Tag: The backlash

  • How to do dialogue

    Chris Mooney is in praise of dialogue again.

    The fact is, journalism (and dialogue) about science and religion are pretty difficult to oppose.

    Case in point: Last week, here in D.C. (my old, new home), I attended an event at the American Association for the Advancement of Science to reintroduce its Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion…At the close of the session, I rose and posed a question. One can never remember exact words, but in essence, it was this: “I’m glad you’re trying to foster dialogue between scientists and the religious community, and I’m sure you’ll succeed. But here is a harder question–how will you foster dialogue with the New Atheists?”

    Oh that dialogue about science and religion – the one where everybody gets together and hates on “the New Atheists.” And if they’re slow to get around to that, fortunately, Chris Mooney is there to remind them to get down to it – Mr Communication, Mr Framing, Mr Can’t We All Get Along himself. Chris Mooney is a friend to everyone – except the evil marginal non-mainstream people he insists on calling “the New Atheists” as if that were a known classified species rather than a sloppy journalistic catch-all pejorative.

    Good to have you back Chris. You’re a real piece of work.

  • More lessons in civility

    Backlash against “new” atheists, chapter 479,811.

    We were initially surprised that our co-authored book, Unscientific America, was so strongly attacked for observing that scientists should strive to improve their skills at public communication–and that this probably includes not alienating potential religious allies or mainstream America. But in a sense, the attacks made a kind of sense. Mostly, they came from those for whom this advice ran contrary to their particular project of denouncing much of America and the world for alleged ignorance and superstition–the New Atheists.

    That’s “backlash” because it’s untrue, and distorted, and misleading. It’s dishonest and unreasonable, and those qualities make it backlash as opposed to disagreement or criticism. It is of course entirely possible to disagree with “the New Atheists” or “new” atheism in a reasonable and truthful way. It’s noticeable and interesting, though, that the vast bulk of the unfavorable reaction to “new” atheism is not like that, but is, rather, untrue, and distorted, and misleading. There has been a torrent of unfavorable reaction to “new” atheism, and I have seen very little of it – to tell the truth I don’t recall any, which of course is not to say that there isn’t any – that is not hostile and dishonest.

    The quoted passage is untrue and distorted in several ways. One is that it doesn’t say who “the New Atheists” are, which means it leaves the impression that anyone and everyone that someone might consider a “new” atheist fits that hostile and dishonest description.

    That’s an ugly trick. And the description itself is ugly – typical, and ugly. It’s typical of the shameless hyperbole that backlashers permit themselves to indulge in, as if it were simply self-evident that “new” atheists are on a moral level with Nazis or child-raping priests. I’m often considered and labeled a “new” atheist, and I consider myself to have a lot in common with people who are so labeled (and so I consider the label a compliment), so I’ll give my position on this description. I have no “project” to “denounce” much of the US and the world for alleged ignorance and superstition. That doesn’t describe me, and it doesn’t describe the “new” atheists I’m familiar with, either.

    It’s a curiously anti-intellectual and paranoiac description of people who make arguments in books and articles and blog posts, too. It makes us sound as if we lead Nuremberg rallies against the majority of human beings.
    In that, of course, it is simply typical of backlash rhetoric, which seems to be hell-bent on stirring up as much hatred of avowed atheists as it possibly can. It never stops surprising me how cheerfully willing the backlashers are to play with this kind of fire.

  • A schism between the nice people and the demons

    Another columnist does a bang-up job of describing explicit atheists in such a way that everyone will take care to hate them.

    the split also underscores a serious and widening schism in the broader community of non-believers, between those who want civil engagement with people of faith, and even cooperation where possible, and atheist “fundamentalists” (as Kurtz and the old guard call them) — true believers in godlessness who belittle religion and religious people at every turn, and yet by doing so can wind up sounding like the very enemy they are trying to defeat.

    That’s wrong. It’s false. It’s inaccurate. We are not “fundamentalists” in any meaningful sense, we do not belittle religion and religious people at every turn, some of us don’t belittle religious people at all, and we don’t sound at all like “the enemy.” And notice how sweetly reasonable the other side of this “schism” is made to sound – all they want is civil engagement with people of faith, and who could say boo to that?

    So, once again, we are given an unsubtle reminder that we are Other and unacceptable and to be maligned.

    “Although we” [quoting Paul Kurtz] “are skeptical of religion, we nonetheless have a positive statement to make. We want to work with religious people solving our planetary problems. This represents a basic philosophical difference.”

    No it doesn’t. Explicit atheists have sworn no oath of refusal to work with religious people solving our planetary problems. There is no basic philosophical difference about that. We don’t walk around with “Explicit Atheist” labels on our clothes, so there is no barrier to our working with anyone to solve our planetary problems. It’s a non-issue, one that’s been worked up to make explicit atheists look stupid and evil.

