full of advice to fellow Catholics (I beg your pardon, I mean to his “flock”) on how they can make themselves disliked by pestering and nagging people.

The Archbishop of Westminster says Catholics should be more ready to make the sign of the cross and say “God bless you” to people.

The Archbishop called on Catholics to respond to the Pope’s hope that they would become “ever more conscious of their dignity as a priestly people”.

Brilliant suggestions. Make intrusive public displays of superstitious gesturing and invoke something called a “blessing” from a non-existent being. Force your religious beliefs on people so that they will be impressed by your “dignity as a priestly people.” Act and talk goddy nonsense in public so that an admiring world can see how it’s done.

Writing a week after the papal visit, Rev Nichols said: “With the blessings of this visit we can be more confident in our faith and more ready to speak about it and let it be seen each day.

“A small step we can all take is to be quicker to say to others that we will pray for them, especially to those in distress.

“Even the simple step of more regularly using the greeting ‘God bless you’, gently and naturally, would make a difference to the tone we set in our daily lives, as would the more frequent use of the sign of the cross.”

Yes, it would make a difference, but not, as the archbish seems to think, in a good way. It’s passive-aggressive bullying, that kind of thing. It’s typical missionary coerciveness, and it is not attractive; it is rude and intrusive and self-important. It’s funny, in a way, but it’s really more depressing than funny – this eagerness to force unmitigated goddy bullshit on everyone.

Mark Vernon went to the “let’s pretend we get to tell atheists what to do next” debate (debate? it doesn’t sound like a debate – more like a self-congratulatory chat) and explains about it for CisF Belief. It is, predictably, very smug predictable stuff. It assumes from the outset that gnu atheism is obviously stupid and bad and wrong and laughable, and proceeds from there.

Marilynne Robinson was articulate on how the New Atheism erases the human by treating us as crudely material entities…She had a great quip. The theist looks at phenomena like the fine tuning and thinks, amazing. The (old) atheist looks at phenomena like the fine tuning and thinks, amazing. The New Atheist looks at phenomena like the fine tuning and thinks, well that’s that answered then.

See what I mean? What’s great about that? It’s not funny, and it’s meaningless. There’s no such thing as “The New Atheist” in the sense it’s used there – there’s nothing about putative new atheists that can be generalized in such a way that that “quip” describes anything real. It’s only a combination of contempt and smugness that makes Robinson and Vernon think otherwise.

And this points to one of the most irritating aspects of the backlash against gnu atheism, which is that a favorite trope about them/us is about the tribalism, the community-thinking, the demonization of The Other. Well of course there is plenty of that, as there is with any kind of agreement or “movement” or other commonality – there is always the risk of thinking to well of self and group and too ill of everyone else, but you sort of have to take that risk if you want to accomplish anything at all (apart from meditation).

And in any case – why do new atheist-haters focus so sharply on that among new atheists and ignore it in themselves and their allies? Look at Mark Vernon for a classic example, along with the parties to that “debate.” The whole thing looks like an exercise in brainless finger-pointing and “ew” shouting.

Even Vernon noticed that.

All in all, the implicit message was that the New Atheism is anti-humanist…Such analysis was only to be expected, given the speakers. But I did wonder why the New Humanist had no defender of New Atheism on the panel. The editor does seem to be having doubts about whether the defence is worth listening to.

Little wonder many in the audience started to shift in their seats and a certain frustration emerged during the questions.

Well quite. Why, exactly, is the New Humanist staging a pseudo-debate in which three people throw yet more crap at other atheists?

Your guess is as good as mine.

Caspar Melville says on the New Humanist blog that the “‘Beyond New Atheism” debate was

a genuine attempt to see if we could have a different tone for discussion about belief, non-belief, human nature and God.

Well I could have saved them the bother by just answering the question: sure we could. Of course we could. In fact we could find such a discussion, with its different tone, any time we wanted one – we could read Comment is Free Belief or the New Statesman, we could browse the BBC’s “Religion and Ethics” pages, we could stroll into a church or mosque. It is not the least bit difficult either to have or to find “a different tone for discussion about belief, non-belief, human nature and God.”

(Different from what? From that of the “new” atheism, as the post as a whole makes clear.)

Given that, why should we? Given that there is already an abundance of discussion about belief, non-belief, human nature and God that is very friendly to god and belief and very unfriendly to non-belief, why is there any need for the few people who take a different tone to be more like the majority?

Well, maybe by “we” Caspar meant humanists and atheists rather than humanity at large. That seems likely, especially since the debate was sponsored by the humanists. But even then, the answer is still yes of course; there are lots and lots of humanists and atheists who are more than willing to distance themselves from the blunt unapologetic “tone” of the gnu atheists and take a more obsequious tone instead. Many of them in fact take an obsequious tone when talking to theists and an acidly hostile one when talking to or about gnu atheists – which is in itself quite interesting.

In short there are different rules, and it is reasonable to wonder why. Many of the people now so caught up in lecturing gnu atheists for being so gnu are not caught up at all in lecturing old theists for being so gnu – so militant and aggressive and fundamentalist and evil. Why is that? Why do theists get a pass while atheists get a dam’ good scolding by other atheists?

I don’t know. I suppose some of them think it’s admirably contrarian and independent-minded and scrupulous about not letting allies off the hook – which might be fair if the claims weren’t so uniformly evidence-free and repetitive. As it is, when there have already been so many “the New Atheists have a bad tone” announcements, making yet another one looks much more like ganging up on a hated minority than it does like admirable independence of mind.