Modern atheism continues its swirling journey down the drain hole of irrelevance.
There are two predominant reasons that can explain why sexism exists in the atheism movement. The first reason is the influence of social Darwinism. Philip Kitcher, professor of philosophy at Columbia University, wrote in The New York Times in 2012 that the first tenet of social Darwinism is the belief that “people have intrinsic abilities and talents (and, correspondingly, intrinsic weaknesses), which will be expressed in their actions and achievements, independently of the social, economic and cultural environments in which they develop.” A concept such as “men are from mars, women are from Venus” is one version of such gender-essentialist, social Darwinist ideas.
In the atheism movement, social Darwinism has played out as the justifiable assault of women by (naturally) aggressive men. Buzzfeed’s Mark Oppenheimer detailed many accounts of alleged sexism, sexual assault and coercion in his excellent exposé on the atheism movement. “Some women say they are now harassed or mocked at conventions, and the online attacks—which include Jew-baiting, threats of anal rape, and other pleasantries—are so vicious that two activists I spoke with have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder,” he writes.
In related news, NECSS has retracted their disinvitation of Dawkins to their conference. Why? What changed? They don’t say. They just had second thoughts.
Or they got a bunch of cancellations and pushback and decided to bugger principle in favor of the bottom line.
Wow, that’s pretty crappy of them.
Most probably, the executive committee is not monolithic, and different factions prevailed at different times.
The faction that pushed through the re-invite no doubt found $ome very $pecial and impre$$ive rea$on$ to buttre$$ and $upport their deci$ion.
And now they’re going to get push-back from the people who see Richard Dawkins as a nightmarish vision of privilege run amok.
The pro-Dawkins crowd may have won this round, but in the long run I wonder how many invitations he’s not going to get because organizations just figure it’s not worth the headaches.
Seems like he blamed his stroke on being dis-invited (and feminists) and then they invited him right back, ‘cuz “they’re sorry”.
Ah fuck, they caved. You’d think that a group who stuck by Rebecca Watson through the worse of the shitstorm would have had more courage than that…
Don’t all the -isms (racism, sexism, ageism and the rest) come down to a lack of empathy? If we never stop to think how someone else feels we’ll won’t mind bashing and belittling them. There must be a way to get more empathy into the world–or at least into malatheists (mal=bad, could also =male).
@Knight in Sour Armor: not sure you are joking or not, so I’ll go for not. I think you should add some evidence to your speculation.
Don’t get too depressed folks, I know everything PZ mentioned sucks but remember… Scalia is dead and that is just fine. Happy Valentine’s day everyone!
Don’t get too down folks, I know everything PZ mentioned sucks but remember… Scalia is dead and that is just fine. Happy Valentine’s day everyone!
Whoops. I tried to fix my first comment by removing “depressed” add I know that is not a property usage of the term.
Sorry for the double post.
Well, fuck.
I’d rather Scalia retired in shame than died. It’s good that his spot is vacant now, but relishing in his death doesn’t help anyone, or punish anyone but people who have nothing to do with his public awfulness.
I’m not losing any sleep of Scalia. I hope his family and those close to him have warm memories of a man who, by most accounts, was warm and kind to those close to him .
But he impacted my life and culture in a negative and hateful way and for that I can’t mourn what will someday happen to all of us.
I don’t know if cancellations caused them to take back the disinvite. But I do not see how reversing the disinvite would ‘help’ much. Those who cancelled in support of R. Dawkins would not then say ‘ok, I forgive you now. I guess I will go’.
NECSS invited a guy who’s recovering from a stroke to attend a panel where his anti-feminist, divisive, and bullying behavior will be discussed? Good luck to them, but I hope Dawkins turns them down because I can’t see how that would be good for his health. Seriously, not the time.
Instead of MRAthesism, we need another negative name to call the neanderthal end of the atheism spectrum. Atheism minus, atheism lite, atheism less, atheism incomplete, or brites….
Suggestions are welcome.
@ 16.
I think dictionary atheism works just fine. :-)
Weird error in the Correction of the article:
What was the quote? And when will another Correction be added to fix Penn’s last name?
I’ve been using MRAtheism, or at least MRAtheists – though weirdly never on my blog, so no proof to say. Meanwhile, NECSS doesn’t surprise me too much. I never trusted them. Pretty much anything within 1 degree of Skepchick is too Randi to feel safe around. SC ended up very isolated when the soup went down. Shows they are doing something right that they still have fans, despite being apostates from an overwhelmingly creepbro TAM-iverse.
