The critics of atheism seem, without exception, to be lacking in imagination. Over and over again, what we hear from them is desperate attempts to pigeonhole atheism as just another religion; they squat uncomprehendingly in their hovels built of faith and peer quizzically at the godless, seeking correspondence with their familiar theological nonsense, and crow in triumph when they find something that they can sort of line up with their experiences. “They want more people to think rationally — why, that’s evangelism!” Never mind that you could, with the same legitimacy, argue that when one person mentions to another that it is raining, they are attempting to evangelize their precipitational worldview. “They are so damned sure that they are right — they’re fundamentalists!” Jebus, but I’m tired of that “fundamentalism” claim: it’s the surest sign that you’re dealing with a clueless, dissembling, frightened apologist for religion when they start flinging the “fundie” accusation at atheists. And yes, it is exactly like accusing the fellow who walks through the door in a wet raincoat, to the sound of raindrops pattering on the roof and the occasional distant boom of thunder, of being a fundamentalist rainist because he can show you the deluge.
The latest entry in the dead-eyed zombie moan category of the standard atheism-is-a-cult criticism is John Gray’s complaints about “the atheist delusion”. There is no thought, no creativity in it; it’s simply another tedious retread. By finding a few opportunities to stretch the meanings of words, he wedges atheism and religion into a forced propinquity; then he tells us how awful, wretched and wicked this amalgamated godless religion is; and then, of course, he complains that atheists dare to find religion unpleasant, never mind that his entire critique depends entirely on labeling atheism a religion. I swear, sometimes I think it’s the defenders of the faith who have the lowest opinion of religion, since they all seem to believe that all they need to do is tag anything with the label of “religion” or “belief” and presto, they’ve killed all of its credibility.
And yet, at the same time, they readily equate human virtues to religious belief. Gray makes this false equivocation multiple times; for instance, he damns humanists (humanists, atheists, secularists, scientists…they’re all the same to these critics) with “It is a funny sort of humanism that condemns an impulse [religion] that is peculiarly human.” Yet what you’ll find in humanists (and atheists!) is an appreciation of what is specifically human — the need for community, the construction of institutions that facilitate altruism, the shared human values of sympathy, empathy, friendship, and family — that can exist entirely in the absence of the unnecessary baggage of blind faith, belief in superstition, or the acceptance of an authoritarian hierarchy. We don’t conflate human impulses with the artificiality and error of religion, but John Gray does, oblivious to his mistake. I can figuratively spit in the eye of the Pope, for instance, and only a thoroughly indoctrinated Catholic would think that such an act represents an assault on universal ideals. Similarly, we reject the bullshit of religion without demeaning humanity; to the contrary, it’s the people who equate humanity with belief in bullshit who clearly have the lowest opinion of ourselves.
There’s another common theme, that I also saw in the recent diatribe by Chris Hedges, the self-defeating idea that there is no hope, no chance of bettering ourselves, and so we might as well just give up and believe in nonsense, since reason sure isn’t going to do a better job … and any suggestion that maybe there are practical alternatives to guesswork culled from iron age mythologies is rank “utopianism”. It’s another plank in their attempt to equate religion with something they dislike, in this case science. The logic seems to run along the lines of “If religion is a crappy method of acquiring a realistic vision of the world, then science had better be crap, too — after all, if we’ve got a method that is empirically better than faith, I’d look awfully foolish clinging to the old myths.” To accomplish this game, they have to abolish the whole notion of cultural progress and ignore most of history, pretending that nothing has ever changed.
The problem with the secular narrative is not that it assumes progress is inevitable (in many versions, it does not). It is the belief that the sort of advance that has been achieved in science can be reproduced in ethics and politics. In fact, while scientific knowledge increases cumulatively, nothing of the kind happens in society. Slavery was abolished in much of the world during the 19th century, but it returned on a vast scale in nazism and communism, and still exists today. Torture was prohibited in international conventions after the second world war, only to be adopted as an instrument of policy by the world’s pre-eminent liberal regime at the beginning of the 21st century. Wealth has increased, but it has been repeatedly destroyed in wars and revolutions. People live longer and kill one another in larger numbers. Knowledge grows, but human beings remain much the same.
It’s true: secularism does not anticipate uniform perfectibility of human nature, or even any kind of perfectibility. We will always have conflict, we will always have shortcomings, any advances will come in fits and starts, and there will be setbacks of varying magnitude. But hell yes, we can do better, and we will do better, but we will only accomplish improvements in the human condition if we strive for them. These defenders of religion all seem to be the most appalling defeatists.
Perhaps John Gray should imagine living the life of a hunter-gatherer; better yet, the life of a hunter-gatherer woman, 10,000 years ago. If that’s too harsh, how about the life of a laborer in a Sumerian city-state — surely there is little difference between his life now and toiling in the mud for a king. Or perhaps his life now is no different than living in the squalor of a medieval European city, sans hygiene, medicine, or any books other than priestly recitations from the bible? Maybe that’s still too distant, though — maybe he’d trade places with a prosperous middle-class 19th century gentleman, and willingly watch half his children die before puberty?
People do not remain the same. Prosperity and freedom of the sort brought by science and technology enable deep changes in attitudes and opportunities. Culture changed for the better between the 19th and 20th centuries for people who benefited from modern industry.
Do I even need to point out that his grand counter-example, that torture has been adopted as policy by the “world’s pre-eminent liberal regime at the beginning of the 21st century”, is a consequence of the election of an extremist conservative president who claims justification for his policies in divine communication? That’s simply dishonest, to imply that atheism is to blame for the shame of George W. Bush and the religious right.
There’s yet another tactic that the apologists for religion commonly fall back on: that science and religion rule over different domains, and tritely, that religion is responsible for “meaning”.
The growth of knowledge is a fact only postmodern relativists deny. Science is the best tool we have for forming reliable beliefs about the world, but it does not differ from religion by revealing a bare truth that religions veil in dreams. Both science and religion are systems of symbols that serve human needs – in the case of science, for prediction and control. Religions have served many purposes, but at bottom they answer to a need for meaning that is met by myth rather than explanation.
If there’s one thing science is really good at, it is at surprising us and generating unintended consequences — Gray is so far off the mark in his claims about what science is good for that I think that alone is sufficient to throw out his whole argument. The world is not what we want it to be, or what we expect it to be, or what authorities in the supernatural tell us it should be. It is what it is, and science is a tool for probing its nature that tries to get around our presuppositions and our desires, and that when it works well gets us closer and closer to understanding reality. It’s not science, but religion, that is all about control: about filtering and shaping our beliefs to a desired outcome, and getting the tribe to work as one towards a goal, whether that goal is reasonable or reachable or not. If you want social control, it’s religious pablum you should reach for, not the unpredictable honesty of science.
As for meaning, we all want it, atheists and theists alike. Gray gives away the store with that last comment: religion meets that need with myth, science meets it with explanation. Which would you prefer, or which do you think is better for society: glib, happy lies and hateful provocation from the religious, or best assessments of reality from the scientists?
There’s another unresolved inconsistency here. On the one hand, Gray wants to claim cultural stagnation and the futility of striving for personal and social betterment, and dismisses scientists and atheists as hopeless dreamers who can’t possibly change anything; on the other hand, he wants to assign responsibility for purpose and meaning to the gatekeepers of faith. Taken together, that’s an admission that religion is a failure, even in its role as an institution for maintaining human hope and other such noble aspirations. Why should we hand the keys to our future to such a dreary, bleak collection of losers?
One last thing. In a long collection of tired nonsense, John Gray manages to regurgitate one of the tiredest, wrongest, dumbest of the believers’ canards. We have been hearing over and over lately the claims that the Holocaust was all Darwin’s fault, but Gray puts a new twist on it: it was all the atheists’ fault.
Dawkins dismisses any suggestion that the crimes of the Nazis could be linked with atheism. “What matters,” he declares in The God Delusion, “is not whether Hitler and Stalin were atheists, but whether atheism systematically influences people to do bad things. There is not the smallest evidence that it does.” This is simple-minded reasoning. Always a tremendous booster of science, Hitler was much impressed by vulgarised Darwinism and by theories of eugenics that had developed from Enlightenment philosophies of materialism. He used Christian antisemitic demonology in his persecution of Jews, and the churches collaborated with him to a horrifying degree. But it was the Nazi belief in race as a scientific category that opened the way to a crime without parallel in history. Hitler’s world-view was that of many semi-literate people in interwar Europe, a hotchpotch of counterfeit science and animus towards religion. There can be no reasonable doubt that this was a type of atheism, or that it helped make Nazi crimes possible.
