I read this article, Hitchens, Dawkins and Harris are old news — a totally different Atheism is on the rise, with considerable disbelief.
More and more, the strongest atheist voices are talking about nonbelief less as an end in itself, but as part of a larger conversation about social justice. It could hardly be any other way: atheism is growing not only in numbers, but in diversity. When Dawkins, Harris and Hitchens were at their most prominent, a frequent (and credible) criticism was that the faces of atheism were all white, male and affluent. To make the same claim now is to deliberately ignore some of the most vital atheist and skeptic voices that have emerged in the last 10 years.
I wish.
It’s what I want to happen, and maybe I just have a distorted perspective, but when I look at my email and see the hate pouring in, all from atheists who are deeply resentful of women and minorities, and somehow blame me for letting them in (which is twisted enough as it is — these people are so far gone that they can’t imagine this situation occurring without an old white guy being responsible), and I don’t see what change this author is seeing. The same white, male, affluent (or white, male, not-rich-enough-and-hating it) faces are still here, still dominating the conversation, still smugly confident that they are right and in control, still flooding any women or minorities with concentrated bile.
I’m disillusioned. I’m not seeing any substantial improvement at all. And as just another old white guy, there’s not a damned thing I can do about it without getting all the blame/credit from the same old bigots.
I think I’m more in agreement with you than them, but I also think it’s worth noting that we over here spend a lot of our time focussing on the ranty ragebeasts. Our view on the atheist movement is necessarily skewed by the fact that we’re almost always seeing the absolute worst and the least thoughtful of us, so I’d like to think that maybe we’re plagued by an excess of pessimism, rather than that those who believe in an positive near future for atheism are overly optimistic… to be fair, it’s probably a little of both.
Well, while I’m afraid I don’t contribute to our racial diversity, I am female, and I’ve noticed my attitude changing about the idea of attending one those big atheist events like TAM in recent years. All the conversation about social issues and introducing some floor level of understanding about young women’s experiences, especially on the scale we’ve been having it (and even with the shit-throwing), has changed my expectations of what I’d meet upon arrival. Before, I had this sense of dread about showing up to an event where I would be surrounded by mostly men who (at least according to their google searches at the time) were under the impression that irreligious women were like unicorns and about as easy to find. Especially as a young, smiley, biophysics researcher. The deification of science is strong in some parts of this community – especially the transhumanist wing. Now my perspective is different; now I feel like women’s interest drive the agenda a little more and, in addition to there just being way more women than before which reduces some of the awkwardness (yay!), more or less everyone has had a conversation about appropriateness in public space.
Now my only barrier to attendance is that I live in Houston, Texas…You yankee atheists need to bring things a little darn closer to my city! :)
I don’t see this as an excess of optimism, but rather as some type of confusion. As an atheist, I concentrate on the (non-)existence of deities and, as a logical consequence, religions as a form of swindle. That’s what atheism means, I think.
There is, in my mind, a big difference between the idea of non-existence of deities and the rights of those who defend this idea.
While I would certainly want some type of equal rights for atheists, I do not see that as atheism, but as a social justice issue.
In the same vein, I do not see what feminism, gay rights, racism, xenophobia, and any other type of social justice issues have to do with atheism.
Perhaps, one day, if and when atheism has gone mainstream and has come to be seen as self-evident by a significant majority, I will be less strict, but right now, incorporating social justice issues into atheism seems to me as ill-advised as a company taking on too many tasks, i.e. a jack of all trades, master of none.
It’s hard to be an atheist when people are trying to run you out of your house, slashing the tires on your car, shooting your family dog….
and yes, that shit still happens in the US.
thinking you can isolate rights from ideals is naive to say the least.
grow the fuck up already.
…and, btw..
that goes for any oppressed minority group as well.
it’s had to be an atheist… when you are being persecuted for being gay… or bi… or trans.
why is it that a considerable portion of the atheist community is so recalcitrant they are unable to see what is so fucking obvious?
you want atheism to succeed?
then you have to make sure first that the people who call themselves atheists are secure from harm, first.
it’s fucking common sense.
… I just listened to Noah Lugens on the skepticrats give a huge rant that sounded just like Bart’s up above.
it’s sad to see so many in the movement just not getting it, even though it is so basic and obvious.
made me want to slap him.
Join the club. It’s what my parents and their beloved Jesuits did 40+ years ago, by declaring me the Antichrist and punishing me for it. The existence of something and the issues surrounding it are not one and the same thing, just as the fact of evolution is not the same as the theory of evolution. More precision, less confusion is what I advocate.
@Bart B. Van Bockstaele – I think the confusion lies with you. I call myself a dictionary atheist, but what constitutes an atheist is not the question, and I can still agree with PZ. How can there be an atheist movement if it does not include atheists of all race, gender, etc.? As an atheist, you have no choice but to advocate social justice. Whether advocating social justice itself should be called “atheistic” is nitpicking.
Is it OK with you if those of us out here in parts of the world where atheism already is mainstream carry on without you?
Back on-topic: I agree with Athywren. Our views may be distorted because the MRA’s and their likes usually are a lot louder than the minorities in the atheistic community are. But how do we find out how much optimism/pessimism is justified?
Sorry for triple posting, but another thought entered my mind. Why would we even advocate atheism, if not for social justice? No matter how much I care for knowledge, I wouldn’t mind a little religion if being mistaken is the worst that the religious do. But they do much more than that: they do injustice in the name of their beliefs. As long as religion is an excuse to, for example, discriminate against gays, I think a strong atheist movement is needed to promote social justice. Otherwise, atheism would only be an academic exercise. Nothing wrong with academic exercises, but I prefer to leave them to the academic.
Reject the gods, reject the horseshit their followers have built up in their name like misogyny, homophobia, racism, and xenophobia, duh.
Perhaps. I am not in academia, but I care deeply for what is true. I am curious about the universe, what it is like, how it ticks. In that context, the (non-)existence of deities is not unimportant. The idea of living an illusion abhors me. Sure, I like Star Trek, Babylon 5 and other fiction. I enjoy that tremendously, but I don’t believe it, and I hope that – when I start believing it – someone will have enough compassion to terminate my existence in a pain-free way. To each her/his/its own, but this is mine.
That’s easy enough. They are to be considered common criminals. I am far more afraid of those who do injustice *because* of their beliefs. There is, at least to me, a very big difference between doing something “in the name of X” and doing something “because of X”.
uh, your response rather belies that.
Bart BvB,
Actually, speaking as a pretty hardcore atheist who thinks that even skeptical agnosticism is pretty weak epistemology, I think you’re wrong on this. Whether people believe in god or not is actually incredibly unimportant. What matters is what they do and the behaviours they enable in others (e.g. by who they vote for). And while I would be more than happy for religious belief to die out, I don’t think that will in itself make any major difference to the welfare of humanity unless it is accompanied by a major improvement in the common treatment of human rights and social equitability around the world.
I mean, really, if all you care about is atheism without social justice then you’re opening your club to Stalin and Rand and closing the door on the White Rose Movement and Alexander von Humboldt. So if you really want to force a choice between an “atheism is what really matters” club or a “human rights is what really matters” club, I won’t be joining you.
and who will consider them criminals?
you?
How can you be their judge… if you don’t even grasp what the injustice is… because you don’t think it has anything to do with atheism?
are you getting this yet?
any of this sinking in?
a very good thing to remember.
especially given the apparent rise of right-leaning fascism in not just the US, but the UK, Australia, and most of Europe as well.
Many injustices are not illegal. Indeed, many injustices shouldn’t be illegal, but that doesn’t mean we should just accept them either. There’s heck of a lot that falls in between “entirely unobjectionable and socially acceptable” and “criminal”.
Of course they are. But by our standards, not theirs. In their God driven world view, homosexuals are the criminals.
Obviously, the idea of living an illusion does not abhor them. And how passionate I may be about the truth, they aren’t, and I can’t change them even if I wanted to. But I can fight the discrimination and the bigotry that are caused by their illusion.
Bart, #3
Agreed. We must prioritize.
Ten Commandments at the courthouse and “In God We Trust” come first.
The civil rights and welfare of human beings can wait until cis straight white men are ready for it.
cliche white guy (me), did not actually get this until I read “letter from a Birmingham Jail” about 30 years ago.
that’s when I learned I was basically a yuppie racist, without even consciously realizing it.
well, they meant well with all the “colorblind” progressiveness of the suburban 70s they taught all us kids with back then, even if they did end up doing more harm than good.
huh. I wonder if Bart has ever read it.
well, worth a shot.
hey, Bart…
https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html
but do read the whole thing… see if you recognize yourself in it. I know I did, once upon a time.
Now you’ve done it!
The TAMites get all sad-faced when you say they’re atheists. They’re SCEPTICS, dodgammit!
I still fail to understand this quibble about “divisiveness”
Like, fuck yes I want atheist events/communities to be divisive. If your convention platforms someone like Sargon, guess what convention I have no interest in attending? If your community isn’t interested in my civil rights, guess what community I want no part of?
#26 / WilliamGeorge:
All of those predated religion and would almost certainly continue in its absence.
#22 / Ichthyic:
Were I Bart, there’d be approximately a 0% chance that I’d read that essay and change how I think, given how you’ve been talking to him. If you’re only in it to condescend and insult, that’s fine, but in general you’re not going to get someone’s interest and attention by telling them to grow the f*ck up in your first interaction.
@Derek Vandivere – Getting Bart’s interest is not Ichthyic’s responsibility. Nevertheless: Showing legitimate anger can be a very convincing strategy. So pleas stop the tone argument. We’ve had this discussion since the Scienceblogs days.
