I’m back from Zeteticon 2014 — you’ll all have to go to Zeteticon 2015. It was a well-organized and entertaining conference. Although everyone’s talks were interesting, I just want to comment on David Silverman’s.
He’s on the money with most of the things he said — it was his usual aggressive proposal for a successful campaign of assertive atheism, backed up with organizational facts and figures. One surprisingly good number: they prepared for the launch of Atheist TV by researching similar channels from megachurches, and budgeted for one terabyte of bandwidth per month. They used 31 terabytes in the first week. I’m sure much of that was driven by the mainstream news articles about the premiere, and it won’t always be that high, but still, it says there’s a great deal of demand for the service. The bad news: they’ve brought in a consultant to figure out how to pay for all that, and they might have to charge for the service (or bring in ads?).
But he also talked about that CPAC stuff. I’m still not satisfied with the rationale for that one.
Here’s the question I asked him at the end:
You said early in your talk that you were proud that American Atheists supported the equal rights amendment and LGBT rights, and I know that you personally favor those causes. You also said that opposition to those causes was entirely driven by organized religion. You later pointed out, though, that there were many atheists at CPAC, which I’m sure you know is largely unified in opposing women’s and gay’s rights; you must also know that there is a significant and vocal anti-feminist contingent within atheism. You also said that if we won over conservatives, atheists win. Do atheists actually win if we get someone elected to the presidency like a Karl Rove, who is, by the way, an atheist?
As you might guess, I was a little bothered by the blanket assignment of all blame for all the misogyny in the US to an entirely religious cause, when we’ve got our own in-house misogyny and American Atheists wants to recruit from a locus of conservative hatred. He gave a long answer that I didn’t transcribe, (I hope it comes out on video), but I’ll give the gist of his reply. Most of it was rather unsatisfactory, I thought, although there was a glimmering of what he wants to do.
First of all, he affirmed that claim that religion is the cause of all the discrimination against women and gays. That bugs me; it can’t be true. Not only do we have all these godless misogynists (the majority of reddit MRAs identify as irreligious), but there are also openly gay priests and liberal faiths that work for equality. I would have pressed for more argument, but you all know that the rule is that you ask your question and then you sit down.
He then argued that the atheists at CPAC would have been fiscal conservatives who were there for for the economic issues, not the social issues, and that they were actually as unhappy with the conservative association with right-wing Christianity as he was. I can see part of that; I’m sure that there are conservative atheists who see the Christians as a tool to get an electoral majority, yet are very unhappy with the baggage they bring with them (actually, I suspect that many are alarmed at the ongoing consequences of striking a bargain with Jesus.)
But CPAC is assertively religious, and doesn’t seem to be the best place to find conservative atheists.
the American Conservative Union, which hosts CPAC, is a traditionally religious group, although it is: A section headed "What We Believe" on the ACU’s website says "we reaffirm our belief in the Declaration of Independence, and in particular the belief that our inherent rights are endowed by the Creator."
It’s true that CPAC was conflicted about gay rights, mostly avoiding the issue, and that some right-wing goons were incensed that CPAC wasn’t sufficiently hostile to gays, but I’d like to see some evidence that atheist conservatives are less antagonistic to liberal social causes specifically, and that promoting atheist Republicans will lead to a softening of their opposition. I suspect that there are Republicans who also see appealing to atheists as a tool to increase their electoral majority, for one, and for another, see long-term social value in increasing socially regressive values within atheism. Don’t forget, AA, that while you’re working the crowd at CPAC, the crowd at CPAC is working you.
Silverman also made the case that while he opposed social conservatism, he had no problem reaching out to fiscal conservatives. I do. Republican economic policies are disastrous, doing great harm to the poor and underprivileged, and serve mainly the wealthy and corporations (although the Democrats are only slightly better…but they are better). A Republican atheism is a wealthy white atheism. We need to reach further, to a more representative American community, and approvingly proselytizing at CPAC does us no favor.
Also, the one wing of American conservatism that has a large contingent of atheists is the libertarians. No, thank you. We’ve got plenty of them in atheism already, and in fact, they seem to be a prominent source of atheist opposition to social justice issues. Again, not a religious cause of that problem, unless you want to call worshipping the Invisible Hand of the Market as a kind of culty religion. Perhaps I should have asked my question with a hypothetical atheist Rand Paul as our president.
Although, my example of a Karl Rove in the White House did give Silverman pause — he agreed that that would be terrible. But his answer to the last question was that yes, atheism wins if we get a terrible, awful, destructive Republican atheist elected. And that’s where I got a glimmering of his vision: he really wants to normalize atheism. He wants to eliminate religion as a criterion in public discourse — an America where liberal and conservative candidates debate and their respective religious views are off the table and no longer a factor in the public’s decision would be a better America.
And I agree with him on that. It would be great if Americans made political decisions without prioritizing the candidates’ invisible friends.
It isn’t so great for atheism, however, if it becomes a valueless cause that tries to take both sides in discussions about war, or race, or gender, or poverty, in an attempt to appeal to everyone. I don’t think that’s a formula for becoming universal, but for becoming irrelevant. I would also like a successful atheism to be consistently on the right side of history, and it looks to me like the only way Republicans can be on the right side of history is if the US becomes a theocratic tyranny. “I, for one, welcome our future corporate masters” is a good phrase to fling around if you expect you’ll need to cozen up to your conquerors, but not so good if you’re trying to organize an opposition that is in favor of human rights.
I also think it looks bad for atheism to appear so desperate for members that they’re already pandering to an organization like CPAC, trying to scrape out a few sympathetic members from a fringe group. Members who’ll be oddballs (I hope) and unsympathetic to the larger causes that atheism has endorsed so enthusiastically, like women’s and gay’s rights, so far.
I’d also like to see our national dialog free of god-bothering bullshit, but I don’t see that happening by participating in gatherings of god-bothering bullshitters. We need to work on the electorate, and get them to react to religious appeals by a spontaneous eye-roll and request for relevance…and the growing majority in the US is not going to be impressed by an organization that gives a happy thumbs-up to the shenanigans of today’s Republicans.
Karl Rove has explicitly denied being an atheist — do not get hung up on that, though. My question is…do we simply accept as “good for atheism” anyone, no matter how politically regressive they are?
I guess the question tends to come down to: How much social justice (in general) might we (as a movement) be willing to forsake to have social justice for atheists (in specific) advanced?
I may be a little confused. Are we saying that you can’t be an atheist if you are politically conservative?