Science is a kind of totemic word that is invoked by many, including John Gray, to represent all kinds of nonsense. Ask people what science means, and many will chant, “Television! The Internet! Airplanes! Perpetual motion machines! Intelligent Design! Quantum healing by the vibrational properties of tuned crystals!” As Gray and too many others use it, it’s divorced from meaning and used as a prop to support any claim they want to make, ignoring all the evidence. Hitler was no more a fan of science than is Deepak Chopra. Both simply steal words and tack them to whatever unfounded belief they want to grant some incantatory pretense to validity.
Science is about inquiry. It’s about asking questions, honestly trying to get answers, and communicating the methods and results to others for verification. Deciding that entire ethnic groups are evil and must be exterminated is not formulating a scientific hypothesis; butchering people by the millions and burning them in ovens is not a scientific experiment. The Nazis were driven by a hateful ideology that had its foundation in Protestant anti-semitism and a bizarre paganism that was one part wish-fulfillment and one part delusional self-aggrandizement, not science.
Note also the amazing leaps he makes in that paragraph. Nazis had a pseudoscientific rationalization for their acts; therefore they were scientists; therefore there can be no doubt that atheism put “Gott mit uns” on those belt-buckles and sent the legions of largely Catholic and Lutheran German soldiers marching out to conquer the world.
There’s a reason I dislike religion. I suspect that it’s related to the fact that only under the brain-damaging influence of religion can anyone regard dreadful tripe from the likes of John Gray as serious, rational, intellectual scholarship.
You would think they would realize at some point that their argument is so self-defeating.
Of course, most of them are blatantly unaware of the physical properties of the world they live in, and blissfully unaware of the way that logic works.
oh when, oh when will the whispering by jesus into the ears of men end? come on jesus, send us all a text message.
To be fair to relatively enlightened religious people, they will often claim that groups who do horrible things in the name of some religion aren’t really religious, or praticing religion (the way Nazis weren’t practicing science).
While I have some sympathy for their position, the problem with that notion is that it assumes there is some coherent, consistent definition of religion. And that people can’t claim any random bullshit is religion. Which, in fact, they can. Unlike science.
Do realize that these are the sorts of people who have made Martin Luther’s rant about how “reason is the whore of the Devil” their personal (unofficial and/or official) motto.
If the monotheists actually believed in their god then they would never take offense at those that disagree with or even ridicule their god or beliefs. They would let their god handle it.
It is only because they know deep down that their religion is a lie that they respond so violently to criticism.
Instead of being offended or annoyed by this nonsense, I am just amused to remember some of my favorite rejoinders, such as:
Atheism is a religion the same way that bald is a hair color. Or:
Atheism is a religion the same way that off is a television channel. Or:
Atheism is a religion the same way that not collecting stamps is a hobby.
Why don’t you start a contest to find the most charming “Atheism is a religion the same way that ______________” response with the winner (as determined by your readers or just by you as the sole appointed judge of all that is humorous) awarded a suitably framed picture of your favorite denison of the deep.
Gray’s piece is truly some of the most tiresome, self-indulgent and dishonest discussions of this issue I’ve seen– an that’s saying something. Maybe he deserves some kind of recognition for his accomplishment… Oh– there’s the very idea, proposed just above the comment box. AnswersinGenitals, you have it.
PZ, I’ve been waiting for this post ever since my eyes glazed over trying to read Gray’s article the other day. It was simply *exhausting* to finish his piece. Once you cut away his hoity-toity verbiage, it was nothing more nor less than “atheists are exactly the same as religious fundamentalists, ha-ha, isn’t that ironic?!” What does he expect atheists to do? Give up saying “Yeah, wow, you got us, we’ve never heard that one before! Better pack it on in.”
Actually, yes, that’s precisely want he wants. Fuck that dude.
Hitler was an avowed christian who persecuted atheists. That’s reality. And we need to say it every time the theists pull this “Hitler was an atheist” bullshit.
What is sad to me is that religion is often a topic that is off-limits. In my family it is the big white elephant. My parents are devout and I am very much atheist. However, any discussion of the matter quickly leads to retreat as most religious people live in their little foxholes of circular reasoning. The entire “Atheism is a religion” is just another logical fallacy (My favorite of all Sagans set of quotes) in terms of trying to refute atheism or support a religious worldview. But, somehow I feel like I’m preaching to the choir here :)
“You would think they would realize at some point that their argument is so self-defeating.”
And yet, no. By casting atheism (or secularism or whatever) as a religion, they can just say that their religion is better than that a-religion because they have all the pretty symbols and stuff.
“Slavery was abolished in much of the world during the 19th century, but it returned on a vast scale in nazism and communism, and still exists today.”
Can anyone explain what exactly he is referring to when he says slavery in communism and nazism? And is nazism even a word?
And as for the whole torture thing, well, fuck off and die, John Gray. How in the world does not believing in that for which there is no evidence keep getting us juxtaposed with the neo-cons?
“The proposition that God exists,” (Dennett) writes severely, “is not even a theory.” But religions do not consist of propositions struggling to become theories. The incomprehensibility of the divine is at the heart of Eastern Christianity, while in Orthodox Judaism practice tends to have priority over doctrine. Buddhism has always recognised that in spiritual matters truth is ineffable, as do Sufi traditions in Islam. Hinduism has never defined itself by anything as simplistic as a creed. It is only some western Christian traditions, under the influence of Greek philosophy, which have tried to turn religion into an explanatory theory.
It is again interesting how what atheists consider THE central issue — does God exist? — is blithely ignored,and brushed carelessly to the side as an insignificant little question. Does God exist? Is there a supernatural realm? Are we being guided and advised by a Higher Intelligence? In response, we get “the incomprehensibility of the divine” and a lot of blather about how everyone has always been terribly, terribly vague about God and what it is. And religion really isn’t about what makes it unique and different from philosophy or ethics — the transcendent realm of the supernatural. No. Apparently religion has nothing much to do with believing in Gods or higher powers, and trying to follow what they think is right.
And then he goes on to make the now peculiar point that belief in God has always been terribly, terribly important to people and their art and their meaning. It doesn’t matter if God exists, or if people can know what God is like. What matters is the belief itself, and how bloody sure they are, and if this bothers you then you’re just as bad as they are. At least they’re being vague about God. Except when they aren’t. But how human it all is, and to be admired.
The attempt to eradicate religion, however, only leads to it reappearing in grotesque and degraded forms. A credulous belief in world revolution, universal democracy or the occult powers of mobile phones is more offensive to reason than the mysteries of religion, and less likely to survive in years to come. Victorian poet Matthew Arnold wrote of believers being left bereft as the tide of faith ebbs away. Today secular faith is ebbing, and it is the apostles of unbelief who are left stranded on the beach.
Given that we’ve always been so very, very vague on what God is supposed to be and the “mysteries of religion,” just where does Gray get off talking about “grotesque and degraded forms” of religion? What would those be — those forms he doesn’t like? Aren’t they mysterious enough for him? Degraded from what? The real version of God? Are we allowed to ask that? Not seriously.
The fact that violence and war have “survived” has never been chalked up to their credit, or held against people who have fought for peace and human rights. Pointing gleefully towards religious belief and its ability to “carry on” despite critique should not automatically gather respect for it. On the contrary, a hope (not “credulous belief”) in such things as scientific progress, universal human rights, reason, and open inquiry is far better grounded than the existence of God — and anything good which might, by sheer accident, fall out of our “myths.”
Disappointing essay.
PZ wrote:
That’s also, in part, the echo chamber effect. The apologists all read and repeat each other’s ideas in different (and sometimes not so different) words. There’s also a bit of echo chamber effect in the atheist books and blogs.
“Atheism is a religion the same way that not believing that Friday 13 is unlucky is a superstition.”
“There’s a reason I dislike religion. I suspect that it’s related to the fact that only under the brain-damaging influence of religion can anyone regard dreadful tripe from the likes of John Gray as serious, rational, intellectual scholarship.”
I wish I’d simply read PZ’s final paragraph (above) before I waded through Gray’s tedious bullshit in today’s Grauniad.
Good work fella.
(In future, I must remember to go straight to the Sports pages, and not take the bait…)
“At least they’re being vague about God. Except when they aren’t. But how human it all is, and to be admired.”
But if they’re lukewarm, then won’t He SPUE THEM OUT OF HIS MOUTH-AH?!
This was so great. Being a blue-collar-type (I’m a carpenter – not a scientist, but if you paid for palletizing my tools I’d renovate your home and make you so much more than proud – something tells me tho, this isn’t all that much of a priority for you – maybe it would be for your wife tho – they seem to run these important things)
I live in Anchorage, currently occupied territory. It’d probably be ’bout $2 per lb given current gas prices. (I’d work just to enjoy sun and pick your brain a bit over good beer or something stronger.)
I just enjoy your well-articulated view of life and reality. Reading posts like this makes my day and reaffirms views of life that have been so hard-won for me. This is payment enough.