If it’s acceptable for someone to say grow the f*ck up in his very response, it’s absolutely acceptable for me to call them on it. Personally, I’d like to see fewer jerks on this particular comment board, because discussions tend to work better that way.
Bart, #3
In all seriousness though, since you put it like that, it means you have a list of tasks in mind that atheists/atheism movement should be focusing on while putting human rights of oppressed minorities on the back burner (for some reason not yet explained). I’m curious what those tasks are.
Derek, #25
True. I think that could have been worded better.
If you’re an atheist who says religion is bad in part because it mistreats women and LGBT people (which most atheists have no problem saying), then you need to be opposing non-religious misogyny and anti-LGBT as well. And you definitely shouldn’t be taking a part in it.
and that response was not condescending at all…nosiree.
hey! we agree!
don’t be so sure. Religion has been the tool of authoritarians for perhaps… ever.
if it went away? hard to think of something that would act as such a cohesive glue, and also have the ability to righteously discriminate against the “other”.
think about how religion is used, even now, to control dialogue in the united states.
Who is Donald meeting with in order to garner political support?
yeah, you guessed it… the likes of Pat Roberston, and the rest of the religious conmen.
it’s a VERY powerful tool. nothing else even comes close.
…it’s like saying:
“Without guns, there would still be murder.”
sure there would, but that rather ignores that guns have rather accelerated the entire concept of killing orders of magnitude, more than any other tool ever invented.
*stares*
Pardon me, I seem to have accidentally stepped in a thread from 2008.
*luxuriates in it for a moment*
Ok, carry on.
Yawn, nothing like the smell of tone policing in the morning.
It is, and it’s absolutely acceptable for me to call you on that.
You’re basically telling Ichthyic not to express his anger.
Again, this is an old discussion. Please stop it.
Interestingly Raw Story (or Disqus) have closed comments on this story – after only 15 pretty mild posts.
I suspect that the Harris Fanboiz have been out in force on this.
My Disqus tag is Playonwords.
that IS rather interesting. I have seen RS comment threads go on for over a thousand comments before.
… and as a nod to Derek…
RS is one of only two blogs I have ever been tossed from for arguing with a moderator, so if you want to avoid me specifically, feel free to spend time there.
The other was Jerry Coyne’s “website”, which for sure has more “civil” discourse than here… at least, on the surface (though the backbiting and irrationality runs deeper there as well), which appears to be what you care about, so yeah… there’s another place you can avoid lil’ ol’ condescending me. Feel free to ask him about the value of zoos while you’re there.
see? choices!!
@Bart B. Van Bockstaele
I think you might have a hard time getting people to accept that the officials they elected to pass laws that single out and oppress gay people are common criminals for passing laws that single out and oppress trans people. I mean, maybe you’ll get them to accept that they’re criminals for shifting their focus away from gay people, but I’m not sure that’s the approach we’d want to be taking.
In one very slight way, you have a point – it isn’t reasonable to expect someone who is tackling one issue to take on everything. You cannot expect someone to normalise atheism while fighting against racism, and working to eliminate the various wage gaps, and bringing an end to child poverty, and promoting greener industries, and eliminating puppy farms, and……. That is entirely true.
Fortunately, the atheist movement isn’t one person – it isn’t even one movement. It’s a loose, and, at this point, fairly fractured coalition of groups and individuals. If I, as an atheist, feminist, socialist, etc. choose to dedicate my free time and energy to working at my local animal shelter, for example, that doesn’t actually detract from your efforts to make atheism mainstream; and although I’m not particularly driven to do that myself, I can still lean in while you’re doing it and say, “yeah!” I can still make my voice heard in support of other causes, while I put the bulk of my effort into something else. In this way, with mutually supportive specialist groups, the movement can tackle multiple issues and still maintain mastery of the skills required to take each one on.
If your goal is to make a significant majority of the world recognise the silliness of religion and openly identify as atheists, cool, I can support that… I don’t think it’s ever likely to happen, and I’m kind of ambivalent over whether I personally actually care too much about it at this point, but I can see the value of it and support the goal. But if you’re actually saying that the rest of us can’t tackle other issues until yours is done? Well… no. Sorry, but you’re on your own there as far as I’m concerned, because I don’t think that making the dominant attitude toward religion be an atheistic one is a goal whose worth justifies dropping all others. I mean, what’s the point of spending the next 50 or so years convincing half the world that religions are false if, at the end of it, there’s still petty obstructionism getting in the way of equal marriage, we have genital checkpoints at every bathroom door, children around the world are still growing up in poverty and on the streets, and kids are still getting murdered by gangs that call themselves “the police” for having dark skin?
I’m an atheist, and atheism matters to me on a number of levels, but if I’m forced to choose between promoting a world that rejects gods or a world that rejects injustice, I don’t even have to think about it.
Derek, the point being, religion reinforces thoses values. His post didn’t say removing religion will cure the word of racists & homophobes. Stop being pedantic.
I really hate the idea of an “Atheist Movement.” I think that’s the wrong way to think about it. The idea of a movement evokes connotations of a top-down authoritarian structure, with a leadership and a specific end-goal. It also seems to attract the authoritarian follower type, for whom the tribal identity as part of a top-down hierarchical movement is the primary motivation for their participation. If this is the starting point, then it would seem like the ancillary issues are diluting the main purpose of the association.
But that approach is wrong.
It is really more of a community where one participates if one is predisposed to think logically about the world. The points raised in the Raw Story piece, about members of the atheist community not being able to separate their choice of a life of reason from statuses that are ascribed from birth underscores this.
QFT
I hear this a lot, but I’m really unfamiliar with that particular connotation. Generally, I hear it in reference to, say “the art deco movement” or in broad terms like “the social justice movement”, neither of which have a rigid structure or leadership.
Also, to add onto @38
I was recently in the position of having to pick a christian lgbt group over my local atheist group, because they’re ~skeptical~ towards transgenderism. So, y’know.
communities can form movements.
seems more an issue of semantics to me.
I agree with limiting the power of authoritarians though… invite along.. but never give them the reins. never ends well.
http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2939
I imagine Myers is pretty much only seeing the concerted efforts of the worst of the worst, but that doesn’t really reduce the sting, eh.
From diversity comes strength. With a multiplicity of viewpoints, we can perceive the whole elephant.
@Vivec
I’m thinking in terms of the Civil Rights movement, or the Feminist movement. While these are benign examples, they did indeed have recognizable leadership, if not the authoritarian followers. Any one of use could probably, easily name two important leaders from each of those.
Or less benign examples: the white supremacist/nationalist movement, the 3%-ers, the “oath” keepers, and even the Bundy gang of morons.
And even art deco has Erte.
But atheism is different, because it has an attractive smarter-than-the-unwashed-masses intellectual foundation, it has a potential to attract those that feel marginalized and need to bolster their self-identity with association in a movement.
It’s the same mindset that requires dear little Teddy Beale to associate himself with Mensa.
But the dedication to reason inevitably intersects with other concerns that aren’t strictly about striking god from the public square. The idea of a community is more inclusive, since it acknowledges that there are ancillary issues that need to be addressed in order to fulfill the ideal that a reason-based existence promises.
carlie #33
Shouldn’t there be porcupines?
Which, I believe, would be a huge stretch of the word “leader” to mean what I’d consider “Prominent activists”
Belonging to the civil rights movement didn’t mean that you’re obligated to follow some hierarchy of leadership where each activist can give orders to the ones lower in rank. It’s just a cluster of people, some of whom are more prominent or contribute interesting frameworks and ideas.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was a leader in the civil rights movement, not an activist. Leadership organizes and provides a focus for people to act and accomplish stated goals, which is what the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts put in place legislatively with respect to civil rights. In atheism, formal groups like the Freedom From Religion Foundation have been working within the legal system to ensure that government doesn’t improperly promote Christianity. So while there are plenty of atheists talking about various things here there and everywhere, there’s no substitution for organization and action.
and sideways oriented rusty knives?
can you clarify what you mean by that?
he was tossed in jail… for being an activist, for example.
he was on the front lines of protests constantly.
if anything, he seems both a leader AND an activist.
Right, but that seems to be conflating two different uses of the word Leader, then. There’s no single “civil rights hierarchy” where MLK is at the top and he passes orders down a chain of command, it’s a network of groups and individuals, some of which cluster around particularly outspoken activists. Sure, he was a leader inasmuch as he led and took part in organizing efforts, but he did not have any authority the way @47 seems to be implying.
Ah yes, add a Leica and the immersive experience will be complete. :)
Honestly, I fear for a world that would be full of atheism without social justice right at its side. I’d rather the world not fall entirely into a Randian dystopia, thank you. Too many revolutions have focused only on tearing down an edifice without thinking about what to replace it with. My first, largest looming question once I became an atheist was “But what will guide my moral compass now?” I really appreciated there being good answers available when I searched for it.
Atheism is a movement like physics is a movement. Atheism is a tentative answer to a scientific question. Nothing more. If it could be shown that gravity depends in part or in its entirety on – say – the sex of the experimenter, that would be a significant finding, and it would change the nature of physics. If the existence of deities would depend on – say – the skin colour of the person studying them, that would be equally significant.
Now, just as there can be organisations of physicists, there can be organisations of atheists. Both could include or exclude
people with or without clitorises/hair/IQs/skin pigmentation or whatever, but none of these inclusions/exclusions would change the nature of gravity or the existence of deities.
I disagree.
No it’s not. If you call advocating social justice “atheistic”, you are saying that religious people who advocate social justice are atheistic. I don’t think you could make a credible case for such a dogmatic standpoint.