I would think a win for atheism would be when you can be identified in a political debate by your politics, not by your religion or lack of it. When it doesn’t matter if a candidate is catholic, mormon, muslim, or atheist and gets judged on their policies and promises.
It seems weird that atheism needs to be defined as a political view. If somebody says they are an atheist and you want to know their politics then you should have to ask them what their political view is, and not assume it.
@Anri:
Unfortunately as I see it the atheist movement is, by and large, one of wealthy white men. I think the movement is perfectly willing to throw LGBT, women, and minority allies under the bus if it gets them ahead.
@Joe Clarke:
RTFA.
PZ, are you being totally fair in excluding those atheists with contrary economic views. I have no doubt that you have no love for communism and socialist perversions of the former Soviet Union. Yet our mutual hero of freethought was WEB Dubois who wrote a eulogy lauding Joseph Stalin. Indeed Dr. Dubois was a staunch supporter of Soviet communism despite its faults. I know you would never uphold a view of not reaching out to brilliant thinkers like Dubois. Can we not also offer a hand to those on the right?
Karl Rove disagrees. Time to let that myth go, and good riddance.
Karl Rove refutes atheist Christopher Hitchens’ claims
Imagine a Karl Rove, a person with his political sensibilities who is also an atheist. The question still works.
Karl Rove is so religious that his middle name is “Christian.”
@ragdish:
Right-wing economic policies by-and-large reward the rich by punishing the poor.
This looks remarkably like one of those “not-pologies” you are always criticising.
My hard core conservative Republican father was an unadmitted atheist. He was a surgeon who performed abortions without reserve and thought they ought to be more available to minority women. He hated churches and often ranted about how they didn’t pay taxes when he had to. This was back before the fundies got so much influence in the GOP.
Kevin, Youhao Huo Mao – I did read the article. Where it says
”It isn’t so great for atheism, however, if it becomes a valueless cause that tries to take both sides in discussions about war, or race, or gender, or poverty, in an attempt to appeal to everyone.”
That lead to my confusion about atheism being discussed as a political movement rather than a personal definition of one’s lack of an imaginary friend.
@Joe Clarke:
You asked a question that PZ answered in the blog post. No, he’s not saying you can’t be an atheist and politically conservative.
PZ doesn’t much stand for the dictionary atheist definition, either. There has to be more to it than just not believing in gods, in his opinion. Atheism, as a movement, should be about more than trying to deal with religion on a simple basis, but more to the implications of following religions.
Reginald,
You are not owed an apology. PZ acknowledged the correction and changed the comment to, “Imagine if”.
Stop trying to derail the thread.
Joe,
You can be an atheist and be a serial killer who eats live puppies too. That does not mean that as a movement we need to make room for you and your priorities in movement atheism. We do not have to pretend your beliefs and actions are correct or moral. We do not need to make room for you under the “big tent”.
Is that clear enough or are you still going to pretend the article said something it didn’t?
And it has to be more than their say-so. I have encountered a few atheists who claim to be “socially liberal, but economically conservative.” I have difficulty believing them, as they will then go on to say that their biggest issue with the Republican party is their pandering to religion. I’m never sure where to start with that. I do know that near the top of issues is that they seem to be buying into a myth (as Silverman appears to do, as well), that Republicans are truly for cutting government spending. One only needs to look at how Republicans, for the most part, have no issue spending billions on the military to see that that is bullshit. But, from there, one should be able to see that the main areas where they are serious about cutting money are with programs that help the poor, which disproportionately impact, as Rick Santorum put it, “blah” people. So, if that’s what these atheists are backing, that discredits their “socially liberal” claims as far as I’m concerned. To me, it seems like they are using their pro-LGBT stance as their evidence for being “socially liberal.” Sorry, being liberal on one social issue does not make one “socially liberal.”
I was at the conference and was also disturbed by his answer. I can’t recall the exact words but he asserted that none of the atheist conservatives that he spoke to were in favour of the socially conservative policies. Well d’uh. Privilege blindness perhaps? I’m sure none of them were sexist either.
Joe Clarke @2:
That’s not what he’s saying. He even mentions that he recognizes that there are conservative atheists. He doesn’t like conservatism though, and wishes people (including atheists) would reject that political ideology.
I think it would be a win for an atheist to be a high level political official (even President) for the same reasons that Silverman apparently thinks: normalizing atheism. This could help reduce the stigma of being an atheist in the United States. Hell, just the campaign to get this hypothetical atheist into office would force people to discuss hir atheism. It would shove that to the foreground and possibly lead to discussions (some productive, some not) about atheism. Many people in this country need to see that atheists aren’t immoral, and can and should be able to be public officials. The win comes in showing people they’re wrong about their views of atheists.
I don’t believe PZ says atheism needs to be defined as a political view. I think he’s saying atheism ought to be associated with a progressive, liberal view, but that’s different than what you’re saying. Where are you getting this from?
It’s still seems obvious to me that any serious atheist activism must take social issues into account.
Religion is a collection of human social behaviors. That is what you are left with if the stories are all false. A group of humans got that way somehow over time, and there are going to be lots of little ways that those behaviors will be reinforced and protected.
Those behaviors affect different people in different ways, like the irrational and atrocious social application of disgust to LGBT individuals and the limiting of social roles when it comes to sex and gender. Thus dictionary atheism is crap because there are as many atheists as there are reasons for having problems with religion. It’s not all creationism level issues, and just because one becomes an atheist does not mean that one stops acting religious.
We need to be more determined to examine ourselves if we really want to deal with religion effectively. And we must also examine each other because there really is not other way to deal with a social system composed of individuals.
@Leo Buzalsky 15
Yeah. The whole “socially liberal but fiscally conservative” line (I’ve known many, many people who claim this position) really doesn’t even make sense when you get down to it. Because, in modern capitalism, the “fiscally conservative” position is heavily invested in making sure the rich stay rich and the poor stay poor. How can you possibly socially liberal when you support economic policies that screw over all but a tiny minority?
And yeah, calling Republicans the “fiscally conservative” party is just laughable at this point.
I think the point that Dave Silverman was trying to make in connecting these attitudes with religion was that even if someone has no god belief, religion has still infected our culture in many harmful ways. We may have stopped believing in god, thrown out the baby, but neglected to notice that it was soaking in some pretty fetid bathwater.
I don’t get the calls not to be divisive within movement atheism. If a movement is not going in a direction it isn’t actually going anywhere. It isn’t a movement at all. I thought we had no sacred cows? I thought the “Well, it real to ME!” defense didn’t have a place in the atheism movement. Some people are wrong and it is fine to say that they are wrong. Their ideas are bad and it is OK to say that their ideas are bad. Some people’s motives are shitty and it is OK to say that their motives are shitty. We should not have one rule for believers and another for atheists. Bullshit is bullshit.
