Sigh.
So last night one of the new Genome Sciences grad students held a little get together so everyone in our incoming class could meet each other. Overall it was fun – everyone seemed very nice, and I think we’ll have a good group. Not to mention our host totally impressed everyone with his fancy cooking skills.
But it ended on a sour note for me. My ears perked up when I heard someone mention Richard Dawkins. Thinking I just found a new friend, I happily said I was a fan of his. A couple of the people there quickly started making comments about how much they used to like him when he stuck to biology, but not now that he talks about atheism. I commented that I like all of his stuff, and someone claimed that Dawkins was a militant atheist (said with that particular sort of disdain you probably recognize) and wasn’t any different from religious extremists who go around blowing stuff up.
Wow.
It’s not exactly a new argument. Actually, the reason I was so surprised to hear it was precisely because it’s such an old trope that has been debunked repeatedly. I retorted that “militant” atheists simply disagree with people, not go around murdering or converting people. But it went on and on. It was the standard “You’re an asshole if you say someone’s religious beliefs are wrong” argument.
I asked if they had even read stuff like the God Delusion, since Dawkins really isn’t as aggressive as people make him out to be. They claimed to have done so. I gave up defending Dawkins and instead commented that it can be seen as a “Good cop, Bad cop” approach. Aggression works at reaching some people, and that’s what Dawkins does. Sympathy and diplomacy works better with some people, and other authors do that. But then the discussion just devolved into attacks, with one guy claiming outspoken atheists like Dawkins are only in it for the money, and he’s just some pompous old British guy who can’t even defend his arguments on TV.
Yeah, it was frustrating, to say the least. I just wish I had this comic with me:
After last night, I recognize how spoiled I’ve been the last three years. Pretty much all of my social interaction at Purdue has been through the Society of Non-Theists. Sure, I’m civil and friendly with my classmates and coworkers. But all of my close friends were made through SNT, and I didn’t really hang out with anyone else.
Why? Because I automatically felt comfortable around those people.
I’m not saying I can’t be friends with religious people. Heck, some of the nicest people there last night were the most religious, and the ones debating with me weren’t very religious. But when I walk into a crowd where I know everyone is an atheist, or at least sympathetic toward atheists (like at skeptical events), I can let my guard down.
I don’t have to be prepared to debate and defend myself at any given moment.
I don’t have to awkwardly deal with people assuming I’m religious.
I don’t have to listen to people equating my outspokenness with suicide bombers.
And I don’t have to purposefully hide parts of my life because I’m afraid it’ll alienate people from me. Last night I was sure as hell not going to mention how most of my blogging is about atheism and as aggressive as Dawkins, or that I founded a club for atheist students, or that I was on the board for the Secular Student Alliance. And when someone asked how I had met Richard Dawkins, I didn’t mention how we’re being published together in the same book about atheism. I lied by omission about something I’m incredibly proud about.
Immediately afterward I felt bad for not being true to myself, but these are going to be my coworkers for the next five years. I don’t bring up religion or my atheism in class or at work because I don’t want it to be an issue, just as I try not to bring up politics. But when it is brought up, I’m not the type to stand there and take it. And thus I feel like the odd woman out.
But when I had dinner with the Seattle Atheists on Sunday night? I immediately felt like I was part of the group. I was so comfortable around them – it felt like I had already been their friend for years. The same thing happens whenever I have a blog meetup, or attend a skeptical conference. We may have different political opinions or hobbies, but everyone can sigh in relief at having one awkward wall already broken down.
This post is partially to get how I feel off my chest, since it’s been kind of festering. It’s partially to illustrate why atheist social networks are so important to people. And it’s partially to sympathize with those of you who haven’t been as lucky as me to have all these atheist social networks. I forgot what it was like being the token “militant” atheist in a group. I’ll survive, but it’s just not fun going into social situations on the defensive. Heck, even writing this post makes me a little nervous, since I’m sure some GS people will read it and I don’t want them to take it the wrong way.
Thankfully the Seattle Atheists are having their game night tonight, so I’m looking forward to that more than ever. It’s still a bit ironic, though. People built up me moving to Seattle as my escape to some secular paradise. At least in Indiana I can always assume I’m going to be in the minority. Here, it’s just a little more disappointing when I am.
Sadly, wherever you go atheists are generally in the minority.
I’m quite shocked by this as well….as a UW Genome Scientist, I can safely say that our department has quite the atheist bent. In fact, most of the department went to see Dawkins when he came to speak at UW last fall. The first year you describe is quite the anomaly!
This definitely makes me a feel a bit better…
Wow. That’s just sad. Frankly, I don’t think I ever talked about religion at all in grad school. I avoid the topic assiduously, though my in-laws occasionally bring it up. I never give them a straight answer, just change the subject. With my in-laws keeping the peace is definitely preferable. In your situation I don’t know what I would do. I tend to keep quiet about my atheism in personal conversation, but in the grad office, while religion never came up, having a good intellectual argument was one of my favorite things. Frankly, I often lost. But like I said, we weren’t discussing religion. If they’re not religious though, then I would probably feel pretty comfortable defending Dawkins against the false charge of militancy. That argument is just so absurd. But on the first date, so to speak? I don’t know. Don’t feel too bad about staying quiet, maybe you’ll be more comfortable being vocal later. Plus, these are all new grad students? I expect you’ll find different opinions among the professors and older students. You never know what kind of undergrad experience these people had…
Sorry to hear about that, Jen. We’re in the minority no matter where we go geographically, but generally speaking I’ve found the people of WA’s more populous regions to be more welcoming.
We met at that dinner Sunday, I mentioned everybody in my band is evangelical and my boss is a Christian Scientist? My parents are Jehovah’s Witnesses, and virtually everyone I know is some brand of feel-good christianity. Except the Seattle and Tacoma Atheists. Yup! We’re a minority. HahaI have to shut the hell up about religion or I just get freakin’ gangbanged. One time, my lead singer blindsided me with a yelling rant about how atheism is a religion – literally interrupted me mid-sentence – as I was telling him how I spent my weekend. Of course my weekend had involved hanging out on the set of Ask an Atheist. Another time, I reposted one of Greta Christina’s atheist memes of the day on Facebook and our manager got this 3-page ranting text message about how the sender would never support the band again because they were appalled at what the lead guitarist had said. It was phrased… pretty strongly.It won’t always be this way though. Remember how you’re spearheading that. It’s pretty awesome.
Never…never ceases to amaze me how totally devoid of acceptance of other many “christians” seem to be.
When I discuss Atheism with theists or soft-theists (it sounds like the crowd you were in were more afraid of Atheism than hardcore religious nuts) I smile, I crack some jokes, but I don’t back down. Arguing facts is important, but what wins people over (not immediately, but over time) is the idea that you can live a happy, moral life as an Atheist.That is what I have found useful.Good luck.http://laughinginpurgatory.blo…
You say you are the “token atheist”. However you really don’t know what the others around you believe. You seem to be one of the atheists that feel that they must almost compulsively share their religious beliefs with others who most likely couldn’t care less what they are. They like you have had a lifetime to develop their belief systems and could care less how you feel about their choices. You beliefs are only really important to you. Remember this and you won’t alienate the people around you. Best of luck.The non evangelical atheist.
In the minority? I would estimate that the majority of citizens of over 40 countries in the world identify themselves as non-believers.The non-evangelical atheist.
I don’t mean to be melodramatic though. Everyone I know is awesome, and everyone gets along 95% of the time, and nobody’s throwing angry rants at me every single day. And I also have awesome social networks to hang out with, like you mentioned.Life is good.
Come to Britain! We have cookies. And rampant secularism and godlessness. And the Pope hates us (or at least the atheist ones). :)
Except that I never brought up religion or atheism at this gathering, and they were the ones who started talking bad about atheism, so, uh, yeah. No.
I’m surprised they kept going after you challenged them. People like this tend to back down the moment someone steps up and eloquently opposes them. Then again, they had the support of the crowd, so I guess that counts for something.To be honest, I’m just sitting here smirking at the thought of them discovering your “secret identity” as an outspoken, atheist blogger and public speaker. Picture them covertly passing around printed blog entries and whispering around the water cooler…
You know, I don’t know if I even know any atheists personally. I assume I do, but none of them are compulsively sharing their religious beliefs. I’ve never witnessed that. I’ve seen a lot of Christians who do that, but not one atheist. But maybe I’ve just really never met another atheist?
I think you replied to the wrong post. But that’s an interesting off the top of your head assertion. Polls show, however, that in the United States non-believers are a minority. And assuming your assertion is correct, that still leaves something like 200 countries where the majority are believers.