MLK, Jr. was an organizer who didn’t just lead a national movement, he worked hard to build it, along with many dedicated followers. There were other organization too who made common cause with the NAACP, of course. Scatterings of self-described activists acting independently aren’t able to accomplish as much. For example, Black Lives Matter is definitely a meme, and there has been some local organization happening. Whether or not BLM can become a national movement better able to accomplish something bigger is yet to be seen. Of course BLM has accomplished things locally, to the credit of its local organizers.
I think we’re largely in agreement, I just disagree that a movement necessarily implies some sort of rigid hierarchy of command. If a bunch of people all started doing a particular art style across the world mostly communicated through social media, I’d consider that an art movement. In the way I’m familiar with the word “movement”, it’s more of an up-scaled group centered around a particular meme or idea, without necessarily having any particular leadership.
OK, but I disagree with you, and you are unable to convince me you are right. That is the problem, and you won’t win here.
Bart, you say “I am not in academia, but I care deeply for what is true.” This seems to be a fairly limited form of caring; why is it a valuable thing to promote the truth about the existence of god, but not at least as valuable to promote the truth about assumed differences between people of different sexes or races, or about the nature of gender? You thinkk atheists should be active in spreading one bit of truth, but ignore others that are far more significant to people’s lives.
I mean, at the end of the day, you’re welcome to have your little non-divisive atheist clubs where MRAtheists rub shoulders with each other, but don’t be surprised when people like me are disgusted and walk out, and you don’t get to blame us for your numbers going smaller.
blame me for letting them in (which is twisted enough as it is — these people are so far gone that they can’t imagine this situation occurring without an old white guy being responsible)
It’s not that you let them in that’s pissing them off — it’s that you utterly failed in your ‘duty’ to protect their privilege. That everyone isn’t a randian zero-sum gamer turns out to be a hard concept for some of these people.
it isn’t reasonable to expect someone who is tackling one issue to take on everything.
It’s not unreasonable to expect someone not to make things worse in one area, while they are trying to improve things in another. That’s how a ‘movement’ works – if you’re all going in more or less the same direction then you don’t have to do everything, someone else will (hopefully!) cover it, if that’s where they are interested.
A lot of this reminds me of an old joke my dad used to tell me about two people who decided to assault an alpine road on a tandem bicycle. Of course it was hellish – miles and miles of spinning the pedals as fast and as hard as they could. Finally they got to a summit area and stopped for some water. The person who was in the front said “That was much much much harder than I expected! I thought my heart was going to explode!” and the person on the rear said “You’re not kidding! There were times I had to put the brake on so we didn’t roll backwards!” The atheism ‘movement’s backseat pilots who keep putting on the brakes are the usual suspects (Dawkins, Harris, etc) They don’t really even have to pedal hard – if they just stop putting on the brakes we’ll get there fine without them.
I don’t like to call atheism a “movement” because (I see and respect some of the commenters above that disagree in advance with me…) I see “movement” as something that has leaders who coordinate. By “coordinate” I mean: a bit more than just “we’re all going up that hill there” When I need a word for collective atheism I sometimes call it an “emergent movement” or a “trend” If I’m trying to manipulate my interlocutor I refer to atheism as a “demographic and social trend” implying that time and history is behind it.
@Bart B. Van Bockstaele
Not true. Clearly there is an atheist movement. It even seems to have elected leaders who speak at atheist conventions and whose every word is either infallible or misunderstood. The atheist movement consists of organised collections of people in societies or communities of people on websites. Of course not all atheists are in the atheism movement.
I really do not understand why you dictionary atheists keep reminding us of the definition of atheism. We know what it means. We use it correctly too.
Like theists and physicists, and knitting societies, atheists are a social entity whether you want to talk about atheism as a movement or not. Having non-beliefs infer beliefs, such as the proper teaching of biology in our schools, or how to deal with your theist family. Having beliefs have social consequences. Atheists will react negatively to prayer in public meetings which in turn causes a reaction against them. Marginalised social groups often rely on a church for economic and social support. What happens, if you are in such a group, when you lose your belief? You get marginalised further. Or how about your theist family? You could lose contact with the people you love. Or how about if you are a privileged atheist who thinks that atheism has nothing to do with issues of gender, race, or economics? It doesn’t matter what kind of atheist you are, your non-belief entails positive beliefs that have consequences on you and the world around you.
The point is that atheists are not a monolith. There are many divergent experiences amongst atheists because of their non-belief.
So why can’t movement atheism discuss those wider issues? Why can’t people of colour speak to their experiences as atheists to other atheists? Why can’t they ask for help and support from their fellow atheists? Why keep reminding us of the damn dictionary as if that was a sensible answer to these perfectly reasonable questions.
I see reason for optimism, and I do think that our position in the atheist/skeptic community colors the way that we view an article like this. Many of the blogs and commentators here at FTB were part of the effort to get these issues taken more seriously, and part of the necessary response to defensiveness to changes to the status quo. As a result some of us (atheists/skeptics actively supporting social justice issues within those communities) probably let those experiences affect what we notice about these communities. We probably see the negative and the resistance more easily than we might see the positive and increases in acceptance. It’s a typical way that people process experiences and fair, but important to try to balance when looking for improvement.
But it’s also true that because we actively supported those issues and dealt with push-back that we are also a focus for people were on the other side of that. So there will be more negativity directed to us and people that acted as figureheads during that (in many ways ongoing) situation.
So a little of column A and a little of column B.
@Bart B. Van Bockstaele
It can’t be a confusion because of a consequence of how atheism is used and experienced. What atheism is cannot be separated from how it is (and was) used, why it is (and was) used and who uses (and used) it.
Atheism has always been about social interaction and organization because historically it has been about a response to others. Without religious believers there would be no need to focus, and that need to focus implicitly involved organization with other atheists as a consequence of how we respond to social disagreement in general. Non-believers found allies, formed groups and used groups in responding to religious believers. If not for religious belief atheism would not be useful, and it’s implicitly useful in a social context.
The connection to feminism, gay rights, racism, xenophobia, and other types of social justice comes from multiple sources. One being the fact that the path that many took to atheism involved how religion intersects with bigoted thought with respect to race, deviations from proscribed roles, behaviors and characteristics associated with male and female people. But the most important fact in my mind is that any group of humans doing anything needs to take the quality of the group and it’s interactions seriously. Bad behavior done knowingly or not is relevant. Beliefs that inform actions that cause problems for others is relevant. Other characteristics that lead to problems in how others are treated, thought about and talked about is relevant. Recognizing existing division and conflict and understanding it is important to fixing anything.
Atheism cannot escape this.
@Derek Vandivere
1) Being jerk is not a guaranteed way to get a person to stop being a jerk*.
2) If you take the time to understand why a person is acting in a negative way that you don’t you can’t know if the emotion is justified or not.
3) Being incapable of dealing with an intense negative emotional expression is a weakness** because it leaves you incapable of figuring out if the expression was inappropriate or not.
I don’t necessarily agree that was condensation, but I can assume that it was for argument’s sake. Like any other expression of emotion condescension is information and social as well as individual. It’s role-modeling that a way of seeing or doing things should be considered not only unacceptable, but is something that the other person should have known. Maybe Ichthyic really does have a better way of looking at this.
I agree in this case that the way Bart looks at this is very unrealistic and flies in the face of the reality we live in. While I would not have chosen condescension in this case, I’m not going agree that Ichthyic should not express condescension without a good reason. It’s a perfectly natural human expression with appropriate and inappropriate use. In this social context I feel that the person who has a problem with it should be able to argue why it’s not appropriate.
*I do have a history of being a jerk and it is always for specific reasons that involve role-modeling messages. That is something that is still necessary in today’s world. Maybe in this situation and maybe not, but in general for sure.
**That last one is complex because some people have good reason to be unable to deal with such (let’s say a person who is triggered by something), but they should at least be able to say that they can’t deal because other people have good reason to feel intensely to what they are reacting to. In a social justice context you are dealing with people who routinely get told that they should not react to things in certain ways and when that is a tool the functionally prevents the problem from being dealt with I choose not to care about how people feel about their expression, and I will even support them.
Conversely if a person telling someone else they can’t deal with the intense emotion does so, they need to be able to demonstrate that they will actually be able to have an honest social exchange absent that emotion. Because if someone both can’t deal with the emotion and can’t have an exchange, they are likely part of the problem.
Two observations. First, I think it’s a trifle unfair to toss around “dictionary atheism” as an insult to anyone who isn’t involved in some sort of atheist activism with a social justice slant. I’m pretty sure the overwhelming majority of atheists are simply people who describe themselves as not believing in God, and then there’s a subset of those who get involved in social justice because they think it’s the right thing to do, but never attach it to their atheism (even though, upon greater reflection, they might perceive a greater connectivity between the two). I know a bunch of people who worked in marriage equity campaigns, and who were doubtless atheists, but if you asked them to define their atheism, they’d say “I don’t believe in God”, but working for marriage equity is just something they thought they should do, regardless of when they actually stopped believing in God. Dictionary atheism should be reserved as a categorization for those who come into atheist discussions saying social justice and feminism and LGBT rights have no place here. Of course they do. It’s religion that very nearly forces that conclusion upon us! The fact that these folks bandy social justice about as an insult shows, prima facie, how ethically bankrupt they are. But how 90 percent of decent socially progressive atheists view their atheism probably is with a bit less thoroughness than how movement atheists and visitors to this sort of blog do.