There are atheists who believe in ghosts and astrology.
There are racist atheists.
There are atheists who think homeless people are just lazy and that an unregulated free market is awesome.
There are atheists climate change deniers.
There are atheists who think it isn’t fair to accuse someone of rape if they drugged you before they raped you.
They are all factually wrong.
If we do not care about what is true and what is not, what is the point of movement atheism? Is it just to sell books for white guys who don’t like religion and get them on TV while their fans harass women on the internet? Because that doesn’t work for me. It doesn’t work for alot of people.
If it’s just about defending our rights as atheists, it seems to me that that Americans United for Separation of Church and State is far more effective at that than any atheist organization I know of. The entire worldview of American conservatism- including economics- is derived from right-wing American evangelical Christianity, so an atheist organization that welcomes right-wingers is a useless contradiction in terms. Atheism+ or go home, and if you don’t like that, go sulk with your religious colleagues in racism and misogyny.
Hmm….mistakes were made.
ragdish @4:
Yes he is.
When you speak vaguely about “contrary economic views” it almost sounds harmless. When you talk about the nitty gritty of those “contrary economic views”, their abhorrence becomes quite apparent. Libertarians wants to turn the US into Free Market USA, which would be great for the rich people, but no one else. Republican policies aren’t that much different with their trickle down economics bullshit. So yes, if you adhere to harmful economic policies, I support excluding you.
Leo Buzalsky @15:
One of the many problems with many conservatives is that they want to gut any programs that benefit the poor to save money, but they’re fine pumping ghastly amounts of money into defense. All for what? To protect us from terrorists? How much *actual* (not perceived) danger is the US in from terrorists? How much money is actually needed to provide sufficient defense for the US? Why are they worried about external domestic threats, rather than the many militias, white supremacist organizations, and right wing fundamentalist terrorists inside the US?
Tony! The Queer Shoop
Doesn’t saying “atheism ought to be associated with a progressive, liberal view” amount to identifying it with a political view?
Leo Buzalsky
“We do not need to make room for ( a serial killer who eats live puppies too) undet the “big tent”. And of course nobody is asking you to make room for that particular straw man. But are the only people you will make room for those who agree with all of your political views? Because then big tent may get smaller quiet quickly.
Kevin, Youhao Huo Mao
“PZ doesn’t much stand for the dictionary atheist definition, either….Atheism, as a movement, should be about more than trying to deal with religion on a simple basis”.
I think this probably gets to my confusion with the article. I come from a European atheist background, not an American one. It’s not as controversial, or as difficult, to be an atheist where I grew up as it is in the United States. Therefore my left wing, socialist politics were mainly created by my class, education, and working experiences rather than my religion or lack of it. I was lucky enough to grow up in a time and place when questioning someone’s religious beliefs, or lack of them, was seen as at best irrelevant ,or at worst the beginning of some nasty sectarian violence.
I’m not so sure about Silverman wanting to “normalize” atheism. Then why would he spend so much time and money on those needlessly confrontational billboards that basically announce, “Hi, we’re atheists and we’re a bunch of assholes!”
To be honest, I still have no clue what American Atheists’ ultimate goal IS.
Socially conservative: “I hate gays, atheists, commies, blacks, immigrants, poor people, divorcees, cohabitators, women who have sex too much, women have sex too little, women who try to get into places of power, men who let positive social change happen, or anyone or anything that defies my conceptions of gender norms”
Atheist social conservative: “You shouldn’t hate atheists! And you hate gays for the wrong reasons! But, yeah, you are basically right about all those Undesirables!”
Fiscally conservative: “I hate welfare, taxes, infrastructure, safety nets, regulation, anti-discrimination measures, and poor people! And I hate all of the above so much that I don’t care that I am allying with people that hate gays, atheists, commies, blacks, immigrants, poor people, divorcees, cohabitators, women who have sex too much, women have sex too little, women who try to get into places of power, men who let positive social change happen, and anyone or anything that defies my conceptions of gender norms! But I totally don’t hate them myself, I swear!”
EG:
1) Kennedy (JFK), the Catholic running for president (subsequently elected)
2) Mitt Romney, the Mormon running for president (subsequently failing, delightfully)
3) Obama, the
MuslimPOC, running for pres (subsequently serving 2 terms as)The point being the religious trappings are key points to characterize our candidates for office.
The secondary point, is that after JFK was pres, the fact that he was Cath became a non-issue, just like Obama being a POC is becoming (slowly) a non-issue. So maybe an Atheist Pres will move atheism into the non-issue sphere; but…It may well backfire: making atheism also a key characterization: moving atheism under the label of “New Age Religion” (corresponding to the New World Order). The ideal, of course, is to make election of pres and sens and reps, atheistic, eliminate any mention of their religiosity from the campaigns. Maybe if they can’t talk about it, it will become far less explicit, distorting the attitudes and opinions of those reps.
Silverman, saying “atheism wins”, no matter how awful the “atheist as president” is, is totally WRONG. It is far too easy and common to blame the “religion” (err, non-religion) for giving us that nasty excrement for president. Mr. Silverman (talking to you now), think about that recommendation again. For atheism to win, the #person# must be acceptable, and not the equivalent of Rove.
Of course I’m not the one owed an apology.
I’d like to know what “fiscal conservative” is even supposed to mean, if it has no impact that’s indistinguishable from a “social conservative” policy. Sure, some specific “social conservative” policies don’t have a major economic impact (in a very narrowly-defined sense of “economic impact”), but it’s hard to see how there’s a difference otherwise. Even taking those few rare exceptions into account, it’s such a vague concept that practically any bullshit can get a pass. I don’t think it’s satisfactory to let them hide behind some disingenuous “economic” rationale (which is no good even on its terms) just because they are mouthing the appropriate magic incantations which are meant to confuse everyone. And I just don’t fucking care how credulous David Silverman might be (or is pretending to be “for the sake of the movement”) — he gets no credit for being dumb enough to take the bait.
Calling somebody an atheist is not something that deserves an apology either….
@ Reginald Selkirk
Were you suggesting that PZ should apologize to Karl Rove? If not what is the point in what PZ said sounding like some sort of “not-pology”?
If so I don’t think that an apology of any sort follows from finding out that Rove is not an atheist. It’s fine using an atheist that is hypothetically similar to Rove in politics as an example. There are authoritarian, fiscally conservative atheists that might otherwise show superficial concern for social libertarianism, and be willing to ignore social issues for the sake of advancing politically.