“You’re an asshole if you say someone’s religious beliefs are wrong” — for what it’s worth, my response would be “What? Why?”I seem to be running into a similar idea over at LessWrong. Apparently there is this meme that challenging beliefs which someone holds to be part of their “identity” is some kind of violation. I can poke at least 2 or 3 large holes in that claim without trying too hard, but before I can do that I have to read a holy crapload of reading on the subject which supposedly will explain why I’m wrong (or which I at least have to understand before I have the right argue any further). I should be done by roughly 2013 at the very latest.
First impressions are hard. I’m going to chalk up the rudeness as maybe a bit unintentional. Perhaps those going at you the hardest knew who you were and were intimidated by you?Regardless, as you said, you’ll be seeing more of these people so give them the benefit of the doubt. Some people tend to get obnoxious when nervous and can’t help it. <3
Never mind alienating people — we’ve urgently got to counter this meme that “verbal criticism” (what “evangelical atheists” do) can in *any way* be equated with religious extremism (blowing people up, shooting people, or threatening other forms of bodily harm).That is a very, very destructive belief, and I will get in anybody’s face about it in a hot second.
Hello all. This seems like as good a time as any to ask for advice, since it is kind of related to your experience above. I’m from the Bahamas and I’m thinking about starting a humanist/secular/freethinkers/etc. group down (over?) here.This is somewhat of a novel concept here, so I need some tips on getting started. I think I know enough people to have an initial meeting and similar groups in other countries have a few tips on what to do (which is mainly to contact them for more information), but I’m mostly torn on what to call ourselves and what areas to focus on.Note that this is a very religious society (e.g. http://scienceblogs.com/pharyn…, so this type of group would be completely off in left field. The problem is how far out in left field do we want to be. The two extremes would be to have a vague, humanist, unitarian church approach or a secular, atheist, religion is the devil approach. In either case, part of the goal would be to counter the influence of the church in society and add a little balance to the preachers and politicians that support things such as marital rape. Bottom line, we would have to balance being less “offensive” with taking a more “militant” approach.Recruiting would be important too. I would consider myself fairly close Jen’s views, as expressed above, but finding more than a handful of like-minded people would be unlikely.Thoughts?
You are part of the group (Gabba gabba! We accept you, we accept you! One of us!). I really enjoyed hanging out with you and the rest of your group. You’re right — one awkward wall broken down does wonders. Glad you had a good introduction to Seattle. :)
It’s always hard having to gloss over or directly hide who you are.
Jen, was the problem that the other students were religious or that they didn’t like Richard Dawkins writing about atheism? One can be atheist and not agree with the way he treats the subject in his writings, the same as one can be Christian and not agree with creationists.On the subject of The God Delusion, having read much of the book, I have a hard time describing it as not “aggressive”. Begin with the preface where Dr. Dawkins suggests that religious belief is a form of psychiatric disorder (p. 5 of the hardback). I will give Dr. Dawkins his measure of Chutzpah, in the very next paragraph he says his intent is that religious readers become atheists. This immediately after telling those same religious readers they are mentally ill. The rest of the book goes on in the same vein, at least what I’ve read. I have as much trouble reading this sort of biased treatment of religion as I did when reading creationist books (just from the other side).I’ll agree the term ‘militant atheist’ doesn’t apply to Dr. Dawkins, though I’d apply the term “fundamentalist”. However, the cartoon isn’t really a fair. You take a generic atheist (with no other identifying beliefs) compared to specific theistic beliefs. In the same way as there isn’t really a generic ‘militant atheist’, I’m not aware of the existence of a ‘militant theist’, meaning somebody who is violent solely on the basis of belief in God or not (with no regard to a specific religion). Instead, there are specific types of militant theists (various extreme Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Jews, etc). In the same way, there are specific types of militant atheists. The obvious example is Communism, since even though termed a political or economic philosophy, atheism is fundamental to communism.
Those can be the worst kind of situations is when you walk into it instead of being involved in first place. I have had my share of arguments in my lifetime on both sides. I used to think the God thing was good but over time I started to see the reality of life so I am on your side of course.
Let us not forget about “militant feminists” or “feminazis.”Though, I will say that there are militant vegans and ecoterrorists that actually deserve their names.
Ahhh, welcome to my life day in and day out in southeast Oklahoma. The intertubes are my escape and connection to sane and sensible people.
You’re funniest when you’re the token atheist!
Almost every part of what you say irritates me greatly, because it’s yet more repetition of more of the kind of long-refuted memes that Jen is posting about.Where’s the inconsistency between (a) describing something as a mental illness and (b) offering a remedy?How is his treatment in any way biased? (I think you misunderstand the meaning of the word “bias”.)Calling Dawkins a “fundamentalist” is arguably accurate, since he advocates “strict adherence to an established set of basic principles” — but that strikes me as a good thing as long as the basic principles in question are rationality and the scientific method. Is there a problem with this?Yes, there is. The problem is that fundamentalism is usually (though not always) religious in nature — so the implication is left hanging that Dawkins is some sort of cult leader, which he isn’t.”I’m not aware of the existence of a ‘militant theist’, meaning somebody who is violent solely on the basis of belief in God…” This is a weird argument.”Militant theist” is a classification which may be further subdivided. A militant Christian is a militant theist; so is a militant Muslim.You only want to take away the broader classification in order to make it more difficult to discuss the broader problem, i.e. religion.Atheism is not fundamental to Communism. I don’t know how you can possibly claim that.
And he called us Nazis, though sadly the Queen didn’t jump up and declare the whole state visit Godwinised at that point.
Hey Jen, I feel horrible that your first experience was to say the least awkward and uncomfortable. I’m sure everyone there was a bit nervous and phrased things in a way that they (hopefully) wouldn’t have normally. Although on a plus side, at least you know now who to kind of avoid. Yes, you have to work with those people, but at least now you know who not to invite to a party. :) Anyway, here’s a *hug.*
You’re in Seattle now? Hallelejuah! <snerk> You should get your folk on 2nite (9/16) — the band will be killer and the caller will be avant-gardish.http://seattledance.org/contra…Seattle: the contra-dance hub of the PNW.</snerk>
We miss you too! I have the same issue because I’m a minority in the new grad students here too.
Wait. They didn’t know who you are? OMG, even my conservative, prison guard son knows who you are. Even my Republican, Rush Limbaugh listening boss knows who you . . okay that’s because I talk about you . . .but still. And you didn’t tell them . . .You have my admiration.
I couldn’t be possible that your blog preceded you? If you think your PHD admission committee didn’t look at your social media your probably wrong. The non-evangelical atheist.
Ha. They don’t know what a militant atheist is. My 14 year old son has been in trouble at school more than once for calling religion “a crutch for weaklings” and calling evangelical Christians “moronic assholes who are too dumb to understand science.” We are – um – trying to teach him the fine art of tact and diplomacy. He loves him some Dawkins though! :)
“And I don’t have to purposefully hide parts of my life because I’m afraid it’ll alienate people from me.””I don’t have to awkwardly deal with people assuming I’m religious.”This sounds reminiscent of a film party I attended. A coworker of mine invited me and everyone else who was there attended the school she graduated from. The Moody Bible Institute. And there I am, the atheist among a crowd of evangelical christians, and none of them knowing. They were all talking about religious stuff or where they are going to preach and whatnot. The most uncomfortable 4 hours ever. My friend now knows I am an atheist and i am sure she can read some of the comments I make on a couple of facebook groups. This is a part of who I am and I refuse to hide it anymore. You also have my admiration.
We did talk about boobquake once someone brought it up. Some people didn’t know what it was, and some didn’t know it was me. But I don’t think many people connect boobquake (a one shot thing) with my blog as a whole, which is mostly about atheism.
I love your blog! I’m from Johnson City, TN and read you every day. Until now, I’ve never commented; but I’d like to share a story with you. Until today, I had never been in your shoes. Even after today, I won’t have totally had the same experience you do, but I think I have now been on “your side” a little bit. I’m a Christian – an Episcopalian to be exact. One of our beliefs (and one of the major reasons I joined this denomination) is that the Bible, although divinely inspired, was written by man; and therefore inherently flawed. I expressed this to one of my classmates, an evangelical Christian, who immediately tried to save my soul. Long story short – after an hour of trying to convince me that the Bible is the perfect word of God, he said, “Just think about what I’ve said today – hopefully I will have changed your mind and I’ll see you in Heaven.” I WAS SO MAD!! As if I had never thought about this before! As if I just stumbled into a denomination in which tradition, scripture, and REASON are the pillars of faith! I had never been on “the other side,” as it were. And from me, I would like to apologize for the negative responses you’ve had from people who share my religion. I used to belong to a Southern Baptist mega-church. One of those churches who had “witnessing field trips,” as I like to call them. I’ve done it – I went through that class, I tried to give the “good news” to people. And now I wish I could find every one of those people and apologize to them for presuming that I was doing them a favor.At any rate, thank you for being an educated, skeptical, reasonable, successful woman. You are one of my role models, and I hope the people you have to study/work with don’t get you discouraged!
