Every review of Nick Spencer’s Atheists — the Origin of the Species leaves me less inclined to even want to read it. The man can’t possibly be as big an idiot as the reviewers make him out to be, can he?
The latest paean to Spencerian inanity comes from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. It always puzzles me how such a secular country can have a major media outlet that so blithely props up religious twits, but here they go again with the director of the Centre for Public Christianity, Simon Smart, who’s apparently spent his whole life trying to defy the name he was saddled with at birth.
It begins with a description of the “atheist creation myth”.
Atheism has its own creation myth, writes Spencer, and it goes like this: non-belief is the love child of reason and science – a human advance arising from scientific and philosophical progress in Europe, particularly movements like the Copernican Revolution in the 16th Century, the scientific revolution in the 17th and the Darwinian in the 19th.
In an article for Politico Magazine…
Hold it right there. Politico? That disgraceful organ for glib right wing crapola that Charles Pierce refers to as “Tiger Beat on the Potomac“? Just to give everyone some perspective:
Given all this, Politico was inevitable. It is a content-producing machine. It is a brand that runs in and of itself. It has a Web site and a magazine. It produces its own videos. It conducts policy forums for which it sucks down corporate sponsorships. (More about those in a moment.) As a news operation, it’s half gossip rag and half tip sheet. As the former, it’s not as good as the National Enquirer, and as the latter, it’s way up the track, just behind the Daily Racing Form. From the start, its founders expressed admiration for Matt Drudge, who is a truthless hack, and they made clear their objective was to “win the morning,” whatever that means. Worst of all, Politico is produced in Washington, D. C., the nastiest one-industry town in America, a social and cultural context in which all of political journalism’s worst instincts, as embodied by the very existence of Politico, are encouraged to run wild—a kind of fundamental rot of the type that Crouse discovered was baked into the product from the start. And, as is the unfortunate case with la Dowd, it has spawned imitators all over the landscape, like an invasive species of mussel clogging the Great Lakes.
So when someone tells you something that has been published in Politico, you know how much to trust the source. But do continue, Mr Smart.
…Spencer describes this myth: "Gradually, wonderfully, the human race matured, with every confident scientific step forward pushing our infantile, crumbling ideas of the divine closer to oblivion," he writes. This myth is "true enough to be believable, (but) it is not true enough to be true."
Any atheists out there who believe this? Anything close? This is bizarre. As one of those scientist-atheists, I find this fairy tale of steady progressivism to be counter to the whole idea of evolution. As a member of a minority philosophical position, I certainly don’t hold that humanity as a whole has marched down some path to pure reason — everything I see around me says that this is not true. So not only is it not true enough to be true, it’s not believable to an atheist at all…yet here’s Spencer smugly puking up that dollop of nonsense, and Smart happily lapping it up.
But let’s be fair. Spencer does manage to say a few things I can agree with. Well, one thing.
Spencer’s thesis is that to truly understand the history of atheism you need to see it as a series of disagreements about authority. Late 17th century Britain, for example, possessed the ingredients for sustained and systematic atheism, but largely due to a political and intellectual environment that was relatively accommodating, generous and tolerant, full-blown atheism did not emerge.
Yes! I would also point to the US, where one of the key factors that has driven interest in atheism is creeping authoritarianism, hard-core right wing politicians (like the ones Politico supports) who wrap themselves in God and the flag, and the increasingly aggressive and destructive stance of evangelical Christianity. Does he even notice, though, that this reality rather strongly conflicts with his myth of an ineluctably advancing rationality?
And then Spencer and Smart drag out one of my pet peeves: Nietzsche. Not Nietzsche the philosopher, of course, but Nietzsche the dolorous atheist. Nietzsche the regretful non-Christian. Nietzsche the sorrowful, reluctant thinker who praises Jesus while weeping sincerely, and simultaneously predicting cultural cataclysm because we’re losing our faith. It’s the only atheist message the devout want to hear — if you’re going to abandon religion, at least be sure to stroke the pastor’s ego on your way out the door.
These guys always make Nietzsche sound like a 19th century S.E. Cupp, which is an awfully nasty insult to deliver to a guy you’re praising.
But perhaps the most challenging aspect of this work is the way it illuminates the inherently naïve optimism contained in New Atheism’s rendition of the "God is dead" trope.
While there has been no shortage of non-believers who viewed the demise of the divine as ushering in an era of untrammelled human progress, no less a figure than Friedrich Nietzsche understood the great shadow that would be cast across Europe if, as he hoped, the rejection of Christianity came to fruition. Such a move would signal the ruin of a civilisation, and he wrote about "the long dense succession of demolition, destruction, downfall, upheaval that now stands ahead."
Something of a dark prophet, Nietzsche envisioned troubled times ahead – a prediction that the 20th century’s atheist regimes fulfilled with alarming efficiency.
Nietzsche’s importance, writes Spencer, lies in his understanding that metaphysics and morals are inseparable. Nietzsche was under no illusion that you could hold on to Christian ethics – which he saw as degenerate slave mentality – while jettisoning the Christian faith.
You know what? Fuck the Christian cartoon Nietzsche. He’s wrong, he’s annoying, and I feel no obligation to respect his views of a lovely essential Christian dogma. Also, as noted above, if atheism is a reaction to false authority…why the hell do you think citing a philosopher who has been dead for over a hundred years will make us roll over and surrender? Nietzsche ain’t the atheist pope, either. Christians can keep trying to shoehorn atheism into obligatory tropes that they’re subject to, but all it does is convince us that Christians don’t know what they’re talking about.
While there are growing numbers today who are ready to celebrate throwing off the shackles of religion, Nietzsche’s warnings to those who still have an affection for Christian ideas like free will and the equality of all humans are still worth hearing.
Spencer is clearly most sympathetic to an "ascetic atheism" that takes Nietzsche’s critique seriously, such that the implications of there being no God are given proper consideration.
Christian ideas like free will and equality? Have you ever heard of Calvinism, or are they not Christian now? You’ve got a holy book with a set of prophecies that are destined to occur, and this same book endorses slavery and genocide, and somehow, in the endlessly malleable universe of Christian fantasy, outright heresy has been morphed into a central tenet of the religion. Amusing.
I think it’s more obvious that some religion has bent towards recognizing that humanist values are damned admirable, and is actively retconning their faith to claim that they thought of it all first. Unfortunately for them, having a holy book and record of sacred authority leaves no doubt but that their religion has been evolving, and evolving towards values that atheists hold with no apologies, no excuses, and no deference towards ancient bullshit.
I do agree that the implications of god’s non-existence should be given proper consideration. And that means recognizing that traditional delusions are not a sound foundation for regulating human affairs, and that building morality around reality is a wiser idea than constructing rules for behavior around an unreliable ghost.
I won’t dignify religious rules with the word “morality”. A true human morality has to be founded on our obligations to one another, rather than to an imaginary figurehead.
To answer the question as to why the ABC props up religious twits, well this is because the ABC is government run. It has an obligation to have programs that reflect all aspects of Australian culture regardless of whether they are profitable in the market (The ABC, like the BBC, does not run ads). It’s telling that the commercial stations have almost no religious programming at all and suggests there is little market for it. But if there was a community of fire-worshippers in Australia, the ABC would have some obligation to have a show or two about it.
I know this doesn’t explain the inanity of the segment in question, but it’s hard to do religious programming any other way.
N.B. I haven’t watched Australian television in years. Things might have changed.
A bit off topic, but I love how Politico put Greenwald/Snowden on their “Top 50 List of Thinkers and Doers” and accompanied it with a terrible hit piece on Greenwald that quoted former NSA director Michael Hayden as an authority on “Snowden fatigue”. Looking closely, though, #1 and #4 Top Thinkers and Doers are Rand Paul and Ted Cruz, respectively, so that tells me all I need to know about that rag. Tiger Beat on the Potomac indeed. RAND’S SO DREAMY
Well I certainly don’t believe that. Atheism existed in south Asia thousands of years ago. Read up on the Karvaka. It also existed in classical Greece. There have been unbelievers in every culture. Some times they kept their heads down under threat of death or torture, but whenever it was possible to express their unbelief, they did.