I don’t believe for a moment that Rove is actually a believer. Years ago he got caught out once in an interview basically admitting as much, and since that slip he has had to energetically keep up the pretense of Christian beliefs given the circles in which he moves. (In which he of course differs not at all from plenty of other professed Christians.)
When I’m faced with the bullshit “fiscally conservative” claim I answer with this: you know what’s fiscally conservative? It’s funding the hell out of education, including university education or technical college for all. An educated workforce is a productive workforce that means more profits for companies and a higher tax base to pay for infrastructure and other needed government functions. Fiscally conservative is a minimum wage that is a livable wage for a 40 hour work week that includes sick pay and paid vacation which results in a hugely reduced need for social welfare programs and also increases workforce productivity and a higher tax base. Fiscally conservative is taxing churches (and the NFL!) for all income that isn’t used to serve the greater community. Fiscally conservative is fairly taxing corporations to pay for the publicly paid for infrastructure and educated workforce that they use to make those profits.
The most intelligent response I get is a sputter and occasional “fucking commie”.
The political implication of atheism is that, in the absence of an Almighty Authority, we (humans) have to find solutions to our (real-world planet Earth) problems using our own reason and creativity.
No such solutions presently come from the US right wing (if we had genuine traditional conservatives left, I would need to modify that – but we don’t, so I won’t). What secular Republicans (i.e.,megacorporations and the military) offer for policies make things worse; at least some churches offer lip service (and a few, quite a bit more) to actually helping people who need help.
For atheism to make a positive contribution, it has to back realistic and useful actions. The Republicans support the opposite (and by this measure, most top Democrats are effectually Republicans); perhaps a few of the more open-minded among them can be brought to see some light, but so long as their collective agenda remains anything like what they have now, the rational & constructive response consists of “Here’s why you’re wrong… – now get out of the way!”
Joe Clarke:
Sort of.
Atheists do lean left. This is a fact. The only real schism is between liberal and libertarian.
Atheists should not lean right. This is based on the trivial observation that the right is the most ridiculously religions end of the political spectrum.
So yes, atheists ought to lean left. And they do. But these to facts also apply to African Americans. They are heavily left wing, with the vast majority voting for Democrats. And they should do so, because Republicans actively do whatever they can to fuck black people over. Does this mean I am also identifying being black with a political view?
“Agree with all of your political views”? Says the man who cried “straw man” one sentence prior.
Yup there’s your problem. Not only is Europe less extreme in religion, it’s right wing is less extreme in its politics and is less theocratic (all in general, and the degree isn’t large enough to prevent European right-wingers from being fucking odious as well). In our country, if you have an atheist allying with our right-wingers, you KNOW something is fucking wrong with that atheist’s politics, even if they claim “it’s only about fiscal policy I swear!”.
Fiscal conservatism: Proudly defunding Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, Welfare, Arts and Sciences and then spending it on wars, incarcerating drug users, and tax cuts for the rich. Because big government is government that isn’t 95% military. Because a nanny state is a state that cares about its citizens instead of merely one constantly observing them to determine when the best time is to break their knee caps. Because government waste is every dollar not spent on guns, cops, and prison bars.
No, of course not. If two things are identified, that means they are the same thing. But a thing cannot be associated with itself. In this specific case, saying that atheism ought to be associated with a progressive liberal view, admits the possibility that this may not be so.
As I see it “normalizing atheism” would involve more than “ma(king) political decisions without prioritizing the candidates’ invisible friends (or lack of them.)” Normalizing atheism would bring both criticisms of religion and their rational foundations into public discourse.
It would become as acceptable to argue against the existence of God as it is to argue against policies endorsed by either Republicans or Democrats. Appeals to faith or tradition go the same way as appeals to pseudoscience, bad science, or voodoo economics. They will get skewered.
From what I’ve seen Silverman would agree with this. Debate is healthy. It’s not about marginalizing religion by taking it off the table so that it becomes private: we marginalize it by placing it on the table so that it becomes unconvincing. And now we’ve got a clearer field to go after social justice issues.
I do not know enough about politics to say with confidence that all the Republican platforms violate social justice; I only know enough to know that it would be very easy for people as pig ignorant as me to get involved and then confused and think they don’t harm people when they do. There may also be local issues which someone uses as a touchstone for where they belong and so they’re not paying much attention to the larger picture and are easily swayed. “I’m a Republican because I certainly do/don’t want that new highway constructed in my town.”
So there are probably at least some Republicans who either define ‘conservatism’ in their own way, who don’t really understand what they’re doing, who follow their family/community identity, who focus on the few issues which don’t impact social justice, and/or who aren’t so deeply entrenched into conservatism that they can’t change their minds. In other words, average idiots.
Average idiots can be worked with. We can reach out to them without violating humanist principles. At least I hope so, seeing as how they’re pretty much everywhere.
I consider myself Liberal but am fiscally conservative in some specific ways. For example, I think perpetual deficit budgets are ridiculous, but I don’t think that shafting the poor, cutting regulations, slashing education, etc. is the way to balance budgets. In Canada (big 3 parties = (left to right) NDP, Liberal, Conservative), our previous federal Liberal party had balanced the budget (with surplus) but were still successfully labelled as tax-and-spend Liberals. The Conservatives, running mainly on a platform of fiscal conservatism, got in and spent all the surplus and drove us back into deficits even before the recession hit. So they were full of crap on the fiscal conservatism and brought along a whole pile of social conservatism with it.
On paper, fiscal conservatism looks good but, in my opinion, social issues need to come first. US Slavery is a wonderful example of a fiscally conservative system that greatly financially benefited some individuals and, arguably, the country as a whole, but at a horrible social cost (primarily to individuals but also to the country). Fiscal conservatism as it’s typically practiced by Conservatives seems to always be, “I got mine, Jack. Go work 3 jobs or die in a ditch.”
You want to boost an economy? How about raising the standard of living of the people who aren’t used to having much; they spend it in their communities instead of putting it in offshore accounts. Same for education. Studies consistently show (Google: “study investment in education economy”) that spending money on education is one of the best returns on investment for a society, but it is routinely cut by conservative governments. This approach is completely independent from social conservatism.
So no, I don’t see much attraction in trying to bring attendees of CPAC into the Atheist movement, whatever their views on deities may be. The “movement” already has enough people who lack compassion.
anteprepro;
“Agree with all of your political views”? Says the man who cried “straw man” one sentence prior.
Yeah, that was badly worded. I meant to say that you have to be careful about which of your political views are the ones that define the entry criteria for the big tent. Whilst you can put puppy eating serial killers on the barred list easily enough you may run into trouble when you look to put, say, nationalisation of major industries on the entry criteria.
