Tag: The backlash

  • Scraping the barrel

    Some fella says Richard Dawkins is bad and stupid and cynical and anti-intellectual because he refuses to debate William Lane Craig.

    Really?

    Well not the bad and stupid part, no, that’s my paraphrase, but it’s not far off; and the rest of it, yes, really.

    Richard Dawkins is not alone in his refusal to debate with William Lane Craig. The vice-president of the British Humanist Association (BHA), AC Grayling has also flatly refused to debate Craig, stating that he would rather debate “the existence of fairies and water-nymphs”.

    Yes, and? Are they required (morally though not legally) to debate anyone who asks? Are they not allowed to choose?

    Given that there isn’t much in the way of serious argumentation in the New Atheists’ dialectical arsenal, it should perhaps come as no surprise that Dawkins and Grayling aren’t exactly queuing up to enter a public forum with an intellectually rigorous theist like Craig to have their views dissected and the inadequacy of their arguments exposed.

    Oh, I see; it’s  intellectually rigorous theists that they’re not allowed to refuse to debate. Well there might be something to that, but what makes Daniel Came (he is the fella in question, the one who wrote the Comment is Free Belief piece) think Craig is intellectually rigorous? From what I hear he’s not a bit; what he is is a practiced debater, not a rigorous intellectual.

    In his latest undignified rant, Dawkins claims that it is because Craig is “an apologist for genocide” that he won’t share a platform with him. Dawkins is referring to Craig’s defence of God’s commandment in Deuteronomy 20: 15-17 to wipe out the Canannites.

    …

    I am disinclined to defend the God of the Old Testament’s infanticide policy. But as a matter of logic, Craig is probably right: if an infinite good is made possible by a finite evil, then it might reasonably be said that that evil has been offset. However, I doubt whether Craig would be guided by logic himself in this regard and conduct infanticide. I doubt, that is, that he would wish it to be adopted as a general moral principle that we should massacre children because they will receive immediate salvation.

    No, but he would defend it in the case of “God,” thus defending what ought not to be defended. As for infinite good, since no one can possibly know anything about such a thing,  it’s not very useful as a reason to say “oh well ok then” to wiping out a tribe or a nation. Dawkins is right to be indignant and Daniel Came is wrong to palter in this way.

    As a sceptic, I tend to agree with Dawkins’s conclusion regarding the falsehood of theism, but the tactics deployed by him and the other New Atheists, it seems to me, are fundamentally ignoble and potentially harmful to public intellectual life. For there is something cynical, ominously patronising, and anti-intellectualist in their modus operandi, with its implicit assumption that hurling insults is an effective way to influence people’s beliefs about religion. The presumption is that their largely non-academic readership doesn’t care about, or is incapable of, thinking things through; that passion prevails over reason.

    That claim might make some sense if Dawkins refused to debate anyone, but of course he does no such thing. He refuses to debate Craig, largely, I believe, because Craig is a dogmatic apologist, not a rational inquirer. You don’t go to William Lane Craig if you’re after thinking things through.

    H/t Eric.

  • A tedious impasse

    I see Julian has a new series at Comment is Free, Heathen’s Progress. (I saw it the other day via a post of Eric’s.) It’s about telling believers, atheists and agnostics how they’re all doing it wrong, and how to do it right.

    In a debate that has been full of controversy and rancour, there is one assertion that surely most can agree with without dispute: the God wars have reached a tedious impasse, with all sides resorting to repetition of the same old arguments, which are met with familiar, unsatisfactory responses. This is a stalemate, with the emphasis firmly on “stale”.

    Oh dear, I’m so bloody-minded. The first sentence of a long series, and one which says surely most can agree on just this one thing without dispute…and I disagree. Wouldn’t you know it.

    I don’t disagree that that describes part of what’s happening, but I disagree that it describes what’s happening, period. Yes there’s a lot of repetition; no that’s not all there is. So, no, I don’t agree that “the God wars have reached a tedious impasse.” I think things are happening, not to say changing. I think “the same old arguments” have become much more widely known to far more people, and I think that by itself makes a difference. I think it’s way way way too soon to come over all jaded and bored and declare that that’s all there is to it. I don’t think it is a stalemate, not least because religious apologists and pontificators can no longer have things all their own way. Now that the intertubes have come along, religious apologists and pontificators get pushback whenever they publish anything. Part of what’s happening with all this repetition of the same old arguments that Julian finds so stale is that religious commentators are becoming aware that their claims are not unanswerable. It takes time for that kind of awareness to spread and to bite. Relax; be patient; put up with the repetition.

    In any case things are churning in other places too. Atheist and secularist groups are forming and growing; books are being published; blogs are starting and continuing; people are talking. It’s not just a matter of the same old arguments repeating like an endless rerun of Seinfeld.

    My heart sinks whenever I am invited to talk or write about the existence of God, whether science is compatible with faith, or whether religion is the root of all evil. I struggle to say something new, knowing that this is such well-trodden ground, the earth is packed too firmly for any new light to get in. The only hope is to start digging it up.

    Really. Five years or so of “the new atheism” and the ground is so well trodden that now it’s time to dig it up. I don’t think so. I think there are things to say about, for instance, the eagerness of so many people to end the conversation. I think there are things to say about the silencing tactics that have been used – some of which are not entirely absent from Julian’s piece. I think this very “oh it’s all so stale” note is one such tactic.

    I do not blame the quagmire on the intransigence of any of the three sides in the debate – believers, atheists and agnostics – but on all of them. Broadly speaking, the problem is that the religious mainstream establishment maintains a Janus-faced commitment to both medieval doctrines and public pronouncements about inclusivity and moderation; agnostics and more liberal believers promote an intellectualised version of religion, which both reduces faith to a thin gruel and fails to reflect the reality of faith on the ground; while the new atheists are spiritually tone-deaf, fixated on the superstitious side of religion to the exclusion of its more interesting and valuable aspects.