@F.O. #7
I can’t speak for Knight in Sour Armor, but I suspect they’re referring to this comment from Dawkins, as quoted here:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/accordingtomatthew/2016/02/richard-dawkins-discusses-the-stress-he-had-before-his-stroke/
“The doctors asked if I had been suffering from stress, and I had to say yes I had, and they keep advising me not to get involved in…controversy. And I had to tell then that not getting involved in controversy, that controvery is not one of those things I can. I told them I had been distressed, that on the 28th of January, I was disinvited from conference to which I had previously been asked, this upset me very much. I’m used to getting hate from religionists, from creationists, but when I get hate from my own people, from left, liberal feminists and so on, that actually hurt me.”
I can’t check the audio myself right now but the link to the interview is apparently here:
https://soundcloud.com/user-733970241/an-update-on-richards-condition-in-his-own-words
Also, agreeing with kellym (as usual) – Dawkins should take care of himself and avoid confrontation for a while. I don’t like him at all, but I don’t want anyone’s brain injured.
Ugh that quote @20. Left liberal feminists are NOT your fucking people RD.
@ibbica @#20; @F.O. #7:
Carlie’s partial transcript, here, contains the additional sentences following those that are cited @#20:
So the actual sequence of events as reported by RD, as well as the text of the statement by NECSS, directly contradicts #4/Knight in Sour Armor’s scenario (which, tbh, I imagined at first as well).
@ibbica: thanks.
Looks like @Knight in Sour Armor #4 is right, and the recent controversies took a toll on Dawkins.
I hope he recovers quickly.
Still, I really don’t think I belong to his group.
Following up on my #23:
Sorry, I thought this was linked above somewhere; it’s actually linked from the skepchick post linked above.
Statement from the Executive Committee of NECSS; Posted: February 14th, 2016
Which includes the line:
@Owlmirror #23: Fair enough, and thanks for the correction.
Still, I think that the important part is that the whole thing was very stressful for RD, and could have contributed to his stroke.
The “social darwinism” explanation makes some sense to me, although I think egotism and chauvinism plays a role too. I’ve met atheists for whom their atheism was about reinforcing their sense of self-superiority over “normal” people. I suspect a similar dynamic is at work with the MRAtheist crowd.
I don’t agree with the quoted article. I think the “social darwinism” explanation gives sexist atheism too much credit. For instance, when Sam Harris says that atheism is male-dominated because it doesn’t have an “estrogen vibe”, I do not think there is any coherent social theory behind it–he’s basically saying, “just because”.
In my theory of mind, sexist atheists view themselves as liberal allies of women, but believe that opposing religion is somehow sufficient. Thus, when they hear feminist criticism of atheists, they infer that those feminists are extremists, and a vocal minority. And when it’s pointed out that there aren’t many women around, they think it can be dismissed without much thought.
First thoughts: Dawkins thinks he’s a feminist?! My Dog, is he delusional.
Second thoughts: Being disinvited from a conference is hateful? For a guy who argues other people need to get a thicker skin, he seems as thin as wet tissue paper.
Third thoughts: Is… is he trying to weaponize his stroke? “See what happens when you criticize me! Think twice before you do that again, you wouldn’t want to harm an old man.”
I still think that it’s a victory.
The social consequences for supporting terrible things as a figurehead in this community may not have occurred at a public structural level this time. But if anyone told me that there would be consideration of disinviting Dawkins from anything skeptic/atheist related for his atrocious behavior a year ago I would not have thought it would have happened.
That this could be attempted and was this close is a good thing. I certainly will not be laying off of criticizing the shitty things that Dawkins does after this.
Chauvinism also makes sense to me as an explanation (as suggested by #27).
I guess the lesson to be learned from Big Atheism and the MRA takeover thereof is that saying we should reject dogma, tradition, and superstition and base our beliefs on reason and evidence is easy but actually doing it is hard.
Anyway, back to why I popped by.
The second half of that is dodgy (Dawkins didn’t get wealthy from atheism, and all of the big skeptic/atheist orgs are struggling for cash), but the first mirrors my own thoughts.
Flip that on its head: religious intolerance is correlated with sexism and rape myth acceptance. And if you are intolerant of religion, your natural home is within atheism, as it’s kind of awkard to rail against the bizarre beliefs of Muslims or Mormons while consuming the Eucharist.
[1] Aosved, Allison C., and Patricia J. Long. “Co-Occurrence of Rape Myth Acceptance, Sexism, Racism, Homophobia, Ageism, Classism, and Religious Intolerance.” Sex Roles 55, no. 7–8 (November 28, 2006): 481–92. doi:10.1007/s11199-006-9101-4.