Once you agree that the big tent has an entry policy beyond simple atheism you then have to get agreement on what it is.
And that, I suppose, is the debate.
How about this? If it’s the right thing for a person to do, it’s also, necessarily and by implication (since atheists are people), what atheists should do. So, some kind of “agreement” or “consensus” among atheists has not a fucking thing to do with it. Simple, right?
consciousness razor:
”How about this? If it’s the right thing for a person to do, it’s also, necessarily and by implication (since atheists are people), what atheists should do. So, some kind of “agreement” or “consensus” among atheists has not a fucking thing to do with it. Simple, right?”
Ha! Yeah, it is dead simple. Because we all know what the right thing is, each and every time. Nobody has ever disagreed about what is the right thing to do ever. About anything. Phew, sorted.
I will gladly make common cause with my fellow atheists who work for social justice , just as I will with my fellow UUs (many of whom have metaphysical beliefs I don’t share) or with liberal Christians (all of whom have metaphysical beliefs I don’t share) because in our fucked-up world, the social justice is the important part. (Liberal religionists , by the way, agree with atheists that we humans are the only ones who can clean up our own messes.) I might be willing to make temporary common cause with atheists who have noxious social / political beliefs for purely defensive purposes , except that I’m unlikely to see the need because as I already mentioned, Americans United does it better. I have no sue whatsoever for a permanent “atheist movement” based purely on dictionary atheism.
[OT] public service announcement
Joe Clarke:
If you use the blockquote function to quote other people, it will allow us to read your comments easier:
<blockquote>place quoted text here</blockquote>
produces
Joe Clarke @26:
No.
He’s saying that’s how it ought to be. Not how it is. PZ recognizes this is not the case for a lot of atheists (hence the presence of libertarian atheists).
“First of all, he affirmed that claim that religion is the cause of all the discrimination against women and gays. That bugs me; it can’t be true.”
It isn’t true, and (forgive me for sloppy Identity Politics generalizations) and only a straight white man could think such a thing would be even possible. Misogyny, like racism and homophobia, can only ever be academically understood by someone who is not part of the targeted group. You can read articles about domestic abuse, online complaints about how catcalls make women feel, hear anecdotal stories about eager young girls becoming quiet in the classroom as they get older and lose confidence in themselves, read studies about how men perceive women to be half of a given group if only 30% of the people are actually women, and gain a deep understanding of systemic misogyny. But you can’t understand the visceral feeling, that sudden horrible epiphany, when, as just one example, the man you’ve just been discussing your career prospects with, and taking all his advice, happily thinking, “How nice that this older person wants to help me out!” when suddenly his hand is on your ass and he’s suggesting you talk further “over coffee” and you realize that you’ll have to take everything he said with a grain of salt, and that if you don’t get that coffee with him, you’d better hope he’s never in a position of hiring, firing, or supervising you, and that anyone you tell with say you overreacted and misunderstood, and that’s just how he *is* anyway. Or any of the other hundreds of micro-aggressions that women live with every day that most men will never even suspect exist, let alone understand as part of a larger system of gendered oppression, rather than the acts of one or two “bad” guys. Religion actually has very little to do with that attitude, it just provides men inclined that way as a convenient wrapper for rationalizing the way they treat the women in their lives.
Religious people, as you note, can pull all sorts of things out of their sacred scriptures and traditions to support positions or behaviors that have little or nothing to do with religion. The career of Bishop Gene Robinson is a great example of someone using this kind of religious-based rationalization for good, promoting LGBT rights, while Pastor Mike Driscoll or Ted Haggert are perfect examples of the same phenomenon in regards to promoting misogynist gender roles and prejudice against LGBT people.
Which is miles ahead of a bunch of convoluted, confused, mealy-mouthed bullshit. I would ask whether we agree on that, but believe it or not, I don’t actually fucking care.
Again: Who the fuck cares whether we know or disagree? Whatever “debate” there is to have on any issue, the debate ought to be about that, no? Which is another way of saying it shouldn’t be about what’s supposedly in the interests of the movement or specific people in it, or what some particular individual atheists happen to agree upon. They could in any case agree agree upon the wrong things, couldn’t they? So how could that possibly make it the right thing to do, or even be relevant to the question?
“We offer the [republican] party as a big tent. How we do that with the platform, the preamble to the platform or whatnot, that remains to be seen. But that message will have to be articulated with great clarity” Dan Quayle.
The problem with the big tent philosophy [which could then include Carl Rove types] whether it is republicanism or atheism is that it hides things that must be exposed in order to be positively changed.
Big tents are all the better to have massive brawls in.
An emphatic NO. Not only is it not good for atheism, it is not good for the country and not good for any set of values worth pursuing. The Big Tent idea sounds good on the face of it. But what good is it to invite into your tent those who are going shit all over the place and stink it up with a foul odor?
Personally, I’d prefer my atheism to be entirely less in-tents.
/rim shot
@22 Steve LeBonne
I think the Freedom From Religion Foundation does a better job of defending the rights of atheists than does Americans United, though I also support AU. AU in fact is not focused on assisting atheists, unlike FFRF, which actively campaigns to challenge the misconceptions that many hold and the outright lies told by some in our society about atheism and atheists.
Yes, I admire FFRF’s work as well and I should have mentioned them.
Posting now for length; more to come.
1)I don’t give a shit; the standard you walk past and all. If they’re not there for the social issues, they need to stop fucking throwing their support behind the right on social issues.
2)Leaving that aside, ‘fiscal conservative’ policies are the continuation of conservative social policies by economic means, and inevitably serve to entrench existing privilege and prejudice,
and
3)’Fiscal conservative’ policies also just plain don’t work, and have catastrophic effects on the overall economy as well as their specific harms to the already underprivileged and disenfranchised, and indeed create larger pools of people who fall into those categories, notably the one labled ‘poor’.
So, from any human rights, fact, and/or evidence based perspective, those assholes are no better than the bible-bashers, and aren’t on the same side or part of the same movement I am. And if David Silverman is courting them, he isn’t either. There are Deep fucking Rifts, and he’s put himself on the wrong fucking side of them.
Joe Clarke #2
Atheism, per se means jack shit around here. A commitment to human rights and following the evidence is considered important, though; atheism is merely one of the consequences.
Leo Buzalsky
‘Economically conservative’, like ‘fiscally conservative’, is semantically equivalent to ‘has no comprehension whatsoever of macroeconomics, and a shitty grasp on microeconomics too’. It is not a tenable position or a viable opinion.