    One, are they, really? All of them? Are all new atheists really tone-deaf to the more interesting and valuable aspects of religion? I don’t think so. I think most of them pay some attention to those at least some of the time. Two, given what a vast army of people there are who are already doing that, would it really be so terrible if all new atheists did focus on the superstitious side of religion alone for a time? I don’t think it would. Given the row upon row of shelves devoted to hooray-for-God in the bookshops, I think a few books devoted to the opposite of that are not such a terrible (or “tone-deaf”) thing.

    A plague on all their houses: all are guilty of becoming entrenched in unsustainable positions. For there to be movement, all are going to have to recognise their failings and shift somewhat. The battlelines need to be redrawn so that futile skirmishes can be avoided and the real fights can be fought. This is the first in a series of articles which together will attempt to do just this. Over the coming months, I’ll be fleshing out the charges I have made and suggesting what the right responses to them should be.

    But there is movement. Even without shifting, there is movement. Even if the basic arguments are repetitive, there is still movement. I’m still busy with the battle lines drawn where they already are, and I want to fight the fights that I think are real, not the ones that Julian thinks are real. I haven’t nominated Julian to be my general, so I’m not shifting.

    As a querulous member of the atheist camp, one of my aims is to end up with a richer, more constructive vision for what should follow the “new atheism”, which may well have been needed, but does not appear capable of taking us much further. To use another military analogy, the new atheism seems designed for effective invasion, but not long-term occupation.

    People keep saying that. Over and over and over and over again. (Talk about stale!) It’s bollocks. The “invasion” is a long term thing, to put it mildly. We can keep doing that while other people do the “occupying.” The new atheists don’t have to stop what they’re doing and do something else, because what the new atheists are doing isn’t finished yet. We get that lots and lots of other atheists really hate it and wish it would shut up, but that’s just too bad. If other atheists want to occupy, by all means occupy, but don’t try to make us join you. You do what you want to do, and we’ll do what we want to do, and that will be fine. Telling us what to do, on the other hand, not so much.

    One key characteristic of this new, new atheism must be more modesty. Although it was not intended to be a boast, advocacy of the noun “bright” to describe atheists illustrates how they have too often come over as smug and over-confident.

    Sigh. Yes, no doubt, but almost no new atheists do advocate the use of “bright” so that’s a boring (and stale!) strawman…and silencing tactic. And speaking of smug, and more modesty – what is all this “must” talk? Who is Julian to tell new atheists what we “must” do or be? I might just as well try to tell the new heathens (if that’s their title) what they “must” do. I’m not smug and over-confident enough for that.

    Not a great start for the campaign, I think. I expect the later, substantive articles are better. I haven’t read them yet…

     

     

  • Some on the left

    Another intimidation piece directed at journalists and researchers who write about dominionism, back in August. It’s in the Washington Post, which is a nice gig if you’re trying to intimidate people.

    Here we go again. The Republican primaries are six months away, and already news stories are raising fears on the left about “crazy Christians.”

    One piece connects Texas Gov. Rick Perry with a previously unknown Christian group called “The New Apostolic Reformation,” whose main objective is to “infiltrate government.” Another highlights whacko-sounding Christian influences on Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota. A third cautions readers to be afraid, very afraid, of “dominionists.”

    The stories raise real concerns about the world views of two prospective Republican nominees. But their echo-chamber effect reignites old anxieties among liberals about evangelical Christians. Some on the left seem suspicious that a firm belief in Jesus equals a desire to take over the world.

    Maybe some on the left do, but the authors of the articles in question do not, so it’s bloody unfair to imply that they do. It’s an intimidation move.

    This isn’t a defense of the religious beliefs of Bachmann or Perry, whatever they are. It’s a plea, given the acrimonious tone of our political discourse, for a certain amount of dispassionate care in the coverage of religion. Nearly 80 percent of Americans say they’re Christian. One-third of Americans call themselves “evangelical.” When millions of voters get lumped together and associated with the fringe views of a few, divisions will grow. Here, then, are some clarifying points.

    But the writers in question took the requisite care. They didn’t lump all evangelicals with dominionists – on the contrary: they point out that to dominionists, plain old evangelicals are way too lukewarm. And dominionists, unfortunately, are not “a few.”

    Evangelicals generally do not want to take over the world. “Dominionism” is the paranoid mot du jour. In its broadest sense, the term describes a Christian’s obligation to be active in the world, including in politics and government. More narrowly, some view it as Christian nationalism. You could argue that the 19th- and early 20th-century reformers – abolitionists, suffragists and temperance activists, for example – were dominionists, says Molly Worthen, who teaches religious history at the University of Toronto.

    Well you could, but equally you could argue that anti-abolitionists and anti-suffragists were dominionists. Just as not all evangelicals are dominionists, so not all 19th century Christians were abolitionists…to put it mildly; in fact abolitionists, Christian and otherwise, were a tiny minority, despised by almost everyone. It’s endlessly irritating the way contemporary Christians claim credit for abolitionism when it would make vastly more sense for them to admit blame for pro-slavery.

    Extremist dominionists do exist, as theocrats who hope to transform our democracy into something that looks like ancient Israel, complete with stoning as punishment. But “it’s a pretty small world,” says Worthen, who studies these groups.

    Mark DeMoss, whose Atlanta-based public relations firm represents several Christian groups, put it this way: “You would be hard-pressed to find one in 1,000 Christians in America who could even wager a guess at what dominionism is.”

    Seriously?! She quotes a PR guy on the subject as if his views were disinterested scholarship?

    Washington Post, where are your editors?

  • There’s probably no bus

    Oxford Christians tell Dawkins where to get off.

    In 2009, atheists in London paid for 200 adverts on the city’s buses, declaring: “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.”

    Now Premier Christian Radio has paid for its own version on Oxford buses, after the distinguished evolutionary biologist turned down the chance to debate with Christian philosopher William Lane  Craig when he visits the city later in the month.

    The new advert reads: “There’s probably no Dawkins. Now stop worrying and enjoy Oct 25th at the Sheldonian Theatre.”

    The trouble with that as a witticism is that it isn’t true. It’s as if X taunts Y by saying “You flunked out of high school!” and Y returns the favor by saying the same thing, when in the first case it’s true and in the second case it isn’t. That’s one of the first things you learn as a child: when exchanging taunts with a sibling/cousin/friend/enemy you have to avoid that particular trap.