Secondly, and related, it kills me how many bloggers and commenters at the likely suspects (like the Sk*P one — and not Skepchick! — where all the Libertarian atheists who hate women and minorities write blogs entries every three weeks that nobody reads) invariably refer to atheism being “hijacked” (OMG, think 9-11, let’s lock and load!). Any time somebody criticizes Harris or suggests a new policy at a conference or commits the greatest sin of all, mentioning Rebecca Watson or Prof. Meyers, the great hue and cry will belch forth, we’ve been HIJACKED. Why oh why can’t we just stick to bashing Muslims and saying vaccinations are a good idea???
I discovered atheism long before the Unholy Trinity was popular.
I’m also typing this on a Blickensderfer 5.
Seriously, I tuned them all out pretty much immediately.
Hate Islam all you want, but if you don’t recognize that the Christian West is the cause of all the violence in the Islamic world you’re not worth listening to.
anbheal@65:
–>Unfair to toss it around as an insult, okay. But when [any hypothetical] someone stands and declares, “I am an atheist!” what response is appropriate? I can’t imagine anything more than a shrug being correct. “Okay, you don’t believe in god. So what.”
It’s the answer to the “so what” that’s important. It’s fine if some atheists want to spend their time making sure the world is a safe place for atheists. However, a problem seems to arise from a conspicuous number of “dictionary atheists” declaring that being atheist qua atheist is the only righteous thing in the world. They frequently use their atheism in exactly the same way religious people use their religion: as an excuse to shit on nonwhite, non-cis, non-het, non-male, non-able-bodied, etc etc.
“We’re atheists trying to get the world to respect atheists!” they cry. “We don’t have time for the delicate fee-fees of women and brown folks and those weird LGBT people who claim we’re being mean when we’re just talking the way we’ve talked for hundreds of years already.”
There are lots of atheists who respond to their own atheism with a shrug. It’s not an important thing in their life. But they also don’t get into extended arguments on the internet trying to claim that theirs is the One True Atheism, in the way certain “dictionary atheists” do.
Why would anyone do that? Why go beyond a shrug into insisting that their definition of atheism is the ONLY CORRECT ONE?
(I’ll leave that question as an exercise for the reader.)
As Vivec noted @60, we atheists who want atheism to be more than a dictionary definition don’t want to be associated with the “dictionary atheists,” because they are often terrible people.
(Oops, I gave away the answer!)
@66 doctorb
All of it? So the Sunni-Shia conflicts are all due to the Christian West? Sanctioned violence within the legal systems are all due to the Christian West? Arab-Persian conflicts are all due to the Christian West? Islam-Bhuddism conflicts in south east Asia are all due to the Christian West?
Somehow, this seems unlikely. There’s a fair amount of the violence that is at least partially directly due to western action (everything involving Israel comes to mind), and a fair amount more precipitated by the destabilization involved in throwing over leaders, economic violence, the aftermath of direct violence by western nations, etc. The whole portrayal of Islam as some sort of existential threat to “civilization” would be completely laughable if it weren’t for the very real damage being done because of that belief, and it only gets more so when there’s a not insignificant fraction of people whining about Islam as some sort of existential threat while advocating for policies that actually would be existential threats to various Islamic countries. The rhetoric of the people you refer to as the Unholy Trinity regarding Islam is completely detached from anything even approximating reality.
The idea that the entirety of the violence in the Islamic world is caused by the Christian West is similarly inaccurate.
One of those, right here.
As far as I’m concerned, I’m into this community primarily for the social justice stuff. In a mirror universe where PZ was a christian, I’d still prefer him to a Harris or Dawkins, and I’d still be into this community. Hence, my real life preference for LGBT Christians over transphobic atheists.
Bart B. Van Bockstaele@13:
Then you should care that what is true is that countries where the markers of social justice are higher also have a higher incidence of social happiness (and this part’s important) for everyone, or at least a much higher percentage of the population.
Coincidentally (and there is correlation, not necessarily causation), those countries also have a much higher percentage of non-religious, and those who are religious, tend to not hold their religion to be as important as in less civilized places, like the USA.
jefrir@59
Also, what jefrir said.
I get that some issues of social justice might not interest you. Fine, that’s ok (really, I’m not being sarcastic, although I would question your motives). However, stop telling other atheists they aren’t allowed to use athiesm as part of the toolset that is used to promote their idea of social progress just because they are using the same word (atheist/atheism) as you in a different context.
I’m going to ask some serious (as in not snarky, I’d really like to know) questions to Bart (and others here that might agree with his viewpoint:
Why does “incorporating social justice issues into atheism seems to me as ill-advised as a company taking on too many tasks”? We aren’t asking you, Bart, personally to participate in every single social justice issue there is. Why do you feel like you get to tell us what we can or can’t prioritize in our own way? Why do you feel like you are getting dirty by association because our atheism is part of the reason we want to participate in SJ movements?
Gee, the supermarket store is selling ham and eggs.
Too many tasks!
(Sorry, loosing patience)
To clarify my stance: atheism might be a disadvantaged group and I’m always going to come to bat for freedom from religion, but it simply isn’t the primary form of oppression I care about. In my life, most of the stuff I witness is racist cops, LGBT bashers and anti-women violence. Atheist bashing isn’t really a thing I’ve experienced, so while I’m certainly in favor of promoting the rights of atheists, it’s a bonus to me. My primary focus is stuff like race, ethnicity, gender, and orientation.
As such, while I do appreciate a community with such a huge atheist following, I could really take or leave that part as long as the other social-justice stuff is intact. If this community was solely about atheism and ignored any other issues, I’d have almost zero interest.
In just the first few comments here, I can see all the same old problems with atheism and humanism that I’ve seen for 40 years. It’s probably all just academic (which seems to mean that it’s OK to fool yourself..) But once again I’ll try to make clear why I think its important to consider not just that you’re an atheist, but why.
Christians (those that are aware enough to know that atheists and humanists exist) just love to dismiss humanist ethics (if any) as a “holdover” from when atheistic humanists were believers. And apparently they are largely right!
I was told many years ago that I am too enamored with science to understand humanism, which shouldn’t concerned itself with such academic questions. And that, apparently is still right, too.
The religionists agree that social justice couldn’t possibly have anything to do with atheism. Those who give a damn about human rights see it as their territory, and atheists can just butt out because they don’t believe in anything, and human rights requires belief, because they are endowed upon us by our Creator, God Almighty, as both the Bible and the Constitution say (and never mind that the Declaration isn’t the Constitution).
To be clear: Religious believers really think that one of the problems with atheists is that they have no basis upon which to argue that other human beings should be treated any differently than animals, plants, and rocks. And apparently, a good number of atheists agree, but don’t think that it’s a problem. Use them all as you wish, ’cause there ain’t any god out there to object. They actually believe that any sign of empathy and good will shown by an atheist or humanist is because everyone used to be Christian, and some non-believers are still holding onto some of that, or are still unknowingly invested with a moral sense by the presence of the Holy Spirit.
I had a correspondence with Paul Kurtz 30 years ago or so, when he came out with one of his books that listed all the “common decencies” that he said were somehow entailed by humanism (though he never seemed to explain how that was the case). My own opinion was, and still is, that he was playing right into the hands of the believers — he was essentially admitting that he had no idea how being decent to other human beings could be logically justified in the absence of a Holy Law-Giver, so he just poofed his list into existence without god and without justification. He never understood the importance of science, and many (most?) atheists and humanists still don’t.
And they are right! As long as they think their atheism is a simple dictionary rejection of the supernatural because.. well, just because! — then, unless they add a “Plus”, or otherwise whip up a list from nowhere, they have no reason to respect the person standing next to them any more than they would respect a fence-post. (Maybe the fence-post deserves more respect since it may help keep out the furriners, only some of whom may be decent people…)
That’s just wrong, and tragically so, because it’s a misunderstanding that causes much human grief. Facts are theory laden. Evolution is considered to be a true fact, because it is a robust theory that has a lot of evidence from multiple sources and directions all pointing to its probable truth. The god theory and the supernatural does not qualify as fact, because there is no reliable evidence in its favor, and the evidence increases every day that it is an unnecessary and failed theory. If the “something” of atheism is not the same as the theory of naturalism, then what right to you have to say that a supernatural God is not a fact?
And what about all that “science” that keeps showing, day after day, experiment after experiment, that the universe and the human experience are not the product of an immaterial mind, but that the material universe is the antecedent of evolved material minds (on Earth as it almost certainly is in the heavens)? How does that work? Does it spring from the individual mind of an English genius who explains how gravity works, except that God still has to correct the movements of the planets with his Holy Hand now and then? Or might it also be helped along by that weird Frenchman who tells his patron that he has no need of that hypothesis? How about the Jewish patent clerk who daydreams about the nature of space-time and then explains it mathematically? Or the large groups of scientists of diverse race, ethnicity, sex, orientation and even beliefs, who, all working together, finally detect the particle that helps explain physical mass, or detect the gravitational waves from the distant orbits of black holes?
The point is that science is not an object of deification (except in the older sense of “scientism,” back when it was used to describe the likes of Lysencoism and Freudianism as science that had morphed into unchanging dogmas akin to a religion, before that word evolved into an epithet to condemn anyone who wants to take science seriously). Science changes and adapts, deriving its power from the minds of any and all human beings who wish to contribute. Or, rather, that is what it should be, and what it strives to be. Science is ideas, plus work. And the recognition of the equal initial value of the ideas, and the equal rights of the people who are the source of those ideas, and who do the work necessary to falsify them or to establish their probable truth, is a requirement for the long-term success of the common intellectual enterprise of science. Excluding certain people won’t affect the real-world truth of gravity, but it surely can, has, does, and will change the likelihood that our scientific story will ever come close to describing it.