Hj Hornbeck @#33:
I am pretty sure that most religiously intolerant but strongly religious people are so accustomed to the beliefs and practices of their own religion that they don’t even think twice about railing against the bizarre beliefs and practices of religions not their own while performing their own practices (based on their own beliefs) that would seem bizarre to those who were not raised in their religion.
They have psychological blocks against thinking carefully about their how their beliefs and practices might look from the outside, as it were.
@#20, ibbica:
Well, obviously, the stroke didn’t damage the parts of his brain required for the two activities he has lately been most famous for: flapping his lips and blaming other people. If his fragile little narcissistic ego was so crushed by being uninvited from a conference that he literally had a stroke, then that’s a problem with him, not someone else. If he’s right, I’m not sorry at all, and what little sympathy I otherwise had for him as a stroke victim is being sandblasted away by this idiocy.
Yeah, that seems to be going around in “progressive” circles these days.
Owlmirror @34:
True, but those blocks aren’t as critical to an atheist, as we’re better at justifying religious intolerance.
See? This person doesn’t hate religious people, they just think they’re deluded brain-washers of children, devoid of rational thought. It’s terribly easy to think you’re just railing against bad ideas, and not realize you’re dealing out a fair bit of splash damage at the same time.
Hj Hornback, how do you define splash damage in this specific case? Because as we have seen multiple times over the years, it is impossible to be critical of religion without hurting the feelings of other people. Even many of the converts whose stories I read were felt persnaly attacked at the moment of confrontation with atheism. People and their ideas (actions) are not separate, but interconnected.
There is a principal diffeence between a baseles ad hominem and a critique of an idea,of course. But even when you attack someone’s idea, no matter how mildly and justified, you also in some sense attack them selves, at least in their minds.
And evidentl this is the problem not only with religious people. People criticised what Dawkins has said and done, and he, despite being vocal about the difference himself, was unable to separate a critique of his ideas from an attack on his person. And just like religious people, when his bad ideas were challenged, instead of thinking rationally and changing his mind he dug his heels.
I do think there is a bit of the atheist community that never got past the “lol if you’re religious you’re stupid, here’s my edgy facebook graphic” phase. I also think there’s a fair amount of people that are into atheism because it gives them something to feel superior about and an excuse to be a douchey contrarian, and thus have zero interest in humanism or social progress.
(I have no problem with calling religious dogma or claims stupid, but I do kinda draw the line at attacking people for a thing they can be socially pressured or misled into believing.)
@33
I see no awkwardness, religious people don’t see their religious practices and the Other’s as belonging to the same category. They think theirs is the correct one — they just see the Other guy’s beliefs as Doing It Wrong. Some might just be simple bigots, but I’ve spoken to people who have more, uhh, “elaborated” opinions, and they positively believe that Muslims and Mormons are doing stuff that “works” but is actually either angering God or summoning demons. (These are the sort of Christians that won’t do Yoga because they think it will attract Satan in the guise of a Vishnu, or something.)
So we have rape myth, and religious myth, and the high correlation of believing one and the other. I don’t know if I’d characterize Dawkins as “intolerant” of other religions, though he does kinda hold to a myth that many atheists believe, the myth that religious people adhere to their religion purely out of stupidity, fear, herd mentality or ignorance.
So if we assume this is true, then what is the time-line? Is it after he pulled the video and made a sort of apology? Or is still later, after he doubled down, reposted the video, and re-tweeted every tweet supporting him, half of them GamerGaters, hardcore MRA’s, Milo fanboys, and even some Trump supporters and openly white supremacists? (There might be some overlap in this list.)
Seriously, what are the thinking? Now they have basically pissed of both sides. I am very curious to know who they invite to that ‘Dawkins’ panel.
HJ:
Dawkins will use whatever is at hand to point to his natural superiority, and of course, never ever being wrong. Not him. Nope.
F.O. @ 26:
How sweet. Naturally, it would have been completely unreasonable (damn near hysterical!) to see an expression of empathy for all the women who have been harassed and continue to be harassed, at the behest of Dawkins, who not only happily contributes to such, but often leads the way.
I’m not sure that we need any special reasons to explain why sexism exists in the atheism movement. Atheists are people. They exist in the same culture that everybody else does, and that culture is absolutely drenched in sexism. Sexism is everywhere that doesn’t take explicit steps to exclude and repudiate it.
I guess the real question is: is sexism actually worse in the atheist movement than in the culture as a whole, or is it just that it’s everywhere, and so (thanks to the availability heuristic) you tend to notice it most wherever you happen to be?
Sure, I’d totally agree with that, but again: is this something that’s unique or unusual about atheism per se, or is it just the usual crap that people do for whatever reason comes to hand, and for a certain group of people that thing happens to be atheism?