    There are good reasons to think there is a Dawkins. I’ve seen him myself, I’ve exchanged a few words with him. I know other people who have talked to him. I’ve seen him on DVDs and YouTube, I’ve heard him on the radio and in podcasts, I have books he’s written. I don’t think Oxford University is deceived about his reality. That’s just a few of the good reasons to think there is a Dawkins.

    God is very different in this respect. I’ve never seen God or exchanged words with it. I don’t know anyone who has. I don’t know of any reliable accounts of anyone who has – not one. All the purported information about God that I know of is in the form of stories or apologetics. I’ve never seen God on tv or You Tube or heard God on the radio or in podcasts. I have no books that God has written, though I have one it’s purported to have written (but is obviously written by a number of human beings). There are good reasons not to think God exists, and no good reasons to think God does exist. There are good reasons to think God doesn’t exist.

    So the two ads are asymmetrical, you see. Because there are good reasons to think God doesn’t exist, the sentence ”There is probably no God” is not a daft sentence, while because there are good reasons to think Dawkins does exist, “There is probably no Dawkins” is a daft sentence.

  • The real problem is new atheism

    Nick Cohen has a terrific, ferocious piece on Trevor Phillips’s failure, indeed refusal, to do anything about caste discrimination in the UK. Since Phillips is the head of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, this failure/refusal is striking as well as tragic.

    Nick starts by clearing some stupid lumber out of the way.

    You can tell that speakers are preparing to say something scandalous when they assert that “militant atheists” are the moral equivalents of the religious militants that so afflict humanity. Trevor Phillips, whose flighty management of the Equality and Human Rights Commission is becoming a scandal, was no exception when he announced last week that British believers were “under siege” from “fashionable” atheists.

    …

    Trevor Phillips’s attack on “fashionable” atheists for exercising their right to speak their minds shows he does not begin to understand modern sectarianism. From his ignorance flows a cowardly refusal to face down those who would bully and harass others, as a story that deserves more attention than it has received shows.

    Phillips also, I would add, does not begin to understand people’s right to speak their minds. The endless flow of crap about #BadNewAtheists demonstrates that a lot of people don’t begin to understand that, because the whole “omigod #BadNewAtheists” thing depends on the assumption that there is something obviously Bad about atheists spelling out what they don’t believe.

    Faced with the prospect of confronting the prejudices of core supporters, the Labour government preferred holding on to seats to living by liberal principles and backed away from extending anti-discrimination law to cover caste. With Labour gone, campaigners for just treatment for tens of thousands of British Asians have a glimmer of hope.

    They are trying to persuade the coalition to take seriously a study of bullying and harassment conducted by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research. It is a dispiriting read – little more than a list of pointless cruelties. The Indian supervisor of an NHS worker discovers that he is from a lower caste and makes his life such a misery he becomes ill under the pressure and is suspended; a social services care worker refuses to help an elderly woman wash herself because the old lady is from a lower caste and so it goes on through dozens of examples.

    But Trevor Phillips doesn’t want to know.

    A search of the Equality and Human Rights Commission records shows that it ignores caste discrimination in Britain.When I phone its press office to ask why, its public relations officers fail to return my calls.

    Why tf not? Seriously: why? As it’s a press office, they must know Nick will report the failure, and where he will do so. Are they content with that? An article in the Observer noting that they can’t be bothered to pay attention to a report on caste discrimination? Too busy opposing “fashionable” atheists are they?

  • Oh hai, why can’t the new atheists be nice?

    Why can’t they, asks “interfaith” atheist (don’t ask me, I don’t know how that works) Chris Stedman via a guest post on his blog by someone called Karla McLaren. He says “It’s a hugely informative and clear-eyed assessment of the state of the atheist movement.” I don’t agree. I think it’s just the 14 millionth installment of “new atheists are bad and mean ick.”

    Atheism, McLaren informs us, is more visible thanks to those books by the four New Ones, or as she calls them, “the Fractious Four.” Yes really.

    I call them the Fractious Four, which has a cool superhero ring to it (even though their superpower is to argue with everybody).

    Dawkins, Hitchens, and Harris have written polemics against religion, and true to the polemical form, they’ve taken a moral absolutist stance which asserts that religion is orders of magnitude more harmful than it is beneficial (if it is beneficial at all). Dennett is a philosopher, and his work is nuanced and, well, philosophical – and I often wonder why he’s included with the polemicists. However, he is, so on we go.

    We do? Why do we? Why not not include Dennett if you think he doesn’t belong? Why swallow the clichés whole in order to barf them back at us, even the ones you don’t agree with?

    The Fractious Four have put forward some very attention-grabbing ideas in a post-Twin Towers world, where many of us have seriously questioned the purpose and limits of faith and supernaturalism. However, the Four (Dennett excluded) have put those ideas forward at the end of a fist, and in a way that questions the sanity and morality of anyone who disagrees with them. But see, that’s the point of a polemic … you put forward the most extreme version of your argument, and you don’t make any room for moderating views.

    A polemic is a deeply emotional appeal made not just with anger, but with rage; not just with sadness, but with despair; not just with fear, but with gut-wrenching terror. If it’s done skillfully, a truly masterful polemic is melded with a careful overlay of logic, scholarship, and verbal skill. A polemic is made to be powerful and arresting, and it can be a very beautiful thing indeed. But it’s not something you should make a career of, because it’s exhausting (both to create, and eventually, to witness).

    And so on, and so on. It’s all like that – treacly and belligerent at the same time, and of course wildly inaccurate in the usual way of gnu-haters. This is the basin of warm sick that Stedman urges on our attention.

    The Four Horsemen of New Atheism did their work well, but they cannot help us clean up the battlefields they created. That’s not their job. The clean-up, the strategizing, the community rebuilding, the future imagining, and the alliance-making — this is not a job for bomb makers.

    In order to move forward, we need to rely on more than mere polemics. How about if we try dialectics?[iii] Dialectics can be just as fun as polemics (and they require just as much skill), but dialectics have the added benefit of creating community, building intelligent synthesis out of seemingly intractable positions, and teaching people how to manage – rather than merely weaponize – their emotions.