Let’s remember one thing about Nietzsche: he did not lament the fall of Christianity. He exulted in it, because he wanted a society that could produce great, globe-straddling figures like Napoleon. Bertrand Russell discusses this in his History of Western Philosophy. Nietzsche believed that any amount of misery for the mass (whom he referred to as the “bungled and botched”) was justified if it enabled proto-übermenschen to gestate more fully or realize their potential. He imagined with relish a time when human suffering would reach a higher pitch than it ever had, and when the great would have the chance to actualize themselves through conquest and subjugation of other people. Fuck this “Gentle Nietzsche, meek and mild” bullshit. He was a sycophant of what most people would call the naked abuse of power.
nomadiq has it correct, the ABC is a government funded body which is ostensibly independent, but whenever the ultra-conservative Liberal party gets into power is generally attacked for being too leftist – despite their own commissioned reports showing it’s actually far more right leaning, as well as the Liberal party stacking its upper echelon with its lackeys – and is always threatened with either funding cuts or privatisation. This in turn leads to the sort of pandering bullshit like the article in question, which usually ends up alienating their actual viewer base, leading to a drop in audience numbers, which feeds nicely into justifying funding cuts.
There’s been some amazingly suspect activity from them lately, primarily no real criticism of the Libs prior to the last federal election, even going so far as to suppress articles that highlighted huge holes in their policies. Some of these were later published 3-6 months after the election, rendering them worthless, but it seemed the ABC didn’t feel they could stem the tide of public disfavour towards the ALP that the Libs rode into power on.
Frankly, I wish they’d just grow a spine.
I’m not so sure that atheism is a reaction to religious authoritarianism. Maybe in the U.S. today, but certainly not universally.
Sweden is arguably one of the most secular countries in the world — indeed I would say that many Swedish people who are really atheists do not identify as such because atheism is a non-issue. According to the Eurobarometer Poll in 2010 only 18% of Swedish citizens responded that “they believe there is a god”. (Although, when asked, a fair amount of people state that they believe in some less well-defined “spiritual principle” or “life force”.)
Anyway, Sweden has not always been secular. In the 19th century, Swedes were generally religious AND there was an authoritarian lutheran state church. For most of the 18th and 19th centuries, you were not even allowed to practise the official religion outside the church. (With very few exceptions such as jews and some immigrated catholics).
The reaction to this was not atheism but religious revivals. One of the motives for Swedish emigration to the US during the 19th century was to escape religious persecution. Sweden became secular in the period from the late 19th century to the mid-20th century when society became less authoritarian and the influence of the church declined.
Today the Church of Sweden is separate from the state but still about 2/3 of the Swedish population are members. Many who do not actually believe in a god stay with the church as they see it as part of their cultural heritage. In fact, many people believe that K.G. Hammar, the archbishop of the Church of Sweden 1997–2006 was an agnostic. I don’t think so, but his understanding of God was certainly not the traditional christian one.
To be fair to the ABC, it has, due to it’s reliance on government money and especially due to the conservative government’s hatred for it, had to tread a delicate path between honest reporting and pandering to such drivel as this because of religion’s (especially christian) influence among those ranks.
If there were no ABC to offer relief from endless ‘reality’ TV (most of it foreign) and produce quality locally made content, I wouldn’t have a television at all.
Gosh, I wonder what Spencer was talking about here? How many times has this trope been debunked?
There’s a distinction to be made here between, oh, call it casual atheism and assertive atheism. (Chances are there a plenty other names for them as well.)
Casual atheism is matter-of-fact, no-big-deal, taking it for granted and having no felt need to make waves about it. You get it when you’re surrounded by other casual atheists, or very mild, very tolerant, very quiet about it people of faith. Casual atheism doesn’t need to make itself felt or heard; it’s not a reaction to anything – it’s just what you think when you don’t believe in gods and rarely if ever have to bother to mention it. You’re most likely to find it in northern and western Europe.
Assertive atheism has to make a point of itself, because it IS a reaction to rampant religiosity all about – perhaps not the atheism part, but the assertion of atheism. That sort of antitheism takes itself as needing to make itself heard because the religion around it is that toxic – you can’t afford to live and let live, because they’re not letting you live. They’re tromping all over the rule of law, they’re burning clinics, they’re removing heads. You’re most likely to find it in areas where people are not scared to death of theists but more than concerned enough to regard them as worrisome.
Hitchens Rule: Xianity lost its best defense when it lost the power of the gun, the noose, and the stack of firewood.
Up until a few centuries ago, being an open atheist was a death penalty offense. And, strangely enough, there weren’t many open atheists.
There are a lot of drivers for the rise of atheism. Which is the big religion story of the last century. They went from about zero to around a billion Nones.
1. We know how the universe works. It doesn’t require gods.
2. Dennett. All testable claims of religions have been falsified. Religion got everything wrong. The earth isn’t flat, the stars aren’t just lights stuck on a dome, the sun is the center of the solar system, and the earth isn’t 6,000 years old.
3. The fundies of all religions. When xian started being synonymous with hater, liar, crazy, ignoranat, and sometimes killer, a lot of people didn’t want to be one any more.
If religion was ever a force for good, it isn’t any more.
Jeff Engel @9:
I think you’re conflating atheist and antitheist. They aren’t the same thing.
Some historians put the beginning of the end for European xianity at 1348. The Black Death plague.
About 1/3 of Europe died and it really did look like the End of the World. The RCC tried to do something and failed.
It took a few centuries but the church never quite recovered. A huge crack appeared when the Protestants managed to survive Catholic attempts at killing them all.
The bubonic plague is still around. And these days there is a group that can do something about it. We call them scientists and doctors. They succeeded where the priests failed.
No, they’re not. But I’m talking there about assertive atheism. I’m claiming that most atheism that’s making a point of being known and recognized is tied up with rejecting theism as a positively bad thing that calls for opposition. We’re speaking up because religion is a bad thing.
Then why didn’t we see assertive atheism in Sweden during the 19th century? Instead we got a religious revival movement.
Assertive atheism is just another way of saying militant atheist. Whatever that is.
Not sure what’s with the anti-Nietzschean sentiment here.
Though naturally Nietzsche isn’t the atheist pope. His writing is intentionally divisive and intended to work in direct opposition of the sentiments of the time. But in ‘Ecce Homo’ he writes: “I have a terrible fear that one day I shall be considered “holy”.”
Some chance. Apparently even atheists are all too quick to presume that his ubermensch concept was a prototype for Nazi ideology. (Never mind that Hitler, known to have been interested by Schopenhauer, is not known to have ever cited Nietzsche as an inspiration.)
Nietzsche didn’t like Christianity for all sorts of reasons, but one aspect was that the figure of Jesus was a poor role model on which to base the goal for human development. (Nietzsche referred to Jesus as an ‘idiot’ – albeit as a reference to Dostoyevsky’ book “The Idiot”.) With both God and Jesus dismissed, there is still a need to have a reachable goal for human progress and so Nietzsche proposed the ubermensch (or ‘superman’) as a level which humanity cannot hope to reach in our lifetime, but which we could reorganise society to make possible in the future. – Sadly this has been linked in many people’s minds with Hitler’s eugenics programs (when in actual fact if Nietzsche had eugenics in mind at all, it is something more like Plato’s proposed eugenics programs which he had in mind, which might not be ideal, but it’s not quite the same problem).
In some ways Nietzsche’s claims are often a parallel of Christianity’s own claims. Nietzsche insists that the major change he envisions will cause conflict and suffering… just like Jesus envisioned a future where sons would take up arms against their fathers. (Matt 10:34-36 btw) And heck, the belief that belief in religion was on the downturn was much more suitable in Nietzsche’s era than it was today, and Nietzsche was of the opinion that people didn’t really believe in religion any more like they used to. That’s actually what Nietzsche’s famous “parable of the madman” is all about. A madman cries out to a society which is now entirely populated by atheists “where is God?”, confounded by how a concept which once mattered so much could have ever disappeared without trace. Nietzsche knew full well that the concept of God would always leave a trace (which he often refers to as a shadow) behind, but he may have underestimated how much religions would evolve to keep their positions of power.