(Well, okay, I’d probably charge through the nose like any contractor would…)
Rey Fox @11:
“Can anyone explain what exactly he is referring to when he says slavery in communism and nazism”
He probably means the forced labor in Nazi camps and the Soviet gulag. In “Koba the Dread”, Martin Amis describes how Hitler planned to turn Western Russia into a slave empire after the Soviets had been defeated: “It does sound crazy, but then you realize, a slave empire was what Stalin had there already.”
#16 – The spewing will be done in a vague, unspecified manner. Probably a metaphorical spewing, but no one knows for sure.
I infer than that he’s referring to the forced labor that took place in the gulags and the concentration camps. These prisons were not just to hold people, but also to get them to work for the respective states that held them, which had two effects that those states found useful: they made money from the prisoner labor, and the prisoners were theoretically kept too busy and exhausted to plan and work towards escape.
Not that any of the above has anything to do with atheism or theism.
Although, how come the bible itself speaks approvingly of enslaving people?
I suppose one could consider gulags to be slavery, but since the slaves there were at least ostensibly criminals, then it doesn’t seem quite the same as slavery as was practiced in America, where a class of people were forced in slavery merely due to being members of that class. It’s all a red herring anyway, I guess, with the stink of “atheism = commienazism” about it.
Both Nazi Germany and Stalin’s Russia used slave labour on a vast scale – in Germany, prisoners in the camps, and in Russia, inmates of the Gulag. I suspect that’s what he’s referring to, and is true. Hey, that makes him 1 for what – a thousand?
This reminded of something else I read recently: that Hitler was aware of the etymology of the word “slave”, and his plans for Russia reflected that awareness:
The German for “slave” is after the Middle Latin: “der Sklave | die Sklavin”
Rey Fox:
If frequent occurence in dictionaries and in popular and academic writing can turn a sequence of letters into a word, “nazism” is one.
As for slavery, I imagine he’s refering to the habit of both regimes employing millions of forced labour. The Soviets mostly used convicts (in many cases convicted on entirely ridiculous charges), the Nazis both concentration camp inmates and nominally free civilians, mostly from Eastern Europe. The Nazis sometimes rented them out to private companies.
You might argue they weren’t technically slaves because they weren’t bought and sold, but the difference is pretty academic.
You might argue they weren’t technically slaves because they weren’t bought and sold, but the difference is pretty academic.
It’s all a red herring anyway
both correct.
Ah, xpost.
And these are exactly the same arguments that gave Heller his Templeton prize. Just listen to his interview for NPR Morning Edition last week.
I’m going to be the dissenter and say that I enjoyed Gray’s article. That’s not to say I agree with it all, or even much of it. I think some of his underlying suppositions are fundamentally flawed, but as far as religious apologism goes, it’s a pretty well-rounded, non-dogmatic, sane piece of writing. I don’t think it deserves the vitriol and name-calling PZ is lunging at it.
I do object to two main ideas:
1) The idea that Dawkins, Dennet, et. al., are evangelists for atheism. I’ve read their books, and nowhere have I seen evidence of that. Evangelism requires some kind of structure or mechanism for changing minds, often a coercive one. None of the atheists I’ve read propose any sort of mechanism. They only lament that people don’t use their brains more often.
2) The hogwash that secular humanists believe the Earth exists for the benefit of humans. That’s absolutely untrue, and against the affirmations of the Secular Humanist movement. In fact, one of their affirmations is this:
We want to protect and enhance the earth, to preserve it for future generations, and to avoid inflicting needless suffering on other species.
…which suggests to me the opposite viewpoint.
As one of those dirty socialist types that Gray and his ilk despise, I imagine he’s talking about “being enslaved to the state” or something like that.
Ouch, my sympathies PZ, that back must really hurt.
But aside from putting the hurt on Gray the post was fodder for thought, and far from the unimaginative drivel of the seriously deluded on the subjects science and atheism.
In other words, it is not even wrong.
Ouch, my sympathies PZ, that back must really hurt.
But aside from putting the hurt on Gray the post was fodder for thought, and far from the unimaginative drivel of the seriously deluded on the subjects science and atheism.
In other words, it is not even wrong.
That’s funny, I’ve only read Dawkins TGD so far and he presents very explicit mechanisms for changing minds – supporting science and education to increase knowledge, and disallowing religion from child indoctrination.
And I’m not sure anyone needs to propose new mechanisms. Whichever you think is the cause or effect, if most of the best minds becomes atheist, or the atheists becomes the dominant among the best minds, it is a fact of life as evidenced by statistics. It has probably always been so, hidden or not, and there is no reason why this natural recruitment would stop.
That’s funny, I’ve only read Dawkins TGD so far and he presents very explicit mechanisms for changing minds – supporting science and education to increase knowledge, and disallowing religion from child indoctrination.
And I’m not sure anyone needs to propose new mechanisms. Whichever you think is the cause or effect, if most of the best minds becomes atheist, or the atheists becomes the dominant among the best minds, it is a fact of life as evidenced by statistics. It has probably always been so, hidden or not, and there is no reason why this natural recruitment would stop.
“Slavery was abolished in much of the world during the 19th century, but it returned on a vast scale in nazism and communism, and still exists today. Torture was prohibited in international conventions after the second world war, only to be adopted as an instrument of policy by the world’s pre-eminent liberal regime at the beginning of the 21st century.”
Of course, what Gray doesn’t point out is that both institutions were once nearly universally accepted, and now, whenever they pop up are nearly univerally regarded as wrong. I’d say that’s some measure of progress.
Of course, what’s a small omission like that, especially when it’s something that doesn’t support his thesis.
One of this article’s many serious faults was only brushed over by PZ: the NOMA-based idea that “science answers the ‘how’ but religion answers the ‘why’.” This is laughably untrue: science answers plenty of ‘why’ questions. On the other hand, the answers that religion provides for the ‘why’ questions are often not very helpful. “God wants it that way” is not a satisfying answer — it is no better than “because”.
One of this article’s many serious faults was only brushed over by PZ: the NOMA-based idea that “science answers the ‘how’ but religion answers the ‘why’.” This is laughably untrue: science answers plenty of ‘why’ questions. On the other hand, the answers that religion provides for the ‘why’ questions are often not very helpful. “God wants it that way” is not a satisfying answer — it is no better than “because”.
All of the criticism above would be a little more worthwhile if people had bothered to find out what Gray’s (ir)religious views are (he’s an atheist), and were able to control their outrage at any suggestion that the holy words of Saint Dawkins may not be sacrosanct. Gray is fundamentally a nineteenth-century liberal in his political and social outlook, an unpopular position today (especially among some of those who label themselves liberals), and nothing he has written in the last couple of decades is “religious apologism” – it’s a firm defence of liberalism in the sense that Mill, for example (another atheist), would have understood it.
Oops.
grr, AnswersInGenitals… beat me to it. “So what kind of car do you have?” – “None” – “Oh, what color is it?”
Boy, have you got the wrong belt buckle, PZ– it’s like blaming Lysenko on the Czar
Rey Fox wrote…
“I suppose one could consider gulags to be slavery, but since the slaves there were at least ostensibly criminals, then it doesn’t seem quite the same as slavery as was practiced in America, where a class of people were forced in slavery merely due to being members of that class.”
The gulag system was very definitely a collection of slave labour camps. People would be arrested for no particular reason in most cases. In one example there were quotas for people to be supplied to the camps – a fixed percentage required from people from a number of identified groups. What were those groups? Here’s a hint – in English there would be 26 of them.
a wrote:
Well, he’s an atheist who apparently takes the theist echo chamber too seriously and repeats them.
About Hitler and the Slaves :
“Slaven sind Sklaven” (the Slavic people are slaves by nature) was a favourite saying among the leaders of Nazi Germany.
If atheism is a religion, then sobriety is a drug.
Oh, is this the same John Gray who wrote “Men are from Mars, etc. ” ? He most definitely seems to be from another planet, but which one, I couldn’t say.
I’m not seeing this guy saying that atheism is just another religion. I’m not seeing him saying that religion is good.
I’m seeing him say that the difference between a westerner with Christian values who believes in God and a westerner with Christian values who doesn’t believe in God is the belief in God, nothing more. He certainly gets some stuff wrong about the Nazis, but he gets a lot right.
And if you think the purpose of myth is to make us feel better, you clearly need to sit down and read some Shakespeare or Homer. The purpose of myth is to give us stories around which we model our lives. One doesn’t need to believe in the stories as “real” events in order for them to have very significant meaning.
Gray is making the usual mistake of taking the hobby horses of public atheists as ‘gospel’ for those who share similar views. The only idea they have in common is that There Is No God. How a society that has utilised god belief as a touchstone for millennia should act, when that touchstone is taken away, is a difficult question.
Ultimately, Gray’s mistake is failing to recognise that atheists are not wanting to change the world, we are wanting one less pollutant in the global thought process.