    It’s one long “shut up, ur doin it rong, stop doin it the way ur doin it and do it the way I do it, stop arguing and get busy creating community.” It’s written in a fey style so that it perhaps comes across as friendly, but it is in fact very unfriendly indeed. It’s packed with fiercely hostile language about argumentative atheists and their rage and extremism. With friends like these we’ve already got all the enemies we could possibly find room for.

  • Be really nice to the people who are telling you to hush

    Stephanie Z has an excellent comment on Josh Rosenau’s post about how I’m totally wrong about what he means by “the New Atheism.”

    It’s worth remembering where this debate came from. Atheists, only recently starting to stand up and be counted in any number, are seeing the people who have been saying the same things that atheists have been saying for centuries (as noted in comment 5, then largely ignored) being told to hush up because they’re being noticed for once and that’s making trouble. These are frequently also the people who gave your rank-and-file atheist the courage to come out and who provide sympathy when coming out results in the crap it always results in. But hush, because what these other people are doing is really important.

    Of course, it is important. But so is being supported and encouraged as an out atheist. So is being able to tell people how religion hurt you or those you love without having to put bows on it. So is being able to tell other people that they have a real choice to get out of abusive religions. So is being able to run for public office. So is being able to keep your job. So is being able to keep your kids.

    But hush. And be really nice to the people who are telling you to hush. Be nice to the people who are telling you that you matter less than what they’re doing. Be nice to the people who are doing good work but only talk about why people like you are bad. Be nice to the people who might, someday let you eat at the grown-up table if you stay quiet enough at the children’s table first (and when there are no more grown-up problems you might interfere with). Hush and trust them, despite the fact that they’re calling you the problem.

    Yeah, no. Atheists are being aggressive, in part, because they’re being told to go back to being passive. They’re being argumentative because there’s a constant onslaught of messages leveled at them and everyone they have to deal with that becomes the unquestioned social background if they don’t. They’re being rude because everybody is rude sometimes, and they’re not going to be left out if you’re not. They’re being condescending because you’ve been told this before in some form, but you can’t seem to move past the fact that someone insulted you in order to hear it.

  • Oh yes you did, oh no I didn’t

    Curious incidents on the Open Letter to the NCSE and BCSE thread at Jerry Coyne’s. 428 comments at present and counting. A guy called Roger Stanyard, who works for the BCSE and has lately been telling Jerry and co. to stop dissing religion because, tried to explain about how the UK is different from the US. This was entirely beside the point, as several people tried to explain in return, but Stanyard doesn’t listen good.

    Those of us that run the BCSE have no mandate or freedom whatsover to back New Atheism. A goodly number of our members are religious, or indifferent to religion or are uncomfortable with New Atheism.

    If we limited membership to New Atheists we wouldn’t have any activists.

    Ya…that’s super super interesting, but it’s not relevant, because oddly enough Jerry’s open letter doesn’t say “Dear BCSE please back New Atheism and please limit your membership to New Atheists.” What it says is: you keep heaping invective on New Atheists and tarring people like Richard Dawkins with opprobrium, and you’re losing allies as a result.

    I for one tried to clear things up for Stanyard, more than once. I also tried to pin down the essence of his confusion.

    What Roger Stanyard, and other accommodationists, seem to be saying is “because we at the N/BCSE have to avoid criticizing religion, therefore we want all scientists and friends of science also to avoid criticizing religion.”

    This is not reasonable. That “therefore” makes no sense. It’s like asking that nobody who votes Democratic in preference to voting Republican ever criticize any Democrat.

    His cogent and civil reply began

    When are you going to get it into your thick skull that the United Kingdom is not the United States.

    Nobody here gives a stuff about Democrats and Republicans or your culture wars.

    The BCSE has no option but to take a radically different position from you.

    Yes, thank you…Meanwhile and a good deal more significantly, he also attributed a surprising statement to Richard Dawkins; Dawkins turned up and asked him to substantiate it since he (RD) did not remember saying such a thing and found it highly unlikely; Stanyard said he got it from Larry Moran; Jerry asked Larry Moran; Larry Moran said Nope, I don’t remember saying that, I remember telling you not to bash atheists…and Stanyard demanded apologies all around. Go figure.

    That’s not even all of it. It’s high-class ructions, I tell you what.

  • Not a moment sooner, k?

    David Barash wrote another pro-gnu-atheist post a couple of days ago, and Jacques Berlinerblau posted a chippy comment there. His comment was rather sinuous, but the upshot was that yes gnu atheists are just as horrible as everyone says so ha.

    nsmyth made reference to “critical atheists” and she or he has perhaps finally identified the proper term to describe the many scholars who are nonbelievers themselves but who have serious reservations about New Atheist worldview.

    These critical atheists–the list grows longer every day–are subjected to all manner of vitriol and invective by Gnus. Now, the infidel tradition is full of vitriol and invective so I am not entirely opposed to that sort of thing and not averse to giving it a spin myself. But the point raised by nsmyth stands: there just doesn’t seem to be any attempt by many NAs to think through these criticisms seriously.

    It’s JUST vitriol and invective, a reflex like a gagging mechanism triggered by any criticism. That’s why it frustrates so many critical atheists (I assure you David this is not a small cohort and not lacking for serious scholars). Again, I have written a fair amount about this. You can read it if you like and if you do I would be more than happy to discuss it with you privately or publicly.

    Love, Jack.

    You see how it is: The gnu atheists – they do vitriol and invective, and they don’t think, plus they do vitriol and invective. I’ve written about it.

    Well who could argue with that? Not I, certainly – but I did ask him for just a little in the way of specifics. Just a crumb, to be going on with.

    “Again, I have written a fair amount about this.”

    What did you say?

    Really. Just a hint. Just one little paraphrase. So far you haven’t said a thing, you’ve simply scolded like a crow.