And the myth that cutting government spending is intrinsically a good thing. Infrastructure, and the way that it costs money and stuff, and the economic benefits that it brings, are all on the list of things that fiscal conservatives don’t understand in the slightest. You can tell they don’t, because if they did, they wouldn’t be fiscal conservatives anymore; it’s not even good for millionaires, when you crunch the numbers.(Unless, of course, you assume that all the talk of money is a smokescreen, and what they really want is to lord it over a horde of desperate, powerless serfs, which is not an unreasonable way to look at matters; it’s still not a valid position, though.)
Pierce R. Butler
No, you really, really wouldn’t. They weren’t any different, they were just a little more articulate.
Sastra#40
They do. Every last one of them. I have no hesitation whatsoever in making this statement. Sometimes they may be opposing a Democratic policy that’s also contrary to social justice, but they’re never on the side of social justice.
I think homophobia and sexism are sourced in religion – however one cannot assume that simply because somebody is an atheist, they have rejected all the religious baggage that comes with their culture.
An atheist from America will not support the Hindu caste system, but one from India might just see it as the way things are. Dropping your religious beliefs doesn’t magically make you see how religion has been privileging you, it is just a first step.
Removing the source of the damage is not the same thing as fixing the damage.
Social issues are fiscal issues. There is no gap between them. For example, civil rights – that is a social issue right?
Well in order to take civil rights seriously you need a strong education system – otherwise the economically privileged majority ends up with an advantage simply by being able to afford better.
How about abortion? Well if you are going to be pro-choice, you are going to need it to be available to everyone. That means universal healthcare – because otherwise you end up only being pro-choice for those who can afford it.
So already you are moving away from the fiscal conservative line.
One should also note that fiscal conservatism generally ends up costing more in the short, medium and long terms.
Cheaper stuff generally breaks faster and cheaper repair services are generally shoddier – so what ends up happening is that you buy cheaper stuff more often, costing you more than if you could afford the more expensive stuff. Being poor is consequently often more expensive than being rich.
Fiscal conservatives rather than saving money, actually spending more because they want America to run as if it were poor – thus meaning less quality with regards to infrastructure, education or healthcare, which in turn cuts productivity while also ironically hiking costs beyond what they should be.
Golgafrinchan Captain 41
It’s ‘fiscal conservatives’ who are responsible for the deficits being perpetual, due to their insistence on cutting taxes in fat times and lean times alike, rather than using the surpluses from fat times to pay for the deficits in lean years. On top of that, even extremely long-term deficits can be an excellent plan, as long as the money is going to pay for infrastructure, as that infrastructure will pay off in a stronger economy and hence larger tax base. Done right, it’s quite possible to maintain annual deficits while still increasing revenues each year, such that servicing previously incurred debts can be done while still investing further in infrastructure.
Those things are what the budget is for, so yeah, it’s kind of a silly idea. That’s at the base of fiscal conservatism, though; it’s (at best) the policy embodiment of the concept of ‘penny wise and pound foolish’ (often they’re foolish with the pennies too, though).
The fact that that’s considered an insult is a tribute to conservative propaganda overcoming evidence. Taxing and spending is what governments do. It’s what they’re for: to provide those things that are more cost-effective and/or beneficial when universally available, i.e. infrastructure. The only valid questions are what the spending is on.
That’s what they do. Always have done.
No, they weren’t. That’s what fiscal conservatism means, and is the only thing that it has ever meant. If that’s not your cup of tea, then you’re not a fiscal conservative.
No, it doesn’t. Their numbers are shit, and they also ignore a lot of really important factors.
That as well, but as I said, even ignoring the social issues, fiscal conservatism is shit economically too.
No, that’s not arguable. The economy as a whole was fucked by slavery, for the short-term and temporary benefit of a cadre of rich (white) assholes. On top of the horrors of slavery itself, the existence of a huge pool of unpaid workers had the knock-on effect of driving wages down for free workers nationwide, and the plantations could undercut any efforts by small farmers to move beyond bare subsistence farming, keeping millions trapped in abject poverty, on top of the millions held in outright bondage.
And economic. There’s zero upside to conservatism, fiscal or social.
Not typically. Always and invariably.
And is further evidence of why fiscal conservatism is shit, yes.
I think I would be happy if atheism became normalized, and even irrelevant. Then we could focus on other worthy causes, and our opponents would be forced to engage us with purely secular reasoning. I’m just not convinced that this is work that *we* should be doing. If conservative atheists want to organize, let them do it by themselves, and I will only offer abstract sympathy. I am an outsider, and a hostile one at that. Any help I offer would basically be concern trolling.
Dalillama… @ # 56: They weren’t any different, they were just a little more articulate.
US conservatives of past generations included, besides the WF Buckleys et al to whom I suspect you refer, a subset who believed in prudence, honesty, and suchlike long-forgotten-on-the-right virtues. Consider, e.g., the savings-&-loan sector before Reagan deregulated it: in general, offering a financial service to (much of) the local community, not hell-bent on “making a killing”, assessing each proposal on its merits, taking a long-term view.
Or look at Dwight Eisenhower – hardly a beacon of progressiveness, but willing to send troops in to help desegregate Little Rock, Arkansas, schools – and not sending troops to the British-French fiasco over the Suez Canal.
Even crazed warmonger Barry Goldwater could say, “I think every good Christian ought to kick Falwell right in the ass.”
Despite all their racism, sexism, etc, certain past conservatives did have something useful to bring to the table. Just about all of that has left/been driven from the movement that still uses their name.
My parents, especially my father, identify as one of those “socially liberal but fiscally conservative” atheists. Nonetheless, some of their social attitudes, especially towards gender and race, have more in common with the victim-blaming, pro-status quo tendencies of the mainstream right. It’s gotten to the point where I have to remove the majority of what my dad posts from my Facebook feed because of their apologetics for social and economic inequality. Unfortunately my past experience with debating my parents on any issue has shown that they’re too dead-set in their preconceptions to be worth arguing with.
I love my mom and dad dearly, as they have done and continue to do a lot for me. If anything, that makes their politics all the more insufferable.
@brucegorton
But what does the part I bolded mean?
If religion is just plain human behavior that basically means that we all have the innate capability of attaching the emotion of disgust to something as random and harmless as sexual orientation. We can’t assume that atheists and homophobia are naturally exclusive. Ditto for sexism since it’s likely that the gender role sensitivity is part of the same collection of behaviors.
In addition to the baggage of religious culture, we cant’ lose sight of the fact that religion and gender sensitivity (whatever gender ultimately breaks down to) will be independent phenomena and need independent strategies.
