Saturday, March 31, 2012

Today's Hot Topic: Atheism

On his always excellent blog, Jason Miller posted an entertaining complaint about the behavior of the "New Atheists," then took it down for the reasons he describes in the linked post.  Since I had added a couple of my own thoughts to the deleted post - and since several of the "New Atheists" are still acting out in exactly the fashion he described him - I thought I'd touch upon the subject here.

First of all, let's talk about that favorite atheist slogan: "Morality is doing what is right regardless of what you are told.  Religion is doing what you are told regardless of what is right."


Ted "the Unabomber" Kaczynski believed he was doing right despite what he was told.  So did Charles Manson.  So does every garden-variety sociopath.   Hell, I'd go so far as to say just about everyone does - or tries to do - what they believe is right. Outside of horror movies there are very few people who knowingly and willfully do evil for the sake of being evil.  Sure, there's often a whole lot of self-justification and reframing of events involved in the decision that "I was right to do that." But that's hardly confined to religious folks. You can certainly use your religious text of choice to assuage your conscience. But you can also use your troubled childhood, your political opinions, your end which justifies the means or any number of other excuses that have nothing to do with deities. 

Now let's take a look at some of those people doing repellent things in the name of "religion." The folks who bomb abortion clinics and shoot abortion providers believe they are doing right regardless of what they have been told.  Their actions aren't just illegal, they are strongly discouraged by the vast majority of Christian pastors.  Yet they decide that "God's law" - what they believe is right - trumps man's law and trumps the simpering milquetoast claims of all those self-proclaimed Christians who don't want to walk the walk.  Do people become monsters because of religion, or do they use religion to justify their monstrosity? Religion can become dangerous in the hands of dangerous people - but so can just about anything.  People kill each other in the name of various deities, but they also kill each other in the name of gang affiliation, ethnicity and favorite sports teams.

If religion is "doing what you are told regardless of what is right," what are we to make of Stalinism, Maoism and the various other Marxism-inspired political systems which place a premium on toeing the "Party Line?" If we're going to tar all Christians as potential inquisitioners and all Muslims as potential terrorists, then should we assume that inside every atheist there's a Kim Jong-Il waiting to get out?  What about groups like the Symbionese Liberation Army, the Baader-Meinhof Gang, or various other revolutionaries who were inspired to commit all sorts of atrocities in the name of a secular utopia-to-come?

And while we're on the subject: who is arrogant enough to think that they always know enough to "do right" without any input from others on the subject at hand?  Ethical questions are rarely clear-cut and frequently have enormous consequences at stake. Most people are happy to take expert advice on difficult topics. Everyone from Socrates to Tucker Max is consulted in the quest to a more ethical life: in the vast majority of cases they are given a vote but not a veto. And if we are capable of using Anthony Robbins or Jean-Paul Sartre as a guide toward rational decisions, why could we not use the Rig Vedas or the Q'uran in a similar fashion?

The answer, of course, is that most religious people do just that. Their religion shapes their worldview but doesn't trump their common sense.  But that's not what the Loud Atheists (i.e. strong atheists who won't shut up and stop waving their godless pee-pees in everyone's face) want to hear.  For all their talk about simple-minded religious mythologizing, they are desperately seeking a nice clean black-and-white world with clearly defined enemies and unquestionable answers.  Where their hated "Fundamentalists" divide the universe into "God's people" and "the Devil's servants," they see society as a battle of Enlightened Atheists vs. Silly Superstitious Religious Fanatics. 

Elf Sternberg commented that the mind is like a barrel of fine wine and religion is the teaspoonful of sewage that ruins said fine wine.  I note that Galileo was a devout Catholic, even after that unpleasantness with the Inquisition.  And while I remember some of Elf's contributions to the various alt.sex.* groups with fondness, I gotta say it: you, Mr. Sternberg, are no Galileo.  You are no Einstein.  You are no Olivier Messiaen, no Henryk Gorecki, no Shusaku Endo.  Hell, looking at your science fiction I'd say that you're not even up to filling Orson Scott Card's magic underwear.  Whatever one may think about the merits of Theism, only the most deluded dipshit would deny the contributions made to the world by people who believed in one deity or another.

Another anonymous atheist commented "We're assholes. Reality is an asshole. Get over it."  This is exactly the kind of behavior Jason was complaining about in his earlier post.  It's not exactly the height of rational argument - but then, the commenter wasn't interested in rational argument. He wants to scream his rage at Big Daddy God and the Sky Fairies into the abyss, hoping he can find other disgruntled unbelievers to share the emptiness with him.  Which is fine: we all make decisions based on emotion as well as logic. But don't kid yourself into believing that "the Bible said it, I don't believe it and that settles it" is more rational than any other ardent declaration of faith.