“All of the criticism above would be a little more worthwhile if people had bothered to find out what Gray’s (ir)religious views are (he’s an atheist)”
Bullshit. We argue ideas here, and it does not matter a quack what he is, his article was pathetic. All the MORE so if he is an atheist, he should know better.
Plus progress is slow, but it does happen. Slavery even if practiced, is no longer accepted, unlike in the old testament. More women have equall rights than ever before, and there is only one leader of a suposedly civilized nation who will publicly approve of water-boarding, and he will soon be gone.
Why don’t you start a contest to find the most charming “Atheism is a religion the same way that the pope shits in the woods” response with the winner (as determined by your readers or just by you as the sole appointed judge of all that is humorous)
Wait, i bet that if i just fling this polished up turd another way, it might stick!
I haven’t read the article in question but I’m familiar with John Gray and his usual shtick is to opposes secular humanism because it retains too much of its Christian heritage. He’s a fatalistic atheist (he refers to humans as “Homo rapiens” because he thinks our destructive nature can’t be reigned in) and not a religious apologist. He’s an incredibly sloppy thinker though.
Glad to see you do a number on Gray’s garbage, PZ. I was steaming about this one after I read it this morning. I’m also steaming about how a once-fine liberal newspaper (The Guardian) seems to have become one of the most frequent publishers of anti-atheist drivel.
Gray: “It is a funny sort of humanism that condemns an impulse [religion] that is peculiarly human.”
[Snortlaugh.] Gray’s just playing childish word games here: “Humanists are supposed to love everything that’s human – it’s right there in their name, humanist. Whaddya thinka that, huh?” In the words of the departed Frink Tank, “Q.E.D., bitches.”
By the same pseudologic, he could say that humanists are hypocrites for condemning violence, since it’s clearly a deep-seated aspect of human nature.
Here I am, late to the party again.
AnswersInGenitals, I like your competition but now you’ve made me imagine a web site where LOLCatz meets “Everything I need to know about life I learned from internet porn” – and I daren’t google for it just in case I find it ;)
My contribution, rather on the geeky side:
Atheism is a dogma in the same way tha[NO CARRIER]
I must say, PZ this is really some of your best writing. If you ever do decide to put out a book of collected blog posts, (as many have suggested and pleaded and would line up to purchase as if an eighth Harry Potter suddenly materialised) consider this for inclusion, really do.
Your writing is always coherent and cogent, and then there are posts like this that spike up to new heights.
Answers in Genitals:
(Why can’t I come up with a nom de keyboard like that? I almost hurt myself reading it.)
Anyway…”denisons of the deep”? Benthic Marine Chili (with beans)?
Hulk want.
@ a
I was going to write what you said but less coherently. Luckily I checked the thread before posting.
Gray’s idea is actually quite obvious: myths and narratives drive history in the form of ideology. They can be evoked in order to do terrible things – in defence of “the nation”, “God”, “our race”, and equally against all of those concepts. Atheism, or anti-clericalism, or anti-theism, while they might be defensible ideas, are a potential wellspring of violence as much as any other ideas. For a liberal philosopher, all militant “movements” are potentially troubling – that’s why Gray doesn’t like Dawkins, Harris et al. He thinks revolutions and totalitarianism are often driven by the type of utopianism and black-and-white thinking Dawkins displays.
“There was nothing wrong with it… until I was about 12 years old and that no-talent ass clown became famous and started winning Grammys.” — Office Space
But it was the Nazi belief in race as a scientific category that opened the way to a crime without parallel in history.
A real conversation I had:
Friend: Science has led to atrocities, like Hitler.
Me: Bullshit. That wasn’t science.
Friend: Ah! A True Scotsman argument! You always complain when Christians claim that the Crusaders weren’t ‘true Christians’, but now you’re doing it!
Me: Not at all. Remember that science is all about empirical observation. What possible empirical observation could you make to conclude that a race was ‘inferior’? That idea came from their crappy value judgements, not from scientific observation.
Friend: Well…
Me: I mean, you could try and say that Population X shows these attributes or those behaviours, but then as soon as you say ‘and therefore, they’re inferior’, you’ve started on the value judgements again. And you’ve stopped doing science.
Friend: (Concurs.)
Don’t blame science for people doing not-science.
For a liberal philosopher, all militant “movements” are potentially troubling – that’s why Gray doesn’t like Dawkins, Harris et al.
then he’s wrong about that, too.
neither Dawkins nor Harris are militant, and neither call for any kind of violence whatsoever.
OTOH, we can point to innumerable examples of people calling themselves “christians”, “muslims”, or even “scientologists” for that matter calling for violence.
Dawkins thinking is nothing but reactionary, not dichotomous.
What’s more, there is a need to drive the discussion towards a recognition of the value of non-religious thought.
Dawkins has done a fantastic job of this in the role he plays.
so does PZ, for that matter, if on a less globally recognized scale.
It is indeed very sloppy thinking to consider Dawkins “militant”. Either that, or you have to redefine to the extreme the term “militant” to begin with, and that smacks of intellectual dishonesty even more than sloppiness.
so which is it?
Is Gray being intellectually dishonest, or merely sloppy?
I’m not trying to defend Dawkins from claims on shallow thinking, he is eminently able to do that himself. But as I have only read TGD and some scattered texts of Dawkins I don’t know this side of his writings, and I’m curious.
So what is Dawkins utopia, and where does he do black-and-white thinking? [TGD has neither of those, as he discusses science and religion from a fact perspective.]
I’m not trying to defend Dawkins from claims on shallow thinking, he is eminently able to do that himself. But as I have only read TGD and some scattered texts of Dawkins I don’t know this side of his writings, and I’m curious.
So what is Dawkins utopia, and where does he do black-and-white thinking? [TGD has neither of those, as he discusses science and religion from a fact perspective.]
Answers, of course not collecting stamps is a hobby. I have spent many hours not collecting stamps.
ReyFox you need to read your Solzhenitsyn. When Stalin needed engineers to oversee the great construction projects the Zeks in the Gulag were building he simply decided there was a conspiracy amongst the engineers, convicted them of anti Soviet activities and et voila! a trained cadre of slave engineers. For a time Solzhenistyn was in a special prison in Moscow for techie types. He was working on voiceprint recognition systems. That institute was the place that enable Stalin to find the Soviet diplomat who tipped the Americans off about an atom spy, probably Julius Rosenberg. The Gulag Archipelago was a self contained country with enslaved engineers, nuclear scientists, technicians, all sorts of doctors, they even had travelling theatre troupes.
It just struck me how emo John Gray seems to be, sulking in his room about what a mess the world is, wearing black and listening to My Chemical Romance.
I agree with John Gray, that I find atrocities committed in the name of science far worse than religion. The latter seems expected, but the former seems like a betrayal.
To answer the question above, the author of Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus is a different John Gray.
This John Gray, however, seems to be an absolute nutcase. The above article, if anything, is one of his better works. It’s difficult to pin down precisely what he believes in, due the absence of any coherence or consistency. However, the following would be reasonably close: “Humanity, reason and civilisation are all worthless and anyone who disagrees with me is a stupid utopianist”.
OK I’m going to play devil’s advocate here: see where it gets me.
First I have to say that I think that Myer’s original post is terrible: he obviously has only skimmed the Gray piece and doesn’t know where Gray is coming from at all. He seems to think that it is justifying religion (it’s not: what Gray is saying is that religion will always be with us and he’s right), and he also seems to think that Gray is saying that ‘atheism is just a kind of religion’. If you believe that, find me piece of text where Gray says that, or anything like it.
Second, and this is VERY important (and no one has picked up on it, at all), Gray is making a political point. It is simply a fact that ALL of the ‘new atheists’ are either relatively vapid liberals (Dawkins, Dennett) or veer off to the extreme Right. The simple fact is that the ‘new atheists’ did NOT arise because people were worried about Bush’s America (and if you think that, you’re deluding yourself) they arose after 9/11. This is about Islam. I’m sorry to have to state the obvious but Hitchens and Harris are quite clear about it and we should pay them the respect of paying attention to their arguments. Hitchens and Harris are perfectly clear that they support the invasion of Iraq BECAUSE they are atheists. If you don’t believe me, write them an email and ask them. What Gray is asking is: ‘why’? Why is it that atheism, which used to be associated with the Left, is now associated with aggressive right wing imperialism?
This is what Gray’s article is about, and regardless of whether you think he’s an idiot or not, you should respond to his article and reply to the arguments he actually made, not the arguments you think he made.