    The wider debate among secularists over whether to engage religious believers, or whether snark and sneer are the best ways to defeat faith and rally unbelievers to atheism, seems destined to continue.

    Same thing. Exaggerated at best. Snark and sneer is not all we do. David Gibson is himself uncivil and inaccurate. Bad journalist. No cookie.

  • The modes of inquiry are, to be sure, very different

    The World Science Festival is offering a “Faith and Science” panel, funded by the Templeton Foundation, of course. Chad Orzel disagrees with Jerry Coyne and Sean Carroll on the wrong-headedness of this. Sean points out

    there is a somewhat obvious omission of a certain viewpoint: those of us who think that science and religion are not compatible. And there are a lot of us! Also, we’re right. A panel like this does a true disservice to people who are curious about these questions and could benefit from a rigorous airing of the issues, rather than a whitewash where everyone mumbles pleasantly about how we should all just get along.

    To which Orzel responds

    I’m not convinced you need anyone on the panel to make the case that science and religion are fundamentally incompatible…The interesting subject of conversation is not so much the absolute compatibility or not of science and religion– given that neither side is really going to budge on that– but rather how it is that religious scientists reconcile the supposedly incompatible sides of the issue.

    He doesn’t know that “neither side is really going to budge on that” and therefore he doesn’t really know that a discussion of it would be immovable and uninteresting. It’s true that it’s unlikely that either side will budge as a side and as a result of being on the panel, but what individuals including those attending the panel will do is much less obvious. His dismissal is, as so often with accommodationists, flippant and dogmatic at once.

    Josh Rosenau thinks it’s good stuff though – in fact better than that: he says Orzel is absolutely right.

    Someone like Dawkins would stop the World Science Festival panel cold. The whole point Affirmative Atheists are making is that there is no dialogue to be had. Which means that the panel would descend into a metaconversation about whether there should even be conversations like the one they were supposed to be having. And that wouldn’t inform anyone.

    Why wouldn’t that inform anyone? Rosenau doesn’t say. Why should there be conversations like the one they were supposed to be having at a science fest? It’s certainly not obvious to me, given that science and “faith” operate in rather different ways. It’s also not obvious to me that, or why, an explanation of that fact would not be interesting.

    Larry Moran comments on Orzel and Rosenau.

  • Fresh deep boundaries

    Andrew Brown spots another opportunity to piss on “the new atheism” and pounces on it with his usual cheerful malice.

    …the new atheism, with its constant use of “religion” as a term which means something (nasty) is an attempt at social construction. In particular it’s an attempt to make fresh deep boundaries between ingroup and outgroup.

    Yes, in some senses, and partly. But one could say the same thing about the civil rights movement; about science; about feminism; about scholarship; about liberalism; about conservatism; about any human endeavor with actual specific articulated ideas or truth-claims. And it might and should occur to Brown that religion too is very often an attempt to make fresh deep boundaries between ingroup and outgroup, but for worse reasons and with less warrant. But Brown is much too hostile to atheism to give that sort of thought any space in his head.

  • A tinkling cymbal

    Is your stomach strong enough for more vulgar malice and abuse from that impressive Anglican priest George Pitcher?

    He starts with mere stupidity, attributing every good thing in the world apart from coffee and the internet to theology. Yes really: theology. Theology did democracy, the abolition of slavery, education, the family, marriage, our judicial system – everything. Then he goes on to rail at Terry Sanderson, but, quickly bored with that, he returns to his real voodoo doll: Evan Harris.

    The NSS (in which, never let it be forgotten, ousted Lib Dem MP Evan Harris is a leading light) likes to go on about opposing religious privilege, freedom for non-believers (as if they haven’t got it) and tolerance. But note that if the likes of Mr Sanderson ever came to power (and the likes of Mr Sanderson include the wall-eyed Harris, who might have a seat in government now if he hadn’t lost his seat – so who says there isn’t a God?) they would withdraw all funding from the teaching of theology, whence all education derives, in favour of what he and his friends have unilaterally decided is “real education”. That is extremist policy that has more in common with totalitarian regimes than with our parliamentary democracy.

    Completely random arbitrary abuse of Evan Harris coupled with the imbecilic claim that all education derives from theology; modern Anglicanism at its finest.

  • Even the Dalai Lama kicks at atheists

    Tenzin Gyatso, the Dalai Lama, says tolerance is good and religions are good. Unfortunately, as G Felis pointed out, he says more than that.

    Though intolerance may be as old as religion itself, we still see vigorous signs of its virulence. In Europe, there are intense debates about newcomers wearing veils or wanting to erect minarets and episodes of violence against Muslim immigrants. Radical atheists issue blanket condemnations of those who hold to religious beliefs. In the Middle East, the flames of war are fanned by hatred of those who adhere to a different faith.

    No we don’t. We may offer generalized criticism of religious belief as such, but that’s not the same as issuing “blanket condemnations” of all believers themselves. The DL did a blanket condemnation of us.