@ 63
I should expand on my own comment a bit.
Because of the way history has played out social justice activism as it relates to atheism, homophobia, and sexism are intertwined and need to be worked on together so the three belong in the same general activist sphere. But because whatever actually makes homophobia, and sexism related to religion more often than not is going to be general human bullshit, we have to pretend that they are phenomena related to behavior that perhaps any sort of person might pick up independent of beliefs.
The greatest lie told by conservatives is that they are the parties of “fiscal responsibility”/[insert trite political phrase relevant to your country/electorate].
This is bullshit, and it is promoted by rich businesses and rich people because conservatives will then legislate to ensure rich people and rich businesses are protected from competition (aka poor people and new businesses) and/or the labour force getting upset about working conditions and/or liability for social/environmental/economic damage they cause to wider society. On occasion, this sort of legislation may actually be fiscally responsible, but that’s by coincidence, not design.
Unfortunately, it’s very well branded and tenacious bullshit, despite decades of evidence against it.
I’ve been thinking for a number of years that the political divide in society is more fundamental than the religious one. As PZ mentions, when it comes to a wide range of social and economic issues, left-wing atheists (like myself) will typically find a lot more common ground with left-wing Christians than they do with right-wing atheists.
If I had to chose between turning America into a conservative atheist nation or a liberal religious one, I would almost certainly chose the latter.
I can certainly accept that religion helps to fuel the conservatives’ drive to remake the nation in their own image, but absent that religion, they don’t just go away. They merely find other reasons to believe what they believe about social and economic issues.
@Dalillama, Schmott Guy #59
I’ve definitely never considered myself a fiscal conservative but, after your post, I checked Wikipedia and it probably would have been more accurate to say I support fiscal responsibility, since that’s about the only part of fiscal conservatism that I support. I realize that it is a lie when spoken by politicians; the few who actually act responsibly aren’t always going on about it. Paying down the national debt should also be a moderate priority, when possible.
Even without the social conservatism baggage, I wouldn’t vote Conservative here. When polls are close, I vote for whichever party has the best shot at beating them.
My view on taxes is that we should be fighting to get more for what we pay, rather than fighting to pay less. The first approach puts the focus on improving the system. The second approach tears it down.
Brony
I think I can illustrate what I am talking about with an example.
In most of African traditional culture there isn’t a particular opposition to homosexuality. It is one way in which African culture was in advance of the colonialist powers.
Yet with the introduction of Abrahamic religion, homophobia became a major part of Africa as a whole. It wasn’t generally there before the religion, before the missionary movement, but it most definitely is there now.
So I am looking at religion as a cultural force – changing culture as a whole.
That also impacts people who aren’t actually in the religion, particularly if the religion is trying to paint them as degenerates for various things they would be otherwise neutral to – such as homosexuality.
And it also sets up what we think of as the default, as what we think of as “that’s just the way things are”.
Which means in a culture that formerly deeply steeped in religious ideas – we are still going to struggle with holding onto artifacts of religious morality that aren’t particularly good.
Of course religion can change and not all religions are homophobic – religious morality it mutable, but that doesn’t change the fact that to a large extent these specific harms seem rooted in specific religious ideologies and those religions that aren’t homophobic or sexist, will generally have their own negative morality too.
And that too will spread into wider society.
@ brucegorton
I can assume that what you say about traditional African culture may be true and it still makes my point about human group behavior (and we may even be nibbling at different ends of the same point). Some difference between traditional African culture and Abrahamic religion would be why homophobia existed. That difference can be some random twist of fate that gave a group a sociopolitical advantage in attaching emotions of disgust to anyone that deviated from certain combinations of sex and what are seen now as gendered behaviors. I believe we are just as capable of painting emotions on things as groups as religious folks and we must beware of that.
What do you mean by “cultural force”? That “cultural force” you are referring to is likely to be human group behavior. While we don’t have all the details worked out, human social memory and communication is a more specific explanation. Those are things that are is part of us as well.
I don’t see religion in terms of their narratives that don’t match reality. I see them in terms of what they do with what they believe, and why they do what they do with what they believe. PZ posted this paper a while ago, “The evolution of costly displays, cooperation and religion: credibility enhancing displays and their implications for cultural evolution.”. This is piece of how I see religion. This paper presents “credibility enhancing displays” (CREDs) in terms of good moral examples for the most part. But this also likely applies for negative CREDs as well as I have seen many people display their terrible behavior as a thing to be emulated. This is just “group behavior”, not “religious group behavior”.
Otherwise I agree that we have a tendency to become sensitive to social routines. I would add that some of us are sensitive to the point that they become violently agitated when those routines become threatened (such as misogynists, racists, etc…). Routine is a tool in many ways and we don’t like to have tools taken away.
I can’t agree on this,
Many homosexuals are in fact in religions that can be called homophobic. It’s good that you want to be concerned with the effects of religion on homosexuals, but to do that successfully you need to take that word “Religion” and disassemble it into what it is independently of the supernatural crap. There is a reason that phenomena like victim blaming is a part of religious rape controversies, sports rape controversies (like the Sandusky situation), random comment sections on rape articles around the net, and right here in the atheist/skeptic community. On levels we don’t want to admit, we are still “religious” as a group.
While fighting artifacts of cultural belief systems like religions are indeed important, we MUST also prepare for new expressions of the same crap in other groups of humans in the future. I have no reason to think that any of this is confined to religion. That is likely a founder effect.
Brony
I suspect we are seeing the same thing – but from different directions.
In my case what I mean by religion as a cultural force is in effect not the supernatural elements, but the morality and ideals it tends to codify. Whether a religion believes in God for example to my mind is really secondary to the importance it puts on issues like sin, karma or suchlike.
Essentially I see religion as being a system of beliefs that forms into a core dogma – and thus I include communism as a religion while not including deism.
So when you say this:
I absolutely 100% agree. We are still religious to an extent, and have to deal with that within ourselves. By becoming atheists we do not automatically shed all of the religious claptrap that came with our former beliefs.
And yet we have an example of that happening right now – with American Atheists. Atheists tend towards being pro-choice – yet at least one major atheist group saw the need to highlight and thus promote atheists who aren’t so as to neutralise criticism from pro-life religious groups.
As to new expressions of the same crap – that is something we will always have to guard against. Once something has become widespread within our culture it is incredibly difficult to remove it – as it mutates and takes on a life of its own.
Certain negative ideas may have originated within religion – but that doesn’t mean religion is the only means of perpetuating them.