I might add that (despite the fact that a lot of people seem to think it is true) it is simply false that atheists are any better than anybody else. Not believing in God does not make you a good person, any more than not believing in Santa Claus makes you a good person. Moreover, being an atheist does not make you any more rational or intelligent than anybody else. All it means is that you know one particular fact. It’s like saying that ‘I know what the capital of Burkina Faso is. This proves I am rational. Only people who know what the capital of Burkina Faso can be rational. After all who starts all the wars and persecutes women? That’s it: people who don’t know what the capital of Burkina Faso is. Proof if proof were needed.’ (And yes I know the analogy is not exact, but to make it more precise, it’s like saying that people who believe that the capital of Burkina Faso is Bangui are irrational, evil, whatever).
And please spare me the counter-argument: ‘ah but they won’t give up their beliefs in the face of contrary evidence’. Who does? Not Dawkins for one: cf criticisms of the ‘selfish gene’ idea: when Dawkins is criticised he does what everyone does: hits the roof and attempts to shout his opponent down, cf recent letters of his in New Scientist).
Scientists are not any more rational (let along better people) than anybody else.
(Actually I don’t actually know what the word rational means, but that’s another story).
Finally, it is absolutely to the point that Hitchens, who proclaims rationality, is completely irrational on the subject of Iraq, or that Dennett apparently believes that the internet will defeat religion (an irrational belief if ever there was one) or that Sam Harris appears to be some kind of lunatic Buddhist/occultist. To repeat: being an atheist doesn’t make you any more rational or intelligent or morally good than anybody else. There is absolutely no evidence, none, that the world would be a better place if everyone was an atheist. Iraq was about oil. ‘We’ wanted ‘their’ oil. Religion had nothing to do with it: in fact a more hard headed (i.e. less moral), ‘rational’ approach to foreign affairs would probably lead to more wars than the contrary, as more powerful countries steal the natural resources of less powerful countries.
And it is this fact (and it is a fact) that, amongst other things, Gray’s article is about.
Gray is (I think) an atheist, incidentally.
Dawkins claims that he has changed his mind regarding major questions in the field, just not this one; but IMO, it would be stupid for Dawkins to change his mind now, when the evidence for gene selection is just coming in (see Burt & Trivers’ new book) and the Wilsons have not presented any “contrary evidence” or actual models to speak of.
“I’m seeing him say that the difference between a westerner with Christian values who believes in God and a westerner with Christian values who doesn’t believe in God is the belief in God, nothing more.”
Given that “Christian values” would cover a rather broad range of ideas and expressions across increasingly large swathes of the world over nearly 20 centuries, and that some of the values being described as such here are probably fairly recent, culturally specific, and in some ways a striking departure from the main thrust of that tradition, perhaps a term like ‘Western values’ or ‘modern classical-liberal values’ or whatever would be more useful?
“ The purpose of myth is to give us stories around which we model our lives. One doesn’t need to believe in the stories as “real” events in order for them to have very significant meaning.”
Sure. The issue here is that a lot of folks do in fact believe in the stories as “real” events, with results that can, best-case scenario, be completely unobjectionable or even ethically praiseworthy, true, but also include the neverending attempt to destroy science education, or the craziness expressed by folks like Hagee – with access to the GOP presidential candidate – that we need to act in ways that all but ensure conflict or even open war in the Middle East because Daddy Jesus is coming!
Windy
I advise you to look out the New Scientist of a couple of months back when Dawkins replied to Wilson. He didn’t just register his lack of agreement with Wilson, he hit the roof.
Incidentally, you might want to sample this interview here
http://www.salon.com/books/int/2008/03/13/chris_hedges/index.html
Hedges is a believer, which I’m not, but he makes similar points to the ones I was making.
I’ve read them. Do you mean the one where he felt that one of the Wilsons had lied about him? That’s a bit different from simply objecting to criticism.
I’m not saying that scientists don’t on occasion “hit the roof”, but it’s useful to know a bit of the background before criticizing someone for not changing his mind (that’s what you originally did, now you simply seem to be decrying his lack of politeness? Do you think Dawkins is ignoring large amounts of evidence stacked against his theory, or not?)
As an atheist, I’ve given this issue a lot of thought – and there is simplicity beyond complexity.
Can an atheist be reasonably termed a fundamentalist? NO
Can an atheist be reasonably termed an evangelist? YES
Why we can’t be fundamentalists: Since “fundamentalist” is defined as “of or relating to the simplest facts or theories of a subject”, and the only meaningful fact or theory of atheism is that we do not believe there is a deity, we are either all fundamentalists or none of us are fundamentalists. I posit that, since there is no scale of beliefs (from fundamental to ancillary, secondary, superfluous), there is no meaningful distinction between fundamental and non-fundamental atheists – we are all just atheists, and the term “fundamental” is, in our case, meaningless.
Why we can be evangelists: Microsoft used to have positions titled “___ Evangelist” – it has become a term commonly used to describe those who try to convince / win-over others to their way of thinking. And YES, we atheists sometimes do that (Thom Hartmann on Air America gets pissed off when atheists try to convince him to become one – and rightly so).
Does anybody disagree with me, if so I would LOVE to hear your take on this.
I wasn’t criticising Dawkins: it’s what anyone would have done (which is my point). In any case, it’s not really Dawkins I want to talk about, as I think he is essentially a good guy who has fallen in with a bad crowd.
It’s really the others in the ‘New Atheists Club’ (Hitchens, Harris, Dennett) whose political views are more important (especially the first two).
In response to being lied about, yes; but your original claim was stronger than that (that he should have changed his mind, but didn’t). But never mind.
Hidari wrote:
I think Hitch is wrong about Iraq, but I don’t think he is necessarily irrational about it. Rational people can disagree. In Hitch’s case I think he is working with some bad information and wrong cultural assumptions he has inherited from neocon propaganda. And Dennett is not committed to a belief that “the internet will defeat religion.” That’s more of a hope and a possibility — and it’s long term. And Sam Harris’ Buddhist beliefs are grounded in his personal experiences with meditation and his so called “occultist” beliefs are just open mindedness and ignorance of everything James Randi has done in that area.
Rational people really can disagree about a lot of things. We’re all working with different kinds of information and we’ve all got some unchecked assumptions.
‘And Sam Harris’ Buddhist beliefs are grounded in his personal experiences with meditation…’
You are really sailing close to the wind when you accept that ‘personal experiences with meditation’ counts as a rational reason to accept something. In what way is that different from the fundamentalist Christian who ‘feels God in his heart’?
Remember we’re not talking about whether something is TRUE or not, we’re talking about whether or not it is RATIONAL to believe it.
Incidentally, having heard Hitchens talk about Iraq I am absolutely and 100% convinced that his reasons for supporting the Bush administration are emotional. Hitchens is relatively clear about this, to be fair: he always talks about 9/11 as a kind of epiphany.
Hidari wrote:
I agree. Nor does it necessarily make you more sane. However, on the religious end of things there do seem to be some incredible nut cases quite unlike anything I’ve seen among atheists. That’s what makes for the moronic freak show of Ray Comfort, Pat Robertson, Vox Day, Ben Stein and the rest that PZ puts on parade for us here on his blog. And the rejection of evolution in America is very high. It all does seem to point to religion as a force for ignorance and delusion.
‘The article came with a graph that suggests that there is an inverse correlation between a country’s religiosity and its per capita GDP, or, in simpler terms, the more religious a country is, the poorer it will be.’ (from the post linked to).
Correlation is not causation: and this is not just a snide point. I genuinely do think that this graph has been interpreted wrongly. I don’t think it’s the religion that causes the poverty: I think it’s the poverty that causes the religion, and I can back up my argument with more data. There is a lot of data that the more economically unequal a country is (i.e. gini coefficient) the more religious it is likely to be. There is also an Israeli study (don’t have it to hand, but could hunt it out if you were interested) which demonstrated that ‘religiosity’ and ‘superstitiousness’ (as measured on scales) went up after a suicide bombing. In other words, when people feel that their lives are out of ‘control’: when they feel that they can’t achieve anything or fulfil their ‘destiny’ (or whatever) they turn to religion make sense of this situation.
Hitchens (who is a right winger, despite his protestations) et al could never in a million years accept this, because it suggests that one of the key determinants of religion is inequality and that the solution is redistribution of wealth. What no one points out about the most secular countries (the Nordic countries) is that they have relatively low levels of inequality. Part of the reason the US is so religious is because of its staggering levels of inequality.
CF also Iraq; it has become far more religious as it has become more dangerous (in other words, it’s the danger that causes the religiosity). Again Hitchens could never accept this for obvious reasons.
Hidari wrote:
You only read the first couple paragraphs or so. I actually mention that here:
Now, don’t you feel foolish?
Hidari said:
I see that you have taken up the challenge of outdoing PZ’s “terrible” post. After reading it, I am not so sure that you have understood Gray’s piece, either.