And that’s strange since his most important philosophical concept was the “will to power”. Not a claim that power is more important than anything, but that everyone has power-drives and they can either acknowledge them or pursue them secretly (sometimes even lying to themselves about their intentions). His work on the will to power was actually an inspiration to many early feminists (bizarrely enough considering Nietzsche’s own brand of misogyny). The subversive hidden power drives which Nietzsche wished to expose are more present than ever in modern evangelical Christianity – and, as if we needed more proof of this, now they are even trying to put forward Nietzsche as an ally to their cause. Lol!
I’m also not going to claim it’s the only possible reaction. One thing that may rule it out is sheer fear – Saudi Arabia today hasn’t got many assertive atheists either, for instance. And with people leaving Sweden during the 19th century, it’s at least an open possibility that some of them were leaving for an environment in which religion wasn’t imposed quite so much. I don’t know enough about 19th century Swedish religious traditions or demographic trends to speculate.
I wouldn’t want to use ‘militant atheist’ for assertive atheism. For one, just about the only use made of it is disparaging. For another, it conjures up images of atheist mobs with torches and pitchforks. Granted, I’m sure plenty of people will use it for any atheist who makes any public point of their atheism, but if that’s the threshold for “militance”, the word’s diluted all out of recognition.
But that’s the problem with the argument, isn’t it? Making a claim as to the reason for “assertive atheism” in the U.S. today without knowing — or even looking — at what has happened in other places and other times.
Cārvāka, with something similar to ch.
Also of interest: the Pirahã in the rainforest of Brazil – a whole society so godless they deconverted the American missionary who was sent to them.
He wasn’t talking about the US…
I headdesk whenever some theist invents ridiculous implications for my atheism and accuse me of doing it wrong when I express compassion for other people. Being an atheist doesn’t change my core values. At most, it changes methods and instills a sense of urgency, since we don’t have gods to do anything for us. If we can’t rely on gods to make the world a better place, that means we have to do it ourselves.
@fatpie:
I don’t see how anyone can miss Nietzsche’s contempt for the kind of person democracies are led by and created to serve—unless, that is, they willfully ignore those proposals that disclose his rampant hatred of most men and women. Among educated people, the rebuttal about Nietzsche not being a proto-Nazi is a red herring. Even if he wasn’t, he was still someone who unambiguously called for force as the sole criterion of human supremacy. He did use the word “ausrottung” in a context where it could have few other meanings beyond “extermination.”
Some Nietzsche lovers will of course scream in protest. But I am not saying that Nietzsche was a Nazi or a proto-Nazi. Nor am I saying that he is not worth reading or that his books ought to be banned, or that there is nothing to learn from him philosophically. I am saying that he expressed views that not only could be interpreted, but were reasonably interpreted as justifying the sorts of crimes the Nazis committed.
I think lots of intellectuals get so swept up by the romance of Nietzsche’s prose and the richness of his fantasies, they overlook the ugly corollaries of thought.
(I messed up the HTML, in the previous comment. The giant hunk of hyperlinked text is a quote from a blog called The Maverick Philosopher, dated Wednesday, April 15, 2009.)
The last sentence about Nietzsche’s contemporary apologists is my own comment.
Well, I believe something close to this. But I don’t think Spencer is trying to imply that the human race is progressing toward pure reason. I think he’s talking about the idea that as we learn more about the way Nature behaves, as we increase our scientific understanding of Nature, we reduce the role of the divine. For example, we don’t need a “Thunder God” to explain the weather.
Leaving aside Nietzsche for a moment, one of the things that people (especially religious fundamentalists, but atheists miss it too) don’t get is that fundamentalism is a particularly modern movement.
That is, the biblical literalists as a potent political force really didn’t appear until the 20th century. The same is true of fundamentalists in other religions — Islamic fundamentalism as we know it dates from Sayyid Qtub, who was a 20th century guy and a product of a modernizing Egypt. In China, the Boxer rebellion was led by people who were, for lack of a better word, fundamentalists (though their ideas were Taoist and Buddhist, and had more to do with Chinese identity).
All of these movements appear in societies that are under stress. In the US we forget that in the early 20th century most people still lived in rural areas. It wasn’t until the census of 1920 that changed, and it was a huge political problem because many rural states, primarily in the South and West, were losing representatives and electoral votes. There was a widespread feeling that the values of urban areas with all their multicultural implications were a real threat to “Americans.” It’s no accident that the period coincides with the rise of the KKK as a political force. (The 1920s also sees the first widespread industrialization of farming, which even before the Depression that followed had huge effects on rural populations and resulted in large migrations).
In other countries it’s also no accident that religious fundamentalists appear in places where there are stresses and upheavals. And often it is a response to oppressive governments, especially when other avenues of political expression are foreclosed. I don’t think it’s an accident that in say, Iran, after the secular left movements were effectively marginalized and nearly destroyed by the Shah, that the religious right-wing fundamentalists took over, or that in Pakistan where successive governments have done their very best to go after secular opposition the religious parties are all that is left. (Musharraf, for example, spent a lot more time attacking trade unions than Islamic terrorists).
Many fundamentalist movements, as well as fascist ones, all tend to appear in the context of some problem that local political structures aren’t handling well. It makes some people hark back to “better times” — it’s almost always past that never existed. Modern Tea Partiers do this a lot, which is one reason why they fetishize the Founding Fathers the way they do. (And it’s why they betray many of the pathologies of a fascist movement).
This would be why in many places — even where religion is oppressive and part of the local government– you often get religious revivals, counters to the dominant faith but still faith based movements. In Saudi Arabia, for instance, Osama bin Laden was calling for elections. (Yeah, I know, irony meter explodes). Much of the anti-government activity in many Islamic countries is religiously based even though there’s a big theological influence in local governments. Heck, going back further remember that the big rebellions against the Catholic Church were all religious movements, from the split with the Eastern Church onward. Successful secular revolutions are very much an 18th century and later phenomenon, a thoroughly modern one. They are the exception rather than the rule.
Jeff Engels: I like the term “movement atheism” for “American-style” billboard-renting, youtube debating, politically vocal atheism. Of course the term might already be poisoned somehow and I just haven’t heard.
I suspect a big factor (next to the social climate as you pointed out) is that most American atheists are former theists, while most European atheists grew up without belief. …I assume. I don’t actually have any statistics on this. But my friends here in Germany are all atheists as far as I’m aware — it doesn’t really come up — and where I know anything about their parents’ religion it’s either none, or *very* vague, fluffy ideas about an afterlife or god or something in the abstract, not the kind of thing you can indoctrinate your kids with.
So “movement atheists” tend to be actively disappointed and disillusioned with religion, as opposed to indifferent to it.
pharyngsd #25:
Looking solely at rational, scientific progress and our scientific understanding of how the world works, you are correct. Unfortunately, in some places, such as the US, there is a significant chunk of society that will categorically reject anything that conflicts with their religious beliefs – including things like knowledge gained through scientific progress and our scientific understanding of how the world works, even if this is based on easily verifiable facts and concrete evidence.
I dunno. I’m pretty sure I’m an atheist because reason shows me that the concept of God is incoherent and inconsistent with observable reality. It’s a direct function of my commitment to a scientific world view. And that’s how atheists argue against the existence of God — with reason. The trend toward secularism and away from religion has been slow, but I don’t see how you can argue that it doesn’t exist, nor against the proposition that it is driven entirely by the continual demonstration of the power of scientific inquiry. It is indeed science that has religion on the run. PZ seems to reject that proposition as obvious nonsense — I don’t get that. Specifically:
“non-belief is the love child of reason and science – a human advance arising from scientific and philosophical progress in Europe, particularly movements like the Copernican Revolution in the 16th Century, the scientific revolution in the 17th and the Darwinian in the 19th.”
Yes. What’s wrong with that?
Do you really mean to say that
In theocracies, it’s by design – the only way you get to worship in peace is to be the people in charge.
@Cris Matibag
At the point when Nietzsche was writing most countries in Europe were not democracies, including his own. I never said he was an advocate of democracy. I’m not sure why you are bringing up democracy here.