You know, that’s weird. I’m from Israel and I’m a (passive) atheist. I don’t know what do you know about Israel, but we don’t really have separation of synagogue and state and it intervenes in our life much more than in many other places – you can’t have a non-religious wedding inside Israel, getting a civic burial is very complicated, there is (practically) no public transportation on Saturdays and holidays, pork is sold in very few shops and etc. And yet, I have not felt the public pressure to defend my beliefs and my way of life. An aggressive religious behavior exists, but on the public level, not on the private level. I wonder if it’s me or if it’s Israel and I would’ve feel differently in US (I am in Canada now, but that’s less of a problem here). I’m sure that partly it is me – I am not pissed off when people greet me with happy religious holidays, for example (and Jews have much more than any other religion), but I wonder to what extent.
“You know, I don’t know if I even know any atheists personally. I assume I do, but none of them are compulsively sharing their religious beliefs. “By “religious beliefs” are you equating Atheism as being a religious belief, as some theist do, or are you saying people you know don’t go around stating their beliefs in either God, Gods or a lack of a supernatural being?
I’m surprised you’re getting this reaction in graduate school. My diagnosis: these people are the first years. They’ve just arrived from someplace where theism was the norm. Over the next few years, most or all of them will get over it. Don’t feel like you really have to hide who you are. In a year or two, they’ll regret their history of theistic brainwashing and envy you. Along those lines, don’t feel like you’ve just got to hang with the first years. You have loads of other graduate student colleagues you can befriend. You’ll probably end up in classes with 2nd years, and you’ll eventually end up in labs with a whole range of folks.
I work for a large multi-national that pretty rabidly protects its employees from discrimination. I don’t have to worry about losing my job for reasons of religion, sexual orientation, race, sex, etc… Outsourcing, however, is a different issue entirely.I know that academia is different, but I have always considered the corporate practice of discouraging discussions regarding social issues in the workplace a sound one. I know you were at a social gathering, but it strikes me as a social gathering in name only, really. Unless one is working in the social work field, there is little place for these topics at work. In the course of being a database administrator it doesn’t matter that I am a severely bipolar female atheist. What matters is that I know what to do when a database server crashes and that I can architect data.I don’t hide those things about myself but I also don’t generally discuss them. People who have worked with me for a while know these things about me, but they aren’t an issue because I don’t make them as issue. I do my job, I go home (well, I work from home, but you know what I mean) and I spend part of my paycheck buying books from Richard Dawkins and supporting atheist causes. Basically, I reserve my activism for my own hours. My employer is paying me to do a job, not be an activist, and although you are paying the university for an education it may be more interesting to watch your fellow candidates change over the time you are stuck there with them. :)
I’m sorry if this irritates you. I’ll just add three comments.1. If I have to like Richard Dawkins writing on religion to be an atheist, then I must not be an atheist.2. If you’ve read The God Delusion and don’t see the one sided nature of the book, nothing I say will make a difference. It’s biased in the same way Fox News is biased to the political right.3. Atheism is fundamental to Communism. Read Marx. Look at every communist nation which has existed. All are either officially atheist or anti-religion in practice. Are you aware of an exception?
I’m going to second “they are just first years”.
You don’t really answer Thomas’ assertion about the unfairness of the cartoon about “militant atheists,” which equates a normal atheist to an extremist Christian and an extremist Muslim. I guarantee you that your average Christian does not go shooting up abortion clinics, nor does your average Muslim a suicide bomber. And if Dawkins’ argument begins with the assertion that all religious people of any stripe have a mental illness, then why should a religious person read any farther than that? I will admit that I have never read Dawkins (nor do I think I ever will, he just doesn’t interest me), so I can’t really judge his arguments, but it just seems counterintuitive to start off what is supposed to be a conversion tactic by insulting your audience (granted, there are a fair amount of people over the course of history who have been converted from one religion to another like that, so it’s got to work on some people at least)
Perhaps what was going on was that these people assume, rightly or wrongly (I’m not familiar with your writings to know), that as an atheist you would think less of them for being religious/spiritual/whatever, and reacted defensively i.e. by attacking atheism as being inherently anti-theism.Another thing is that in the Pacific Northwest, among liberal-minded people at least, there’s a hope that we can all get along, which leads to attacking and vilifying those who assert an opinion which by its nature is divisive. The Seattle Weekly had a column every week called “Ask an Uptight Seattlite” that parodied this mindset, which in its attempt to be as inoffensive and PC as possible leads to vilification of really anyone who holds any viewpoint at all. Sadly, I think it’s been discontinued (I haven’t been in the Seattle area for several months now).I’m sure as people get to know you as a person, and as you get to know them, that your differing beliefs on religion or whatever else will matter less and less (at least hopefully).
I’m a pretty outspoken Atheist and everything. I will argue and defend my position as required. But I sure wish I didn’t have to. I’d like to just relax and be accepted as an Atheist without someone (there’s always someone) who takes it personally and has to argue with me about it. Even people who aren’t necessarily theists seem to think that I’m being ‘militant’ just by identifying as an Atheist (as opposed to Agnostic or something).
boo, those whores. Come to Vancouver BC!
But I really doubt the other PhD students looked her up before even meeting her. I think it was pure chance that this particular topic got brought up on the first meeting. Finding atheists or at least liberal Christians should hopefully be easy in most biology departments.
While Jen might disagree, I think using the words “Humanist” or “non-theist” rather than “atheist” is your best bet for gathering together a large enough group of people to have a workable group.
Richard Dawkins might be too harsh for your taste, but I think we need a “good cop bad cop” approach to deconverting people. We need people like Dawkins to move people from liberal Christianity to atheism and we need calmer friendlier atheists to move people from Fundamentalism to liberal Christianity.Atheism was fundamental to Marx. Yes, this carried over to most Communist nations, but it doesn’t have to be this way. Historically, Latin American Communists were more accepting of religious people. Pope John Paul II was treated as a hero when he came to Communist Cuba.
Atheism is funamental to Marx. It is true that most communist nations adopted atheism but it isn’t fundamental to the ideology. Historically Latin American Communists were much more open to religion. Pope John Paul II was treated as a hero when he came to Communist Cuba.
Why are my comments posting on the bottom of the page instead of being connected to the posts I was specifically pushed the reply button to? Oh well, I hope people can still figure it out.
I don’t think that you understand the cartoon.It isn’t comparing ‘average’ Christians and Muslims to ‘average’ atheists.It is pointing out that to be called ‘militant’, Muslims and Christians take up arms and go killing people.All an atheist has to do to be called ‘militant’ is write a book or a blog saying that there probably isn’t a god and religion appears to be a bad thing.As for The God Delusion, Dawkins is laying out an argument. The title is more about grabbing attention so people will read it. There may be some turned off by the ‘insult’ and not read it. But would they have read it if it was just another bland title on the bookshelf either? As many copies as it has sold, I think despite the implication of the title many people are willing to at least read the argument anyway.Besides, a tactic of pointing out why a belief is silly is an effective strategy. As is often pointed out, many children lose their belief in Santa because of other kids laughing at them for believing such silliness. But Dawkins is a lot more tactful than that.
Depends on where you’re from. Some countries are not as religious as others.
Oh noes! a militant atheist! Quick everybody, stop him before he writes a strident letter!!Oh no..he did, he wrote it! And…and then he blogged about it! and dismissed our treasured beliefs in an invisible sky-fairy as childish!WAAAAAAAA…..
I confirm.In France, when I meet someone of my age (say, between 20 and 30), I assume he is atheist, or at least a non-practising believer. For an example, I had met some French guys saying they are Muslim but drinking lots of alcohol.Very few young people claim their beliefs, I’ve met only a dozen of asserted Christians. And I discovered their belief only because I like talking about religion with people…In summary, the idea of atheists being a minority is quite strange for me. Jen, you know where to search your post-docs! ;)
I would agree that the cartoon is not fair, but for a different reason. Your implied equivalence of (e.g.) communism with a atheism is comparable to the equivalence of boy scout membership with religious belief. Besides, communism is just the economic philosophy that pairs with the political philosophy of socialism. How elemental is atheism to communism/socialism? Well, probably not very, given that “under god” was added to the pledge of allegiance by a christian socialist.That said, I do think that the cartoon uses an obvious double standard. The term “militant atheist” is in fact specifically intended to describe people like Dawkins, Hitchens, etc., i.e. people who fiercely debate the legitimacy of religion, not the casual atheist who just stands around drinking coffee.The militant islamist is shown with an assault rifle and a dynamite belt. The militant christianist is shown in the picture holding a handgun. These are fair pictures, because these are the weapons that these types of militants typically use. However, the militant atheist is shown without any weapon at all, and this is a blatant misrepresentation. He should have been shown standing next to a huge stack of science and history books.