We are talking about the same thing from different directions. But the units of measurement seem to be how much blame is directed to religion, or humanity as a whole and thus all of us. We seem to have very different personal and strategic interests, and if our interests end up hurting other people or portraying them falsely that matters.
Morals and ideals, and systems of belief with core dogma.
When you say morals and ideals, I think “rules of interpersonal conduct, and idealized reasons for those rules”. This is raw human behavior that seems universal and not limited to religion. We adopt idealized values that provide benchmarks to measure our everyday behavior against the behavior of everyone else.
When you say belief with core dogma, I think “rules about reality derived from remembered observations, that inform core parts of one’s rules for personal conduct”. We use patterns to try to understand what we are seeing, and determine how to act in response to it as individuals, and groups.
Since the supernatural claims of religion are false I’m honestly prepared to compare all of it to myself and us on a broad human level. There really is no other way to try to figure out what religion is and what it really means to us. I’ll explain what I mean as I respond to the rest of your points.
I can admit that you believe that the actions of people in American Atheists were a tool to neutralize criticism from Christians. But if that is true what does that mean? Your portrayal of that event is only useful if compared to other portrayals since we are talking about a conflict. You have to be able to contrast perspectives and be able to include that contrast fairly.
It means to me that people in AA are willing to use women as political chess pieces. It means that AA gives a voice to people that want to let society control the personal autonomy of women. It means that AA thinks privileging a group of atheists that is already privileged in the wider society is just fine to grow the numbers of atheists.
Your view helps people that want to remove personal autonomy from women. Emphasizing a commonality between atheists and the religious when it benefits the group over victims is not healthy to women or atheists. We have to be willing to compare ourselves to religion when it makes us look truly horrible as well. That knowledge is important.
Or it’s naturally possible for us to apply a wide variety of emotions to a wide variety of things (especially with group reinforcement), and we need to accept that as a species. I’m not saying that I am aware of any atheists that became sexist or homophobic for non-religious reasons. But I am saying that I don’t believe homophobia and sexism require religion. They are deeper and more insidious forces than that and I refuse to go easy on myself when thinking about what religion means to me.
I do not believe that these things are strictly grounded in natural* human behaviour. I think that to a large extent a lot of bigotry is trained into us.
That can have various sources, but in the case of homophobia it is pretty much down to religion.
Now as to dogma – there are a few differences between dogma and ideology.
One important element of this is that with dogma – the dogma itself can never be held to be at fault. There will always be excuses to declare someone “not a real Christian” or to claim that that was “not real communism”, or in one outrageous case to declare that ISIS is not Islamic.
With ideology we can actually hold the ideals themselves as being faulty. We can mount criticisms of secularism, democracy and even human rights – though in each case such criticisms have to be backed with evidence it is not in principle bad to seek such evidence.
Now as to what we do about motivated reasoning – we need to do what Dawkins said and treat religion much like we treat everything else, but with the corrolary of treating everything else much like we treat religion.
We need to move away from the religious instinct to declare things beyond question – that is true. But we also need to consider that it is important to pay attention to the evidence.
We do not reject the God hypothesis because we don’t like the idea, we reject it because there is no evidence for it. By the same token we do not accept evolution because it sounds good – but because of the strength of the evidence for it.
This is where for example the anti-SJW side of the debate always loses – their first instinct is to try and dismiss any given evidence without examining it, to revert to defending their dogma rather than examining the actual arguments. Did Sam Harris ever actually confront the fact that globally women are more likely to be atheists?
Has Sam Harris ever confronted the evidence against the efficacy of profiling in airports? Or the counter-productive nature of torture? He hides behind hypotheticals because the second you try to apply those ideas to the real world they don’t work.
Whereas on the pro-SJW side, there is an entire field of academics based around examining feminist ideas – feminist theory. That comes complete with evidence based peer reviewed articles, that critically examines not simply “patriarchy” but the ideas of other feminists.
This is one of the reasons why I opposed Thunderf00t’s idea of the house divided – the fact is that presenting a ‘united front’ means accepting certain dogmas, not critically examining certain ideas, which is precisely what we oppose in religion, and I suspect what we mean when we say we oppose religion as opposed to specific religions.
*by natural here I mean inborn, or inherent to humanity. Obviously it is natural in that it is real human behaviour.
@brucegorton
Emphasis mine. I can’t accept this assertion. This may be how you feel, but I see no reason to see reality line up this way. Religion is natural human behavior that includes a narrative objectively inconsistent with reality. Why would historical contingency limit homophobia to Religion?
What is the relevance in the distinction between dogma and ideology? As atheists we have had no problem pointing out how dogma has changed over time in religion. What the words are meant to convey is that individuals have a “+10” on the scale of emotional resistance to altering dogma, and that ideology is <+10. Over history there is no reasonable difference between dogma and ideology and it's more clear that as a group we choose which is which through experience and culture. Individuals may be dogmatic or ideological on a position, and groups will shift these over time.
I don’t think it’s as simple as declaring “things beyond question” or avoiding evidence when trying to understand and functionally deal with motivated reasoning. “Motivation” is not a simple bad. If ones motivations are appropriate they will not let bias affect themselves. There are good and bad examples of things that are technically motivated reasoning despite the fact that the term was coined to describe problems.
It’s also how things are questioned, why things are questioned, and the context of the questioning. Dawkins did not just ask questions. He casually asked questions about painful things and then outright dismissed a whole selection of answers with prejudice (he did not seem interested in the evidence from people affected by the issues). There was a right way to try to measure suffering and a scientist should have at least thought to ask people that actually study things like suffering in rape how to do it best. Creationists just “asked questions” all the time too and evidence can be used in dishonest ways. The most effective dishonesty often uses real things.
I agree with some of this and some of the rest. Anti-SJWs do tend to have a really hard time actually considering the evidence. At the very least they can’t show that they have seen it. But while the group certainly looks dogmatic and that is fair to point out with the outrage, individuals will still be either dogmatic or ideological.
Harris does have a hard time showing that he has considered the evidence of Institutionalized bias, deliberate and otherwise. He shows privilege bias. Yes feminists need their ideas questioned too, but I refuse to ignore it when the act of questioning is used in ways that are not simply about looking at reality. The personal and social purpose of questions is also fair game for analysis. Emotions and motivation matter on both sides.
Yes some things need to be dogma and ideology for groups to successfully do activism. But we are in the process of debating what those things should be and I am not willing to accept that a united front is worth accepting the behaviors that are being complained about.
Like how David Silverman makes a lot of noise on Twitter about being a feminist, then turns around and embraces known MRA Justin Vacula?