Nietzsche was a strong advocate of not following the herd and thinking as an individual. He felt that people needed to be prepared to think differently and his writing was all intentionally divisive, as I noted before. If you want to take that as a hatred of mankind then so be it, but I wouldn’t say that was a terribly fair interpretation of his work. He spoke of the “bestowing virtue” (which was what he hoped for from a leader) where you persuade others to do things by inspiring them towards a goal. That doesn’t sound like something you could ever imagine being achieved if you simply hated all people.
In regards to the passage in the blog you tried to link to, Nietzsche recognised the need for brutality and suffering because (as he says in the same book that passage came from) we have regularly needed people who can perform brutalities and cause suffering in order to advance as a civilisation. Nietzsche had a strong dislike of hypocrisy. Nietzsche contrasts this with Christian pity, finding a strange sadism in someone who actively seeks out people who are suffering in order to ‘save’ them from it. (As an invalid himself, he knew all too well what kind of will to power can be expressed in these situations. People who seek out people who are weaker in order to be someone those weaker people rely on. And we know that there have even been occasions when carers have actively hurt those in their care so that they can continue to hold the power of being a carer.) It’s another case of Nietzsche being actively divisive of course. Normally we’d say ‘suffering’ bad, ‘pity’ good. But Nietzsche argues for the opposite. He baits his reader and sparks discussion by doing so.
Can you give me an example where he uses the word “ausrottung”? I don’t know much German and that blog post you linked to only talks about Himmler using that word. In contrast to that passage, Nietzsche (also in the same book, I believe) criticises how Thomas Aquinas says that the saints in heaven will be able to see the suffering in hell because it will increase their pleasure. Nietzsche doesn’t appear to have been interested in pointless sadism like that.
I always find it curious when people try to define my position according to some magazine that I’ve never heard of. It gives me a very clear impression of how seriously to take their analysis.
That’s just it though; like how these folks have spun 1984 as instruction manual instead of warning, but in reverse. They have spun the predictions of Nietzsche into a warning, when in fact they were merely laying out what will likely happen when you tear down the authoritarian infrastructure that had been in place for hundreds of years.
You can see the teeth of it every time there is an attempt to tear it down, like in the 60s and 70s, and with the Occupy movement in 2000s. with the Arab Spring.
it wasn’t a fucking warning at all. it was merely pointing out what WILL happen, but also what NEEDS to happen.
pharyngsd #25
cervantes # 29
Either ( & most likely), Spencer is indulging in weasel-words, or Smart is weaseling by quoting him out of context; but whoever is responsible, the meaning of ‘human race’ is blurred, in that it could mean either the lot of us, or it could refer to our crowning achievements, the best that the human race has done. So the ‘creation myth’ of atheism may then be the mistaken prediction that our species as a whole was leaving behind childish ways. ( Which is demonstrably false. ) Or it may be the observation that our growing scientific and rational understanding of reality is destructive of the ideological premises of religion; that science and religion are antagonistic and only one of them can be true; and that the further science advances, the more obvious it will therefore be to the well-informed that the concept of a god is spurious. ( And if I read him correctly, it’s only the first possible interpretation that Professor Myers is rubbishing: the suggestion that atheists are in thrall to the myth that religion is doomed because humanity — as opposed to science and rationalism — is growing out of it. )
These are of course two very different concepts. And given that the ‘origin of atheism’ is the theme of the fucking book, it’s amazing that we aren’t supplied with a bit more clarity here. But by leaving this central idea ambiguous, it is automatically and mischeviously suggested that atheists and skeptics were mistaken about the nature of religion, simply because religion declined to die the death as progressive people were hoping and expecting it would in the twentieth century. He ( or both of the buggers) thus converts a social fact — that religion is still lumbering onwards — into a fraudulent rhetorical impression that the atheists and skeptics had underestimated its intellectual fibre.
But obviously enough, the ‘myth’ that atheism will eventually triumph over religion is simply not central to atheism anyway. This nonsense also creates the illusion that atheists are as much addicted to questionable acts of faith and beliefs in prophecies as the religious. Which is a bit sad, but many religious people doubtless find that sort of thing delectable.
It’s amazing what you can do just playing with bullshit.
no. what insular atheists who say this forget is that the AMERICAN version is rather modern.
there have been fundamentalist movements in ALL religions that can be traced historical since their origins.
…and, btw, ALL of those movements towards fundamentalism IMO can be directly traced to rises in authoritarianism.
Ian S. Markham published the same invocation of Nietzsche as an attack on atheism a while back called “Against Atheism: Why Dawkins, Hitchens, and Harris Are Fundamentally Wrong”. I still can’t understand why Wiley published it.
I have always thought that the idea that if God goes so does morality/truth/etc. can be disarmed quite easily by Euthyphro dilemma: the existence of god/s simply has no bearing on the existence of morality. (Unsurprisingly, Markham never mentions this objection.) For those of you more versed in philosophy than I am, do you know whether Nietzsche considered it? Possibly provide a citation if you can?
exactly.
and this is why religions endlessly court authoritarian personalities; they act as a singular block. It’s why the GoP furiously started courting them after the civil rights movement, and for the exact same ends.
with the exact same consequences that follow from such shortsighted actions.
ignorance. plain and simple.
sounds exactly like what happened to PBS and NPR in the States.
and I could just as easily argue that the will to power was the only way he could see to free people from the shackles of servitude to the authoritarian hierarchy of his day.
David Marjanović @ #19 — From what I’ve read, the Pirahã’s godlessness is nuanced. According to Everett, the missionary I believe you refer to, they do experience supernatural phenomena. However, they only believe what has been experienced. He says they “lost interest” in his Jesus story when they learned he had never seen Jesus…and of course, who has?
On the other hand, the god impulse clearly isn’t universal despite what some religious people assert. Either Niels Peter Lempche or Thomas Thompson hint that parts of the so-called Hebrew Bible contain anti-theist elements. If I recall correctly, the core of Job is sited as an example with the end being tacked on to make it more theologically acceptable to the redactors. Of course, that piece is considered a Hellenized perspective, thus not so surprising given the Greek disinterest in gods and their horror at certain cultic practices.
@ichtyic — I mean fundamentalism as we would recognize it today. In order to have a reaction against modernity you have to have modernity in the first place, and that makes less sense when you are talking about 14th century peasant revolts or Joan of Arc.
I would agree that every religion has had internecine struggles about who is more authentic, which is why I brought up Jan Hus and the split within the Church that gave rise to Orthodox/ Catholics.
Authoritarian religions I think end up breeding their own opposition, especially as the people in power become corrupt or just plain don’t deal well with a crisis. Martin Luther, after all, saw himself as a Catholic. He wasn’t arguing for an overthrow of Rome at all. So partially, anyway, I don’t think we disagree on that point.
I’d also agree with you that certain religious hierarchies attract authoritarian personalities. It’s awfully dependent on which system you are taking about though. Sufis are sort of the hippies of Islam, for instance, (and it’s the dominant form of Islam in the Balkans, funny enough, but given that the rulers were Turks for 300 years that makes sense).
no… you don’t get it. there is ALWAYS reactions to change. change is always happening. these movements can be found repeatedly throughout history.
Rome was “modernization” to many people at the time.
you can find similar patterns in Buddhism.
that is a mechanism used, not the movement itself. But, since you brought it up, it IS a feature of all authoritarian groups as they attempt to make themselves special, and demonize the “other”.
@Ichthyic
First of all, must say that I’m glad that I’m now not the only one making a stab at defending Nietzsche. I was feeling quite lonely.
However, I’ve just got a small nitpick with your comment about fundamentalism. I think the real issue here is probably the term “Fundamentalist”. The term comes from a document called “The Fundamentals of Christianity” which was put together in the late 20th Century. However, as I’m sure was your point, the term “fundamentalist” often now seems to be used to describe groups with similar religiously-conservative sentiments to those who put together that book, and even sometimes simply to refer to any kind of extremely conservative or ultra-literalist religious viewpoints.