Dunc:
It’s worse in at least one respect: harassment. Harrasment is not only accepted, it’s encouraged, and those who don’t indulge don’t say or do anything to stop it.
Caine, @46: Yes, I guess that probably is true… I’m certainly well aware of the massive harassment problem we have in atheism, but I don’t have any other baseline to compare it to. Do you think that’s related to the specific sort of claims and intellectual approach involved in movement atheism, or do you think it’s more likely to be related to demographics (i.e. predominately young male internet users)? Some combination of the two? I guess in a lot of ways we have a “perfect storm” of biases to deal with – young male internet users convinced of their own rationality and intellectual superiority, selected for their willingness to take “controversial” positions. Ugh.
zenlike @41:
Dawkins never apologized, not even close to a “sort of” apology. He was adamant about that, and he is an excellent communicator.
Dawkins’ disinvite to a single conference was an act of “hate,” and a violation of his free speech, while his blacklisting of Rebecca Watson, was apparently a sacrament. Also, he stopped promoting the work of Greta Christina when she began criticizing him. Neither will ever receive a gracious apology.
@Caine: -sigh-.
I think you misread me. “Important” referred only to the limited extent of the specific discussion, ie whether or not the NECSS decision(s) played a role in RD’s health. I wholeheartedly agree that the victims of the climate RD helped foster are far more important.
It is the second time you fling shit at me, I believe undeservedly; I wouldn’t mind if you tried to be a bit more charitable next time. Thank you.
Dunc @ 47:
I think the article got it right –
The movement of atheism, such as it is, is seen as the only bastion (outside of religion) of supreme homosociality, with the pastier men at the top, natch. It’s privilege, writ large, and clinging with a death grip to centuries of feeling superior. This isn’t just young men, either. There are plenty of older men keeping up the chorus of boys will be boys and all that. And, while women are playing a minor role in all this anymore, Laddist Atheism does need its complement of chill girls and faux-feminists (such as Hoff Sommers), to keep the reassurance chorus going. It’s a fucking mess. Y’know, I grew up with the whole “oh, good girls don’t get raped” and all that shit. Now, it seems, we have “real feminists don’t get harassed” and other assorted shit.
F.O.:
Terribly interesting how you didn’t mention that at all, but mentioned poor, stressed Dawkins more than once. Spare me your I’m so misunderstood posts.
One doesn’t have to be a card-carrier to support atheism, nor does one have to endorse other atheists merely due to their atheism.
I know it’s said that “united we stand, divided we fall”, and it’s true enough — but there’s a collective power in many individuals endorsing an idea on their own, just as there is in a collective where individuals endorse the collective’s idea.
(There’s no need to carry others’ baggage!)
Dawkins:
Is he saying he was triggered? I thought that was a made-up PC tool of the wimpy liberals.
In light of this, and taking Dawkins at his word about how stressed he felt by the disinvite, atheist dudebros the world over must do one of the following two things:
1) Acknowledge triggers as being a valid health concern and begin to respect people’s need for trigger warnings.
2) Chastise Dawkins for exploiting a politically correct tool fabricated by the feminazis and the regressive left.
F.O., #26
He shouldn’t have gotten himself disinvited then.
I don’t think that’s even an important part, let alone the important part.
I can’t be an ass to someone and when they disinvite me from their wedding blame them for my stroke.
A quirk of my current monitor makes the first two words of the article look like “modem atheism”. Seems appropriate.
@Hank_Says
Well, I guess that explains all the incoherent shrieks and bleeps.
Saad, but you see, he implies that that was the reason why he had a stroke and then goes on to imply that it was the joy of being reinvited, though not really because delayed response or something. So, he gets to blame all those horrible feminists for his stroke while at the same time making it so that he can easily deny he did.
The important thing, though, is that other people are to blame for everything and that he is the poor victim. Even when deserving sincere sympathy for an unfortunate health event, he manages to be a complete and utter fuckwad. For an evolutionary biologist he sure seems to believe in spontaneous generation (of criticism).
It should be pointed out that while stress can be a factor in the triggering of a stroke, this shit also just happens completely unrelated to any potentially stressful events in the life of the individual.
Dreaming, #56
I think shorter Dawkins would be: Either put up with my shit or cause me a stroke.
Also, why is pushback to his comments causing him stress? I remember him saying to college students that they should be prepared to have their views challenged by uncomfortable ideas.
Ahhh, but NECCS will host a panel on these issues.
I’m waiting excitedly to see which pseudo feminist they’ll get up on the stage to agree with everything Dawkins has ever said.