Greetings from down here in Portland. Yes, this is quite uncomfortable. Of course this is hind sight but I think I might perhaps (depending on how I read the general temperament of the room) have assumed a curious stance and launched some gentle questions as to why they felt the way they did (maybe how they formed that particular opinion?). It sort of puts the ball back in their court without appearing “militant”. It’s really too bad that a person has to feel as though they’re on the defensive when it comes to their dis-belief. I wish you good luck with your new group and studies.
I think that YouTube guy Thunderf00t said it best: that groups of people usually define themselves by what they believe, not by what they don’t believe. Calling everyone who doesn’t believe in a god an “atheist” is like calling a christian or a muslim a “non-flying-spaghetti-monster-ist”. That’s why I think being a skeptic, agnostic, or empiricist is patently different from being an atheist. The first three have nothing to proclaim, nothing to evangelize, and nothing to fear from extra-empirical belief. Any proclamation of extra-empirical belief, e.g. “there is a god”, “there is no god”, “there is very likely no god”, “people who believe in a god are irrational”, is evangelism.So what if Dawkins is sometimes an asshole? Some atheists are assholes. Some men are assholes, too. I am a man, but I don’t feel the need to defend them. Jen, you like Dawkins despite his flaws, but that doesn’t mean you have to like his flaws. Maybe admitting that he’s not always the nicest guy (how hard is that to admit?) would put the other side of the conversation at ease.
I’m an atheist with a diagnosis of mental illness.The first thing you should understand, and I have little hope this will ever actually happen, is that when you engage in childish name-calling by insulting someone as mentally ill, you’re not just insulting them; you’re also insulting everyone who is or has been mentally ill themselves. It’s quite analogous to insulting a boy by calling him a “sissy” or a “girl”: it might insult the boy in question, but it’s definitely an insult to actual girls.If religious belief (the normal kind, not the extreme variation which is already recognised as a form of psychosis) is to be described as a mental illness, you’ve got to choose whether you would like to make it a new diagnosis or merely think the entire psychiatric profession is mistaken in not considering it as an example of an existing one.Since the usual approach is not to make a serious argument but merely to discredit those who disagree with you as members of a stigmatised group, I think it’s fair to lump in most rhetoric as essentially arguing that religion is a psychotic delusion: that’s certainly the title of Dawkins’s book (while the English title is ambiguous, as “delusion” is both an informal English word and a psychiatric term, the translations make very clear that the “psychotic” meaning is something Dawkins is okay with having published under his name). If that’s true, antipsychotics should reduce religious belief. They don’t. Neither do antidepressants, nor is religious belief brought about by aluminum in your blood as symptoms of dementia often are.If you think “religious belief” should be a new category of mental illness, you should realise that it’s very unusual: most mental illnesses are recognised by patients as such, if not necessarily while they are incapacitated in the acute phase of a mental health crisis, then before and after such crises: schizophrenic patients in successful treatment usually agree they are mentally ill, that things they might have done while acutely psychotic were nonsensical and potentially harmful, and that their personality is more consistent with the beliefs and actions they exhibit with treatment.The new “religious belief” category is fantastically resistant to virtually all psychiatric treatments, even those which work on very different diseases, such as ECT, and all the objections raised against such discredited psychiatric diagnoses as “reformist delusions” also seem to have validity when applied to religious belief: it’s a well-integrated part of the “patient”‘s belief system that, even to those who disagree with it, does not seem exceptionally harmful; it doesn’t usually dominate the “patient”‘s life to the exclusion of all else; and the “patients” are able to make a coherent legal and medical statement of refusing “treatment” for their condition – indeed, such refusal is universal.It differs in all those things from what is currently understood as mental illness.I could go on, but I think you’re quite capable of thinking about this, and researching it, yourself: the idea of normal religious belief as a mental illness is simply incompatible with modern psychiatry.What Dawkins did in the title of his book, and what others do with a regularity and insistence that I frankly find frightening (searching the posts on pharyngula comes up not just with name-calling, but, even very recently, with an apparently serious attempt to discredit a creationist as “a former mental patient”, as though that were anything but an ad hominem attack), is name-calling. A history of mental illness is massively stigmatised, and that stigma is both perpetuated and abused by people who either cannot be bothered to check whether the title of their publications is offensive rhetoric, or deliberately engage in such.My impression Jen is a laudable exception to this: there’s more to most of her posts than “haha, religious people are crazy”, and this post in particular resonated with me: it’s good to be in company where one’s beliefs, or one’s medical history, are not something that must be kept secret at all costs.
Ah, no, just quoting the guy above me, actually. Probably should have used quotation marks. I would never make that equation. I’m just saying I see religious people who seem to obsessively need to share their religion with everyone, but I’ve never seen an atheist feel the need to tell complete strangers, or even acquaintances and friends that they are non believers. I’m an atheist, and I have no idea if any of my friends or acquaintance are atheists. I have my suspicions, but no one has ever discussed it with me, nor I with them. The only person I know personally that I know is a non believer is my wife, and I know this because I did make sure to discuss it with her when we were dating and getting serious. I’m just saying that the evangelizing atheist is a red herring or a straw man. She may exist, but is very, very rare.
Cuba was declared officially atheist in 1959. Since 1982 or so religion has been tolerated to a larger extent, but then so has private property and private enterprise over the years. So the only openly communist Latin American nation attempted atheism.Nicaragua’s Sandinistas had ties to the Catholic church, but they didn’t declare themselves a communist nation. I’m not aware of another communist nation in Latin America. It’s harder to say about those not in power as communists have often been willing to do or say anything to gain power.
There’s a difference between being an asshole and being unapologetic and passionate. The only time I’ve witnessed Dawkins being an asshole is when some creationists were using dirty tricks to attempt to trick him. Feel free to compare his behaviour to that of Pat Robertson, who not-that-long-ago announced that the people of Haiti deserved the devastation they suffered because the people there made a pact with the devil.
Sorry to say, but you sound defensive. When it comes to talking religion (or lack thereof) patience & a smile will get you a lot farther than defensive, aggressive comments. I am an atheist, but I do not actively seek out other atheists. For one, I don’t have a problem mixing with others who believe differently, so long as we respect one another’s beliefs or do not discuss it in the first place. An atheist social network can be similar to organized religion, in my opinion.For me, atheism means that not only do I not believe in god, but also the lack of anything concerning god, or religion in my life. 99 percent of the time I don’t even think about it. It don’t want anything even remotely concerning faith, belief, or religion encroaching upon my life.You fiercely defended your choices, but did you even listen to theirs? No, you felt the desire to be with (for lack of a better term) your own kind. You’re not better than a so-called Christian who obstinately defends his beliefs, attacks those he doesn’t agree with, and only wants to be with his own kind.As for myself, I strive to not sink to their level but rather rise above it. No obstinate, angry arguements from me. I refuse to engage people that want that kind of reaction. If it comes up, I calmly state that I am indeed an atheist & then change the subject. I won’t hide who I am but won’t argue about it either. If I can’t have a respectful, rational discussion about it, I will not discuss it, period.I’ve tried it your way, but I’ve found mine leads to a lot less frustration & stress.
being the token anything is never fun.
i’m gonna jump in unread and say: over time, it gets easier, grrl. i’m that “angry, militant” atheist that gives all yall a bad name, and you know? it’s not so hard out here. i’ve lived in fundie backwaters and urban ghettos and college enclaves and suburban hellholes and the truth is, the less you care about what they think, the easier it is for you. technically we are a minority, but a quickly growing one. never forget that.i routinely shock blue hairs and “moderate” believers with my “crass” tone. meh. i have to tolerate casual homophobia and racism in my daily interaction with culture and society, and nobody is crying about that. so my “militant” atheism is kind of like my “militant” use of deodorant. i’m going to use it. if that makes you cry, i guess i care about that as much as when my 4yo niece cries that she isn’t ready to take a nap. like religion itself, the idea that “we must show respect for religion and religious belief” is a canard. it’s not based on any important fact. dissing religion will get you in trouble, sometimes. if you’re gunning for a Darwin award, pissing off believers with guns, for example, is a good way to go there. still, there’s very little i won’t say in public about my opinions of religion or my analysis of the logic of atheism. mostly, believers sputter and flap their lips, but the world doesn’t end when that happens. i usually even make new friends by being an “out” atheist, at parties with lots of strangers watching me and some believing fool go at it, with volume. bring it on, bitches. i am the Life of the Party, and always have been. your sky fairy tales just make you look yesterday.