Do I have a particular problem with atheism in and of itself? Not at all. Like most other belief systems, it produces reasonably moral behavior when followed by reasonably moral people.  But neither do I see any particular evidence that its followers are in any way ethically or intellectually superior to those poor benighted believers they mock.  Believing in God/s doesn't automatically make one a sinner: neither does disbelieving in them automatically give the disbeliever any kind of special enlightenment. 

7 comments:

Matt said...

Kenaz - my first post on your excellent blog!

While I agree with most of what you have written here, I wonder whether religion might in some sense be potentially worse than secular philosophies insofar as it feeds the most passionate and ugly tribalisms. Certainly the toxic land disputes in the Middle East seem inflamed by various religious and spiritual narratives. There's plenty of nationalistic strife in the world, and plenty of heavily armed nuts, but religion seems uniquely adept at fusing the two and breeding the latter from the former.

-MG

Shoku said...

I (Zorku) would like to respond to one of your comments loosely aimed at me from that thread.

"Not aimed at you specifically, but here are a couple of strawmen in the comments to date:

'But not so annoying as people who want to restrict your life based on their version of batshit crazy. Telling you that it’s better for your wife to die than have an abortion. Or lie to you about the facts of abortions. Or lie about evolution to children.

***
And people who believe in skygods are nice people who want to control other people’s lives with their crazy made up garbage.

Ye s I will be an asshole to try and stop some religious nuts controlling my access to health insurance and proper hospital care.'

Not every theist is anti-abortion, nor does every theist support the teaching of “creation science” or have strong anti-Obamacare feelings. And most of the theists reading this blog are as pro-choice, pro-health care and pro-evolution as any “freethinker” out there. Claiming otherwise is as silly as claiming that every atheist is a communist who wants to make religion illegal."

Seems like a bit of a strawman to be acting like anyone said all theists are those things. Maybe I just missed where they said they weren't giving specific examples~

"While we’re on that subject:

'We tend to have a lot of real world experience with people that just leave before they gain any understanding so it makes sense that some of us would be a bit too enthusiastic about beating the concepts into your head. We simply don’t have enough time to ask you about all the details of what you think; you have to convince us that you’ve got a long attention span before we can possibly try to address your unique beliefs.'

How does your “enthusiastic[ally]… beating the concepts into your head” differ from the Chick tracters who shove “YOU ARE GOING TO HELL WHEN YOU DIE!!” pamphlets in people’s faces. At least the Chickleteers have the excuse of concern for your spiritual welfare. If you genuinely believe in hell, it only stands to reason you’d want to save people from it. What advantage accrues to your targets from being “enthusiastically beaten” about the heads with the truth of Atheism? I understand why Christians want salvation: what’s your motivation for preaching your version of the One Truth?

I'm actually all for the parallel you drew there. Saying that we're beating ideas into your head was a sort of self depreciating joke but aside from that both groups do think they've got an important truth that everyone should know about.

There's a big difference though. I think you're probably a good enough person to recognize that chick tracts are about demonizing anything that's not part of a particular culture, or really an idealization of a particular culture. They're against people who don't believe fanatically enough.

The new atheists? We're pushing boundaries, and I know that can be upsetting, but I remember when a whole lot of people would get offended just from atheists making it known that we exist (and in some places people still take offense to that.) Even in the comments yesterday I saw people acting as if having personal justification for not believing was an attack against believers. Our very existence is still very much offensive to a lot of people and I think if you've got any experience as an outsider you will be able to understand why that means the boundaries need to be pushed further.

And while I'm at it I, like so many, like to share my education. It's not always directly on topic but the skeptical tool set is a very useful way of thinking, and one that is especially difficult to see the benefits of before you've acquired it (off the top of my head: it's nice being able to spot a pyramid scheme a mile away.)

SeekInfinity-ICTX said...

One question this brings to mind; many mages honestly do have experiences that give what seems empirical proof that there are gods. Not just one odd coincidence but a consistent set of effects, sometimes verging on what could be considered repeated miracles. Is this neccasarily a good thing? Considering the effects of religion, and the effects of the different domains of the gods, one might say not. Mercury/Hermes seems to be treating humanity pretty well for example. So, what about a third position for those like me who can't deny their existence based on personal experience. Why should we consider them morally superior just because they have what amounts to an advanced technology or advanced abilities? Why shouldn't we be willing to fight them if they're opppressive, renegotiate terms of interaction or otherwise treat them as one would treat a powerfull human? Every answer I have ever heard basically amounts to "because they're a god that's why" and that is no reason to treat humans like toys. It might be a reason to become a god yourself in some way so you can't be treated like that.