Besides, suffering a stroke at his age is about as suspicious as Scalia dying. To borrow from Elon White:The atheist movement is so misogynist that when a 74 year old man suffers a stroke they blame the women.
@Saad
Well, see, it’s only people who are wrong who should be prepared to be challenged. Those who are right
eous don’t need to be challenged, because they’re right, and so it’s unfair and unreasonable and, frankly, abusive to challenge them.Curses. Strike was meant to end sooner:
Those who are right
eousdon’t need to be challenged, because they’re right, and so it’s unfair and unreasonable and, frankly, abusive to challenge them.Didn’t I come up with #MRAtheists first?
Wherever the term first came up (it was definitely floating around before this weekend) I’m pretty sure we can all agree that this needs to be the themetune.
Giliell, #58
Great. The atheist version of “gays cause earthquakes.”
Saad @ 63:
No, no, boobs cause earthquakes.
Yeah, I was under the impression that gays cause tornadoes.
You know, it’s getting really hard to keep my less-privileged-group/natural disaster combinations straight in my head.
Now he gets to have two talks – his original AND the panel. So win-win. For him.
Flooding. Gays cause flooding. (Or at least, they do here in the UK. According to UKIP.)
So who is it that causes deforestation?
For anyone else who were confused by the quote outside of its context, it’s not “independent” as in “independent variable.” Rather it’s describing the social darwinist belief as saying that social, economic and cultural environments don’t matter. See “The Taint of Social Darwinism”. I don’t think the piece was particularly relevant to the gender essentialism Bianco connects it to, and in general I don’t think the article does a very good job of analyzing the causes of the very real problems it describes.
Porn causes deforestation. (If you know what I mean… ;))
Jesus, that panel is going to be an orgy of feminist-bashing and hypocritical justifications. As if there is any chance whatsoever that they will say anything that might possibly be considered critical of anything he’s done or said. Oh, they’ll pretend that they are going to challenge him with hard questions, and it will be completely fucking empty and immediately turned around to the real problem, those awful feminists and the regressive left that’s poisoning the movement and attacking poor old Richard…
Remember to unplug your irony meters or they will be destroyed by the storm.
The Penn Jillette quote probably was this one, as cited in Mark Oppenheimer’s 2013 Buzzfeed article: (edited here)
Oppenheimer also discusses the origins of boys’ club atheism and skepticism:
In the last few years we’ve seen sexual harassment scandals arising from missing-stair predators in most of those fields – sci-fi, gaming, coding, astronomy, philosophy, science writing, and university science departments, just to name a few. A culture of misogyny is why so many fields remain disproportionately male and male-coded. If anything the tradition of harassing and driving out women pre-dates New Atheism and got brought into its roots by the prominent male predators and those ready and primed to guard their backs.
The Penn Jillette quote probably was this one, as cited in Mark Oppenheimer’s 2013 Buzzfeed article: (edited here by me)
Oppenheimer also discusses the origins of boys’ club atheism and skepticism:
In the last few years we’ve seen sexual harassment scandals arising from missing-stair predators in most of those fields – sci-fi, gaming, coding, astronomy, philosophy, science writing, and university science departments, just to name a few. A culture of misogyny is why so many fields remain disproportionately male and male-coded. If anything the tradition of harassing and driving out women pre-dates New Atheism and got brought into its roots by the prominent male predators and those ready and primed to guard their backs.
I grant that this is a slightly more original phrasing than “it was a joke”, but in actual substance, there’s not much difference.
Calling Lindy West a was a carefully chosen artistic decision? Sorta like the smile on the Mona Lisa, or the harmonies in a Beach Boys song, or the rhythm of Shakespeare’s language?
OK. Guess I can’t argue with that.
As an artist, I can see using the words c*** or b**** in a piece, particularly to make a sharp point. That said, there are ways to make that sharp point without said words. One thing I feel confident saying is that the “artistic decision” claimed was a fine example of bullshit.
And with this, friends, I jettison all organized “skepticism” into space. I held out some hope that there might be an organization to counterbalance CFI. That was naive.
Charly @38:
Consider the metaphor of religion being childish. Children don’t have good critical thinking skills because we haven’t taught them to be critical thinkers. Criticizing them for believing in nonsense is like criticizing someone who’s never taken physics in school for not being good at physics. Children can have a loose grip on the boundaries between reality and fantasy, but that’s because their brains are still busy wiring themselves and haven’t solidified that yet. Healthy adults can experience hallucinations too, and it’s not uncommon.
So if religion isn’t very child-like, why do people keep bringing it up? Is it out of ignorance, or because they think religious believers are children while non-believers are adults? Because they view atheists as being more “developed,” in some way, than theists?
