Author: Ophelia Benson

David Koepsell commented on Berlinerblau’s “what gnu atheist martyrs?” post to say

You should read my entry on “The Law and Unbelief” in the Encyclopedia of Unbelief, in which I detail such cases in the US, when courts even admitted that atheists were free game because of legal prohibitions against their testimony, and some were attacked and sometimes killed for sport. This happened even into the 1920s. I summarize that lengthy article in this shorter version.

I posted this same comment at Joe’s blog, but it’s “awaiting moderation”… I hope it makes it through.

It didn’t. You can see exactly how worthy of non-posting it is – how full of invective and misrepresentation and free-floating hostility.

David used to be at CFI; I met him there at the same time I met Joe. They’re former colleagues. So it goes.

Read David’s article; it’s very informative.

 The Guardian is pathetic.

Kenza Drider stood defiantly outside Notre Dame, adjusting her niqab to reveal only a glimpse of her eyes. Scores of police with a riot van and several lorries stood by as she and another woman in a niqab staged a peaceful protest for the right “to dress as they please”. On the first day of France’s ban on full Islamic face-coverings, this was the first test.

Blah blah blah, for 14 paragraphs – the heroic defiant brave rad rebellious women passionately standing up for their right to wear bags over their slutty heads, with the heroic brave left-wing Guardian cheering them on. Yah baby you fight for that niqab covering your mouth and nose so that it’s hard to breathe and talk; solidarity forever!

Not one stinking word about the women who loathe the niqab and what it stands for and approve of the ban, or about the women who don’t like the ban but also detest the niqab and what it stands for. No, it’s all about women defending the disgusting reactionary woman-erasing hot speech-inhibiting theocratic medieval relic. Look at that idiotic photo, with the faceless woman heroically silhouetted against the sky.

Note the item at the end, too.

•   This article was amended on 12 April 2011 to remove the phrase ‘normal headscarf’ in the sixth paragraph

Oops! Got shouted at, did you? Well see if you can’t learn something – the niqab is not a liberal cause. The ban is arguably illiberal too, but don’t go pretending that therefore the niqab is right-on.

I went to a reading and talk by Howard Jacobson yesterday evening. He was brilliant. Brilliantly funny and interesting and fluent. One wit asked what the bar mitzvah presents were like in Britain in the 50s. Jacobson responded that bar mitzvah presents were a big deal, and there was a little ripple of nodding and murmuring. He had, he went on, relatives on one side of the family who were in towelling and bedding. He received a lot of towelling and bedding. On the other side there were relatives in classy import items like tinted glass; he got wine glasses colored pink, amber…

His father had a market stall, where he sold swag. “You know swag? Basically junk.” He was no good at it. But he did his best – at this point Jacobson did a little pantomime of a marketer’s claps and gestures – then referred back to his failed youthful efforts to write books that had already been written (“I tried to write Crime and Punishment, I tried to write Anna Karenina – I especially tried to write like Henry James, about life in English country houses, about which I knew absolutely nothing.”) – “This is why I couldn’t do Henry James” [repeating the marketer claps and gestures again].

About his mother’s always making sure he didn’t expect anything, so that he wouldn’t be crushed when he didn’t get it. When he got the telegram that said he’d been admitted to Cambridge and he opened it and exclaimed “I’m in, I’m in!” she advised him to look carefully at the address. She assured him he wouldn’t win the Booker, and he said I know, I know. He was the only nominee who had a good time at the dinner, because he was the only one who was calm. All the others were too nervous to eat or drink but he had a fine time packing it in.

My favorite part was when someone asked how he separates comedy from just plain fiction. He doesn’t. He doesn’t say “I’ll write a comic novel now”; he writes novels, but he can’t write without humor. It’s in the language, it’s in the writing itself. It’s just there. He can’t write any other way. I know exactly how that is; I think I have the same thing. I don’t decide to put it in – I never set out to write in a joky way (and I think most people who do are bad at it) – it’s just how I write. It’s interesting how this works. Jacobson was insistent that it’s in the language, and I think that’s exactly right.

I’m having tea with Anthony Grayling later today.

Berlinerblau is back in the trenches battling the Monstrous Regiment of Gnus. Not much of a battle, he just agrees with another warrior that there haven’t been many “atheist martyrs”; what that’s supposed to prove is somewhat mysterious. Do any gnus talk nonsense about piles of atheist corpses? Not that I recall.

Never mind, the point is, it’s all over. We should pack up our gnu megaphones and our gnu pepper spray and go home. The tide of history done turned against us.

Hoffmann represents a rapidly growing contingent of atheists and agnostics who, for a variety of different reasons, are expressing increasing frustration with the New Atheist world-view. Many of them are affiliated with the school of “Secular Humanism.” I hope to write about this split at a later date.

The Hoffmann he quotes is even more optimistic.

Have there been atheist martyrs–women and men who suffered and died as a consequence of their rejection of God?

This thoughtful question came up when I recently suggested that I detect a trend in the small but dwindling new atheist community to pad the bona fides of their young tradition with things that didn’t really happen.  We know that real Gnus love science and aren’t too keen on history…

A rapidly growing contingent versus a small but dwindling community. We’re doomed! Doomed, I tell you! Thanks to the perspicacity and determination of the frustrated atheists and agnostics, the new atheist community is on the verge of disappearing in a puff of sulphur.

Religion is not all bad, we’re told. Religion is often good, we’re told. Some atheists do nothing but bash religion, we’re told. Some atheists do nothing but bash “the religious,” we’re told.

Not all religions are literalist, we’re told. Not all religions are fundamentalist or theocratic or doctrinaire, we’re told. Unitarian Universalism, for instance, is liberal and swell, we’re told.

But some former Unitarian Universalists beg to differ.

There is a contrary trend, though, in many local UU congregations and in the national UU Association (“UUA”): extremely strong religious privilege and (largely as a consequence) severe distaste for open atheism and criticism of religion. Very few UUs believe in “God” as that term is broadly understood by theists (and atheists) the word over, but lots of UUs believe in “religion,” “faith,” “prayer,” “church,” and (indeed) “God” as terms and systems that deserve support and defense. Gnu-bashing is overwhelmingly common and accepted among UUs, especially clergy and denominational administrators, as I have documented repeatedly (several selected examples here).

In one of those selected examples we read

our Association is dotted by powerful ministers and administrators who regularly push outrageous and bigoted messages about atheists, agnostics, not-particularly-“spiritual” humanists, and anyone whose skepticism leads her to an outlook that is less pious than these figures would prefer. UU discourse about atheism and skepticism is riven with bigotry, disrespect, and ignorant stereotype–and the broader community’s reponse has been… for the most part utter silence.

This, depressingly, confirms what many of us already know: that atheists are the last (or almost the last) group (non-criminal group) it is not just ok but positively virtuous to malign.

 My own minister has declared that I, and everyone who sees the world the way I do,

are often unaware of the sharp limits of their empathy and their abilities to construct and identify with the interior feelings and processes of others. Religiously, these persons are often drawn to the rigidities and seemingly unambiguous teachings of fundamentalism–and there are liberals and radical fundamentalist spirits. As spouses, parents and bosses, such persons are, at the best, insensitive, and at the worst, rigid, authoritarian, and emotionally abusive.

Read that last sentence with attention, and ponder it. That’s what putative liberal religions think of atheists.