    What did he say? Well, not “how dare you compare my scolding to that of a crow!” – but rather, something more civil but also more exigent and dismissive.
    Always great to hear from you. Go to the CHE review I wrote about Hitchens’ God is Not Great. Then a piece in the old Washington Post Book World on Michael Novak’s No One Sees God.

    Then read the book I wrote Thumpin’ It: The Use and Abuse of the Bible in Today’s Presidential Politics. After that, I would urge you to read The Secular Bible: Why Nonbelievers Must Take Religion Seriously (written before the Gnus emerged, but should be of interest to you nonetheless).

    There are other sources, but that’s enough for now. I have a book coming out soon on the subject. So head out to your local library, read up, and let’s talk when you have that all read. But not a moment sooner, k?

    So the deal here is, anti-gnus get to do any generalized character-assassination they want to about gnu atheists, but if gnu atheists have the audacity to ask, “Like what?” then the anti-gnus are entitled to tell the gnus to go read everything and shut up in the meantime.

    This is the sophisticated nuanced vitriol-free scholarship that is supposed to be so much better than what the Gnus do.

    Meh.

  • Ruse rhymes with loose, he says so himself

    Just a little note to point out the consistent rudeness and inaccuracy (to put it politely) of Michael Ruse.

    I read one of the responses to my recent piece on Darwinism and the problem of evil. One of the junior new atheists — that is to say, not one of the big four of Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris — took extreme umbrage to my picking on him (even more umbrage at my not naming him by name) and my suggesting that absolute reality might not correspond exactly to his worldview.

    No he didn’t. Any “umbrage” he took was a good deal less extreme than the umbrage Ruse routinely takes at (not to: at) a great many people and things but especially gnu atheists. “He” is Jason Rosenhouse. Jason starts by quoting Ruse on Giberson and Collins:

    the book is intended to defend Christianity against the critics who argue that science and religion are incompatible. Expectedly, it has got all of the junior New Atheists jumping with joyous ire, and all over the blogs are stern condemnations: “this is not a good book” “the authors’s [sic] frequently murky prose”; “I was struck by just how unserious they are on this issue.” You get the idea.

    Jason points out that all of those quotes come from his review of the book. Now that you know that, look again at what Ruse said. Typical of him, isn’t it. “The junior New Atheists,” as if it were hundreds of them, or even three, when in fact it was one. “You get the idea,” says Ruse, sloppily, and no doubt we do, but it’s a wrong idea. We get the idea that there are lots of gnu atheists jumping with joyous ire when in fact there is only one Jason, writing a reasoned review. “All over the blogs are stern condemnations”: by which he means one.

    Jason says, mildly,

     Apparently describing a pro-religion book as not good, or protesting that its prose is murky, is now a level of rhetoric vitriolic enough to get you dismissed as a New Atheist, if only a junior one. Of course, Ruse might have quoted the context surrounding those criticisms, since I rather clearly expressed regret that I found the book so inadequate and recommended a better book defending the same basic ideas. But that basic nod to fairness would have required conceding that I wasn’t just writing an angry screed.

    Ruse doesn’t do basic nods to fairness. Ruse does rudeness and (to put it much too politely) inaccuracy.

  • The yukkists

    Man, it’s been a busy week for the gnu-hating crowd. There was Michael Ruse, then Jacques Berlinerblau, and now (it grieves me to say) Joseph Hoffmann. All three doing an extended yell of rage at “the new atheists” while seldom actually giving any specifics or quoting anyone or linking to anything, so that a reader could figure out exactly what they’re talking about. They do mention Dawkins and Harris, and Hoffmann quotes from a press release by the Center for Inquiry, but mostly there’s just a great deal of generalization.

    Here’s Ruse:

    I think the New Atheists are a disaster, a danger to the wellbeing of America comparable to the Tea Party.  It is not so much that their views are wrong—I am not going to fall into the trap of labeling those with whom I disagree immoral because of our disagreements—but because they won’t make any effort to think seriously about why they hold their positions about the conflict between science and religion…

    Here’s Berlinerblau:

    In fact, what is fascinating about the New Atheists is their almost complete lack of interest in the history and philosophical development of atheism. They seem not the least bit curious to venture beyond an understanding that reduces atheist thought to crude hyper-empiricism, hyper-materialism, and an undiscriminating anti-theism…

    New Atheists, like Fundamentalists, only read “original texts” (kind of like the way Tea Party activists prattle on about the “original intent” of the Constitution). They don’t understand hermeneutics, or the interpretive process, and for this reason they are doomed to saying very silly things about their subject matter.

    And now here’s Hoffmann:

    …it is not clear that the EZs are listening, at least not directly, to their critics, because their royalty checks and speaking fees are talking too loud…

    The mode of critique is lodged somewhere between “Stupid Pet Tricks”- and “Bushisms”-style humor, a generation-based funniness that thrives on ridicule as a worthy substitute for argument: Blasphemy contests, Hairdrier Unbaptisms, Blowgun-slogans (“Science flies you to the moon, religion flies you into buildings”), and my latest personal favorite, Zombie Jesus Jokes (“He died for your sins; now he’s back for your brains”)…

    And so on and so on – lots of generality with very little specificity (although at least there is a link to Zombie Jesus Jokes, which is something). I don’t know who the new atheists in question are supposed to be, whether the four cowboys, or the four plus some more, or all new atheists (and how are they defined?). That means I don’t know how accurate the descriptions of them are, or how to check. That means I suspect that the whole enterprise is just bad temper as opposed to reasoned criticism. Yet a major pillar of the criticism or bad temper is how unreasoned the criticism by the new atheists is.

    So the question is: what exactly is it, really, that they’re so pissed off about?

    I don’t even know. You’d think I would, after all this time, but I don’t. They’re all over the place. They change their story every time they post. One minute it’s being political failures, the next minute it’s being too popular. I can’t possibly keep up.

    The truth is I don’t think it’s really anything. I think they just don’t like us, in a dopy Leon Kass-ish “yuk” way, and that’s all there is to it. We really really get on their nerves, and they don’t know why themselves, but they don’t seem to have noticed that they don’t know why, so they keep self-importantly issuing noisy but incomprehensible jeremiads on the subject. This is good free publicity for the gnu atheists, so it all works out.