You do bring up an excellent point, that we tend to personalize beliefs and arguments, but that’s unrelated the splash damage I was talking about.
KellyM@18: “What was the quote? And when will another Correction be added to fix Penn’s last name?”
What’s missing is the middle name: “And”.
@Hj Hornback:
Sorry, I do not get what you are talking about at all, your explanation did not help.
The quote in your previous post does not say that believers are childish in comparison to non-believers. It says that religious belief is childish in comparison with rationalism. In all honesty, I do not understand how is this metaphor problematic or how it causes splash damage – religious belief is measurably not fully developed with regard to critical and rational thinking, if it were, it would cease to be religious (but to be fair, there are non-religious beliefs that are just as childish – like libertarianism which is the embodiment of petulant and selfish four-year-old).
A person consists of many multifaceted traits and can be mature in some aspects and immature/childish in others. A person can be tolerant in many aspects and bigoted in others. A person can be perfectly rational and behave maturely 99% of their time and still believe in virgin mary or being on occasion unable to overcome the emotional impetus not to share their toys.
Saying that a person is childish is not the same as saying that their one spedific belief is such. You can say that a person is childish (or bigoted etc.) if they demonstrate that it is their defining characteristic over a significant (as in easily apparent) portion of their behaviour/beliefs, but not after you spot one quirk.
So far I can see in this specific case it is you who equates criticising the belief (calling religion “childish” as a metaphor for immature, not fully developed with regard to thinking etc.) with criticising the whole demographics (all religious people).
tl.dr.: Catholicism is stupid and evil, but catholics as a whole are not, and Kenneth R. Miller is definitively not.
I don’t buy into the gloom-‘n’-doom of “swirling down a drainhole of irrelevance”. Ten years ago the self-anointed Four Horsemen were rather revered, their pronouncements from on high taken as borderline Gospel among great swaths of Movement Atheism. Now they are roundly criticized, even mocked, all over the place, not just on Skeptic/Atheist sites. Dawkins and Harris are regularly pilloried on progressive political sites and feminist sites, that have no particular commitment to Movement Atheism. The superb communist writer Richard Seymour recently published a book called Unhitched, debunking the arguments of Hitchens, without any atheist axe to grind. He just simply felt the “profound thinker” was full of shit. This is genuine progress.
And I know it’s a bit glib and facile to suggest that sexism in Movement Atheism stands out more because, 1) you expect more rational behavior, and 2) it’s noticed and called out more. But I can hardly argue against those two arguments. If you call out sexism at a law firm or investment bank, you may risk getting that promotion to managing partner. You go along. If you call it out among Republicans and Libertarians, you’re escorted from the rally by heavily armed bully boys. If you call it out in the Catholic Church, you’re excommunicated and anathematized. Movement Atheism has the benefit of being a place where you can say “hey fuck you stop being a shitstain” and live to tell about it. That’s good. The sexism and racism are bad, and irrational, and yeah there are a lot of smug superior dude-bros who simply wear atheism as a badge of superiority. But their hysteria at the likes of Rebecca Watson and Anita Sarkeesian reminds me of the Libertarian Rump State’s tantrums over gay marriage and related social progress — they’ve lost the war, and this is a two-year-old’s response to being denied their candy.
Finally, and relating to PZ’s other essay today about 7 billion problems, Movement Atheism in my opinion suffers as much from classism and ethnocentrism as it does from racism and sexism (with obvious overlaps among the 4 -isms). There are a easily 2-3 billion atheists in Latin America, Europe, Russia, East Asia, spread across China, Japan, Vietnam, Burma, Thailand, Korea, and of course among more religious Muslim and Buddhist and Hindu countries, and not a single one of them gives a rat’s ass about Richard Dawkins or academic conferences half a globe away. Not believing in God as a matter of course, a standard everyday worldview, is ubiquitous on this planet, and you can be a premier or prime minister or president elected with huge majorities and running huge economies without having to genuflect to various American MSM standards of godliness. In the larger scheme of things, outside of the upper-middle-class American and Brit blog-o-sphere, Richard Dawkins is a fart in the wind. Nobody really cares, and his opinions affect virtually nothing.
@79
“Measurably.” Like, in the sense that it’s not even a matter of opinion. We put religion into the mass spectrometer and the signature of Childishness came out.
This is really sounding like you’re just passing judgement… I agree with your judgements but libertarianism is ridiculously adult. That’s the whole point, just because something is bad or wrong, or selfish, or based on a this doesn’t necessarily mean it’s “childish.” And childishness isn’t necessarily bad or undesirable, children can be much more rational and empirical than adults; and “adults” can be much more ideological and bound to false cultural beliefs.