If Gray is really suggesting that religion will always be with us, as you claim, that would be particularly ironic as it is as much an act of faith as Gray, wrongly in my opinion, accuses Atheists of. I doubt that anyone could disagree with that, anyway, and nowhere in the writings of the “New Atheists” is it suggested that it is even vaguely achievable, or more importantly, the point of their books in the first place.
The overall theme of PZ’s post is not a critique of John Gray’s piece, either, which you seem to have concentrated on.
Hidari said:
You seem to have covered a large part of the political spectrum! Not that you have provided any support for this assertion. And, let’s say that this is true. So what? All that it does is reflect on four or five people. To suggest that we can draw anything from this is tenuous at best, in my opinion, as the people who frequent this site, for example, disagree on all manner of things.
Hidari said:
You are going to have to provide references that unambiguously support this, I am afraid. There are many reasons that these books have come out at this time, and from my own reading it is fairly clear that radical Islam is only part of it. The fact that Islam, as a religious, cultural and political movement, could influence people to commit mass murder certainly deserves heavy criticism, but Dawkins, Dennett, and even Harris to a certain extent, have said that our own reaction has been misguided, at best, criminal at worst.
Hitchens, and Harris to a lesser extent, may have taken a line that many of us would not agree with – though I can agree with some of their minor criticisms of the left – but that is not representative, and they have been roundly criticized for it. What makes you think that you can derive an individuals political leanings from their support of a single policy, anyway?
Hidari said:
Instead of wasting my time asking something that isn’t supported in their writings, why don’t you show us the e-mail that they have sent to you suggesting this? You have e-mailed them, haven’t you?
Hidari said:
Gray’s article is one long argument attempting to show that it is not fair to criticize religion, specifically, as all beliefs, non-beliefs, political ideologies, etc, have a poor record. I don’t disagree with that, so much, but it strikes me as a kind of relativism that simply isn’t supported by evidence.
Admittedly, it would have been difficult for Gray to have expanded on his thoughts in that piece, but I simply don’t believe that he has fairly represented either the central message of the books by the “New Atheists”, or the particular line that they take with respect to particular issues. That is what PZ and others are complaining about. If you cannot represent the people that you are writing about even remotely accurately, it makes much of the rest of what you say moot. You are attacking a strawman, in other words.
Hidari said:
I don’t know that any one has seriously said that it does. Any suggestions to this effect are a direct refutation of the idea that it’s true, conversely. In any case, there is plenty of data that shows, firstly, that there is a link between intelligence (what ever that means) and religious belief, and secondly, that Atheists and countries that are mainly non-believing (particularly in the western Europe), perform well in all tests of morality that you care to think of.
We don’t take any of that too seriously, however, as there are all manner of reasons for these findings, but we will point this out when faced with accusations of immorality/amorality.
‘Now, don’t you feel foolish?’
Rarely and certainly not now. If you are omitting the US as an ‘outlier’ then that’s a pretty big omission. But if you accept that the key point is inequality then your problem is solved. Likewise, Saudi Arabia. Poor countries tend to be highly unequal.
As I say, generally speaking the data seems to support the ‘poverty causes religion’ argument better than the contrary, although you could always argue the toss.
As I said, Iraq was a classic ‘experiment’ . ‘We’ turned a more or less secular country into an extremely religious one by radically increasing poverty, increasing inequality and reducing ‘stability’. Ergo! A failed state and a theocracy to book. QED.
The ‘control’ would be a country like Sweden which started off by being highly religious but became less and less so by becoming richer and more equal.
I asked:
Hidari answered:
Then you can’t see what most people here already see.
Hidari wrote:
Doesn’t that put you in line with Dennett who thinks technology “will defeat religion.” If your supposition is true, then doesn’t Dennett’s vision logically follow? So, how is Dennett still irrational?
#77:
Do you assume that these two statements are mutually exclusive?
To me it looks like it has vicious cycle written all over it.
Religion is a waste of a society’s resources. Resources spent to build churches, proselytize, pay the salaries of priests, etc. are neither consumed to improve people’s lives in the present (as food, medical care, clothing, housing) nor invested in something that will have value in the future (infrastructure, industrial development, R&D). (I think it was Dawkins who pointed out that all the countries hit by the tsunami of a few years back could have built an early warning system for a fraction of the cost of their various temples, mosques, etc.)
Add that to the tremendous amount of corruption assisted by religion’s suppression of critical thinking (some of it inside the religion itself, some merely fleecing the congregation as soon as they walk out the church door), and it’s not hard to see how more religion could lead to more poverty.
Over the long term, religion’s hostility to new ideas suppresses scientific and technological progress, too, which is one of the strongest determiners of increased societal wealth.
The “poverty causes religion” argument made in post #77 seems plausible as well.
Hidari wrote:
Via what mechanism? In order for one thing to cause another there has to be a mechanism for the cause.
Also, even if there is some truth to that proposition, and I think there might be, it doesn’t contradict the other proposition that religion can cause poverty too — thus be self-reinforcing.
Chris wrote:
I think that’s the least of religion’s problems, and the hardest to confirm. We might “waste” resources on lots of things, sports, movies, going to the beach, reading fiction, blogging… Some even say grand scientific enterprises like the Apollo moon program were a waste.
I think this statement…:
…is closer to the truth.
That’s one of the things that came out during the Dover trial, the way Behe wanted to redefine what science was to the point where astrology became a science.
Rejecting evolution necessarily implies rejecting all the kinds of scientific processes that lead us to accept it.
And those scientific processes are economically important, now more so than ever.
Religion is a waste of a society’s resources. Resources spent to build churches, proselytize, pay the salaries of priests, etc. are neither consumed to improve people’s lives in the present (as food, medical care, clothing, housing) nor invested in something that will have value in the future (infrastructure, industrial development, R&D).
So is art. Are you also advocating getting rid of the arts?
Not fair, MAJeff. “Waste” directly implies that resources are going in and nothing of comparable positive worth is coming out. You ignore the second half of that by equating religion and the arts. I’d bet Chris would be willing to say that good for society (“improving people’s lives” in his words) does come from the arts, where damned little good (unless you think the institutionalized opposition to and undermining of critical thinking is a social good) comes from religion. And if he wouldn’t be willing to say that, I’m dammed sure willing.
And Hidari, your slip is showing. Attaching the adjective “vapid” to the noun “liberal” when describing Dawkins and Dennett reveals pretty much exactly what ideological axe you’re grinding, and it isn’t any more reasonable or defensible than Gray’s.
And Springy, if you think Gray is a liberal in the tradition of Mill, you need to go re-read On Liberty. Gray is a sloppy thinker and writer. Mill was not. Gray sets up and knocks down straw men at every turn. Mill rarely did so.
I agree with you, even before you put in your observation of the difficulties in making distinctions in an essentially narrow and featureless distribution. My basis is that it isn’t beliefs and dogmatism that supports atheism, it is facts and revisability.
Though I don’t like misplaced religious or political terms such as “evangelical” or “militaristic”, so I have adopted the assonant “ardent atheist” instead.
That is where I think your proposal of mechanism is incomplete.
Originally you claimed that poverty causes religion, as people turn to religion to make sense of the situation (being out of ‘control’). But that doesn’t explain why people would leave religion when they become richer. You need a movability; incidentally the last religious polls to make the blog rounds described such movements, at least between different religious groups.
However, if Sweden is a control it fails to demonstrate both such random mobility and a connection to higher economical standards. AFAIU people seem to have lost interest in religion as it has become powerless as a social, moral and motivational force.
IIRC on the historical basis, people in foremost Stockholm started to leave the church in all the economical classes in the 19 century, while over all poverty was a fact of life until the early 20th century. And this correlates much better with the increased standards in education and mass media (newspapers at the time).
Besides, Sweden is a poor control. Due to the efforts of one Uppsala philosopher in particular, Ingemar Hedenius, swedish churches lost their claim to a rational world view in face of the public around 1950, as well as the use of theology in academic study of religions. They have never recovered the ability to engage the public at large in a discussion over morals or other social areas.
I would suggest nations such as Norway as a neutral control. Incidentally they are both more rich and religious.
I agree with you, even before you put in your observation of the difficulties in making distinctions in an essentially narrow and featureless distribution. My basis is that it isn’t beliefs and dogmatism that supports atheism, it is facts and revisability.
Though I don’t like misplaced religious or political terms such as “evangelical” or “militaristic”, so I have adopted the assonant “ardent atheist” instead.
That is where I think your proposal of mechanism is incomplete.
Originally you claimed that poverty causes religion, as people turn to religion to make sense of the situation (being out of ‘control’). But that doesn’t explain why people would leave religion when they become richer. You need a movability; incidentally the last religious polls to make the blog rounds described such movements, at least between different religious groups.
However, if Sweden is a control it fails to demonstrate both such random mobility and a connection to higher economical standards. AFAIU people seem to have lost interest in religion as it has become powerless as a social, moral and motivational force.