You’re assuming that saying that someone has a mental illness is meant as an insult, and that’s not (necessarily) the case; surely the point is that rather than treating believers as being irredeemably something ‘other’ than us, we should treat them the way we do people with an illness – as people, just like us, but suffering from a pathological condition that they should be helped to overcome.
Any proclamation of extra-empirical belief, e.g. “there is a god”, “there is no god”, “there is very likely no god”, “people who believe in a god are irrational”, is evangelism.no. it’s not “evangelism.” that has to do with religious belief. when i say “there is no god,” what i’m saying in detail is a long and well-supported argument about the value of science over superstition, the history of religious ideas and ideology, and the what truth is revealed from study like archaeology and geology and astronomy. just like i don’t want to deal with believers on my doorstep, some people don’t want to read or hear words like mine, doesn’t make me and the thumpers the same. speaking about reality and truth =/= speaking about stuff some people made up and some other people want to treat as if it’s real. believers can’t even agree on what the word “god” means. atheists, otoh, can agree on what the words “grifter” and “opportunist” and “fear of the dark” mean.
I’m not really sure that you can’t be a communist and believe in God as well. You might not be a “pure” communist, but few are pure anything. The “communist” nations are in no way purely communist either, after all. I do agree with the first two points — the very TITLE of the book cited is inflammatory. It is a “delusion.” It is a bit much to expect the general person to take that in a neutral way. It reminds me of a recent talk by an atheist “don’t be a dick.” In fact, it reminds me of a recent talk posted by our very own webmistress right here! Calling the other side “deluded” didn’t seem to match the spirit of her advice to atheist activists.
Don’t comprimise yourself. I’ve started telling people I’m an atheist whenever it comes up, when I used to keep it to myself. Noone’s gotten out their pitchforks yet and I feel much better. I would totally have bragged about being in a book with Dawkins, even an uber-Christian could appreciate the awesomeness of being published alongside a such a superstar. Also, you don’t know who else feels the same as you and is afraid to come out.
Careful with this. Advocating that atheists should help people overcome religion is dangerously close to evangelism, and we’re repeatedly told atheist evangelists are rare to nonexistent.
I’d say you can have a communist who believes in God in the same way you can have a non-theistic Christian (they exist, see John Shelby Spong, a retired Episcopal bishop). However, Communism as described by Marx and expanded/practiced by Lenin, Mao, etc. is intrinsically atheist.
1. No, you don’t have to like DawkinsOnReligion to be an atheist. I should think that would be obvious.2. If you can’t explain to me how the book is one-sided, then I don’t think you really have a case that this is true. (I can explain to you how Fox News is one-sided, if you need an example of the kind of argument you need to make in order to establish your claim.)3. Just because many communistic nations have also been officially atheistic does not mean that communism itself is atheistic. If you need an actual counter-example, there is at least one religious sect I could point to that “holds all possessions in common”, which *is* the essence of communism.
Before we totally jumped the religious wagon in the late 1990s, my family spent the better part of a decade as pagans (after being Mormon for a decade and being sort of New Age Protestant after being raised Catholic. . .I’m kind of a grazer of philosophy or something). Ah, the stories I can tell about being a pagan in conservative rural Colorado . . . like my son getting suspended for a week for saying, “one nation under Goddess.” LOL I’m probably lucky I didn’t start being openly atheist until I started to homeschool.
P.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C… – in case you didn’t see my P.S. on the other thread
I remember my reaction when I first saw the title: YES!!! FINALLY someone is saying this!
Nonsense; there are loads of atheist evangelists — Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, and Dennett among them. Also Myers, McCreight, Christina, Hunter… not at all a rare breed, though there’s always room for more. (Where “evangelism” is used in the sense of “enthusiastic promotion of an idea”.)It’s terms like “atheist bigotry”, “atheist intolerance”, and “atheist supremacy” that are more objectionable. “Atheist fundamentalism” I’ve already discussed (it’s possible, but carries implications that are self-contradictory).
If we avoid talking with our co-workers and people we do business with, that limits the options for interpersonal dialogue.The more we do that, the more we leave it up to TV to do our communicating for us… and I think that is a lot of what has gotten us into the mess we are in today.I would like to cast a vote in the opposite direction: everyone should have a web page where they state (and defend) their views on as many political issues as possible.
It’s a little bit like having to defend your right not to ritually bang your head on a concrete wall every day. It should be understood that the default is *not* to do this, and there really shouldn’t be anything shocking or even surprising in the suggestion that not doing it is better for your mental health than doing it.
I am bi-polar. I agree with anyone who says religion is a form of mental illness. About a decade and a half ago, I got lithium. I became atheist in a few short weeks. Before that I spent about 30 years bouncing from religion to religion. In all that time, I never met a truly sane religious person.
…except I still have yet to hear any of those “Dawkins is harsh!” claims actually backed up by a quote showing how harsh and mean he is.And I am on a meme-killing spree: atheism is not fundamental to communism. Sharing all property in common, and not having any personal possessions, is fundamental to communism. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C…
When the subject of “atheist evangelism” comes up, I tend to embrace the less-loaded meaning of “enthusiastic promotion of an idea” — in which case I am an atheist evangelist, hallelujah — would you like to buy a copy of this book with all blank pages?If you take the more literal definition — “1: to preach the gospel to, 2: to convert to Christianity” (m-w.com), then it’s clearly self-contradictory. There is no “gospel” of atheism because atheism denies the very idea of unquestionable “gospel” truths.
P.S. This suggests a fundraising idea for Freethought groups: a book elaborately emblazoned with “Atheist Bible” or “The Gospel of St. Athe (patron saint of Atheism)” or “What Atheists Believe to Be Incontrovertibly, Unquestionably True” or “The Fundamentals of Atheism” — and of course it would be one of those journal-type books with all blank pages… perhaps liberally salted with good atheism and rationality quotes…
I was getting all ready to get in your face (TM) about saying the cartoon was unfair, and then I got to the punchline…You’re right: it represents the atheist as utterly weaponless and inoffensive, when in fact atheists have been known to brutally massacre precious and firmly-held beliefs by lobbing facts at them — facts typically obtained from books and other weapons of mass destruction.Obviously the only reasonable way to keep the peace is to ban all books, especially those containing facts.
I realized the first bit of what you said the next morning after I had posted the above. It is a completely unfair reaction.As I mention in a post below, I think what it is is believers (fairly liberal ones too, as the conservatives probably just think atheists are evil/going to hell, so their opinions don’t matter) worrying that their atheist friends/acquaintances will think that they are stupid for their beliefs, and so they act defensive/rude toward said atheists as a sort of preemptive strike. I know I’ve done it in the past, and I try to avoid doing it. Hopefully in the future our religious choices will truly matter only to ourselves, and no one else
Ok, switch to Marxism, which is fundamentally atheist and which is the basis (modified by Lenin, Mao, etc) for real Communist nations.I don’t understand why dissociating atheism from Communism is such a major issue. Every Christian I know is willing to admit that a lot of nasty things have been (and are still being) done in the name of Christianity. Why is there a problem with belief systems which are atheist at heart which have done nasty things? The plain, scientific, rational atheist discussed here is not violent, but other types of atheists are.
I think I’m going to call this style of argument “throwing acorns”. The pattern goes like this:A brings up a subject (e.g. atheism)B makes irrelevant but false claim about the subjectA refutes the claimB says “why do you care if [false claim] is false, if it’s irrelevant?”The analogy is:A tries to start serious discussion.B throws acorn at A.A: “Stop throwing acorns at me!”B: “Why? It’s not like I’m hurting you or anything. Is your thinking so unfocused that you can’t continue speaking just because an acorn drops on you? What if it just fell from a tree? Would you blame the tree and refuse to continue our discussion? Does it matter so little to you?”I got this exact same argument from Conservapedia, when I tried to debunk the “Obama is a Muslim” claim: “If a Muslim president is okay with you, why do you care whether Obama is one or not?”So, my answer to your last paragraph:”I don’t understand why dissociating atheism from Communism is such a major issue.”1. Because untrue claims are annoying and distracting, even if easily refuted.2. Because it is untrue, and I don’t like untruths being left standing.3. Because if true, it *would* have some implications for the value and meaning of atheism, whether or not those implications would be necessarily “bad”.4. Because even though I might not find the association necessarily “bad”, many other people are emotionally primed to associate “Communism”, “Marxism”, and “Socialism” with “bad” — making this a form of “dog-whistle argument”.”Every Christian I know is willing to admit that a lot of nasty things have been (and are still being) done in the name of Christianity. Why is there a problem with belief systems which are atheist at heart which have done nasty things?”Because it’s not true.Just because it would nicely level the playing field for you doesn’t make it true, either.Belief in untrue things (which is what religion and “faith” are, at the core) is going to tend to make people do far more irrational and harmful things than a belief in always questioning one’s assumptions and beliefs.Atheism — to the extent that atheism is a “thing” that exists independently of the need to push back against the forces of superstition (with theism being the primary exponent of that, in our society) — simply does not lend itself to the same kind of mass-manipulation that religion does.”The plain, scientific, rational atheist discussed here is not violent, but other types of atheists are.”Examples, please?