How is this different from saying “children can be very mature, and adults very childish” (assuming that’s the kind of ideology and cultural belief we’re talking about)?
I seem to recall learning recently that one of the most important differences between humans and other apes is that human children are much better at figuring out who has status, and copying their behavior. That seems to be to me a fairly accurate description of the classic authoritarian mindset, suggesting that maybe authoritarians are stuck in this mindset, whereas other people mature to rely more on their own judgment.
I don’t know if that is what happens (I’m certainly no expert in that area), but that would at least explain where authoritarians come from (though not necessarily what to do about it).
@sigaba
Perhaps “measurably” is not the perfect word, but there are also other metrics than SI. Like making lists of attributes that are typicaly associated with something being “rational” and attributes that are typical for something to be defined as “irrational” and then looking at which of those attributes are present in some beliefs (belief systems) and which are not.
For example religious beliefs have in common with childs psyche the overemphasis on purpose, overdetection of intent, elaborate ad-hoc explanations for unknown etc.
Probably depends how you define the terms. But I honestly do not understand what you mean by “ridiculously adult” unless you redefine the word “adult” as having no cultural associations and only to mean “someone over 18 years old” which makes the word essentially useless.
But arguing across language barrier is not something I am good at, so I shall withdraw for now and only observe what others say. I learned a lot that way, I only now chimed in because I really do not understand what Hj Hornback means.
Shit I somehow deleted this before posting. I was before my last paragraph:
And smokers can live 100 years , non smokers can get lung cancer and basketball players can be small.
There is a difference between talking about a typical characteristics of a group and saying that every single member of that group has this characteristics. I think we are talking past each other.
I think the basic tension in this situation originates in the idea of imagining atheism is a good foundation for a social movement. If the movement is a response to religion, then there are basically two choices I can see. The first is to create another, competing religion which a lot of people have pointed out is basically what Dawkins tried to do with scientific atheism. The other is to simply point out the negative aspects of religion and to demonstrate when religious apologetics fail logical thinking. Science can be used as a replacement for religion since you can make a physical analog to most religious promises, it grants better power than prayer etc., but that legitimizes all the worst parts of the human condition. Or at least risks legitimizing them. Science can grant power but compassion requires philosophy, not science. Understanding compassion is a decidedly non-scientific endeavor.
See, my particular objection to the “believing in religion is childish” thing is that there are people who are all but forced into it. Like, the borderline stockholm syndrome religious belief some of my friends had because their parents were legitimately like “if you don’t love jesus sufficiently, enjoy dying on the street”.
While they did end up fervently believing (until they eventually got a chance to be away from said parents in adulthood), it was moreso because they internalized it after years of being forced to partake in it, not because of any childishness desire for easy explanations to hard questions.
objdart @ 85:
Philosophy of Science. Science is completely embedded in philosophy. It doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and neither do those who practice the various fields of science. Many sciences are based on humans – anthropology, psychology, sociology, medicine, etc. It’s a bit silly saying science has nought to do with philosophy or an emotion such as compassion.
Not so. At all.
Vivec @ 86:
I agree. It’s not a great idea to generalize about religious belief when it comes to individuals. I was raised Catholic, long time back, old school. I was trapped a good portion of each day with nuns, who besides being on the vicious side physically, had a great love of pounding into your head the reality and gruesomeness of hell, populated with creatures who would just love to tear you the fuck apart. It was a lot of years before I got that shit out of my head.
I think fear is a truly lousy basis for believing in a god, but it’s effective, which is why so many people use that, and teach it relentlessly.
@83
Libertarianism has elaborate ideologies around things like “self-ownership”, and positive and negative liberties, and it has a literary tradition that’s older than the United States. No such thing could possibly be characterized as “childish,” it can be wrong, it can be twisted and selfish, and it can be cynical and self-obsessed, but characterizing it as something that’s undeveloped, or infantile, is wholly inaccurate and just pejorative.
I guess you can do the experiment where kids without a theory of mind take all the oreos for themselves, but that’s a far cry from the intellectual tradition (so to speak) of John Locke, Adam Smith and Friedrich Hayek.
I dunno, Buddhism is a religion, is Buddhism “childish”? Or Stalinism? Military hierarchy is deeply authoritarian and doctrinaire, is it childish? The association obscures more than it explains. When you call someone “childish,” it’s really a rhetorical maneuver to deprive the referent of his agency: he can’t be trusted to make his own decisions, he needs a caretaker, maybe someday he will be like us, and we’ll know that time has come when he thinks like us and accepts our ways. I agree I’m purging the word of most of it’s cultural construction and narrative, because these are false and the association of peoples and beliefs with “childishness” has a rich history, particularly in the imperial context.