  • The people look like ants

    So how about that Jacques Berlinerblau eh?

    He totally agrees with Michael Ruse that “new” atheists are equatable to the Tea Party, and wishes he’d said it first.

    For those not familiar with their world-view, let me help you understand their central and timeless insight: Unless you as an atheist are willing to disparage all religious people, describe them all as imbeciles and creeps, mock every text and thinker they have ever produced, then you must be some sort of deluded, self-hating, sellout, subverting the rise of the Mighty Atheist Political Juggernaut (about which more anon).

    Goodness; how very vulgar. Miss Manners does not, on second thought, believe she has very much to say about sheer vulgarity. Miss Manners is forced to conclude that Mr Berlinerblau is beneath her notice.

  • Hardly a disaster

    So now poor Michael Ruse has to write a petulant article (for Comment is Free this time? we don’t want to get out of sequence) saying that that horrid new atheist David Barash is mad at him, that he doesn’t care a bit, that he’s a brave contrarian who pisses off campus feminists and other bores who believe in equal rights, that he likes a good dust up, that he was in Arkansas testifying when everyone else was in nursery school, and that new atheists are a danger to the wellbeing of America comparable to the al Qaeda and the Westboro Baptist Church combined. That should take him at least ten minutes.

    Barash was gobsmacked by Ruse’s

    assertion that the New Atheists constitute a “disaster comparable to the Tea Party.”

    So was I. I always am surprised by how malicious and mendacious some atheists allow themselves to be about the Gnu variety.

    Barash pointed out what the Tea Party is actually about, and then pointed out that the new atheists are not about the same things.

    The New Atheists, with whom I cheerfully and gratefully align myself, have no specific public-policy goals, except perhaps the will-o’the-wisp of delegitimizing the typically unspoken assumption—especially in the United States—that religion must never be questioned, not only as a public good but something that is necessarily true and to which all good people must necessarily subscribe. Theirs is an intellectual struggle, an effort to provide a voice to the large number of previously closeted nonbelievers who felt isolated in their atheism.

    Exactly. And we really are allowed to do that. We really are not doing any harm to Michael Ruse by doing that. We really are not doing anything that justifies the relentless campaign of vituperation that is being directed at us. There really is no good reason to preserve and protect the assumption that religion must never be questioned.

    If the New Atheists succeed, unbelief will be increasingly legitimate and willing to speak its name. Minds will be opened, and many will find themselves liberated to express views previously forbidden. Hardly a disaster … unless you believe, Michael, that people are unable or unwilling to do the right thing in the absence of religious belief.

    I can’t improve on that.

  • You people are so amusing, and a danger to the wellbeing of America

    What, again? Yes, again. Yes, for the 14 thousandth time, Michael Ruse is telling us how angry with him “the new atheists” are, how right he is in spite of their anger, how wrong and bad and dangerous and immoral they are, how brave he is, and how right and brave and amusing and important he Michael Ruse is.

    Oh dear, I am in trouble again with the New Atheists… I am being called all sorts of nasty things…Even I sometimes wonder why I am in such bad odor, apart from the fact that whenever I am confronted with people for whom disagreement is considered not just wrong but morally offensive my first tendency is to laugh and tease.

    No it isn’t! Your first tendency is to complain and boast. And then what you call “laugh and tease” other people call by harsher names. There was the time you sent a “laugh and tease” to Daniel Dennett and then forwarded the resulting exchange, civil on his part and splenetic on yours, to William Dembski without Dennett’s permission. That kind of thing is why you are in such bad odor: it’s because you give every appearance of being energetically malicious.

    I have spent forty years fighting fundamentalism, including so-called Intelligent Design Theory – on the podium, in print, and in the courtroom (as a witness for the ACLU against Scientific Creationism).

    He’s important. He wants you to know that. He wants there to be no doubt about that. He mentions it every time he throws another rancid tomato at the gnu atheists, so he must really need everyone to get how important he is. All together now: Michael Ruse is very important. Next.

     I am so close in so many respects to the new Atheists that I am hated with the kind of passion that you usually find between Protestant sects differing over the true meaning of the Whore of Babylon.  Is she just the Pope or is she the whole of the Catholic Church?  Of course I also suffer from what we might call the Laurie Essig syndrome.  I do like a bit of a bust up.

    Well exactly. (Laurie Essig apart; I have no idea what that is. No, don’t bother telling me.) Of course you like a bit of a bust up. If there isn’t one, you create it – hence emailing Dan Dennett that time, and hence all these rancid tomato articles in the HuffBop and the CHE and CisF. You like a bit of a bust up, so stop pitching fits about why are the new atheists angry at me. You know perfectly well why they are, and it’s what you wanted! So what’s the point of opening by pretending to be puzzled? To be irritating, perhaps, and I have fallen into your trap. Well that’s all right. However much you like a dust up, you are acting like a conspicuous jerk, so it’s worth falling into your trap. I didn’t fall in, I stepped gracefully in.

    But then – I’ll revert to talking about him in the 3d person now – he veers into the serious and the McCarthyesque.

     I think the New Atheists are a disaster, a danger to the wellbeing of America comparable to the Tea Party.

    “The New Atheists are a danger to the wellbeing of America” – and he wonders why he is in bad odor.

  • Hammill the prodigal

    Hammill, as I said in a comment earlier this morning, is Walter Smith, known as Wally, a graduate student in biology at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa.

    He said last summer that he would never do it again. He’s been doing it again.

    He’s been sowing little seeds of hostility and paranoia and mistrust. He’s been ever so gently tarnishing the reputations of gnu atheists. Again.

    For instance on this post, which of course drew him like a fly to honey, because it was both scornful and inaccurate about me. His kind of thing! (I don’t know why he hates me so particularly, given that I’m hardly the only vocal atheist out there, but he does.) He saw an opening for some poison, and he was ready. He was worried about the way new atheists talk.