*Love* “The Gospel of St. Athe” , thanks, shall use enthusiastically :-)I sometimes reply with a URL to a [blank] Moleskine, “our bible”, when crazies tell me that atheism’s a religion.
Actually, and sorry to be so harsh about this, what you are trying to do is to somehow retrofit a “we only meant to help” interpretation to what was – and is – clearly name-calling.If there is anything like a consistent argument for (normal) religious belief as a mental illness, I’ve not come across it: simply saying that it is without coming up with extraordinary evidence that this extraordinary statement is true is, at least, quite an insult to the psychiatric profession, thousands of scientists who must somehow have missed this unique disorder, which the sufferer denies having and refuses all treatment for, but which is totally different from all other conditions for which this is true.It is indeed true, and I would like to point out that mistake of mine, that Dawkins does write a little on why he used “delusion” in the title, though what he writes still contradicts the titles of his book in translation. The definition of “delusion” he uses, from the Microsoft Word dictionary, is indeed not “a technical term [of psychiatry], not to be bandied about”. The German “Wahn” is. (Before someone thinks of stating this, it’s worth pointing out that the moral right of an author to be identified as the author of their works extends to the right to stop misleading translations, and that this right, unless copyright itself, cannot be sold to a publisher: Dawkins has every right, at any time, to say that he does not support translations with titles that amount to “the psychiatric delusion of God”, and any contract that might contain clauses abridging that right is invalid).When people think of a mental illness that is a “pathological condition that [believers] should be helped to overcome”, they think of forcible treatment: certainly a dangerous delusion (in the psychiatric sense) is one of those conditions that, Western societies agree, warrants forcible treatment.(In reality, it’s a bit more complicated than that: there are many corner cases in medical ethics of psychiatric conditions that do not warrant forcible treatment, and physiological conditions that do, and such.)But those who are sufficiently ignorant about psychiatry to declare “religion is a mental illness” are also too ignorant about it to make those distinctions: if they actually meant their words, they would be advocating forcible “treatment” of believers. In particular, they’d be advocating force against believers, and that would put them at odds with the rest of the new atheists.Again, no, I’m not assuming that at all. It’s just that if you look at the actual instances of atheists actually saying this, it turns out they are merely name-calling.
“You fiercely defended your choices, but did you even listen to theirs? No…” Whuuu? Were you there, and hence have more information than just Jen’s post to go on? As far as I can tell, everything that Jen said she said is included in these sentences:”A couple of the people there quickly started making comments about how much they used to like him when he stuck to biology, but not now that he talks about atheism. I commented that I like all of his stuff…””I asked if they had even read stuff like the God Delusion, since Dawkins really isn’t as aggressive as people make him out to be. They claimed to have done so. I gave up defending Dawkins and instead commented that it can be seen as a “Good cop, Bad cop” approach.”Where’s the not-listening and the fierce defending?
“If there is anything like a consistent argument for (normal) religious belief as a mental illness, I’ve not come across it…”I think Dawkins makes this argument better in the book, but it’s basically the idea that religion causes people to ignore reality and continue to do things that don’t work, in spite of the evidence that they don’t work, and that this pattern fits in pretty well with the clinical definition of insanity.Calling something a mental illness can be used as a put-down, but that doesn’t invalidate the argument that this is truly the case with religion.
“I never met a truly sane religious person.”That’s the True Scotsman fallacy. I’ve not seen such a clear example of it since, oh, probably yesterday.But since you bring up the sane/insane distinction, the legal terms for whether a mentally ill person is responsible for their actions: I must disagree with that.Religion is a choice. When religious people commit crimes, they’re not “not guilty by reason of insanity” of those crimes: religion shouldn’t be an excuse for doing things that are otherwise inacceptable.Religion isn’t an excuse for killing someone. If a religious person murders someone, and makes a theological argument that appears to support that crime, they’re still guilty! They don’t get pills and treatment, they get sent to jail, and they should be!It’s not okay to tell your kids violence is okay because it’s in the bible. It’s not okay to treat women as subhuman because your religion says so. It’s not okay to refuse to drive a bus because your religious sensibilities are offended.A bus driver who refuses to work because of religion isn’t taking a day of illness: they’re breaking their employment contract, and will be sanctioned according to the contract.School kids who pray seventeen times a day are not delayed in their schoolwork by an illness: they’re delayed in their schoolwork because they choose not to behave.Don’t give religious people that excuse. A person in a mental health crisis might injure a nurse (though this is much rarer than the “axe murderer” stereotype makes people think), but when they’re better, they’ll (most likely) apologise, and the nurse will tell them it’s okay, and that’s that. They’re forgiven, by the nurse, by the law, and by society (or at least by those liberal and enlightened members of society who don’t get their moral values from the tabloids).A religious person who injures someone because of their religion isn’t, and shouldn’t be. Even if they apologise, a crime has been committed, and the law has no forgiveness for that.Religion is wrong. Every openly religious person I’ve met does bad things in order to comply with their religion. Every one, not just the “truly religious” ones. Those things are their fault, not their religion’s fault.Mental illness often is someone’s fault, but it isn’t the fault of the person who is mentally ill. You can’t accuse someone of being mentally ill: you can accuse someone of being religious, of following their religion in its evil requirements.Let’s not give them that excuse.
It’s only the True Scotsman Fallacy if someone were to say “no *true* religionist is completely sane”. Gwenny didn’t say that; she was making an observation from personal experience.It’s true that religion shouldn’t exempt someone from responsibility for crimes. I don’t think we’re talking about “insanity” in that sense. Nor should they be exempt from criticism of acts that are bad without actually being criminal.This is a complex topic. We want to avoid demonizing people who are really just victims of a religious brain-virus — but we also don’t want to let them get away with anything just because they’re infected. …and yet (on the gripping hand) it seems reasonable to have some compassion for those who are infected, especially if they haven’t done anything really harmful.In response to some points you made earlier:“But those who are sufficiently ignorant about psychiatry to declare “religion is a mental illness” are also too ignorant about it to make those distinctions: if they actually meant their words, they would be advocating forcible “treatment” of believers.”That analogy doesn’t hold; society doesn’t use force against the mentally ill *unless* they are “a hazard to themselves or others”. Religion is, for the *most* part, a benign delusion.As active atheists, we do our best to take every opportunity to try and work against that delusion — but without either being invited to do so and in the absence of a clear danger, there’s no justification for further interference. The rules for mental illness apply here too.“If you think “religious belief” should be a new category of mental illness, you should realise that it’s very unusual: most mental illnesses are recognised by patients as such…”— but not all, and I’ve certainly known some people who clearly needed psychiatric help, and yet denied it.“The new “religious belief” category is fantastically resistant to virtually all psychiatric treatments…”Then we need some new ones. That’s part of the point: We should be studying this scientifically, *like a disease*, because it’s certainly not the product of a healthy, rational mind. If it were, then we could simply rationally argue religionists out of their belief, with a high degree of success (or else they could argue us *into* it, if that’s the way the universe turned out to be). We certainly have *some* success, but mostly around the edges.The better we understand the nature of the disease, the better we can judge what remedies to use (when and where ethical considerations allow us to take remedial action).
I think the atheists you were talking to are confused about their own situation as atheists.Consider that I have no problem with whatever fanciful belief systems people have as such. It’s when they get into a position of being able to affect civic policy on a level above me (a common citizen) that I might consider a move toward militancy. And so should all atheists.Let’s take a biblical unilateralist, for instance. These are real people who at the very moment are actually trying to get into power to affect policy. How, as an atheist, do you feel about these people being able to make executive orders about, say, logging? Public school policy? Taxes? Frankly dozens of policy issues. So there is a place for real militancy in being an atheist. Let’s hope it never comes to that.