Science is the best source of probable truth because it is the product of a community committed to an ethic in which its members strive to avoid fooling themselves. It cannot thrive if it fools itself into thinking that it can limit that community to one sex, one race, one religion, one sexual orientation, or one set of physical abilities. And if science cannot thrive, then atheism loses its justification and becomes just another metaphysical assertion.
The recognition of the existence of human rights, what we call “social justice,” is a part of scientific naturalistic atheism, (or what I call “scientism” in defiance of the nonsense about that subject spread by certain philosophers). Its virtue, as with everything in science, lies in the fact (provisional as always) that it is a true fact of our human situation; that the recognition of that fact is supportive of the common goals of increasing the understanding of the human situation and improving the human condition through that increasing understanding; and that it is also supportive of the continuation of science itself and the society that supports it. It is as robust (and as controversial) as, for example, the facts of evolution and of global warming.
But as long as atheistic humanism continues to be mired in the exercise of building laundry-lists of those who qualify to join the club, those religionists who hold similar lists will be justified in congratulating the humanists on their ability to recall the “common decencies” that originated in their own supernatural laundry lists; and others, joined by far too many atheists, united in their disdain for any decencies, will continue to dismiss all of those lists and continue their quest to find someone they can still dehumanize and exclude, whether on a whim or the Will of God.
anbheal:
Is anyone doing that? If any, does it happen a lot?
Let’s make this a little clearer first. What do you mean by saying they are “simply” people who self-describe that way? Is it the case that the overwhelming majority don’t describe themselves in any other way? Obviously not: every person I’ve ever encountered describes themselves in multiple ways. So if that’s not what the word “simply” is supposed to do here, then what does it do? I suppose it’s more or less that they “simply” do that, in the sense that they do not do some specific other sort of thing over and above that. Presumably, your claim is that the overwhelming majority are not doing the specific sort of thing described here:
But I doubt that’s correct…. Do you have any actual statistical evidence about the proportions of atheists who say moral positions (any or all moral positions) have no important place in “atheist discussions,” — that is, I guess, discussions about atheism, atheists, religions, religious beliefs/practices, and so forth? I don’t have that sort of evidence.
But maybe we can improve on the formulation a little bit, so that we won’t bother to try to get evidence about something that isn’t very clearly articulated in the first place. To me it looks like there are quite a few who think there is some principled reason why we should make a sharp distinction about the fact that gods don’t exist on the one hand, and on the other hand any (moral or non-moral) conclusions which may follow from that fact. (Whatever they are according to those who claim there can be implications like that, obviously not those who’d want to rule it out as impossible.)
Even a fairly significant (or at least vocal) group of people who argue against “dictionary atheists” would claim that atheism, as such, is strictly and only about the former and not those things which may (or may not) follow from it. Probably there are lots of different causes of that, but I won’t delve into those here. In any case, instead of arguing on the grounds that dictionary atheism is a false/confused mess of an ideology, they criticize it for various other reasons or in various other ways, like saying that they care more about certain moral/social issues than those pertaining to ontology or epistemology. If they had to pick, as they say, they would rather “side” with a progressive theist than a regressive atheist when it comes to those moral/social issues, but presumably nothing about this line of thought has changed their minds about the nonexistence of gods (or if it did, it shouldn’t have). I wouldn’t really blame them for expressing that view, but it does look like it’s implicitly agreeing with dictionary atheists about the point they’re attempting to make. Or at best it’s changing the subject — to what they’d rather do, who they’d rather have a beer with, what their priorities are, where in fact they stand on certain moral/social issues, etc. — as opposed to what atheism is about and what sorts things you should conclude if atheism is true.
So, the point for now is just that if took this thread (and other such threads) as your sample, I don’t think you’d actually see the overwhelming majority taking up that particular sort of position. Whether or not it’s the right one to have, it doesn’t seem especially popular.
One of these days, it’ll be possible for someone to mention that freaky, unscientific, and entirely non-taking-science-seriously-and-treating-it-with-respect deification of science without someone needed to defend the drive to take science seriously, as if passing criticism of one implied a rejection of the other….
I once had a discussion pressed on me by a guy who wanted to prove that people of colour in general, but specifically black people, were inferior to white people. He had charts, and he had graphs. He even had a flow chart that proved that adopting progressivism lead to accepting paedophilia and bestiality. He had so much SCIENCE that you could barely breathe for it. But he had no science. No useful data. No methodology. No citations. Just glurge. I don’t think that needs to be defended, and I don’t criticism of it should drive anyone to defend actual science.
@rietpluim, 71
Try aisle 12, about half way down. But double check what you’re picking up, because they stock it right next to the ennui.
Maybe an analogy will be helpful.
Imagine there’s a group of people who believe F=ma is true. But they either believe nothing follows from it, or they believe that anything which might appear to follow from it is false. If there is anything else that somebody should rightly conclude about the world given the fact that F=ma, then people in this group don’t believe any of it. They just know the one fact (let’s imagine they’re right about it) and nothing else. If it makes you happy, imagine that they’re all exactly like Jon Snow, with the exception of that one highly-specific thing that they do know.
Now imagine a group of people who believe all of the real-world implications of F=ma. But for whatever crazy reason you want, however they managed to find themselves in this condition, they don’t believe F=ma itself. They just so happen to have an enormous variety of other beliefs which all happen to derive from it, without actually and personally believing in the specific claim that F=ma itself. They don’t know how to connect the dots, they don’t know that it’s something they could do, they don’t care enough to try to do it, or who knows what — it doesn’t matter what.
Suppose we come up with a name for a certain ideology, “watheism,” and we’re going to say it’s about agreeing with the claim that “F=ma is true,” in its entirety and in the fullest sense of the words.
Which of those two groups of people are “watheists” or subscribe to the ideology of “watheism”? The first group? The second? Both? Neither? How is a decision like that supposed to be made? Which one sounds like it’s going to have more correct beliefs about the real world, if the core claim is itself correct about the real world? Do you think the real world cares about whether or how we’ve decided to conceptually isolate one claim from all others?
If we have some actual group of human beings in some more realistic circumstances than the ones I just described, why wouldn’t you say “watheism” (or I guess any idea or set of ideas coherent enough to be called an ideological framework) is really about the whole collection? Not just the “core” claims, not just the “peripheral” claims, but in actual fact all of them together. What’s supposed to be the problem with that?
@Bart B. Van Bockstaele: Do you think atheism would be better of with or without women? With or without POCs?
If you want to win the fight against religion, you want numbers.
Most atheists groups are men-only clubs. If we consider only women, you are missing *half* the potential membership.
Do you think it’s important for movement atheism and its success to understand why it is turning away so many potential members?
Also, let’s assume women are just as intelligent as men. (I know, right?)
How much scientific genius are we missing, because we make it harder for them to succeed in academia?
How many Maxwells and Gauss could never contribute to knowledge because they were born without a penis?
One last thing.
Superstition, magical thinking and a vast host of logical fallacies will endure even once religion has been defeated.
I want to understand your core values here.
If I understand you correctly, you value truth above all.
So why pick religion?
There are worse killers of truth. Wars, for example. They are largely based on lies.
What about economic doctrines, being peddled against any shred of evidence only to further the interests of few?
Are these lies smaller? Believed by less people? Of less practical consequence?
In the definition I used, the presence or absence of women is irrelevant, as is the presence or absence of men. If it could be shown to me that the presence or absence of women/men/gays/lesbians/poor/rich/brainless/gifted/legless/three-legged/French/German/Korean/… individuals would make a difference to non-existence of deities, I could certainly be persuaded that I am wrong, but as far as I am aware, one of the beauties of science is that the reality it aims to discover is not dependent on such presence/absence, unless – of course – that’s what is being studied. The outcome of 10 minus 2 is the same for a waiter as for a waitress. Whether or not the two genealogies of Jesus in the New Testament are contradictory or not is not dependent on the absence or presence of males or females, and so on.
All I am saying is that atheism is not sexist, just as mathematics or chemistry is not. People are. People who form organisations are. Atheism itself is sex-neutral.
What are POCs?
I don’t only pick religion. As a matter of fact, my main activity besides translating is studying snake mortality. Bashing religion is just a hobby, a way to relax, since it is such an easy target. I don’t know about you, but for me, there are 24 hours in a day, not 96. I make choices. I make the choices that are appealing and possible to me. Just because there are other options doesn’t mean I have to embrace all of them. I am well aware that choosing is losing, but not choosing at all is losing everything.
And once again, what I choose to do with my time, is irrelevant to what is true.
naw… I’m no longer extending the benefit of the doubt to Bart.
he’s more libertarian than liberal.
I’d as soon see the back of him.
fuck off, Bart.
I’m gonna quote you on that.
I know… you think that’s a good thing.
*snicker*
I’m loving that “brainless/gifted” dichotomy there. Totally not ableist.
I am going to toss my two cents in on this as well, and.. yeah, I agree with the majority here. There is also a damn huge difference between, say, installing seat belts in cars, and actually insisting people use them. The former is a real nice idea, “Heh, lets make sure everyone has this nice safety device in their vehicle!”, and is the exact equivalent of “ending religion” – its worthless if you don’t use the damn seat belt. Just as ending religion is fundamentally worthless, unless you also get people to stop doing all the stupid things that they did, “because of it”.
Yet, there is always some joker, for no sensible reason, who refuses to wear a bike helmet, or actually put on a seat belt, or a hundred other sensible things and who, when the actually problem is pointed out, will say, “Gosh.. I just forgot, I will remember next time, officer!”, in the former case, or, “Heh, they are in the car, but why should I have to use them if I don’t want to?”, in the latter, etc. Why? Got me. I never understood this thinking. So.. End religion… OK, and then what? What exactly did you bloody accomplish by installing the mental seat belts. which are supposed to help with collision with silly god/religion/tradition shaped obstacles in the road, then letting every one on that road *still* go around being a bloody fool anyway? What precisely did you solve by doing this?
