Author: Ophelia Benson

I must say, I wish Mooney would not be at it again. I wish Mooney would go do other things now. I wish he would find other despised minorities to smear with accusations of aggression and assault and bashing and other forms of wickedness. I wish he would do that so that I could go back to ignoring him (also of course because then he wouldn’t be doing the thing which I resent his doing and thus feel compelled to rebuke him for doing). Of course, I could go on ignoring him, speaking literally – I’m not forced to retort to his manipulative campaign against overt atheists. But I think his campaign ought to be rebuked, so in that sense I can’t ignore new instantiations of it. I don’t think it’s enough to deliver one overall rebuke of his campaign and leave it at that, because he keeps on. I could ignore his blog with no trouble, but items in major media, which includes Huffington, I can’t.

That’s the main reason a critic told me I’m a nasty mean aggressive bully last week – because I was ‘relentless’ about Mooney. It’s true, I was. I didn’t like being so relentless myself – not least because I think all the repetition is just boring – but also because yes, it did feel too aggressive. Not, I’m afraid, in the sense of being unfair to Mooney and Kirshenbaum – because I thought then and still think that they needed to be persuaded to stop – to stop at least using violent rhetoric and other scapegoating tactics, and I thought there was some chance, however tiny, that persuasion would work. More in the sense of being ugly. More an egoistic concern than an altruistic one. No maybe that’s not quite it – because being ugly is harmful in its own way. Yes that’s it. I didn’t like being as ugly as I thought M&K were being. I didn’t like debasing the discourse that way, so often and so ‘relentlessly.’ But but but – there they were – in one national media outlet after another. It was a relief when they’d done all the media they could do, and I could shut up about it. So…I wish Mooney would shut up, or get a different subject. I would like nothing better than to ignore him.

Chris Mooney is at it again, this time with an article at the Huffington Post explaining that Dawkins really has changed his tune even though he explicitly and emphatically said he hasn’t when Jerry Coyne asked him while they were both at the Atheist Boys’ Alliance (emailing from room to room, apparently, as opposed to just talking, but then that means the money quote was in writing, which is always useful). Mooney acknowledges this clarification (though not the implied rebuke to the spin he and Rosenau rushed to put on it) but he turns it into a Point For His Side anyway.

But what’s truly noteworthy is where Dawkins hints as to how this all happened-e.g., he’s got an evolution book to sell now, and he’s sick of people thinking it’s an atheism book, so he’s trying to steer interviewers away from that, and seems frankly annoyed that they don’t get the difference…In other words, Dawkins appears to be grappling with a communication problem. Linking together atheist advocacy and the defense of evolution, as he has done so prominently, poses a pretty big problem when you hit the US media with a new book on the latter. After writing a million-selling atheist “consciousness-raiser” and “come-out-of-the-closet” book, is it at all surprising that Dawkins now finds his evolution book being prominently linked to atheism in the media mind?

Says the guy who has done perhaps more than any other single individual to make that true – the guy who, with his co-author, wrote an article in the LA Times announcing that Dawkins’s new book wouldn’t educate people because they would be too turned off by his evil atheist reputation. Mooney first worked hard to discredit Dawkins’s new book on the grounds that Dawkins is a vocal atheist, and now expresses pious concern about this ‘pretty big problem’ with getting people to talk about the new book when they interview him ostensibly about the new book. In other words it could be that one reason Dawkins is ‘frankly annoyed’ that reporters insist on talking about the old book instead of the new one is because of the role played by mischief-makers and scapegoaters like Mooney and Kirshenbaum.

That’s certainly a huge part of my annoyance. That’s because I think the whole thing is illegitimate, and underhanded, and somewhat dangerous, and irresponsible, and fundamentally unfair and unreasonable. It’s dressed up as a tactical thing, to do with reaching the Silent Majority, the excluded middle, the good normal everyday common sense Folks who just wanna blurghurghurgh, but behind that it seems to tap into a much deeper well of anger and hatred. I have absolutely no idea why Mooney apparently hates overt atheists so much, but I do think that’s what’s going on. Why? Because if it were just pragmatic, there wouldn’t have been all the stonewalling of critics and the serial misrepresentation of same. At least I don’t think there would. Disagreement over tactics doesn’t seem worth it, and doesn’t seem likely to motivate it either.