The reason Dawkins is criticized is because he’s just wrong about religion, historically. He naively ascribes historical evils to religion which are just (scratch the surface) human evils, perpetrated by non-religious people on a regular basis. I can’t stand militant atheists because they’re so fucking naive! They think that if humanity were just rid of this one evil, it would be paradise on earth! We’d all live in freaking harmony and basically be Jehovah’s witnesses, but without the Bible.Guess what? Religion was created by man. The Holocaust? Man-made. The Crusades? Also. Stalin’s horrors? Ditto. The Khmer Rouge? Yep. It’s all created by humans. The sad reality that “militant” atheists refuse to face up to is that without religion, the world would still be the same awe-inspiring, horror-inspiring shockingly beautiful shithole full of promise and despair that it is today. Every time I meet one of these starry-eyed atheists who bang on about the Bible, I feel like handing them a history book, because they know *nothing* about history. They don’t know diddly-shit about the crusades. They have no fucking idea that every “religious” conflict is at heart a struggle over the things people have been fighting for since we found that bone and started beating each other over the head with it: access to resources, be they water, trade, four-legged food, whatever.
I’m not sure I can explain the bias in The God Delusion for the same reason that you could not explain the bias on Fox News to some conservatives (nor could those conservatives explain the “mainstream media” bias they see to liberals).The God Delusion presents religion in a uniformly negative manner. It selectively picks out bad things to say about religion without presenting either the good in religion (Dawkins generally denies there is any) or evidence that religion is any worse than the non-religious alternative.If you’ve read the book, whether you see it as biased will depend on how you see religion. People on this blog have said The God Delusion is a simple exposition of Dawkins’s beliefs. There are also people who honestly consider Fox a “fair and balanced” news station.
“No religious person is truly sane” is the True Scotsman Fallacy, just like “No atheist is truly sane” is. The “true” applies to “sane”, not “religious”. It might help to rephrase “That murderer is not a true Scot” to “No murderer is truly Scottish”, if you can see the analogy that way; what you suggest has two “truly”s in it.You’re, essentially, saying “oh, religion is a mental illness, but it’s a mental illness we can BLAME religious people for”. No. Choose one.The concept of “mental illness” that you use is so fantastically different from what actual psychiatrists mean by the term that it simply makes no sense to insist on “mental illness” being redefined that way. If you blame people for it, it’s not an illness.As for the “most mental illnesses are recognised …” bit, it might help to reread my sentence: mental illnesses are recognised as mental illnesses AFTER SUCCESSFUL TREATMENT. That’s what I said. I’m sure that applies to your friends, too, who needed help, who denied needing help when they did, but, I hope, have now recovered and agree that, in retrospect, they did need help.What you want is “mental illness, but we blame people for it, and we don’t excuse people for it in a court of law, and we can’t treat it, and we never treat it because it’s not a hazard, and it’s different from all existing ICD codes in block F, and it’s something people don’t recognise as an illness, even in retrospect, and it’s something employers shouldn’t recognise as an illness but as a character fault, and it’s something that needs to be researched from the ground up”. That’s like saying “a dog that quacks like a duck, and has a duck bill, and lays eggs, and mates with ducks, and behaves quite like a duck, and doesn’t live as long as dogs do, but I’ll insist on calling it a “dog” anyway”. Sorry, but that’s not a dog.It’s a simple syllogism:1. it’s okay to mock people for religion.2. it’s never okay to mock people for an illness.3. Therefore, religion isn’t an illness.Which part do you disagree with?
“”No religious person is truly sane” is the True Scotsman Fallacy, just like “No atheist is truly sane” is. “That’s just what I said. “No religious person is truly sane” is also not what Gwenny said; she was making an observation from personal experience, i.e. that no religious person she had ever met was sane — not that it wasn’t possible for a religious person to be sane.“You’re, essentially, saying “oh, religion is a mental illness, but it’s a mental illness we can BLAME religious people for”. No. Choose one.”Um, no… I was kind of emphasizing the idea of maybe not blaming religious people for their religion. I was agreeing that they should be held responsible for their actions……and I think I see maybe where some of the confusion is, because words like “blame” and “responsible” have multiple possible meanings in this context. So:1. Religion should not be a penalty-free excuse for doing bad things. That is, someone can’t shoot an abortion doctor, say “I did it because my religion demanded it”, and expect to walk away.2. Whatever measures we take when someone does something like this and then is shown to be clinically insane should also apply if the cause is religion.3. Those measures should certainly include some form of restraint to prevent them from causing any more harm.4. However, as with insanity, the rage we feel at what was done should be aimed at the disease, not the individual. Executing the perpetrator, or incarcerating them for life, might feel somewhat satisfying — but it wouldn’t solve the problem. (To be accurate: it would probably help somewhat, but analyzing the perpetrator’s motives and trying to cure them would help more, as each person we cured would add to the data on what is effective and what isn’t.)The main reason we can’t start actually treating religion as a mental illness — legally and psychiatrically — right now is that there needs to be more objective evidence to show that it is in fact an illness, and objective criteria for evaluating it. Otherwise the potential for abuse is worse than the problems religion is causing now.“Which part do you disagree with?”#1. Mocking religion is not the same thing as mocking people for holding religious beliefs.Take an extreme example: counter-protests against Westboro Baptist Church. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a sign which said “Fred Phelps is ___” or even “all religious people are ____”. They mock the ideas being put forth, not the people putting them forth.
“He naively ascribes historical evils to religion which are just (scratch the surface) human evils, perpetrated by non-religious people on a regular basis.”But not nearly as often. Religion has an amplifying effect on evil.“They think that if humanity were just rid of this one evil, it would be paradise on earth!”Nope; that’s a straw-man. Nobody is claiming that. We do claim that things would be a lot better, yes.“Guess what? Religion was created by man.”So we’re kind of responsible for it, then, aren’t we? Let’s un-create it. We try to clean up all the other messes we make.“The sad reality that “militant” atheists refuse to face up to is that without religion, the world would still be the same awe-inspiring, horror-inspiring shockingly beautiful shithole full of promise and despair that it is today.”If you make your measurements coarse enough, then I’m sure you would find it “the same” — just as the world is pretty much “the same” as it was during the dark ages, or during the pleistocene era.It would be an incremental improvement, but one significant enough to be worth considerable effort.Your last paragraph is basically an ad-hominem (atheists don’t know history, so they must be wrong) and generally kind of fuzzy thinking, so I’m going to ignore it. (It’s kind of a rehash of your “paradise on earth” claim anyway, which I already addressed.)
Re: Westboro Baptist, sorry, counter-protests mock Fred Phelps personally. See http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/the-3o-best-anti-westboro-baptist-church-protest-sSan Francisco isn’t any more intellectual: http://www.asylum.com/2010/01/29/westboro-baptist-church-protests-gets-protested-outside-twitter/I agree that the idea should be criticized, not the person, however street protests aren’t the place to look for intelligence.
I hope things have changed in 40 years, but some faculty members will go gunning for any grad student with an opinion they disagree with or they think might make the discipline look bad. I had such an opinion and went to a particular grad school based on the amount of money they offered; there wasn’t the possibility of studying under one of the very few people who thought as I did on the subject. I ended up throwing up my hands and leaving after a couple of years. I’m in another field entirely now. So it might be well to see if you can send out some subtle feelers to see what the faculty think, whose opinions might matter, etc. It isn’t always just about the work.
Militant? Wow. I read your blog for your feminist views (even though I’m male) and your atheist views (even though I’m theist) precisely because you AREN’T militant. Sad to report that when you announced your move here I sent a link to your blog to a friend whom I thought would enjoy your writing – and she used the M word. I was shocked. I haven’t brought it up since. It’s a lesson I learn over and over: All groups are judged by the real and imagined acts of its “worst” members – and all members are made to defend those actions. …and you never know when you are about to touch someone’s hot button. Hell, I used to take shit for being a Mac user! (Oh and being non-white in The South wasn’t a walk in the park.) I’m writing to let you know that not all Seattle theists are like that and that I hope you continue to travel in circles outside your comfort zone.
I could definitely explain the bias in Fox News to a group of conservatives. Whether they would agree or not is another matter — but laying out the evidence is simple enough.I see you’ve made some attempt to do this re Dawkins, so I’ll respond.Your hypothetical conservatives would probably ignore the arguments against Fox, or offer emotional rhetoric in response. My experience with such people is that they generally believe what they believe because it’s what they believe, which usually turns out to be something they were told by some authority figure — not because of any objective evidence or rational arguments.I shall try to do better than them.I am not sure what Dawkins would say in answer to this, but here is what I would say:Religion already gets too much respect. There’s no need to point out the little good it does, because that supposed good is relentlessly advertised all over the world.Furthermore, most — I’m tempted to say every bit — of that good could be done without it, and probably better.Meanwhile, the harm it does could be so much more easily stopped or ameliorated if it were not for the existence of the evil at religion’s core: unthinking, unquestioning belief in statements made by authority, and the belief in maintaining one’s belief steadfastly *in the face of contradictory evidence* — rather than updating it, as any sane person would do.The evil caused by religion is far more part of religion’s essence than the good. The good is the disguise by which religion lures people into believing in it, supporting it, nurturing it. Once hooked, the claws slowly come out, and people end up helpless to resist its will, believing that the most horrible acts are somehow necessary contributions to the common good.The fact that this fortunately doesn’t happen very often only softens the blow. The fact remains that without religion, these acts would have been done *alone*, with little or no encouragement. With religion in the picture, the actor acts in the belief that they have the support of a supernatural entity of infinite strength — and often the support (real or imagined) of their community, who may believe the same set of lies and reach the same deranged conclusions.If you can show me something good that religion does which could not be done without it, then that is something that needs to be counted in its favor. Yes, Dawkins generally denies there is any — and so do I — and this is a factual claim which can be resolved by evidence.Where’s the evidence that religion is a positive contribution to society?