The thing is, the actual fundamentalists connected with “The Fundamentals…” would wish to say that all their views represent beliefs connecting right back to the early Church. That is not always correct of them (not least when they refer to ideas which simply wouldn’t have been discussed or even understood in the first century AD), but there do seem to be some ideas which cannot be denied a connection to early believers. For example, some have tried to tell me that a literal hell is a fundamentalist concept, when actually medieval Roman Catholic Churches, which used the artwork on Church walls to convey Christian teaching to the illiterate poor, regularly had very scary depictions of hell which would have been taken very literally by the believers who saw them. So while fundamentalists are not reasonable in expecting us to believe that ALL their proclamations can be dated back to early Christianity, many of their beliefs are prevalent through Christian history (though not necessarily in quite the same form).
But as for “fundamentalism” as highly conservative, traditionalist and even literalist belief, that really DOES appear to be representative of the majority of Christian history. So on that reading of ‘fundamentalist’ I do not disagree even slightly.
As you can tell, I’m not exactly disagreeing. Just ironing out some more specific details. I’m probably not telling you anything here that you didn’t know already.
yes, I get the point. but you also have to recognize that not only are they wrong now, but they aren’t the first to start a fundamentalist type movement within xianity itself.
remember; xianity has over 40 thousand sects to it. This actually has happened MANY times before, but not well publicized.
or are we violently agreeing?
In fact, the attention to calling the current brand of right wing evangelicals “fundamentalists” reminds me a lot of branding modern atheists as “new atheists”.
@Ichthyic
It’s only the same as branding modern atheists “new atheists” in the sense that it would be ridiculous to call, say, Friedrich Nietzsche a “new atheist”. It’s a specific term coined to refer to atheists connected with current atheistic figures like Sam Harris or Richard Dawkins. Whether “new atheist” is a suitable, or even fully coherent, term in the first place or not, doesn’t change the fact that the term “new atheist” could not reasonably be used of Democritus or Baron D’Holbach.
The term ‘fundamentalists’ gets its name from the book “The Fundamentals of Christianity” so if we are referring to THAT particular group of fundamentalists then they occupy a very specific point in time and cannot be said to have existed prior to the book in which the set of ideals on which their identity is based were outlined.
As I said before, there are less specific uses of the term ‘fundamentalist’ which have come into parlance since then. So I was simply suggesting that you make clear that you are presuming useage of the wider meaning since, let’s face it, who is really interested in that particular book?
I disagree. You seem to think there is value in the term “new atheist”, but I have never seen it myself, and it’s not because I haven’t looked.
It doesn’t have any other meanings beyond “extermination”. You can use it metaphorically, as applied to a prejudice for instance, but that’s still very clearly a metaphor. It means “killing every last one”; only Illinois Nazis try to believe otherwise.
I’m a native speaker of German and have been living in German-speaking places almost all my life so far.
They believe in ghosts, Everett says, but only when everyone has seen them. You haven’t seen Jesus? Your father hasn’t seen Jesus? Why are you telling us about him, then?
David Marjanoć @ #51
I believe ghosts would count as supernatural phenomena, and then there’s the question of what are they describing that ends up in English as “ghost.” According to one of his stories, they believed they saw ghosts while with him one day. Of course, he didn’t see these ghosts, but that did not persuade them to disbelieve in their ghosts. He probably felt he could experience his ghost, Jesus, but not theirs. They could experience their ghosts, but not his. So it ever was.
What is this? Can it be? I seem to be hearing the dog-whistle of current popularanti-atheist criticism: change the topic.
We’re going to attack atheism by defiantly avoiding discussing whether or not God exists and whether or not it’s reasonable to think it doesn’t. Atheism, you see, isn’t really about that. No. It has nothing to do with how we approach the supernatural or how we analyze truth claims. Nope. Nothing to look at over here.
It’s about morals — or politics — or history — or defiance of authority — or wanting to be daring or cool in the newest fashion. Let’s talk about the consequences of atheism. Let’s talk about the psychological and emotional causes of atheism. Let’s talk about atheists we don’t like and imply that yeah, wouldn’t that just be what we’d expect?
But the origins of atheism won’t have any significant connection to whether it’s a valid or even reasonable conclusion. That’s why they perpetually change the topic and try to figure out why anyone would be an atheist for other reasons.
Ichthyic @ 41:
Well, some of the people, anyway. You know, the people who were actual human beings:
I wonder if he would say the same thing today.
gardengnome (@ 7), then you can sell your TV because all ABC content (TV and radio) are available online for free through iView. Check out their web page ABC.net.au. The link is at the top.
Ichthyic:
Oh, that quote was one of the nicer things he had to say about women. He expressed serious contempt toward us cows in Thus spoke Zarathustra.
Just to add to what has been said about the ABC and Australia already:
The ABC has become a target for right-wing hatred in the past decade, accused of left-wing bias, being watermelon green, hating western culture and history, being anti-American, anti-British, unAustralian, etc. And now, with the new government in, it has had it’s board stacked with far right staff that have previously only campaigned agianst it and for its privatisation.
Furthermore, Australia is becoming less secular in many ways, considering that we’ve had massive funding to put chaplains (emphasis on religious) into schools, rather than trained welfare workers. Even the previous government under the ‘atheist’ PM Julia Gillard continued this federal funding, with the only concession that schools could choose secular ‘chaplains’. The current government has reinstated the specific rule that chaplains MUST be from a religious faith (this after two successful High Court cases showing that this scheme is unconstitutional, at least how it is funded).
Finally, although Australia’s constitution contains a statement about religious freedom almost identical to the USA, the difference is how a past Supreme Court interpreted it. In Australia they decided it did NOT specify the separation of church and state, as it did in the USA. This is why the challenge to the school chplaincy program couldn’t challenge the funding of religious chplains in public schools, but had to go after the technicality of the way the funding was implemented.
probably a racist too. Most men were.
like I said. be curious to see what he would say today.
I don’t believe it, but I do hope for it, in a sense. I really do hope that one day religion and faith largely something of the past, historical curiosities that we learn about but are no longer germane to this (future) society. Of course, I hope the same for bigotry. I’m okay if I don’t live to see it, but I certainly hope to see the beginning of it. I at least hope to live to see a world in which the number of non-believers is at least almost equal to the number of believers, if not a majority.
But I certainly don’t think we’re moving that way now.
The ultra-right wing neo-conservative, God promoting Australian governemnt has appointed several right wing ideologues masquerading as journalists to the board of the ABC. This tripe is the inevitable result.
@Icthyic, #59:
Um… ouch?
The Usual Suspects (aka the 20th century tyrants so predictably invoked as boogeymen by anyone with an atheism-shaped bug up their bunghole) had both atheists and believers among their number (exact numbers and level of belief isn’t always easy to discern). However, whatever lack of religious fervour any of them had was more than made up for by the creation or rebranding of political dogmas which they elevated to Scripture and from which they allowed no dissent.
Their brutal crackdowns on organised opposition, summary imprisonment and execution of dissenters, rigid authoritarian structure, remaking of society wholesale according to their dogmas, thirst for conquest, endless promises of a future paradise of purity, branding of others as outsiders and less worthy, ceaseless invocations of enemies at the gates and grave warnings of rot within the body of loyal party members – these are all hallmarks of a fundamentalist belief in fantasies. Hitler, Mao, Franco, Mussolini, Pol Pot and prototype for the Kim dynasty Josef Stalin, whether atheist or not, all allowed their reason and humanity to be trumped by unrealistic and implausible tales of paradise and superimposed their fever-dreams of conquest and eternal greatness on their self-images, putting those in their power to work at making them reality.
In short, they acted a lot like religious leaders whenever they get too big for their ruby red Pradas. The main differences between the 20th century mob and the various religious megalomaniacs throughout history are the sources of the dogma and the fact that their historical religious forebears, the medieval Popes, were simply shit out of temporal fortune – had they arrived at their imperial powers in the industrial & atomic age as did the Khmer Rouge, Nazis, Communists et al, the Crusades may well have ended with a billion forcible conversions following a couple of well-placed mushroom clouds.
