Author: Ophelia Benson

This is rather depressingly stupid, in a predictable conformist unthinking way. Same old thing – atheism is shocking, offensive, in need of explanation, rude, violent, extreme, naughty, whereas theism is just fine, natural, as it should be, nothing to question, no problem, nothing to see here folks go on home. Why is theism the default position while atheism is something to draw a crowd of open-mouthed horrified finger-pointing gawkers?

[T]he fact is that in the waning months of 2006, a kind of militant atheism was making itself felt across the land. There were two best-selling books declaring belief in God to be a kind of mass delusion, and a harmful mass delusion at that…

Uh…yes; and? Is it so blindingly obvious that belief in God is not a ‘kind of’ mass delusion? Not to me it’s not. Actually I would say that the belief that belief in God is not a mass delusion is, in fact, a mass delusion.

…occasioning a vigorous and often angry response from many people who believe the repeated announcement of the death of God to be wrong, spiritually deaf and dangerous.

What the flock does ‘spiritually deaf’ mean? Deaf to what? Deaf to what ‘spiritual’ noises? Chirps? Barks? Grunts?

But of course empty jargony meaningless decorative burble about spiritual deafness is precisely how mass delusions are dressed up as something Deep and Special and Reverent and Not To Be Questioned By Those Horrid Militant Atheists. It’s amazing what magic the right kind of jargon can do.

Atheism is nothing new, of course, and perhaps not even the militant, proselytizing atheism of the sort taking place just now.

Oh my god – militant, proselytizing atheism – can you imagine. The arrogance and, you know, proselytizing militancy of some people – it’s staggering. Militant, proselytizing theism, of course, is perfectly all right and normal and nothing to make a newspaper fuss about, but militant, proselytizing atheism is an outrage.

But at least a few atheists are now actively, angrily, passionately trying to persuade the religious to their point of view, none more conspicuously than Sam Harris,…whose book Letter to a Christian Nation portrays Christianity as a kind of malign nonsense. Harris is engaging in no polite parlor discussion, showing due respect to the views of others.

Yes, and? So what? Why is that a problem? But Bernstein is either so stupid or so habituated to this way of thinking that he (apparently) doesn’t even realize there’s anything to explain – it’s just self-evident that atheists are not allowed to try to persuade people to their point of view or to fail to show ‘due respect’ to the [religious, and religious only] views of others by not questioning them in any way.

Atheism as a necessary attribute of civilization – religion as the opposite of civilization – that argument is being stated more assertively and is being welcomed in some quarters more warmly now than at any time before. What is going on?

What do you mean, what is going on? What is all this foolish wondering? Why are you taking it for granted that theism is perfectly reasonable and sensible while atheism is bat-loony and calls for explanation?

This kind of fatuous unthinking is precisely why some atheists feel a need to do some persuading.

The best-sellerdom of books like those of Harris and Dawkins shows that there is a market for militant atheism, but the market for religious belief is bigger. I wouldn’t imagine any candidate for office winning on a platform of disbelief in God.

Well nooooo kidding, bub. And that’s one reason atheists are getting restless. It has to do with not wanting to live in a theocracy! Or even in a thought-world where theism is taken for granted and atheism is treated like a visitation from Mars.

The two movements are almost entirely dissimilar, of course, with Christian fundamentalism engaging in no violence or threats.

I beg your pardon??? Christian fundamentalism engaging in no – oh the hell with it, the guy must live under a rock. He wrote a not-bad book a few years ago, but maybe something has gone wrong since then.

From Norman Levitt’s Prometheus Bedeviled:

[T]he authoritarian presuppositions that had to be defeated for democracy to emerge as our primary political paradigm were closely linked, and sometimes identical, with the obscurantist articles of faith that science had to sweep aside in order to gain its place at the center of our contemporary knowledge system…The entrenchment of dogmatic religion was (and, to some extent, still is) an important prop of a social order based on hereditary caste and class. Simultaneously, it was wedded to an epistemology that automatically excluded both the modes of inquiry on which science depends and the conclusions about the physical and biological universe to which it inexorably led.

This suggests, to me, a way in which religious indoctrination really can be seen as a kind of abuse – intellectual or cognitive abuse.

It’s not just the obvious: that dogmatic articles of faith represent a mistaken way to go after understanding about the world; it’s because dogma can’t be contradicted or refuted. That makes it a trap. It prevents, rules out, forbids, closes off precisely what we need, which is a permanent on-going process of questioning, examining, thinking, that goes with a sense that anything and everything can be questioned – that there is nothing walled off in a shrine, a sanctum, an ark of the covenant, a kaaba, a holy of holies.

When that is done to children, it is a form of cognitive or epistemic abuse. It trains children who are, precisely, too young to be skeptical of what they are told, to think in the wrong way – it disables a basic part of their cognitive functioning before they’ve had a chance to form it. Since they are too young even to be able to resist, this is a cheat, an abuse of power via age-difference. It’s like foot-binding in that way – like distorting young soft bones into a deformed, disabled shape.

In other words it creates an intellectual disability, a mental handicap. It’s similar to handicapping children for begging purposes, as some desperate parents do. Some former children can overcome the handicap later, of course, but many never get the chance. This is a basic injustice. It’s not one that can be fixed by laws or social workers, but that does not mean it’s not a real one.