If Dawkins wants to change minds about evolution, and break down barriers, it makes a heck of a lot of sense to move to the center on religion, and not alienate religious believers or the U.S. media any more than he has to. Dawkins’ followers may complain that the master is being misrepresented, but the truth is that Richard Dawkins may be something else: a savvy, adaptable communicator.

There speaks the true scapegoater and marginalizer and shunner and minority-punisher – ‘it makes a heck of a lot of sense to move to the center on religion’ – and on everything else, of course, because ‘the center’ is where all decent people are, because anything outside the center is by definition evil and weird. Gotcher stones ready?

What does ‘the center on religion’ even mean? The land of split the difference? But different people have different differences to split. In any case…what’s at stake with this disagreement – atheism v vague woolly whateverism – is basically epistemological, and that’s not about what is or isn’t in the center. It’s not about majorities, it’s not about polite conformity, it’s not about not alienating people. That’s what Mooney always refuses to get, or else to accept, or else to care about – that there are principled reasons not to compromise or split the difference or ‘move to the center’ on epistemic issues, and we bristle at being told to treat truth claims the same way we treat campaign promises or votes on highway bills.

Andrew Sullivan really does have a down on Jerry Coyne, doesn’t he. He quotes from Jerry’s post on the Atheist shindig and then comments:

They’re really charming, aren’t they? It is as if everything arrogant about the academy and everything sneering about cable news culture is combined into one big snarky smugfest. Maybe these atheists will indeed help push back the fundamentalist right. Maybe they will remind people that between these atheist bigots and these fundamentalist bigots, the appeal of the Christianity of the Gospels shines like the sun.

Or maybe they will remind (different) people that some of us are tired of theists telling everyone what’s what without a whisper of (public, unapologetic) opposition. Who knows – the future is hidden from our mortal eyes. But the more people like Sullivan blow a gasket merely because atheists are atheists, the more obvious the social pressure will become. Next step – The Revolution.

(I’m kidding, Sully.)

It’s interesting to know there is such a thing as ‘Quiverfull families.’

Quiverfull families tend to believe in male headship – the principle, also derived from the Bible, that men should lead households. Feminists are perhaps the fiercest critics of the budding Quiverfull movement. They accuse it of trying to undo the equality and freedom won for women over decades of struggle, and claim that the idea of automatic male leadership is anachronistic. But Robert Sanford sees his approach to family life both as authentically Christian, and as the best training for children to take on what he sees as the moral decay afflicting American society.

Here’s what I want to know: what is that ‘But’ doing there? Feminists think (or ‘claim’) that the idea of automatic male leadership is anachronistic

but Mr Quiver thinks it’s authentically Christian? How are those two incompatible or disjointed in any way? They’re not. That ‘But’ should be ‘And.’ Feminists see reactionary ‘Christian’ patriarchy as anachronistic and oppressive and unjust, and reactionary Christians see reactionary ‘Christian’ patriarchy as a good thing. That’s clear enough, I should think.

Lookit! A blog post all about my friend Claire and how universe-boggling she is and what remarkable art jewelry she makes when she is not busy teaching or doing research or writing a book or picking up squashed bottle caps off the ground. There are pictures of some of the art jewelry that you can look at. I have a sensational piece of art jewelry that Claire made me for my birthday. I made all the readers of that blog post jealous by describing it. It is thrillingly complicated as well as beautiful.

Apparently church groups in Australia think that if you’re not doing something churchy then you shouldn’t be doing anything at all.

At the moment, an archaic clause in NSW’s Education Act prohibits students who opt out of scripture from being taught anything while others receive religious instruction. At some schools, that means more than half the students are basically doing nothing…The NSW Federation of Parents and Citizens Association (P&C) has funded the St James Centre for Ethics to develop a pilot program to teach ethics to students who don’t want to learn scripture. But the program had barely crossed the Education Minister’s desk before the Government’s religious education advisory panel sounded the alarm. Approving the proposal would require the Parliament to kill that archaic clause, and the churches clearly fear this may be the crest of a very slippery slope.

A……slope to where, exactly? What is the slope that leads from an ethics class to…perdition? A tank full of broken glass? Life as a banker who moonlights as a prostitute?

The current arrangement goes back over a century to when the State took over public education from the Catholic Church. The public of that time was more worried that the State, not the Church, had too much control over education.

Oh, so that’s it. They used to have a monopoly, and when the monopoly was taken away, they were still allowed to keep a little piece of it. They want to go on keeping it, so they don’t want any competion for their ‘scripture’ classes. Yet another example of the instinctive generosity of the religious.