[BTW if we’re going to blame a lack of religion for all this tyrannical empire-building, what of the religiously quite-tolerant Mongols, who in the 13th century controlled the largest empire the world has ever seen? What of their Pagan predecessors like Alexander and their centuries of Roman rule or the Persians? What of the brutality, greed and ceaseless war of the Christian kings of Europe?]
20th century tyrannies weren’t a failure of atheism and they weren’t an example of atheism taken to some logical, inevitable conclusion; they were a failure of the very things atheists frequently criticise about religion – revelation and faith superseding reason, dogma circumventing discussion and democracy, authority and scripture overriding free inquiry and science, tribalism dominating culture. They were also the result of the (in some people, anyway) human tendency to want to ruthlessly acquire as much power and property as is humanly possible before their inevitable deaths – which as we all know is not a tendency religious leaders have ever been immune to (to the point where Popes throughout history are routinely and deservingly held up as prime examples of the extreme malfeasance made possible by the combination of religious influence and temporal power).
Let’s also not forget as a sidenote that while Stalin and Hitler might not have been religious (which is another long discussion), the majority of their millions of loyal citizens – the ones who built and staffed and ran the camps and gulags and enslaved their neighbours, then filled mass graves with them – were.
right, I see you’re perfectly willing to use terms to describe him as you see fit. he can be a sexist, but not a racist.
good luck with that.
why it’s like you’ve never heard someone from the 19th century called a racist before.
…oh and nice deflection to miss my point.
fail.
@Icthyic:
Perhaps you’re just not used to having your language criticized, but you appear either not to have read my link or not to have understood it.
This is not an attack. “Ouch” was supposed to be gentle. Let me try it again:
unless you’re one of those people who don’t make any distinction between racial prejudice and racism, that’s simply not an accurate statement.
I didn’t know which was true, whether you were deliberately conflating racial prejudice with racism or whether you were deliberately asserting that “most men” of color had enacted a rigid & violent system of social & power disadvantages for whites or whether, as I think is most likely, the reflexive biases that seep into our memories through culture caused you to use “most men” where the only accurate statement that makes the deserved distinction between not giving a shit if your resentment of centuries of oppression causes offense or emotional pain and using the Southern Strategy to fuck over Black folk for the power of the presidency would have been:
I left it vague so that you could work out the criticism on your own, without someone yelling Fuck You.
But since you’re telling me to fuck off for reflexively denying the existence of racism, I’m not exactly inclined to make your sloppy and/or ignorant and/or racist thinking anything less than fully visible.
Y’know, you could have just thought about it for a minute and worked it out for yourself. It’s usually less painful than the gigantic-public-mistake method.
But your choice.
@Ichthyic
I don’t give the “new atheist” term validation. I wouldn’t even have used the term if you hadn’t. I also made clear that it was questionable whether the term was valid of even coherent:
Whether “new atheist” is a suitable, or even fully coherent, term in the first place or not, doesn’t change the fact that the term “new atheist” could not reasonably be used of Democritus or Baron D’Holbach.
You criticised someone else earlier for deflecting to miss your point. That appears to be precisely what you have done with me here.
My POINT was that the term “fundamentalist” is different because it connects with an actual book which a whole bunch of people took as establishing their ideology known as “The fundamentals of Christianity”. If anyone means to use the term “fundamentalist” as it was ORIGINALLY meant, then they cannot be referring to a group earlier than the late 20th Century. – Please stop pretending this is rocket science.
@Iyéska
Nietzsche isn’t the most diplomatic of people, but he is actually making quite a complex point there where “woman”, “man” and “priest” are merely archetypes to make a point. Nietzsche’s philosophy is that everything we do is in order to amass control of our surroundings and to shape the world to suit ourselves. So when you get the ‘powerful matriarch’ in the family, she has (particularly in Nietzsche’s time we could expect) been presented with several limitations on what she can control. So within that sphere much of what she does will be to bring down the status of those around her and to cement her position of power.
The example I like to give is of the nurse who gains a position of power and control by helping those who are weaker. There are real life cases where nurses have been deliberately making their patients ill so they can continue to care for them. Even helping the needy can be an expression of a need for control or, as Nietzsche calls it, “the will to power”.
I can understand the interpretation “oh, women just want to bring men down”, but while Nietzsche was ABSOLUTELY a misogynist (an element in his writing which possibly comes from his early inspiration from Schopenhauer), that is still rather an unfair interpretation.
And for all his misogyny, he still explicitly states that women should be educated. (I also like how one of his aphorisms criticises the idea that women should be confined to the kitchen, saying that the kitchen is too important to leave to women. Lol! He’s got his own brand of misogyny, old Nietzsche.)
@Crip Dyke
“most WHITE MEN were”?
In a period where most races were far more separated and societies weren’t so globalised as media has allowed them to become today, I think we could quite easily say “most PEOPLE were”. Most people would be racist against SOME race during that period.
Shortly after the iron curtain came down they decided to try to take the same journey taken by Marco Polo. When they entered China, the first thing they heard was someone tell their child to stay away from the “white devil”. There is racism all over the world and it’s not all from white people.
Of course, Ichthyic’s original comment was calling Nietzsche racist, like most men in Nietzsche’s society. I’m not quite sure how you’d expect him to guess that you were trying to insinuate that anyone who is not Caucasian would NOT be racist. It seems to be a massive change in direction for the conversation.
Gah, can’t edit my last comment: There were these bunch of people who tried to take the Marco Polo route when the iron curtain came down (making it possible for the first time in nearly a century). That’s who ‘they’ refers to.
@Hank_Says
Hitler was definitely religious. He opposed non-religious schools because he thought religion was vital to children’s moral development. Nazi propaganda proposed that women focus on Children, Church and Cooking. Hitler made regular reference to religious ideas and even made use of Martin Luther’s book “The Jews And Their Lies”.
fatpie42 # 68
If Nietzsche was a misogynist then Nietzsche was a misogynist. It’s a straightforward issue. I’d say further however that I’m not impressed by this ‘interpretation’ angle. If a writer has something important to say about an important subject, it is their obligation to say it in a way in which it isn’t susceptible to dangerous ugly misinterpretation. Ultimately this may be impossible, but it’s a goal as important as achieving truth and insight itself, and failing to attempt it is a moral evil analogous to deliberately misleading people on such matters. So much more so, then, when our author is deliberately cryptic or ambiguous.
You refer to this instance as a diplomatic shortcoming, but if, (if), Neitzsche’s meaning is indeed opaque, poor diplomacy is not what’s involved here, but rather obfuscation; which means you’re obfuscating the obfuscation.
By producing all this stuff that’s ripe for, even requiring, extensive interpretation, such authors may attract academic + polemic attention to themselves, but they create a briar patch of confusion that may be as or more influential than their original message; and this must be weighed against whatever insight they have been able to generate. ( People are still trying to figure out what Immanuel Kant meant. ) And equally unhappily, they promulgate the concept that interpretation is or should be a large measure of what philosophy is about. So everybody spends their time and brainpower trying to figure out famous thinkers, instead of in figuring out the World.
fatpie # 71
None of those statements following the first one “Hitler was definitely religious”, are evidence that he was. Not even close. Kudos, however, for mentioning Luther’s nefarious document; that’s a memory it’s important to keep in mind in relation to the Third Reich phenomenon. That is, our malignant religious culture has been determined and highly successful in managing to forget it in that highly significant context; along with the anti-semitism of the New Testament ( quoted in Luther’s demented screed. )
David Chapman can read the mind of a person who has been dead for 69 years.
It’s not really that rare a talent. Millions of people claim to be able to read the minds of dead people in general and thousands know what Hitler was thinking in particular.
1. This is just the common xian excuse for their barbarianism. He wasn’t a True Xian!!!
2. In the real world, we don’t have direct access to someone’s thoughts. So all we can use as data is what they say and what they do.