Also, imo, mocking religion without promoting humanism is like the exact kind of edgy “lol i posted a sick dawkins quote meme” athiesm that I despise so, congrats on being on the same level as edgy facebook teen atheists I guess?
man I just do not seem to understand what the thing is really. I do not think I have ever understood what the thing is since I was 3 years old!
I guess there were people who complained to MLK that he was a baptist minister and should be talking about Jesus and salvation only and if he wants to talk about civil rights he should leave god and such ideas out of it because religion is only about god belief but there probably were those people in “white churches”
I was much younger than I am older than that now..
the unbelief in god and religion is not new nor is it restricted to the European derived cultures and countries.
In the “West” it seems to be tightly connected to reason for about 500 years anyway. It was reason and questions that helped lead to science. why should we be encouraged to for go reason and rely on unbelief instead when it applies to god ? Are we also encouraged to use that form of faith in other areas also?
Because I see little difference between belief and unbelief from faith as used to define atheism in such a limited fashion
are we not human beings existing in the “world” not some abstract idea existing on some other plane separate from mundane reality.
this thinking has too many inconsistencies for me to make any sense out of it
In deed it makes me feel about 3 years old listening to old people talk about stuff.
uncle frogy
Bart, #78
You fool. It’s obvious when we say “does atheism have a sexism problem” we mean do atheists (organized in real life or loosely organized on the internet) have a sexism problem.
Just like if someone says “science has a sexism problem” they obviously don’t mean gravity and the pancreas have a sexism problem.
@Bart B. Van Bockstaele
What is religion?
@consciousness razor
I really really like that analogy.
It is your right to disagree with me. I disagree with you.
Just because some people choose to pollute the language with confusion is not a good reason to practice it myself. If I believed that, I would say that atheism is “disbelief” instead of “unbelief” as the religionists want. I do not.
To paraphrase “Flower”: You can call me a fool if you want to.
Idk, pretty much everyone here seems to have a pretty easy time understanding that atheism is being used as shorthand. Maybe the problem lies somewhere between you and the keyboard.
@Bart B. Van Bockstaele
No one is polluting language with confusion. We are simply not as obsessed with what we are are not as you are, and we consider a less limited set of facts about language than you do. Like what the concepts represented by words are and do in reality.
That was not a rhetorical question by the way. I really want to know what you think religion is. I want to know what it is that you think you are mocking.
I’m not mocking anything, so I have no answer for you.
I thought I made it pretty clear that I understand that. I just disagree with it. I am sorry if people do not understand what I wrote, but writing is all I can do. I cannot project my thoughts into their brains.
@Bart B. Van Bockstaele
So I imagined this then?
No, I am bashing (as in providing arguments against it) religion, not mocking (as in ridiculing) it.
@Bart B. Van Bockstaele
It can mean both, but I can accept your intent.
Same question. What do you think religion is?
@Bart
So basically you don’t care how effective you are?
I mean, you are not interested in changing the culture, you just want to distract yourself every now and then, right?
It’s interesting because I think there is a connection between the gratuitous assertions about what atheism is not, and what religion probably is independent of anything supernatural. I need to go to bed. I’ll see if the person with many words to spare about atheism has anything to say about what they argue against.
Er…
I’ll see if the person with many words to spare about atheism has anything to say about what they argue against in the morning.
Except that there are large numbers of jokers. I have a special fondness for bikers riding bikes with no lights, no reflectors, no bells, while dressing up in all-black like bank-robbing ninjas with no reflective materials and who then complain about motorists not noticing them. However, they usually have helmet. They don’t seem to (want to) understand that when one needs a helmet, one is already in an accident. Is it really so hard to understand that preventing an accident is better than being in one? Also, what many people don’t seem to understand is that death is not the only possible bad outcome. There are many more.
My best example so far is this one: https://www.flickr.com/photos/bartvb/22529369170/in/album-72157659888594131/
The belief in things one cannot possibly know to be true. Christianity, Hinduism, Homeopathy, Islam, The Secret… I see religion as a subset of quackery.
As Swami Vivekananda pointed out, there are two types of religion. Those with a book, and those without. Those with a book are the most powerful ones.
That power has a weakness: it is far easier to bash a religion with a book than one without, since it is harder for its defenders to claim that their religion is not what the critics say.
I care about how correct I am. Whether or not that is effective in attaining a goal, is less important than whether it is true. It is why I disliked Lawrence Krauss in the past, and why like him better now.
Not quite. I am *interested*. I am just not doing it. I have other priorities. It’s no more complicated than that.
I’m so happy you know what I think. Saves me quite a bit of effort. Keep up the good work. You may even be correct every now and then.
Bart B. Van Bockstaele
Was your first language English?
No.
@Bart: So why do you have time to write after those we care whether or not their effort to change the culture are effective or not? How many posts did you write in this thread alone?
@Scientismist #73
Just a side note, but I’d like to add: I have no idea how being decent to other human beings could be logically justified in the presence of a Holy Law-Giver, and the religious always fail to explain. I mean: how does this Law-Giver come to His laws? How does He know what is right and just? How do we know He doesn’t just make stuff up?
Biblical law is pretty whimsical and the religious don’t even seem to care.
And that’s fine. You seem to have issues with those people who are willing and able to change the culture, though. Who have made it a priority instead of their atheism. If you are allowed to have priorities other than changing the culture, why shouldn’t other people make it their priority, and why should that matter to you? Be happy there are enough atheists to go around tackling many (if not all) the issues. Even the social justice issues.
Poe’s corollary: Without explicit self-identification, it becomes difficult to distinguish between a troll and a libertarian.
Or just a special case of Poe’s Law :/
Whatever
@rietpluim #106: The standard answer is that God is Justice, so His laws are pretty much an emanation of Himself.
Another answer is that God determines directly what is just and what is not, ie He makes stuff up entirely. While for you this is questionable, for many believers it’s a perfectly ok explanation (“I’d rape and pillage if God didn’t forbid it”).
In the end, this is people who find a perfectly respectable idea to defend the righteousness of eternal mass torture.
I am not sure I want to argue rationally with someone that keeping people existing for the sole purpose of inflicting pain on them is just. It’s not a matter of logic, evidence or even ethics: if you can’t see that it is wrong on your own, you fail at compassion.
I’m sick of good people defending something so horrifying.
/rant over
Precisely. To me, atheism is to deities what aphlogistonism is to phlogiston. It does not prevent one from being involved in other things, but it does not require it either. It is unrelated. It is just one of the many things that can be classified under skepticism.
I started to really understand that I am a feminist during a discussion decades ago where my father and one of this brothers “encouraged” me to find a girl and get married, so I would have someone to do my cleaning and cooking and laundry. I was abhorred and my only reaction at the time was that I don’t believe in slavery. I had to leave there, because my father became aggressive. My mother and aunt just looked at each other and said nothing.
I later realised that slavery is actually less bad, since slaves are at least not required to “love” their masters.
To me, feminism and atheism are unrelated. One is possible without the other. Original Buddhism is atheist. However, Buddha wasn’t all that friendly to women. He may or may not have been a women-hater, but he certainly wasn’t much of a defender of equal rights either.
If people want to claim that atheism involves/implies/requires feminism, they are welcome, but they are also wrong.
As for many of the comments here, bashing me for things I did not say, nor imply, is fine. All it shows is insecurity. It reminds me of the sad situation after 9-11 when so many non-white Americans felt the need to continually affirm that they loved America. All it indicated, was that they were afraid, and rightly so.
@Bart – You really insist on not getting it, don’t you? This is not about the dictionary definition of atheism. We all know the dictionary definition of atheism. You’re telling us nothing new. We know that a large number of atheists are misogynists. What we are trying to tell you: that is exactly the fucking problem. So stop lecturing us about things we’ve already learned ages ago, and start responding to what we are actually writing.
Bart B. Van Bockstaele #111:
Thanks, I really think that analogy helps me a lot in understanding the disconnection so many seem to want to make between disbelief in the supernatural and a concern for social justice. One can, I assume, appreciate science enough to be “aphlogistonistic” without ever feeling the need to understand the logic of Lavoisier’s experiments demonstrating the rearrangement of the masses of solids and gasses during combustion. And, similarly, one can be “atheistic” without ever needing to appreciate the role of scientific progress in the withering of supernatural theory and belief, and in the increased acceptance of social diversity. I think that such a disconnection is unfortunate, but yes, it happens.
The difference of opinion, I think, may lie in what we classify as “other things”. To me, it’s impossible to think of phlogiston theory without seeing its rejection as an important step in a lot of “other things” in chemistry and naturalism; and impossible to think of atheism as separate from scientific naturalism, leading to “other things” in social progress. Those without a background in science may see things differently. Hopefully, we may come to understand each other well enough to agree on the relevance of chemistry toward an understanding of carbon dioxide as part of the cause of one set of world problems, and the relevance of atheism and naturalism in understanding traditional religious privilege as part of the cause of another set of problems.
Yeah, I can basically agree with that, with the addition that I want less than nothing to do with non-feminist atheists and would be happy to see their shitty little communities die out. So they’re free to have their dictionary atheist groups, but I’ll be cheering when people don’t attend.
@Vivec
Exactly this. What most of us have written repeatedly. And still Bart is pretending we disagree, and then accusing us of bashing him for things he did not say. Carlie is right: it’s 2008 all over again.