IIRC on the historical basis, people in foremost Stockholm started to leave the church in all the economical classes in the 19 century, while over all poverty was a fact of life until the early 20th century. And this correlates much better with the increased standards in education and mass media (newspapers at the time).
Besides, Sweden is a poor control. Due to the efforts of one Uppsala philosopher in particular, Ingemar Hedenius, swedish churches lost their claim to a rational world view in face of the public around 1950, as well as the use of theology in academic study of religions. They have never recovered the ability to engage the public at large in a discussion over morals or other social areas.
I would suggest nations such as Norway as a neutral control. Incidentally they are both more rich and religious.
Torbjörn Larsson wrote:
Wait… are you saying one writer, with one book, changed a nation?
Why couldn’t Thomas Paine have changed ours with “The Age of Reason”?
Dan S. wrote:
How relevant are those values to an atheist with a Basque background? How relevant are those values to an atheist with a Roma background? How relevant are those values to an atheist with a Jewish background? How relevant are those values to an atheist with a Muslim background?
The issue is that these values have all been developed within a Christian framework. Yes, Christianity is itself not monolithic, but it’s also not equivalent to all Western traditions, either. Some of those values might be shared, and some might not. The question is whether those values are universal, or whether they’re culture specific, and whether belief or disbelief in God is responsible for them.
A disbelief in God is not going to make everyone sit up and become nice upstanding Christian-normative individuals. It’s not going to give everyone the same values as Western Christian-derived atheists. It’s not going to make Jews stop circumcising their children, it’s not going to make Muslims start eating pork and drinking wine, and it’s not going to make the Basques settle down and become nice upstanding Spanish citizens. It’s not going to end the Palestine-Israel conflict. It’s not going to make Arabs suddenly embrace Western cultural imperialism. What we’re going to learn very quickly is that a lot of these differences are not caused by religion at all, but by differences in cultural norms and values, and those are very hard to change, and very difficult to establish a moral high-ground for. As an atheist with a personal background outside of the Christian Europe, I can assure you that a lot of the cultural norms and values that Christian-normative atheists, such as Dawkins, Harris, Hitchins, etc., are not only only not universal, but potentially highly immoral.
In this case, the concern is moving these myths to their proper place in society; that of important literature rather than of literal truth. Attacking them…not so much. I’ve met people who honestly and completely believe that the collected writings of H.P Lovecraft are gospel truth. This hardly means we should act like reading H.P. Lovecraft is likely to make someone go out and start a crusade.
Great essay! I’ve copied the whole first paragraph into my quote archive. “Precipitational worldview”… LOL!
Later on, you misspelled the Religious Wrong, though.
Wrongo! That should be “the Nazi belief in race as a mythological category”.
Alfred Rosenberg: The Myth of the 20th Century. Does that ring a bell?
Contemporary joke: Camp chief asks new Gulag inmate: “How much did you get?” — “Five years.” — “And for what?” — “For nothing.” — “LIAR!!! For nothing one gets TEN years!!!”
Incidentally, such jokes existed under the Nazis, too. “New laws: § 1. Whoever does or fails to do anything is punished. § 2. The punishment follows the Healthy Feeling of the People™. § 3. The Feeling of the People™ is set by the province governor.”
This does not correct a single of the mistakes he made.
You need to understand that you have fallen among the scientists. We have trained long and hard to evaluate arguments on their own merits rather than based on the people who have uttered them. And there you come and say we should pay a lot of attention to who said all that nonsense? If Dawkins had said it, it would still be nonsense.
That’s stupid of him. He has changed the topic without noticing.
One or two atheists exhibit stunning stupidity, and all of a sudden atheism itself is associated with aggressive right-wing imperialism? Could you explain that in a little more detail…?
This is precisely what PZ keeps saying again and again… you’re new to this blog, right? (I can’t remember having seen your name before either.)
Excuse me? I’m currently reworking a manuscript because, among other things, I have given up certain ideas in the face of contrary evidence. That’s normal. That’s what scientists do all the time.
Great essay! I’ve copied the whole first paragraph into my quote archive. “Precipitational worldview”… LOL!
Later on, you misspelled the Religious Wrong, though.
Wrongo! That should be “the Nazi belief in race as a mythological category”.
Alfred Rosenberg: The Myth of the 20th Century. Does that ring a bell?
Contemporary joke: Camp chief asks new Gulag inmate: “How much did you get?” — “Five years.” — “And for what?” — “For nothing.” — “LIAR!!! For nothing one gets TEN years!!!”
Incidentally, such jokes existed under the Nazis, too. “New laws: § 1. Whoever does or fails to do anything is punished. § 2. The punishment follows the Healthy Feeling of the People™. § 3. The Feeling of the People™ is set by the province governor.”
This does not correct a single of the mistakes he made.
You need to understand that you have fallen among the scientists. We have trained long and hard to evaluate arguments on their own merits rather than based on the people who have uttered them. And there you come and say we should pay a lot of attention to who said all that nonsense? If Dawkins had said it, it would still be nonsense.
That’s stupid of him. He has changed the topic without noticing.
One or two atheists exhibit stunning stupidity, and all of a sudden atheism itself is associated with aggressive right-wing imperialism? Could you explain that in a little more detail…?
This is precisely what PZ keeps saying again and again… you’re new to this blog, right? (I can’t remember having seen your name before either.)
Excuse me? I’m currently reworking a manuscript because, among other things, I have given up certain ideas in the face of contrary evidence. That’s normal. That’s what scientists do all the time.
If atheism is a religion, then not touching yourself is masturbation.
Hidari, so the worst you can say about Dennett is that, gasp!, you think he is wrong about the role of the internet. Got any proof for that assertion? Any actual data even? Sorry but I am distinctly underwhelmed by your thesis if this is the best you can come up with. And if you call Dawkins’s letter to NS ‘hitting the roof’ then you must have lived a very sheltered life you poor dear.
I remember my first science conference, it was the big combined one at ANU in Canberra as part of the Oz Bicentennial Celebrations. Out of curiosity I sat through a session on Long Term Potentiation (Google it), at the end of one talk the Rat people and the Rabbit people had a stand up shouting argument over which model was closest to humans. I seriously thought that they would come to blows, but of course they didn’t. This was science after all.
Also don’t you think that Dawkins might get a bit tired and annoyed with people who, having failed to win their cases in the peer reviewed journals take the fight into the public sphere instead? Some people need to have the riot act read to them to get them to behave.
And another thing Hidari, I have read my Dawkins and my Dennett and nowhere did I see either of them claim to be perfect, just human. So your long ad hominem argument ignoring their actual arguments is one huge strawman. Carefull people, nobody cause a spark, it might go up at any moment.
PZ are there sprinklers installed in here?
Torbjörn your comments re Sweden and Norway are interesting. I don’t think that poverty per se is the driver of people towards religion. I think it likely that it is insecurity that is the main driver, poverty being only one possible source. There is the thesis that the US is an outlier because of it is also an outlier in the Western world in terms of its social provisions. Economic winds can blow much more harshly in the US than Canada or Europe. Bankrupt due to medical costs?
So, getting back to Sweden and Norway: the media here in the UK tends to lump all of Scandinavia together when talking about social programs so I am not aware of any differences between Sweden and Norway though I am sort of familiar with Sweden having worked with a Swede. So could the difference in religiosity between Sweden and Norway be due to diffferent levels of social provision making people feel more/less secure?
Norwegians are the rich ones with the oil, so probably not. (Some of the oil money goes to fund social programs and unemployment is very low there at the moment). But in some respects, Norway is (at least perceived to be) more traditionalist.
“You need to understand that you have fallen among the scientists. We have trained long and hard to evaluate arguments on their own merits rather than based on the people who have uttered them.”
Oh stop it, my sides are splitting. As a few others have pointed out, the Pavlovian reaction to criticism of Dawkins, along with ignorance of Gray’s intellectual position and a certain (how shall I put this kindly?) difficulty in comprehending difficult ideas, has led to most of the people who have commented so far completely misunderstanding what Gray wrote.
I’m a scientist myself, by the way. But I’m not given to insufferably pompous claims that my knowledge of a particular area of science makes me uniquely qualified to judge the value of intellectual arguments in fields about which I’m wholly ignorant.
Not one book, no. By a series of articles and by support of other rationalists. I wasn’t around :-), but as I understand it it was the failure of the churches to engage him meaningfully in the debate that affected the public and academic debate climate for years to come. They couldn’t answer him, very much like what happens to Dawkins, but AFAIU they actually tried.
Maybe this is a religious lesson learned and behind the fact that articles voicing criticism on Dawkins TGD most often doesn’t even try, as it is easier and fancier to demolish the strawman Dawkins already shown won’t suffice than to fail at the feet of the real argument.