    Just look at the words used to describe Josh here or others from several blogs over the past week: blatantly misrepresented, intellectually lazy, deceptive, dishonest, untrustworthy, deliberate distortion. They all sound like something from a political attack ad in late October, not salvos in a mutual debate or discussion. I don’t want to read too much into intentions or motives, but I don’t personally see them as an attempt to invite mutual debate. I see them as an attempt to quash dissenting opinion through character attacks without giving the heart of the debate a chance to find the table – a marginalization or distraction strategy, if you will. That’s certainly politics, although I would argue it’s far from the good kind.

    And four more paragraphs of the same kind of thing – the very best most refined kind of concern trolling. Now read it again with the YNH blog firmly in mind – the lies, the accusations of lying, the obscenity, the sexism, the multiple socks all confirming the lies – that’s our refined concern troll.

    Then another solemn refined comment in the same vein. Then warm agreement from one of the people he deceived. Then me asking a different anonymous commenter, TB, if it was the same TB aka Tim Broderick who called me a liar repeatedly at the Intersection. Then another concerned, conscientious, hand-wringing, highly respectable intervention by Wally the confessed serial liar.

    For the sake of argument, consider for a moment that TB is who you say he is and what you say happened is an accurate representation of what did happen. Beyond the obvious ethical considerations of providing the real name of another poster who has not personally divulged their identity on a site, how is a past argument relevant to the current discussion? Shouldn’t an argument be judged on its merits and not on one’s perception of the character of the person making it? Unless there are clear logical flaws in what TB has been saying here, I fail to see how pointing out a past dispute serves anything beyond an attempt to undermine one’s character, which is the point I was making several posts above. I hesitate to use this word due to the small firestorm it’s caused in this post, but dropping a pseudonymous commenter’s real name along with what appears to be an entirely unrelated, negative character reference seems an undeniably political move. (If there is a connection between the past and present somewhere that I’m missing (and I may be) that makes all of this more relevant, feel free to correct me.)

    Feast on the rich, multiple, layered ironies of that comment.

  • New albigensianism

    The gnu atheist-haters have been having a busy weekend. Yesterday Michael Ruse told us, after saying that he took Philip Kitcher’s article seriously even though he disagreed with it, and wouldn’t be writing about it if he didn’t –

    (Actually, as a general rule that is just not true. I write about the New Atheists, even though I don’t think their position is worth taking seriously at all. Or rather, I accept many of the conclusions, but I think the arguments are lousy. But I write about the New Atheists because I think their hateful attitude towards believers is a potential force for great social and moral evil.)

    And today Julian Baggini told us about the way atheism is currently perceived (without telling us that he has been doing his bit to foster the very perception he finds worrying).

    The problem is that while the word atheist itself means nothing more than “not-theist”, it seems that for many, “a” stands for anti…If being an atheist meant being anti-theist, then I would not be one. I am an anti-dogmatist, an anti-fundamentalist, yes. But I have no hostility to theism as such, and have no desire to strip all theists of their faith.

    Neither do we. (I’m including myself among the anti-theists, which is fair enough – my overt atheism is the stated reason the owners of The Philosophers’ Magazine removed my name from the masthead with the last issue, after six years of being on it as Editorial Advisor, then Deputy Editor, then Associate Editor. Julian of course is one of the owners, so it’s fair enough to think I belong to the guilty group.) Neither do we – what we have desire to do is say frankly and unapologetically what we think is wrong with such beliefs. It is a form of majoritarian bullying to pretend that that is the same thing as wanting to “strip” people of their beliefs. If that were the case, Julian would be a criminal simply for being a philosopher.

    Of course I think theists are mistaken, but no one should be automatically hostile to everyone they disagree with. Hostility should be reserved for the pernicious, the wicked and the harmful.

    But again – the hostility is for the beliefs, not the believers, at least not unless the believers are shouting at us. Again, it’s a ploy, and a nasty one, to pretend otherwise.

    Dividing the world up into believers and non-believers, while accurate in many ways, doesn’t draw the distinction between friends and foes. I see my allies as being the community of the reasonable, and my enemies as the community of blind faith and dogmatism. Any religion that is not unreasonable and not dogmatic should likewise recognise that it has a kinship with atheists who hold those same values. And it should realise that it has more to fear from other people of faith who deny those values than it does from reasonable atheists like myself.

    Well, that has the virtue of being clear, at least. Julian is saying he sees us – the overt atheists – as his enemies. He’s saying he is reasonable and we are not, and he is an ally of reasonable people and we are enemies.

    He is in Ruse country.

    He ends by pointing to “two sad facts”:

    that atheism has come to be seen as anti-theism, and that, perhaps partly in response, we expect people of faith to forge not-that-holy alliances with each other rather than far better unholy alliances with kindred non-believers. We should challenge both those assumptions, for the sake of values that good believers and good atheists alike hold dear.

    So now he’s among the good atheists, and we are among the evil ones.

    It’s staggering.

  • Throw physic to the dogs

    There’s a funny little sub-group of gnu atheist-hating atheists, who claim to find gnu atheists stupid and worthless and contemptible beyond belief, yet can’t stop talking about them. I’ve started making bets with myself. “She says this is enough about the gnu atheists for now…but I bet she won’t be able to ignore that post by Jason Rosenhouse.” I’ve been winning all my bets. The sub-group is very predictable. They’re like “You’re Not Helping” that way – after awhile I knew what YNH was going to be talking about next, and YNH always obliged.

    They hate hate hate certain gnu atheists – and oh man do they hate the “gnu atheists” joke – yet those very gnu atheists set their agenda. Day in and day out – Jerry Coyne this, PZ Myers that, Ophelia Benson the other – except for the ones who have made a solemn vow Never to Mention My Name, in which case it’s Jerry Coyne this, PZ Myers that, and a blog I will not name the other.

    It’s as if there are no other gnu atheists – yet there are lots. But somehow the Myers-Coyne (and sometimes Benson) axis has become the throbbing heart of noo atheist horribleness, which has to be monitored and anathematized hour by hour.

    It becomes especially funny when it consists of tutting about bitterness and hatred. Yes really – obsessively bitter haters fretting about the bitterness and hatred of The Enemy.

    It’s very unkind of me to say this, of course, because since I know that they obsessively monitor the Evil Cabal, I know they will see this little taunt, and their bitterness and hatred will only deepen. But then I’ve never claimed to be a Nice Person.