  • New sandbox rules

    Karl Giberson explains about political science in the US and what it means for how we have to behave:

    America has a complex and enduring commitment to pluralism. We want people to be free to act — and believe — as they please. But we must all play in the same sandbox, so we are attentive to the idiosyncrasies of our playmates, especially when they don’t make sense to us.

    By “attentive” it turns out he means we don’t disagree with them, and by “idiosyncrasies” it turns out he means beliefs, no matter how unreasonable and arbitrary and evidence-free. So we must all play in the same sandbox, meaning, apparently, that we must all spend our lives three inches from all 300 million of the rest of us, and therefore we must never disagree with any of the beliefs of any of the 300 million.

    What a happy and fulfilling life that sounds like! In airless proximity to 300 million people and forbidden to dispute any of their beliefs no matter how demented those beliefs may be. If that’s what pluralism means, I’d better start packing for Antarctica, where there’s a little room to breathe.

    Giberson goes on to explain that “informed religious belief can accommodate modern science” and that things are looking good in that department, then he goes on from there to explain that the only problem is, “New Atheists.” Then he goes on to spend the vast bulk of the piece saying what’s so awful about “New Atheists” – thus violating his own rule about how to play in the sandbox, I would have thought, but he doesn’t seem to notice.

    Dennet’s brother-in-arms, atheist Jerry Coyne, raked Brown University cell biologist Ken Miller and me over the coals in The New Republic for our claims that Christians can unapologetically embrace science.

    Enough with the jokes; now I’m serious. That’s a really offensive claim. Not offensive in the frivolous sense the word is so often used to convey, but genuinely offensive, because it is untrue. Coyne doesn’t rake Miller and Giberson over any coals; he says good things about both of them in that long review in The New Republic; he also disagrees with much of what they claim in their respective books. He does it honestly, and carefully, and with detailed argument. That is not the same thing as raking people over the coals! It is offensive for Karl Giberson to make that accusation in a large-circulation national newspaper. Yet here he is telling other people how to play nicely. It’s so typical – say things about atheists that are not true, in the very act of telling atheists to be Nicer.

    For the sake of argument, let us set aside questions about the truth of religion vs. the truth of science. Suppose there is no such thing as religious truth, as Richard Dawkins argued in The God Delusion. Allow that the “New Atheist Noise Machine,” as American University communications professor Matt Nisbet calls it, has a privileged grasp of the truth. Even with these concessions, it still appears that the New Atheists are behaving like a boorish bunch of intellectual bullies.

    Does it? Or does it just appear that they are describing reality as they see it, and disputing other descriptions of reality that seem to them to be wrong. That’s how it appears to me. It also appears to me that Karl Giberson is confusing “saying something I don’t like” with “behaving like a boorish bunch of intellectual bullies” – while doing some genuine bullying himself.

    There is something profoundly un-American about demanding that people give up cherished, or even uncherished, beliefs just because they don’t comport with science.

    But nobody is “demanding” that – because nobody is in a position to demand that. People are pointing out incompatibilities, in public discussions. It seems to me there is “something profoundly un-American” about treating that as impermissible.

    I had thought Giberson was a mistaken but decent guy (I got that impression from Coyne’s review, ironically enough), but now I know better.

  • For the record

    It gets more and more tedious, but it can’t be helped – or it can be helped but it shouldn’t be. The relentless brainless dishonest denigration of “New” atheists has to be shown up for what it is every damn time it happens. It may be futile to say “That’s a lie, and that is, and that is, and that’s another”; it may just entrench the lies even deeper (depressingly, there is research that indicates this is what happens); but it has to be done, if only for the record. (What record? Oh shut up.)

    Michael McGhee, Comment is Free (sugar and tea, rainbows at sea, la de da dee).

    I am not a believer. I incline towards a secular humanism that leaves space for “spirituality” – conceived as the disciplined search for self-knowledge – and recognises that we can sometimes and beyond the exercise of our will transcend the narrow perspective of ego-centric self-enclosure.

    That sets the scene. He’s not a believer, yet he chooses to call something entirely this-worldly and secular by the means-everything-and-nothing word “spirituality,” thus establishing himself as better and wiser than people who don’t call their thoughts by that elevated name. Then having done that, he moves right into the “New” atheist-bashing.

    But my wariness of “belief” is matched by an equal wariness of the new atheists’ rejection of belief. It is not just that their popular polemic shows a juvenile comprehension of religion as altogether “a bad thing”, nor that they are silent about self-knowledge and transcendence.

    There: that’s for the record. A stupidly sweeping and false generalization, closely followed by a stupidly sweeping and false generalization.

    After that there’s a lot of guff which boils down to some this-world morality bolted clumsily onto hand-waving about spiritual transcendence and transcendent spirituality for the sake of…I don’t know, separating himself from the “New” atheists or something.