Dennett is optimistic that the powerful mystique of religion is going to fade out – though he also has pessimistic moods when he thinks Martin Rees is right that some whack-job group will do a mass kill with a nuke or a biological weapon. But he says he’s confident that the better thing will happen. I’m not, but I hope I’m wrong.

Why am I confident that this will happen? Mainly because of the asymmetry in the information explosion. With the worldwide spread of information technology…it is no longer feasible for guardians of religious traditions to protect their young from exposure to the kinds of facts (and, yes, of course, misinformation and junk of every genre) that gently, irresistibly undermine the mindsets requisite for religious fanaticism and intolerance. The religious fervor of today is a last, desperate attempt by our generation to block the eyes and ears of the coming generations, and it isn’t working. For every well-publicized victory…there are many less dramatic defeats, as young people quietly walk away from the faith of their parents and grandparents.

Let’s hope so! Bless their electronic little hearts.

Michael Shermer is optimistic that science is winning out over magic and superstition. Well, not at the Grand Canyon, but again, let’s hope he’s right.

Rebecca Goldstein finds it hopeful that novelists are exploring the propositional attitudes of other people.

In one early important experiment (Heider & Simmel 1944), almost every single subject, when shown a short movie consisting of geometrical shapes moving on a screen, attributed propositional attitudes to the shapes. Subsequent research has strengthened the view that our capacity for mental attribution is universal and nearly reflexive—in short, an aspect of human nature.

So we think geometric shapes have minds (of a sort) – that’s interesting. Similar to and no doubt connected with our pattern-seeking habit, and our meaning-imposing tendency, and our anthropomorphic bias, and our need to see causality everywhere. Mind you…I would think that would lead to hostility just as easily as it would lead to harmony – but never mind; I’ll be optimistic for today. Happy new year.

Ed Brayton wrote an open letter to Richard Dawkins after the, er, discussion at Pharyngula and Panda’s Thumb. Long story. There was a petition about religious indoctrination; Dawkins signed it; people had issues with the petition; P Z emailed Dawkins to raise the issues and ask if he really endorsed what the petition said; Dawkins said no, he didn’t, he hadn’t read the whole thing and it was a mistake to sign it, and he’d withdrawn his signature; Dawkins also posted on Ed Brayton’s post on the subject (but you have to scroll through some four million posts to find those from Dawkins). So Ed wrote this follow-up post, and a comment by Orac snagged my attention:

I keep asking myself the question: Why would Dawkins settle for such a tepid response to such an evil if he really, truly believes that religious indoctrination and labeling of children is often as harmful as child abuse?

My guess would be that it’s because it’s complicated: it is quite possible that religious indoctrination (at least in some cases) really is as harmful as child abuse, but also that it is harmful in a much subtler, more unobvious, long-term, invisible and intangible, difficult to demonstrate way than other kinds of child abuse are, and that that fact makes it pretty much impossible to interfere with the practice in general without being monstrously coercive and doing more harm than good. This also ties up with that ‘often’ – ‘that religious indoctrination and labeling of children is often as harmful as child abuse’ [emphasis added]. Often but not always. In short what we have is an opinion that religious indoctrination and labeling of children is often but not always as harmful as child abuse, and that religious indoctrination and labeling of children is often as harmful as child abuse but is not identical with child abuse; along with the fact that religious indoctrination and labeling of children, if and when harmful, will be harmful in much less self-evident ways than, say, beating. That constellation presents a problem. It’s an existing problem, and a real one – there are kinds of child abuse that are terribly harmful but are much much harder to detect, and thus do anything about, than physical abuse is. It’s a problem that is of its nature pretty much impossible to correct without massive totaliatrian intervention and/or surveillance – without some kind of social work system that would employ half the population, and be unworkable. In other words we all sort of know, though we don’t confront it or think about it much, that in fact there are huge numbers of children who are indeed abused but can’t be helped, because there is simply no workable way for anyone to know they are abused. There are parents who, accidentally or on purpose, mangle their children emotionally. It seems safe to guess that that’s not even rare. But how is anyone going to know that? And the same applies to religious indoctrination. I would say that certain kinds of abusive religious indoctrination – repeatedly telling a child she was going to hell to be tortured for eternity, for example – should be a reason for social workers to come calling. But it never will be, for the same reason that repeatedly telling a child she is stupid and ugly won’t be.

In other words, there’s a real problem, not a pseudo-problem. I think it’s wrong to think that Dawkins is just daft to say that religious indoctrination of children is often as harmful as child abuse, or that he’s mistaken in saying that and still saying that government intervention in the matter would be a horrible idea. He’s not being inconsistent, in my view, he’s simply recognizing that there are two evils and government surveillance of all families would be by far the worse of them. But that does not entail that the lesser evil is not an evil. It damn well is an evil. Every despised child who is fed and clothed enough and sent to school but is constantly told she is a worthless nuisance is an evil. Many problems of life can’t be fixed, but that doesn’t mean they’re not problems. It’s as well to be aware of that. Especially since some of them can be at least alleviated by education, by as Dawkins says consciousness raising, by changes in the culture, by altering the climate of opinion. There is growing awareness that emotional abuse is harmful; it seems probable that more people make an effort not to abuse their children that way than would have without that awareness; so the same could in principle be true of religion.