They are small, and I can’t substantiate much besides the current statistics. I can relate the public perception, in Sweden at least, which windy notes – it may or may not be substantiated by facts. Plus Norway still has a state church, Sweden abrogated hers around year 2000.
I do think the economical turn around (the Norway oil is responsible) is of too late a date to affect absolute numbers, but it would possibly show up in the movements if the earlier discussion is right. If norwegians felt hardship relative to Sweden, look for the earlier union with Sweden, and the WWII occupation.
Not one book, no. By a series of articles and by support of other rationalists. I wasn’t around :-), but as I understand it it was the failure of the churches to engage him meaningfully in the debate that affected the public and academic debate climate for years to come. They couldn’t answer him, very much like what happens to Dawkins, but AFAIU they actually tried.
Maybe this is a religious lesson learned and behind the fact that articles voicing criticism on Dawkins TGD most often doesn’t even try, as it is easier and fancier to demolish the strawman Dawkins already shown won’t suffice than to fail at the feet of the real argument.
They are small, and I can’t substantiate much besides the current statistics. I can relate the public perception, in Sweden at least, which windy notes – it may or may not be substantiated by facts. Plus Norway still has a state church, Sweden abrogated hers around year 2000.
I do think the economical turn around (the Norway oil is responsible) is of too late a date to affect absolute numbers, but it would possibly show up in the movements if the earlier discussion is right. If norwegians felt hardship relative to Sweden, look for the earlier union with Sweden, and the WWII occupation.
If that is an opinion on Dawkins and his argument it is here that we split sides, as this reaction is the very reason to the counter reaction from people reading and accepting the arguments of Dawkins TGD (for example).
I don’t think there is anything Pavlovian in it. Dawkins himself explain in detail where his arguments apply and why the criticism to the contrary doesn’t, so it is a natural and rational reaction against both the strawman and the unattended elephant in the room. As the same strawmen are erected again and again, I rather think the mouth is salivating, nay frothing, on the other side.
One thing we could all agree on, is that the procedure tires us. I noted above that I don’t have any particular interest in defending Dawkins or his arguments, yet irritatingly the debate never moves forward and the same point must be made all over.
Fortunately there is a natural statute of limitations for arguments – if no one cares to go after them in debate, the debate will be considered won by the historians. So maybe this was the last time I had the energy to whack this particular mole.
If that is an opinion on Dawkins and his argument it is here that we split sides, as this reaction is the very reason to the counter reaction from people reading and accepting the arguments of Dawkins TGD (for example).
I don’t think there is anything Pavlovian in it. Dawkins himself explain in detail where his arguments apply and why the criticism to the contrary doesn’t, so it is a natural and rational reaction against both the strawman and the unattended elephant in the room. As the same strawmen are erected again and again, I rather think the mouth is salivating, nay frothing, on the other side.
One thing we could all agree on, is that the procedure tires us. I noted above that I don’t have any particular interest in defending Dawkins or his arguments, yet irritatingly the debate never moves forward and the same point must be made all over.
Fortunately there is a natural statute of limitations for arguments – if no one cares to go after them in debate, the debate will be considered won by the historians. So maybe this was the last time I had the energy to whack this particular mole.
Torbjörn thanks for that, As you say you both had established churches until recently. Mind you here in the UK Enland & Wales have one too yet this is perhaps the most secular and disbelieving nation on earth. The point about the oil wealth being recent and that they got invaded and occupied in the last war is probably the big one. Sweden being neutral in both major wars has enjoyed therefore more stability and and hence more security than Norway. Your policy of armed neutrality since the last war might also have contributed, the Norwegians had to rely on Nato and perhaps didn’t always feel that well protected by it. Also having suffered the Wermacht fears of the Red Army could have had more traction than in Sweden. Interesting.
I haven’t read any book by Dawkins except Unweaving the Rainbow. I have no natural urge to defend his ideas against all criticism.
But didn’t you come in and say “stop criticizing Gray, he’s an atheist”? This fallacy is what I object to.
I haven’t read any book by Dawkins except Unweaving the Rainbow. I have no natural urge to defend his ideas against all criticism.
But didn’t you come in and say “stop criticizing Gray, he’s an atheist”? This fallacy is what I object to.
I didn’t say “stop criticising Gray, he’s an atheist”. My point was that anyone criticising Gray on the basis that he is a defender of religion has missed the point of Gray’s article by a mile – it’s an egregious error. One that someone with even a rudimentary understanding of the history of ideas (a description fitting very few of the commenters on this blog posting, apparently) would find risible.
Since I didn’t criticize Gray because he’s a defender of religion, but because he makes a whole series of stupid statements about atheism and humanism, I’m afraid you’re the one making the egregious error.
And please. Here are your first words on this thread
Can you possibly be any more wrong? I criticized what Gray wrote, not Gray’s beliefs, and I don’t see that his stated beliefs about religion matter at all; I’m not averse to criticizing atheists. And of course, if you read what I wrote, you might notice that I don’t mention “Saint Dawkins” at all.
“These defenders of religion all seem to be the most appalling defeatists.”
I think this is most obvious when discussing religious violence – the claim is often that “even if you got rid of religion, there’d still be wars”, as if not being able to totally eradicate suffering were a good reason to continue with the status quo and not even attempt to remove one of the causes of suffering.
But then, according to Gray “In today’s anxiety about religion, it has been forgotten that most of the faith-based violence of the past century was secular in nature.” That’s right – faith-based violence in the last hundred years has been mostly secular. Hm… that seems to me to be a contradiction in terms. What definition of secular is Gray using? Certainly not one I could see here: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/secular
Reading the National Secular Society’s News Feed earlier this week, I noticed a number of stories of hypocrisy, intolerance and violence – such as the tale of a clergyman beaten up in a faith-hate attack outside his church. There were also stories about Saudi Arabian Vice Police storming a restaurant because families were not adequately segregated and Iran’s “Moral Enforcer” was caught, ahem, enjoying the services of a brothel.
Funnily enough, you don’t seem to get news stories about Secular Violence, Secular Intolerance, Atheist Intolerance, or Atheist Violence.
Sometimes I think the braindead leftist elite behind the Guardian and other such publications live on another bloody planet! This is the newspaper that finally pushed me from centre left to centre right. I didn’t want to be on the side that resorts to emotion 100% and always blasts the good or benign side: support Al-Qaeda, blame America; call Muslims victims, call atheists militants. Something is messed up here.
This was the most pathetic anti-atheist rant yet. When I was a 6 year old lamenting over the fact I couldn’t operate the overhead projector during infant school assembly I had more composure than this douchebag. How pathetic can these people get?
And I’m really getting bored of the arguments linking atheism with all the worst atrocites in history. Strange that Hitler himself did the same thing… with Jews: they were, according Hitler, to blame for communism and every atrocite in history. Sound a tad familiar? Ironic that contemory communism in Europe can trace its origins to a organization that based its policies purely on Scripture: The League of the Just. When are atheists finally going to point this out?
You want to know about Hitler and Pol Pot’s Catholic education or Stalin’s 11 years of Christian education get out your history textbooks, not the Guardian!
BTW the “atheists are Hitler (Stalin, Pol Pot, etc)” has existed since those men existed. It is NOTHING NEW. An anti-theist with access to Yahoo News can come up with a new religiously inspired atrocite every day, all anti-atheists can do is call us Hitler.
Anybody who has a point to make, but no real arguments to use, will call you Hitler. People with fewer arguments than that will call you Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot. Let’s all ignore the fact that all 3 of those monsters were educated in church schools; Stalin even trained to become a priest for 5 years in a seminary in Georgia!
‘Sometimes I think the braindead leftist elite behind the Guardian and other such publications live on another bloody planet! This is the newspaper that finally pushed me from centre left to centre right.’
As I said right at the very start, there are political issues here, which ‘George Miller’ has nicely brought to the fore.
It is simply a fact that ALL of the ‘new atheists’ are either relatively vapid liberals (Dawkins, Dennett) or veer off to the extreme Right.
My, but the complete implosion of the neoconservative movement seems to be grating on the nerves of the few remaining “dead enders” a bit these days, doesn’t it?
“As I said right at the very start, there are political issues here, which ‘George Miller’ has nicely brought to the fore.”
Those people who are driven into hating and even demonizing and scapegoating atheists for non-religious reasons are almost always on the left. The religious right hates and demonizes atheists because they are religious.
I’m not certain why the Guardian, New Statesmen and various online leftist publications are ranting on about “militant” atheists, but it might have something to do with their fervent belief that Muslims are all victims. Anybody who doesn’t play ball is “Islamaphobic” and needs to be lambasted.
Strange that putting a book in a toilet is “Islamaphobic” and a “hate crime” necessitating the arrest of the culprit, but comparing decent law abiding atheists to Hitler and Stalin is not “athephobic”. Another example of a double standard arising from the undue respect granted to religion.
thank’s