Deconstruct your Child Narrative.
Caine @87, you say that science is completely embedded in philosophy, to which I agree, so there is no need for the link to philosophy of science but thank you anyway. Still, that doesn’t mean that philosophy is completely embedded in science. Does it? Where, using science, would you turn to analyze Socrates’ statement, “The unexamined life is not worth living”? Are you suggesting passions are and should be a slave to reason?
Also, you say “Not so. At all.” to my assertion that compassion is a decidedly non-scientific endeavor. Can you justify that? It seems extremely counter-intuitive to me. How could an analysis of compassion be scientific and still meaningful to the consideration of the value of compassion?
What is religion? What is it that separates us from the religious as atheists? Religion exists objectively speaking and the last 4-5 years have shown me that a set of things that we liked to blame on religion are part of our group. If you take away the false narratives about reality what is religion? What should I make of the fact that I see so many false narratives in atheism making excuses for the things that get dismissed with an “SJW”?
Xenophobia and bigotry are not religious. Neither are sexism, racism homophobia, transphobia, ablism…
When I see people use the insulting characterization “childish” it seems to mean that one is acting as if a child would and that one should act like an adult. The analogy depends on the behavioral characteristics of of children and adults.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piaget's_theory_of_cognitive_development
I think that there is some value to the characterization but that it would be much better if people actually referenced the behaviors they were calling childish directly. You can even find analogs to them that exist as stages of development where the type of cognition came on. The symbolic function sub-stage and religion for example definitely has connections, but whatever the symbolic function is lets people make faulty connections in many many contexts. Like the connections behind all the excuses that let people reason away claims of harassment. One can even see egocentrism-like effects affecting reasoning.
That link even mentions that not everyone reaches the formal operational stage, but given that this is wikipedia and the problems in how these things get used in society I have to think that the reality is likely very specific to what an individual person is thinking about. Holding an abstract in one’s mind independent of reality is likely very variable by education and experience. So I think that childhood development can be very useful for looking for problems in reasoning and logic where the term “childish” is lacking. But the best it can do is let you identify modes of cognition that a person might be misusing and that direct literal comparisons will not work.
I think that was a very good post, brony. Thanks.
@91 This is sound.
A lot of religious people are childish, in the sense I think Charly means. Though many aren’t.
I think, in the abstract, you have to accept that intelligent, mature, honest, well-informed and emotionally-whole people can be deeply religious. Religion isn’t of necessity the symptom of Stockholm Syndrome, a mood disorder, ignorance, stupidity or malign intent. If you think this I think you’re depriving people of their dignity.
Gotta love how on this blog people know what I think even better than I do.
I’m glad it sounded good. It was a bit personal and I had to stare at it for a while. A piece of my childhood never really shut off. Or maybe something else did not fully come on? The data matches the second, but since it’s an issue of inhibition it feels like the former. These things get weird like that.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25461706
Either way I’ve had to think about how that those stages relate to a lot of things.
@Brony
That’s a good thing. Civilization is based on neoteny.
@sigaba
That’s a good thing. Civilization is based on neoteny.
It’s got it’s advantages and drawbacks, and when we finally admit that we are breaking “normal” down into what we really are I’m not sure how people are going to deal with it as a group.
Sure, over a life time of parsing apart the voluntary and involuntary sensations throughout our nervous systems (it’s not just motor) we actually end up with enhanced cognition on different levels. It’s like having emotions that most people don’t. I can tie studies that describe cognitive enhancements in rule-based processing to areas of my experience. The last six years have been interesting, especially when it comes to language. I’m intuitive with the emotional component of language such that textual argument looks like a structured martial art in action to me.
But being an adult child has drawbacks. Kids are impulsive, it’s an effort wrestling with your own disembodied self in all of your reactions akin to always wearing “emotional leg weights”. My thoughts have momentum. I always have to dial my reactions back from what I would naturally do, I tend to think in manifestos and I find small talk difficult. It’s why I’m so obsessive with being careful that I’m an atheist with the “religion OCD” (scrupulosity). And I see parts if it mirrored in the actions and reactions of other people at times.
And the same story exists in different flavors with autism, ADHD, schizophrenia…interesting times. I want it to be a good thing but I don’t think modern society knows what to do with it all yet. I think this would be me in that culture (the “clown society” entry is interesting),
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heyoka
…but in the west they made us demon possessed.
Oops, “That’s a good thing. Civilization is based on neoteny.” should have been blockquoted as it from sigaba.