I think at this point he is some sort of obsessive compulsive Vulcan. Don’t dare say the word “blue” around him, unless you mean light at is “exactly” 475nm. lol
But the flipside of that is that atheism qua atheism also does not imply/require/involve misogyny, racism or transphobia. It also doesn’t imply that bigfoot or religious belief are more ‘legitimate’ fields of skeptical inquiry than trickle down economics or traditional beliefs about gender roles.
Which is sort of the crux of the matter.
Nobody here really has a problem if someone, personally, happens to be mostly interested in debunking bigfoot sightings or making fun of transubstantiation. A problem arises only when someone else — who happens to be more personally interested in shining the light of skepticism on, say, sexist portrayals of women in videogames — comes along, and then bigfoot guy has a freakout and declares that topic to be off limits to skepticism (because reasons).
Even more importantly, atheism does not provide an intellectual basis for opposition to anti-harassment policies at conferences and gatherings. And we should all have a problem with people who spout shoddy theories of “scientific racism”, or who think that they have an inalienable right to make people feel unsafe with inappropriate sexual propositions. Not because they’re shitty atheists, but because they’re shitty people.
And yet.. your “solution” to religion seems to be the logical equivalent of arresting the advertisers of snake oil, but allowing people to continue to believe in its effectiveness, such that you have removed one, albeit major, avenue for the noxious product, but have deemed the **actually product** to be of no consequence. Got it…
Why do you think I called it “dictionary atheism”? If you’re using the simplest, most threadbare, least philosophical definition possible, then yes, I agree that you don’t have to be a feminist or a humanist or whatever to be an atheist. That’s not something I ever disagree with.
But if you ignore causes and implications, then atheism just sits there, meaning nothing other than a trivial datum, an opinion that some people hold firmly. It’s uninteresting and not particularly useful.
Also, if you’re going to busily cull out all those irrelevancies and complications that are entangled with atheism to make it “pure”, then the first and most obvious thing you’ve got to remove, the loudest noise in atheism that is not atheism, you’re going to have to ditch science.
I’m going to farther dissect the issues coming up in here. The relevance of asking Bart about what religion is included. Others have already done this (for example Sincere Kirabo), this is my version.
What is in dispute?
That atheism inherently has anything to do with social justice issues, and specifically issues like feminism, LGBTQ rights, racism, xenophobia and similar social justice issues.
What is atheism?
Atheism : The belief status of a person with respect to deities. Literally “not a theist”.
This has consequences because of the objective nature of language as a social phenomena that transmits symbolic information.
Assertion 1: All language necessarily makes social interaction relevant to discussion of language.
Assertion 2: Language is a tool. The real-world use of a screwdriver is implicitly part of the concept of a screwdriver and it is the same with language. So all the ways that the concept of atheism is useful are relevant to atheism, especially how it is inherently used with other words and concepts.
Assertion 3: Concepts have associated sub-concepts. These give the concept it’s functionality. So the concepts associated with atheism are relevant to atheism.
Assertion 4: Atheism cannot exist without people. Because people use atheism, relevant general characteristics of people are relevant to atheism (also implicit within assertion 1 but more broad here).
Claim 1: Atheism has to do with social justice.
Historically the use of atheism has been as a contrast to theism as atheists interact with theists on relevant matters. How many relevant matters? All the relevant matters. Every issue that an atheist has interacted with a theist on where atheism has been relevant is relevant to atheism. Therefore theism is relevant to atheism.
The contrast with theism has been a response to existing beliefs and actions/communications taken by people due to their theism. Without theism atheism is simply not useful. What do apes do with useless tools? They leave them on the ground to decay. Therefore the de facto real-world use of atheism is relevant to atheism.
The interaction between atheists and theists has been in a group context involving groups of atheists and groups of theists. Because theism has been about group characteristics, organization and activity*, group organization has been relevant to the use of atheism. Humans instinctively seek out other humans based on relevant characteristics when they contrast with other humans in ways that cause social tension. Therefore humans forming groups is relevant to atheism.
Historically the theist majority has displayed bigotry towards the atheist minority on many measures of difference between theists and atheists that have been socially convenient to theists in that place and time. Bigoted thought has to do with the nature and use of stereotypes of people, the social narratives that those stereotypes are functionally used within, and the social goals the stereotypes and narratives are meant to achieve. The social goals of bigoted thought overwhelmingly have to do with social conflict and dominance.
Social justice has to do with removing injustices faced by people in society. The effects of bigoted thought are an example of injustices that social justice seeks to remove. Therefore, since atheists have used atheism in the ongoing removal of the effects of bigotry against atheists, atheism has to with social justice.
Claim 2: Atheism has to do with feminism, LGBTQ rights, racism, xenophobia and similar social justice issues.
>The real-world atheism angle.
Theism has been about group characteristics, organization and activity*. With respect to feminism, LGBTQ people, racism and xenophobia theist beliefs (and resulting actions) have directly been used to justify bigotry against those groups. That bigotry has been relevant to the lives of many atheists, and has been relevant in the decision making that has led to some becoming atheists. Therefore the actual real-world social injustices that derive from theist bigotry are relevant to atheism.
>The general nature of human groups angle.
People have needed to form groups as atheists in order to efficiently and effectively use atheism in the pursuit of social justice goals. All human groups need to actively consider the health and well-being of the group in order to maximize the efficiency and effectiveness. Women, LGBTQ people, and non-white people have all been trying to communicate about problems that they have with atheist groups and the behavior of many atheists. These problems intersect with general problems that these people have with religious groups and society at large and have to do with bigotry against these groups. These are social justice issues, therefore social justice related to feminism, LGBTQ rights, racism, xenophobia and similar issues is relevant to atheism.
Many atheist groups have also been trying to figure out how to attract more women, LGBTQ people and non-white people which make this farther related to atheism.
>Or you could just be a decent human being and be willing to learn help out someone else by working to change societies toxic crap in any situation you find yourself.
Claim 3: It is the responsibility of people who oppose social justice related to feminism, LGBTQ rights, racism, xenophobia and similar to demonstrate that there is a threat to atheist groups.
Because all human groups need to consider the general health and well-being of group members the needs of women, LGBTQ people and racial minorities are implicitly part of atheist groups. Because of this it is the responsibility of people opposed to focusing on these needs to demonstrate that the overall health and/or function or the group will be negatively impacted by this, and not just assert it like mere opinion means anything next to something like that.
*This is where my question to Bart comes in.
I’m amazed that the average atheist don’t try to figure out what religion is in a naturalistic sense, and I believe that many atheists avoid this (mostly unconsciously) because the consequences of that on their own beliefs and behavior. Based on my experiences in 1) the intersection of the brain and behavioral sciences and religion, and 2) the general characteristics and function of religion I believe that religion is social psychology. I’m willing to cite whatever anyone wants for this. Currently I’m finding amazing similarities among characteristics of people like me with Tourette’s Syndrome, the demon possessed and the social role of the “sacred clown” and trickster archetype. Specifically the people/social role of the Heyoka of the Lakota has been a big inspiration of how I can (and am/have been) expressing my psychological abilities. (Where cultural appropriation is a concern I would sooner call myself an atheist antichrist than a Heyoka).
Religion is an expression of our instinct to form, characterize, organize, socialize and take actions as groups. Those things are relevant to atheists and atheism as well and in our conflicts with the religious we have been neglecting things that are important for us due to the association with belief in deities. I have seen a great many atheists use ignorant, socially myopic, and flat-out incorrect reasoning and logic as a result of their characteristics as atheists.
I’m now convinced that the common question theists ask of atheists “what are you going to replace religion with?” actually has merit. So now when I see an atheist criticize other atheists (you can also substitute humanist, skeptic…) for trying to change the group in some way, I start wondering just what it is they think religion is because of how it relates to general organization and quality or our groups.
Oh yeah. The funny thing about that claim that someone was condescending earlier? I can imagine few things more condescending than thinking that you need to educate a bunch atheists on what the word means. But it is about avoiding implications and real-world use after all.
Nothing. That’s the point.
I’m inclined to think you’re being deliberately obtuse at this point. A lot of pixels spilled here, and none of them seem to be penetrating. I’m still feeling fresh though, so I’ll give it another go:
We get what you’re saying. We really do. You’re pointing out that the literal definition of atheism, i.e., concluding that “there is no god”, is a terminal node in the chain of reasoning. All by itself, it doesn’t really imply anything else, other than the trivial implication that people who still think there *is* one (or however many) are mistaken about that.
But in a way, that’s exactly what PZ and the rest of us are saying too: All by itself, “there is no god” is just not a very interesting or useful fact.
(Aside: After all, why should it be? It’s only really an interesting question in the first place because of the accumulated weight of tens – if not hundreds – of thousands of years worth of powerful, pervasive social institutions all predicated on the presumption that there IS a god. If our race somehow didn’t have all that history, the whole thing might not be much more than an idle musing to be conceived of and dispensed with over the course of an afternoon: “Hmm, what if there are invisible, omnipotent being(s) who influence and control the universe in a manner completely indistinguishable from the working of natural law? Nah. I suppose that’s a pretty useless hypothesis, and, anyway, probably not.”)
In other words: all of us here have now investigated the little corner in the labyrinth of knowledge labeled ‘THEIST’. We’ve concluded to our satisfaction that what looked — at least to some in the party — like an endless tunnel of new wonders didn’t hold up to close inspection. We dithered for a few millennia at the junction, admiring it from afar. Some were entranced, convinced that they really were wandering down that endlessly branching tunnel. Yet, once a few of us finally reached out and really poked at it, it turned out to be a dead end. Barely more than an alcove, in fact, papered with a thin tapestry of fictional wonders. Rather crudely rendered ones too.