  • Oh if only we could learn to doubt

    More dopy mindless generalization about “New Atheism” at Comment is Free Belief, this batch courtesy of Ed Halliwell.

    Almost two weeks on from the After New Atheism event at the RSA and the trail seems to have gone cold. It sounded so promising – the setup from a humanist writer professing his boredom with the stagnancy of debate…And yet it didn’t quite happen. As Mark Vernon reported, the evening itself was a bit of a damp squib, and normal service has been resumed on comment threads, with Caspar Melville – the aforementioned humanist – understandably crying foul at the pummelling he received for daring to call for more listening and less braying.

    Yes, but as we know, Caspar Melville did more than just cry foul; he also invited me to write a dissenting article in reply to his profession of boredom, and then didn’t wait for the next issue of the New Humanist but posted the article online. He’s far from firmly in the “Let’s everybody hate New Atheists” camp, in fact he’s not really in that camp at all.

    Now for the mindless generalizations.

    [A] way through has been hinted at, including at the event itself. Marilynne Robinson pointed to it when she said that “New Atheism doesn’t acknowledge the centrality of consciousness“…

    Oh really? All of “New Atheism” doesn’t do that? Including Dan Dennett? Including Sam Harris? And of course all other vocal atheists? And Marilynne Robinson knows that how, exactly?

    Whether it’s fixation on belief in God or fixation on the absence of evidence for God, whenever we project our crystallised concepts onto the world and call them real, we are falling into a kind of theism – creating gods out of our own ideas and making ourselves “right”. We all do it, of course, and it usually ends in the kind of unproductive fight that has characterised the New Atheist debate in recent years.

    Whereas…what – the old theist non-debate is quite productive and sensible and good? It’s unproductive for atheists to tell theists “you don’t know what you claim to know” but it’s productive for theists to go on forever claiming to know what they don’t know? In short, why single out “the New Atheist debate” as an example of projecting crystallized concepts onto the world?

    So wouldn’t it be more interesting to reframe all this as a psychological rather than scientific or religious inquiry and practise becoming familiar with how our minds work before we try to work out what, if anything, created them? There is a cost – we’d have to let go of being “right”, and instead embrace a deep kind of doubt, one that accepts that the conceptual and perceptual tools we use to explore the world are limited and may be faulty.

    But what the fuck makes this beezer think explicit atheists don’t do that? What else is all this about? Atheists are the ones who know we don’t have a special magic faculty that feeds us reliable knowledge about supernatural beings, so what’s he telling us to embrace doubt for?

    And by encouraging humility through recognition of our fallibility, we could perhaps move beyond the theism of New Atheism in a way that allows us to be a bit kinder to those with whom we disagree. How about it?

    How about what? How about agreeing with the unexamined assumption that “New Atheism” is especially unkind to those it disagrees with? How about blaming explicit atheists for everything while letting theists off any possible hook? No thanks.

  • Baying for blood? Moi?

    Are the few people who commented on JK’s post on the Toxic Sock affair really (though metaphorically) “participants in [a] witch-hunt” and “the 21st century, virtual-world, equivalent of a medieval mob baying for the blood their latest victim”?

    No.

    I can see why they (we – I was one) look like a crowd, because there are quite a few comments and they are critical and sometimes hostile. On the other hand, there are only (if I counted correctly) 23 people total, not counting Jean, and a few of them are friendly; there’s a total of 63 comments. So a rush of mostly-critical comments, yes; a mob baying for blood, no.

    But more to the point: are we the Bad People? Are we the bashers, the demonizers, the bayers for blood, the pitchfork-wielders, in contrast to the kindly peaceable loving villagers who want only to be left alone to raise their raspberries and kiwis?

    No.

    No; I seriously don’t think so. I think the issue here is that we “new atheists” think we are allowed to be openly critical of religion, and that we think haters of “new atheists” are wrong and illiberal to keep throwing merde at us for doing so. We think that when it’s Ron Rosenbaum throwing, and we think it when it’s “William/Tom Johnson” and we think it when it’s Chris Mooney.

    So we tend to push back when people throw merde at us for doing something that is not and should not be seen as wrong. We pushed back at Mooney and Kirshenbaum when they threw merde at us in their book, and the result was that they banned some of us from their blog while allowing their pets to call us liars. That’s the backstory in a nutshell. M&K have chosen to spend a lot of time demonizing a minority that in the US is already thoroughly despised. That would be reasonable if the minority in question were Child-torturers United; but we’re not, so it isn’t.

    So no. We’re not the witch-hunters here.

    Mark Jones finds the whole idea quite ironic.

  • Et tu AAAS?

    Jen McCreight of Blag Hag is at the Evolution 2010 conference in Portland and she went to a 2 hour symposium on Communication this morning. It started well, with Robert Pennock giving some good advice…but then…

    But it quickly went downhill. Much of the talk was about distancing support of evolution from atheistic views – that we need to stress that religion and science is compatible so people in the “middle” can still accept theistic evolution. That people are more willing to accept evolution if they hear it from their pastor. He lauded Francis Collins and the BioLogos foundation for being pro-evolution…even though BioLogos just had a piece trying to reconcile Biblical Adam and Eve with evolution.

    Well that is being pro-evolution – it’s just not being pro-thinking straight, that’s all.

    The reason why people feel compelled to do this is because religion holds a special status in our society where it can’t be criticized, even when it’s blatantly wrong. This really came out in the second part of the symposium, which was by a woman from AAAS (I unfortunately missed her name). She said there’s no use in including creationists or atheists in the discussion because we’re extremists who won’t change our minds.

    Oh thanks. People from the AAAS are othering atheists now; that’s nice. Science and The Good People are all in the middle, and atheists are way the hell out there on the extreme margin, being marginal extremists, and weird and different and abnormal. I believe this is colloquially known as throwing people under the bus. It’s spotting an enemy and cold-bloodedly deciding to sacrifice an ally or friend to the enemy to save one’s own life or job or ability to get along with the neighbors. It’s not very principled or admirable.