3. And oh yeah, David you are wrong about what fatpie wrote about Hitler. He made some good points. There is a lot more corroborating evidence about Hitler’s religious beliefs. In Mein Kampf, he mentioned god and jesus 33 times. Darwin was mentioned zero times.
raven # 73
I didn’t claim that Hitler wasn’t religious, I said that fatpie42’s evidence that he was is complete crap. You deduced my argument to that effect of course, as I knew people would although I didn’t state it.* Which just indicates that the argument is obvious: How do you trust what that fucker said in public? He also said he was a Man of Peace…
What I was slagging fatpie off for was trying to pretend that such data is hard evidence. You just claim explicitly that yes, that’s a perfectly legitimate thing to do, because it’s the only evidence we’ve got……..
This is reasonable in some cases. It’s complete nonsense with regard to fatpie42’s exhibits, or to the number of times Hitler mentions Jesus in Mein Kampf; because ( of course ), we don’t know if he was being pious, or if he was simply pushing people’s religious buttons. By your reasoning we should trust televangelists claims that their heart is on fire with the Love of Jesus Christ as well. If you’re going to believe what Hitler says, why not believe the Reverend Oral Thrush?
But in rubbishing Hitler’s rhetoric as usable evidence, I wasn’t contrary to your claim advocating that we try holding seances instead. We can use what historical figures have said and done as evidence, certainly, but it all depends on the circumstances: the situation in which the deeds were done and the words were uttered or written.
There’s lots and lots of evidence of what Hitler said in private that apparently suggest he was hostile to Christianity in fact, and this merits more serious attention than his public pronouncements:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler%27s_Table_Talk#Hitler.27s_comments_on_religion
( This linked article you might be interested to know also relates that Richard Carrier has challenged this view, and the material it’s based on; although it says he hasn’t won many academic converts. )
But as I say, Hitler-Atheist wasn’t the case I was making, I was instead pointing out that the “evidence” that fatpie42 was offering us is no good.
*There’s also his claim that the Fuhrer thought that a religious upbringing was good for children’s moral development. That really has no necessary connection to Hitler’s personal religious belief at all, so again, crap.
@raven:
yeah, I think this time you misfired. I can agree or disagree or have no opinion on your conclusion while still noting that, in your proof you said 2+2 = 17, and later relied on that in your reasoning. I can even conclude that your evidence is tainted and your proof is crap without saying that I know what the proper conclusions is, or while agreeing with your estimate of the proper conclusion, albeit for different reasons.
When I say running people over with a car is not a good way to prevent violence, it in no way means that the person you just ran over ISN’T Hitler or that in this particular case, running someone over didn’t prevent any other harms.
Saying, “Rock salt is not an ingredient in fresh squeezed orange juice” does not contradict the conclusion that FSOJ is delicious when that conclusion is arrived at by a person who routinely misspells “orange” as “rock salt”, even if I take the time to point out that “rock salt” is not an ingredient in FSOJ.
Nietzsche may not be S.E. Cupp, but that doesn’t mean either of them has anything to say worth a quarter dram of stale rat piss.
Icthyic#41
And I could return that that makes him a pretty poor thinker of quite limited imagination, so I’m not seeing why you think that it’s a defence of him.
fatpie#69
Go back and actually read Crip Dyke’s #66, then realize what an idiot you sound.
David Chapman
Although no-one’s ever given me a good reason why. If it looks to casual inspection like meaningless tripe, and closer investigation is still not illuminating, you have to consider the very strong possibility that the reason it’s hard to find anything useful in it is because it is, in fact, meaningless tripe, and a waste of time. AFAICT, Kant falls squarely in this territory. (So does Nietzsche, frankly).
@Dalillama
You think it’s a waste of time studying some of the greatest philosophers in western history and you think I sound like an idiot for not reading just one internet comment properly? Give me a break.
I’m sorry if I misunderstood Crip Dyke. I’m sure she is quite capable of explaining herself though. Probably without dismissing classic literature at the same time.
@David Chapman
If Hitler’s own words and policies don’t indicate what religion he belonged to then I don’t know what does. On that reasoning Richard Dawkins might not really be an atheist, since apparently no amount of books or speeches on the matter count as ‘hard evidence’…
fatpie
Mental masturbation does not an intellectual make. That goes for you as well as Kant and Nietzche.
No, by that reasoning, you can tell that a televangelist is a sincere Christian; because they say so. And their faithful followers are perfectly rationally justified in thinking that their telepreacher could not possibly be deliberately fleecing them and filling their heads with systematic lies; because if the preacher says they are the Lord’s servant, they must be sincere. What else you gonna think, beside what you’ve been told? That is the quality of the logic you’re employing here.
As for Hitler’s policies, a similar situation holds. For example, various governments in various countries make sure that religion is heavily supported and promulgated by the state. Does that establish that the chancellor/president/prime minister is necessarily a sincere believing acolyte of Christianity/Islam/Hinduism/Whatever. No, it’s frequently the case that they simply know that religion is excellent stuff for making people subservient, and that also they want to be on good terms with the powerful and wealthy forces of the clergy. Surprise not really.
It would be rather difficult to suggest a convincing explanation for Richard Dawkins or PZ Myers doing what they do if they are actually secretly Baptist ministers all this time. It is not at all difficult to imagine that Hitler was a lying bastard when he said he was a Christian, since 95% of the German people declared themselves Christian at the time he was seeking or maintaining power over them. Atheists are wont to point out that no-one who admitted they were an atheist could be elected President of the United States. True. So perhaps you should apply the same reasoning to politicians in other highly religious countries, such as Germany during this period.
I shall repeat myself…..
@Dave Chapman
Heck, Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” was a memoir written in prison. I’m not sure on what basis you want to suggest that it was insincere. I’m pretty sure that the Christianity he espouses is not one that most Christians would accept, but it is most certainly based on Christian religious figures (e.g. Jesus) and Christian historical trends (e.g. anti-semitism against Jews as ‘Christ-killers’).
By contrast, Hitler’s Table Talk is not the direct words of Hitler himself but second-hand notes and is known to have been unreliably edited, as well as being often badly translated (as is explicitly stated in the entry to which you linked).
Richard Dawkins makes a lot of money selling books, attending conventions and giving lectures. He is renowned for his atheistic stance. Clearly he has an audience which would be less inclined to follow his work if he were not an atheist. Perhaps it’s all for show? Perhaps it’s all just for the sake of his audience and not a personal belief at all. After all, how is anything he says in speeches or books “hard evidence”? – Of course, I don’t actually believe this. I think we can look at what Dawkins writes and says and we can look at what Hitler writes and says and we can see that both clearly acted on their expressed beliefs.
And, oh look, Pharyngula has tackled this before:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/08/23/list-of-hitler-quotes-he-was-q/
@Dave Chapman
Also, before you start dismissing my interpretation of Nietzsche’s writings, you might want to give his work a proper read-over rather than just picking out a few sound bites and presuming it’s all wrapped up in a neat little bow for you…
David Chapman:
Great. So, now that you’ve rendered the question of whether someone is religious completely irrelevant (since we can’t ever possible know), I propose that we drop the discussion of whether Hitler (or anyone else) really was religious and simply discuss whether he acted like he was.
He did. Whatever his personal thoughts, he did. And Christians lapped it up.
Just because declaring yourself an atheist would be political suicide doesn’t mean that you have to actively support Christianity. There is in fact a middle ground.
Written in prison for publication in order to promote the Nazi parties fortunes. I’m not sure that you’re being very sincere in talking as if you don’t understand the logic of this situation.
I believe I made similar remarks with regard to Luther’s ‘On The Jews And Their Lies’ and the anti-Semitism of the New Testament. I have no problem with the concept that Christianity’s anti-semitism is partly to blame for the mass murder of Jews by the Nazis; that it was the original source of Hitler’s anti-semitic lunacy. Just the reverse, this is one of the reasons I despise Christianity. On that issue we can agree; even if you didn’t notice we agree.