This is not to deny some gods are decent guys. Just that the basis of the relationship between humans and gods is often unideal. It's been posted before that one shouldn't try to apply modern sensibilities of equality to such; why not? I think that equal relationships are fundamentally better than ones based on control, and this doesn't change depending on level of existence. If it doesn't exist then it should be made to. This also isn't to say that sometimes the gods don't have genuinely important plans that involve screwing people over some-the Norse deities are quite literally trying to stop the end of the world and are living with courage at the prospect of even the end of their own existence, so they at least have my respect despite what they sometimes feel they need to do. Still, there is something fundamentally wrong about humanities relationship with gods. If you're an atheist, you could even replace the previous with 'there is something wrong with humanities relationship with its own personifications of its varying ideologies' and, in the context of kenaz' post mentioning maoism, stalinism, etc take it as a warning against unthinking submission to any ideology. You may also want to consider a balance between 'enlightenment' and 'romantic' ideals since atheism is often unbalanced towards the former. It would even help your own causes because one problem you guys have is you don't seem to understand the power of a symbol, which is ironic since everything you hold dear in one way or another is based upon symbolic thinking.

Eli Fennell said...

I'm reminded of a college professor I used to study under. He was an Evolutionary Psych guy... which is great, I am fully committed to the fact of evolution. It happened, get over it. When people try to get around it by saying, "Intelligent Design", I question just how much they actually understand the concept of "Design", because if you bothered to study human design, you'd find it fits pretty neatly into the evolutionary process (there's a reason we don't drive big boxy cars anymore... they're an inferior design, which we have deliberately "selected" against as we've learned the advantages of a more curved design).

At any rate, one day he showed us a semi-dramatized documentary on Darwin. For about two minutes out of the entire film, a Catholic researcher argued that he didn't feel his "Faith" in God contradicted evolution (though he would certainly have admitted that Creationism, specifically, would be contradiction). The professor got so upset about that brief little "I think they can coexist in their own domains" segue that he insisted on showing us "The Root of All Evil" by Richard Dawkins. I'd seen it before, and he knew I was something of a mystic so he asked me if I thought it was offensive.

I didn't find it offensive... but there was one particular part I found offensive. Specifically, in (if I recall correctly) the opening sequence, Dawkins is standing in front of a Catholic precession for a Saint. These were thousands of people being peaceful and loving while demonstrating their faith. But Dawkins made a comment to the effect that there was no meaningful difference between this peaceful precession, and a bunch of klansman lynching a black man. Sadly the irony that both of them missed is that many religious people can't tell the difference between your run-of-the-mill atheist and a Joseph Stalin. There's a cognitive dissonance involved in not being able to see how your own views precisely mirror the views of those you claim to oppose.

Matt said...

Hello again, Shoku,

One could argue that the posts you cited weren't directed at all theists (though the author's tone and extreme hostility towards religious believers suggests otherwise), but I can say that one of the posts was directed at me, tarring me with politics I in fact actively oppose and then accusing me of being annoyed at a minority of atheists only insofar as they challenged my personal myths. For what its worth, the only atheists I find annoying are those few, like the one who made those posts, incapable of basic civility or guilty of gross overstereotyping.

I actually admire the willingness of new atheists willing to push boundaries and enter arguments, but I tend to think that sort of thing works better when done with wit and comedy as opposed to tantrums.

-MG

Shoku said...

I thought the quotes there were from you, though I included things you were quoting since I am used to forum formats.

I'd say they are probably going too far but we've now left the issue that brought me to post among you; you're just annoyed with people that are rude to you and I have no objection (or right to object) to you feeling that way.

What metric do you use to tell apart insulting things that don't describe you very well and ones that probably do have a little something to do with how you behave?

-I like wit and comedy but a few years back I took a look at the Asian American community. That's been their approach and... well we're still really fucking racist to them as a society. I can't point to any group that's been a big part of the population for that long and still has to deal with open racism except maybe in really backwoods towns where you get the impression that people are inbred anyway. So really that just means that people from the middle east have it worse and Hispanic people might face similar troubles (I'm a bit ignorant about that group.)

The "anger isn't an appropriate way to respond" implication worries me though. I've seen judges decide to keep one monument but not others just because nobody seemed mad about it before (though that would have required them to speak out at a time when they'd be heavily persecuted for it.)

It...
It really looks like you're only comfortable with methods that aren't effective.

Matt said...

Well, obviously, no one likes being treated rudely! That said, its very much in my interest for the new atheists to be effective - - in fact, that's a much bigger priority than avoiding hurt feelings - since we share political goals. I agree with you that there's a time for stridency, but I think there's also a time for diplomacy, and when rhetoric starts offending potential allies - and I think its safe to say the kind of theists that read Inominandum's blog or this one are generally as wary of fundamentalist intrusion into politics as you - it becomes counterproductive. The best metric I can offer is that if one is going to attack another on the basis of a belief, be sure to know what those beliefs actually are before letting fly! Inominandum made it clear in his open letter that he agreed with the new atheists' political agenda, so I think comments blanketly accusing believers of opposing universal health care and so forth were foolish and inappropriate. There were valid criticisms made by atheists on the blog (and I think Inominandum did a good job addressing them in his apology) as well as very inappropriate remarks by theists.

-MG

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