‘THEIST’ clearly isn’t the way to go. Maybe there’s another way. An “A-THEIST” way, if you will, because whichever way we go, it won’t be down the “THEIST” branch again.
The question before us “A-THEIST” travelers is: where to now?
Some of us are saying, well, it sure is boring here now that we know that’s just a blank wall. Let’s turn around, and go use the same successful methods to poke at some of the other passages in here.
But along you come, trying to tell us, no, this is the end of the line. Boring or not, all that really matters is that this ‘god’ passage turned out to be a phony. Now we know it is, and we’re all done. We can’t call ourselves “A-THEIST” if we go poking down passages NOT labeled “THEIST”. That would be silly! The real true “A-THEISTs” have to plunk their tushies down right outside the one labeled “THEIST” for all time.
And yet, I notice you still seem to be rather mobile. You haven’t actually just lain down and fallen asleep yet. You even profess to have beliefs/knowledge about other parts of the labyrinth (congratulations – have a cookie). Your actions don’t really match your words.
So: which is it?
Well then, we agree. I did not expect otherwise, it would not make sense. I think that it must be made crystal clear what atheism is and isn’t. Religionists can have a lot of fun misdefining atheism as just another religion, and that is the confusion I think we should avoid.
Only for the definition of atheism, not for explaining where it comes from. The (non-)existence of a deity is a scientific question, science can therefore not be ditched, since there is a plausible way to explain (a)theism as a consequence of science, or at least skepticism. Can the same be said for – say – LGBT rights? Is there a way to explain atheism as a direct and logical consequence of the fight for LGBT rights (or black rights, women’s rights …)? Or could there be a way to explain the fight for LGBT and other rights as a direct and logical consequence of atheism? I don’t think there is, but maybe I am not seeing it.
I would suggest that these people take a good look around. Something close to half of the North American population claims to still believe in the literal truth of the Bible. Are these bored atheists aware of that fact or does it not interest them?
Religionists are having a tremendously hard time understanding what atheism is. Do these bored atheists really think that replacing atheism with a bunch of non-atheist complications and still calling it atheism is going to make it easier for the religionists to understand the issues?
I am puzzled.
A suggestion to these bored atheists: try to explain to a religionist what the difference is between not believing something and disbelieving something. See how bored you still are.
Bart B:
Been happening on this very blog for many years now.
(Simplest explanation: use trivalent rather than bivalent logic for the truth-value of the belief proposition)
—
PS I noticed your semantic shift; you should have written ‘goddist’ rather than ‘religionist’, since there exist atheistic religionists.
Bart B:
Perhaps you would be less puzzled were you to ponder whether there is any distinction between atheism and movement atheism.
@Bart
At the risk of sounding tetchy, who gives a fuck whether religious people can understand what atheism is? I mean, look, firstly, religious people don’t have any more of a hard time understanding what atheism than non-religious people do. Those who do have problems understanding are usually maintaining the problem themselves. Whether we happen to add support of civil rights to the mix or not, the ability to understand what atheism is relies on two things: 1) someone telling them what atheism is and 2) their being willing to understand. Secondly, NOBODY IS TALKING ABOUT REPLACING ATHEISM WITH “non-atheist complications” HERE. Atheism is atheism is atheism is atheism is atheism. Is atheism. That most of us here are also feminists does not, will not, cannot change that. Nor does/will/can the fact that we think feminism is a good thing that rational people – including atheists – should embrace. It is not a replacement, it is something else that we also are.
Frankly, I’d be more concerned about attempting to understand what you’re arguing against here if I were you, because if we’re to accept your protests that you’re being unfairly misrepresented, and pay attention to the arguments you’re actually making, then… who the hell are you arguing with here?
I do, and I don’t think I’m alone. How can people even consider a position if they don’t understand what it is? That said, thank you very much. I did not get the answer(s) I was hoping for, but your reply is very informative.
I would be more reassured by that, and convinced that further comments from you will actually address the actual point of this actual thread if there was any sign in your comment that you had read beyond the first sentence. Religious people understand atheism just fine. They might not understand how we can not believe in a god, but the concept itself is not a problem for them. Those who don’t understand it have either never been exposed to it before, or they’re being deliberately obtuse.
Bart:
Seems to me you conflate atheism with anti-theism — a similar ontological error to the one I noted @127 — and that’s why you do not apprehend how your approbatory advocacy of anti-theist activism is no less irrelevant to dictionary atheism than is the advocacy of feminism.
(Ought from an is!)
We may not be enlightened as you, O Glorious Knower of Dictionary Definitions, but we’re not completely ignorant. The answer should be self evident.
I would suggest that Bart B. Van Bockstaele – and anyone else who finds it interesting – is free to stand sentry in front of the ‘theist’ passage waving his fingers around to try to snap the remaining zombies out of it. Chewing on the religulous can be a diverting amusement sometimes, I’ll grant you (as anyone even slightly familiar with the history of this blog ought to know).
But the rest of us are also free to go explore some of this wider “A-THEIST” world out here, and we’d appreciate it if you didn’t try to stand in the way. Turns out there’s some pretty important looking stuff to do.
(Also, what John Morales said: Atheism != Anti-theism. Some of your responses do seem to make more sense if one assumes you’re conflating the two. Ironically enough, that’s a confusion I think a lot of religionists have as well!)
@Bart B. Van Bockstaele
1) That’s YOUR point.
2) That is where I’m convinced that we are discovering atheists overlooked something as they worked against the effects of theism and religion, the nature of human social psychology. I can remember the controversy when Sunday assembly or “atheist church” started up in some places. And clearly regular group socialization and celebration is part of human nature.
It’s not entirely our fault because a lot of social psychology is still in it’s infancy and this way of thinking obvious enough with the culture that existed (as far as I know), but I would have thought that we would have been better at dissecting out the useful and even necessary parts of our social processes from the deity and supernatural belief mixed up with it. But on the other hand I have seen a lot of people motivated to neglect a greater social concern in the atheist community for reasons such as economic philosophy and implicit bigotry.
That should say “…way of thinking obvious was not enough with the culture that existed…” above.
They also have no reason to keep upholding prejudices that are ultimately propped up on religious scaffolding. “No God, no God-given morals” also applies to all the immoral things God teaches you.
:bangs head on desk:
Seriously, this is what I am getting from the discussion, in the form of a joke. Bart and a Vulcan enter a bar, and have this conversation:
1. How has your day been going?
2. I can’t say I have been having a particularly good day. If I where to use a common vernacular I might even say that I was feeling a bit blue.
1. Nothing about your dermal coloration would suggest you are turning blue, nor do I comprehend the logic of claiming to feel like a color.
2. I believe you may in fact be mocking me.
So.. Which one is which? lol
At this point, logic would dictate that Bart is not merely unwilling, but fundamentally incapable of comprehending the point.
(btw.. anyone else having time out failures on the first post attempt?)
Bart is now writhing in the dust, sobbing uncontrollably, blinded by the glow of such stellar intellect, and he must ask the burning question: did you figure this all out on your own, or did you get help?
Kind of off topic for this thread, but it did come up, so I’m just going to link to this skepchick article which, I think, makes a decent case that scientism is a thing, a bad thing, and a thing that should not be associated with actual science by people leaping to the defence of actual science whenever it’s commented upon as the utter shitstorm of irrationality that it is.
@Kagehi, 136
Very often. Not all the time, though. I think we have maybe 5 minutes from loading the page to posting before it times out.
(Ok, maybe not 5 minutes… I’m sure I was quicker than that this time.)
@ Athywren Hmm. Interesting… Must be something new then. It wasn’t that way before.
Athywren at 182
Bart B. Van Bockstaele at 183
Wait, I thought Sacred ‘n’ Pure atheism was simply the absence of belief in gods, but here you are all concerned about edumacating non-atheists and bewailing the prevailing atheist overlords for their failure to sufficiently convert outsiders to the cause. Does this mean atheism ought to have an agenda and a purpose after all?
It’s an odd argument because it’s applied so selectively. When we want an unwieldy cudgel to beat back Muslims for our own private reasons, for example, we are eager to explain how and why Islam is dangerous because it can justify, for further example, the oppression of women. I always thought the oppression of women, whatever the cause and however expressed, was mostly a bad and undesirable thing in itself, but if you follow the Pure Atheist argument, the oppression of women itself is a red herring. It would be impure to even comment on the oppression of women. It’s Islam that is wrong. Remove the Islam, and the oppression of women is no longer your concern. Women can go along being oppressed for the rest of their days, provided there is no religion around to sully the quiet, stoic beauty of their ever-lasting oppression.
I can see why this would appeal to incurious, apathetic, bordering-on-anti-intellectual bootstrappers who would rather possess a shallow, sterile certainty than deal with a complex and frustrating real world in which one has to learn things and make mistakes and voice opinions and sometimes get things wrong. Such people make terrible allies and bedfellows. Thank the lard for this and every deep rift.
Pardon me, the comments were 128 and 129. I’ve no idea how I messed that up, but my apologies.
Also, I might add, disinterest in addressing inequality does not signify the lack of a political opinion. It is a political opinion, not tacitly or by default but explicitly and very deliberately. Your atheism was never pure to begin with. There is no vacuum to occupy, no safe space to protect you from the bad feminists, the bullying trans activists, those shrill anti-racists. Atheism Minus is minus in name only. It carries with it a specific ideology with a very long history and its own interesting set of prejudices and dogwhistles and nowhere is that more evident than amongst our Anglophonic Thought Disruptors or whatever and however Maher and Dawkins and Jillette and Gervais and Fry and Harris and co. fashion themselves.