( For the third time ), I’m not trying to show that Hitler was an atheist, I’m pointing out that the sort of evidence you suggested was no good, and the sort of evidence that we should be looking at. The words of the televangelist are definitely first-hand as well. What does that establish? Yes, there are problems with Hitler’s Table Talk; that was why I used the word apparently with reference to it. That’s why I pointed out that Richard Carrier has raised doubts about this Table Talk material. ( I’d just like to point out however that, whereas there are problems with the translation into English and French, the book still exists in German.) Why are you repeating the same issue back to me as if I didn’t know about it? I am trying to show what sort of evidence is reasonable and useful, and why the sort you suggested is useless. There is indeed, other evidence that claims Hitler was anti-Christian. ( Speer’s memoirs, Goebell’s diaries. )
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_views_of_Adolf_Hitler
In other words, perhaps he’s a believing Baptist and a distinguished biology professor? But why shouldn’t he make wads of money and achieve renown by writing books about that? He’d coin it! And if he’s secretly an ardent Baptist, wouldn’t he be a bit worried that he’s committing sin by turning all these souls away from Jesus, by preaching atheism? Yes, I totally can see that Dawkins might be actually a secret agnostic, largely indifferent to the concept of God and religion, and just in it for the money and power. He’s certainly insincere about quite a few things, so that’s a possibility, if not a very convincing one. ( He runs very real security risks being who he is, for example. ) What’s not remotely plausible is that he’s secretly a convinced Baptist minister, covertly pretending to be an atheist. Some possibilities are realistic and some are not. You raised the case of Richard Dawkins in order to establish that people can and should be judged according to what they say, do and write. And once again I say, no, that doesn’t make sense, you have to place all of that in the context of the circumstances involved. And Dawkins is another example of this. Avaricious agnostic? Yes, conceivably, although not very likely. Covert born-again Christian? Almost certainly not.
And I don’t agree with Prof. Myers on this issue any more than I agree with you.
I didn’t dismiss your interpretation of Nietzsche’s writings, so I’m a bit baffled by this. My best guess is that when I said:
— you took me to be saying that I wasn’t impressed by your interpretation. Not so, I was saying that I don’t respect Nietzsche’s ambiguous, cryptic way of writing philosophy, deliberately producing an inert intractable lump of prose innately resistant to straightforward communication; and I’m consequently unsympathetic to any defense of the guy that’s based on interpretations of his wilful obscurantism. When he aggravates the situation by being offensive and misogynistic, and you want to say ( something like ): this is just a way of expressing a deeper underlying meaning, well I’m sorry but I can’t respect what you’re saying either, there. Which is not to say your interpretation was wrong, it might be dead on; but it doesn’t make the misogyny go away, and Nietzsche’s obscurantism is no excuse for the misogyny. It was your reference to Nietzsche being “undiplomatic,” however, that I thought was just flat out dishonest. That’s what I referred to as “obfuscating the obfuscation.”
LykeX @83:
There’s no middle ground for Presidential candidates. These days, their histories are combed over in minute detail. Any godless teenager in the US with Presidential aspirations knows they can’t make their atheism known. Even if they cover it up well enough to make it to a candidate’s debate, what’s the middle ground answer for a belief question? Pleading the Fifth? Saying “none of your business”? Lying?
My bolding.
In fact it is an important question about Hitler, although it’s not the one I was arguing. What made Hitler the warped psycho he was is something we should try to understand if we want to try to discourage phenomena like the Nazis, so it’s not an issue that should be dropped. I certainly didn’t say the issue of someone’s religion is irrelevant, I certainly didn’t say we can never know their beliefs. I simply pointed out that we can’t trust Hitler’s public protestations on this subject; because he was a politician. Duh.
My whole beef throughout has been that we have to demand reasonable standards of evidence; and the reason I have been saying that ( repeatedly ) is that, otherwise discussion of the role of religion in these horrible historical events turns into a rhetorical game. That wouldn’t be a good thing.
Which remark suggests to me ( based I admit on no hard evidence ) that despite the above disavowal of interest, you rather incline toward the Hitler was a Christian theory.
I have a question: Are we supposed to be, as this clown suggests, really into the “God is dead” quote? Because I don’t often see Atheists using it. Occasionally as a wry joke, but not seriously. I don’t use it. Because God’s not dead. Just like Hello Kitty is neither a cat nor a human child. What does not exist and never has cannot be “dead”, “cat”, “human child”, or anything else other than “myth”, “legend”, “fairy tale”, or “fictional character”.
And I always love the argument that we absolutely must keep religion or we’ll become immoral. Not just because it’s dead wrong about ethics and morality and their relationship with belief, but because even if that relationship were true, I would have to question the morality of those convinced that religion was necessary for this purpose. They’re admitting that they’re willing to lie to preserve religious belief and that it’s more important to keep people moral than to have them know the truth. This is unethical. It’s the behavior not just of centuries of religious authorities, but also of the bad guys in most distopian sci-fi stories. Does he expect that he’s only writing to people like himself, who clearly don’t have real deep beliefs, but simply want to keep the rubes in line? Or does he just think the rubes are too dumb to realize what he’s saying? The whole argument is founded on dishonesty and elitism of the worst sort and ought to be known to be immoral from the outset as it denies real human agency, even as he clamors for the importance of maintaining the illusion of free will.
The moral argument is the central core of all this, really; at heart I think most Christians are good people, even the fundie-nuts (or at least are trying to be…). I think the fact that “if no Yahweh then no morals!” is coming to the fore more often is a sign of this idiot culture war finally coming to a head.
That said, it’s also bringing out the very worst of the very worst, the van Tillian Calvinists. They are all over facebook, and I suspect my constant encounters with them are somewhat distorting my perception of how big a force they really are (supposedly presuppositionalism is unpopular even among hardcore reactionaries).
To that end, I think it’s important that we know how to counter their apologetics. When it comes to moral arguments, presuppers and non-presups really don’t differ that much; both make a transcendental appeal (“If there were no perfect Platonic source of morals, there would be no morals at all!”), and only differ on how they press the attack, “You lose before we begin since you presuppose my God already” vs. “Nothing but Yahweh can account for morality.”
I also notice increasingly strident attempts to split the horns of the Euthyphro Dilemma. The most common retort is “Yahweh is the ultimate standard of good/is good by nature, so your objection is moot.” This, of course, merely pushes the Dilemma back a step: How do you know this is so? Is Yahweh’s nature good because he does only what is of itself good, or his commands/actions good because they are consistent with his nature?
How many experienced counter-apologists do we have on here anyway? This is something I’ve spent (wasted?) years on now.
@Dave Chapman
Why should I think televangelists aren’t Christian? Sure they are. Whether they genuinely believe they are doing God’s work when the fleece people out of money is a different question, but they got into the position whereby they could do so by knowing their scripture and working out how to manipulate people within the faith. But that hardly makes them a Muslim or an atheist, does it? They’re horrible Christians, simple as that.
Also, while it’s true that Nietzsche is trying to offend sensibilities, I don’t think he was ever trying to be actively offensive. Misogyny was widespread when he was writing, but he engages with that misogyny and subverts it in unusual ways. Anti-semitism was widespread too and he tries to subvert that even more; in ways which are often easily misinterpreted today where anti-semitism doesn’t take such a frank and obvious form in our culture as it did back then. Nietzsche’s intentions are admittedly quite often obscure because his main aim is to make you think. Kant was big into forming a system of thought and there all sorts of problems with Kant as a result. But Nietzsche was against systems and that’s what makes him the grandfather of post-modernism and existentialism. Not sure why you disagree with me calling Nietzsche “undiplomatic”. Would you feel better if I called him a “sh*t-stirrer”?
Don’t think we’ll ever agree on Hitler. I thought Pharyngula’s post was pretty damn convincing personally…
fatpie42 (#89):
Then you need to look further afield, because the quotations that PZ lists in the old post are highly selective, the vast majority of them being from Mein Kampf and other sources intended for public consumption – and for this very reason, as David Chapman points out, of dubious reliability. One could compile an equally convincing list of quotations from Table Talk to show that Hitler was rabidly anti-Christian, but then Table Talk has its own question marks hanging over its reliability (although most historians tend to treat it as being less unreliable than Mein Kampf for insight into Hitler’s personal beliefs).
The simple fact is that Hitler was (a) a demagogue and a liar and (b) a hopelessly muddled and superficial thinker. Trying to pin him down as a Christian or an atheist (as if these were the only possibilities – sigh) is not easy even with access to all the relevant existing sources, because their most consistent feature is their inconsistency.
In short, quote-mining is no way to settle historical questions.