The only one I see that isn’t based around an attack on his beliefs is the vandalism of the church sign — which is vandalism, which isn’t okay.I don’t see any personal attacks in the SF photo spread, unless you’re referring to the “Santorum” one — which is an attack on Phelps’ and Santorum’s shared hate of gays, so again it’s about what he believes.There may be a fine line between getting a little personal (“spreads Santorum” or “I thought about Shirley Phelps naked — now I’m a homosexual”) and personal attacks with insufficient redeeming critical component (“God hates Phelps” is fine, but spray-painting it on church property is not) — but I don’t think any of the signs gets anywhere near it.Why? Compare and contrast the tone of those signs with the truly vile, hateful things Phelps and his group have said and done. The counter-protests are mild by comparison (and generally friendly in tone) — and I think that’s where the line should be: be mild by comparison, and do no material harm.
We obviously have very different opinions on what constitutes a personal attack vs an attack on an idea.
@ Thomas W: The reason why I point out that atheism is not fundamental to Communism is because I think that Communism’s economic plan and government plan are completely separete from it’s atheism. Liberation Theology proves that one can be religious and Communist at the same time. Objectivism/Ayn Rand proves that you can be strongly Capitalist and atheist at the same time. Thus I think that the question of religion and the question of economics are largely two different things.
I’ll admit I’m not incredibly familiar with Dawkins’ behavior; I’m mainly going by what I’ve heard secondhand and by his book title, “The God Delusion,” which is obviously condescending and/or offending to people who believe in a god.Also, I’ll admit that I haven’t seen many atheists evangelizing in the traditional sense, e.g. trying to convert people or their opinions without provocation.But, in literature and especially on the internet (including commenters on this blog), I’ve found atheists to be derisive of not only the irrational claims of some religions, but also the very nature of religious beliefs. That’s the evangelism I don’t like.Pat Robertson more than counter-balances Dawkins if we really want to compare the greatness of assholes on either side, but instead of comparing, I’d rather tell them both to behave themselves.
Ryan, there are so many comments on this post that I’m just getting around to reading your question. Here’s my opinion:Perhaps you can tell from my above comments, but atheists have called me a “religion apologetic” once or twice, as well as a “pussy agnostic”. Even if you subscribe to the popular atheist stance that “there very likely is no god”, it might be in your best interest to avoid that side of the conversation when starting your group. Using strong atheism as a starting point could be a quick way to alienate people, including those people who are most likely your target audience: formerly- or non-religious people who do not want the negative stigma of “atheist” in a religious society. If I were you (though I don’t know anything about your beliefs) I would focus 100% on the humanist, freethinking, rational, and empirical ideologies, and I would avoid taking a direct position on the existence of gods. This is easy for me since I’m agnostic, but it may seem like avoidance to you. To me, the main issue is and always will be science. If you focus on science and on fact–avoiding belief–you might be able to gather group members who want to hear and learn educated opinions without immediately undermining the church.Speaking of undermining the church, I think recent politics has proven that people who name their enemies win votes, but only if enough of their peers share the same enemies.Good luck!
I often hear that one of the major impediments to people accepting a naturalistic worldview is that it lacks a sense of belonging; no rituals, no fellowship, no meetings to attend. It’s my feeling that you are doing all you can to remove this barrier. You’re in a unique position to let people know that we DO have fellowship, social interactions, community work projects and the like. Thank you sincerely both for helping to generate those community ties and for letting as many people as possible know that they exist. I suspect we have all flagged in our ability to articulate our positions, especially when caught off guard and impromptu, once or twice. Be gentle with yourself, and go get ’em next time. (I know it gets tiring, though, always having to be on guard.)
It is unfortunate that you encounter these feelings of acceptance around other atheists. One of the main issues with Religion is that it brings a sense of oneness and community. This allows religion to expand and seclude others from it. As atheists we should feel comfortable anywhere. We do not BELIEVE. It is so hard. It is Human nature to want to feel included and part of a group. But that is just what religion preys on. Human nature. Get out there and BE atheist. Don’t believe in Atheism. KNOW atheism. Get out there and starting knowing.
I relate so strongly to just about every word in this post. I too tend to feel a bit awkward socializing in mixed company of unknown religion…and most of the time I do that it’s in kayaking and camping groups in Kentucky, not science faculty and students. So I never know what kind of reaction I might get if the topic happens to come up. Risk being the odd woman out? Not my idea of fun when I’m trying to just enjoy a paddling trip. But I’m getting a bit bolder and learning more not to worry about those little conflicts all the time.
I can relate to this… living in the bible belt and all. I am pretty well known as a very nice guy, which apparently “surprises” people when they find out I’m an atheist. The constant stupidity people show in that regard, not to mention irrational hate, makes it kinda hard to be that cheery sweet guy everyone knows me as. Of course, if I wasn’t, and let them get to me, I guess that would be even worse.
I don’t feel bad, you let them define the diologe, you caved and gave ground and they took it, and you played defense. Next time ask them to define militant and how someone can be militant for facts vs ideology.I’d recommend you get more face time talking to the harvest fucknuts who’s form of debate is equating you with Hitler before you can be the face of anything.
Except for in the happiest countries in the world:http://www.google.dk/search?aq…
“You seem to be one of the atheists that feel that they must almost compulsively share their religious beliefs with others…” Atheists don’t have religious beliefs. Good try, though. In a social setting, when the conversation turns toward Dawkins and people begin attacking atheism, an atheist is under no obligation to cower in a closet. That may be your pathetic style, but it’s not something the rest of us are obliged to follow.
Portinari, what post are you replying to? Your reactionary little rant has almost nothing to do with what Jen wrote. “You fiercely defended your choices, [This is your idea of “fierce”? Really? “…but did you even listen to theirs?” Obviously, she did, since she reported what they said. Atheists spend 99% of their time listing to religionists and religionists spend .001% of their time listening to atheists. So it is not obligatory for an atheist to sit and listen to all the tiresome bullshit they have already heard a million times. Religionists get very few opportunities to listen to a rational person speak about facts and truth. Threy would do well to step out of their echo chamber, STFU, and learn something. No, you felt the desire to be with (for lack of a better term) your own kind. You’re not better than a so-called Christian who obstinately defends his beliefs, attacks those he doesn’t agree with, and only wants to be with his own kind.
Hit post too soon …”No, you felt the desire to be with (for lack of a better term) your own kind.’Do you really not understand that? Every minority — unless he is a self-loathing mess — wants time with his own kind, time where he can make sense and hear sense and not have to defend his thoughts and his experiences and his identity against the constant majority noise to the contrary. “You’re not better than a so-called Christian who obstinately defends his beliefs, attacks those he doesn’t agree with, and only wants to be with his own kind.”Seriously? “You’re no better than?” Really? From reading your simple-minded, conflicted, inconsistent and ignorant attack post, I don’t see someone in a position to be telling Jen what she’s “no better than.” There is a fundamental difference between someone who is stating facts and wishes to be around people who have a rational understanding of the world, and those who want to force their delusional crap on others and insulate themselves from reality through the comfortable fellowship of the similarly deluded.
“I’ll admit I’m not incredibly familiar with Dawkins’ behavior”Really? Hmmm. That might compell a lesser person to STFU and not make pronunciations about Dawkins being “an asshole.”
So don’t.
“I have as much trouble reading this sort of biased treatment of religion…”But it is not biased. You are labeling it as such on the basis of your own bias. Creationists are presenting lies and delusions. Dawkins is not. Your false equivalency indicates that you are granting the delusional equal footing with the real. That is your bias.
Thomas, either you are too ignorant to participate in a meaningful discussion, or you are a troll. Accepting reality as reality is not a “bias” in favor of reality. Your assertion is idiotic.
“If there is anything like a consistent argument for (normal) religious belief as a mental illness, I’ve not come across it:”Psychiatric is constantly and specifically forced to kiss the ring and pretend religion is NOT psychotic. One reads passages such as this:”DELUSION: Commonly defined in behavioral health care as a fixed false belief (excluding beliefs that are part of a religious movement) this psychotic symptom is present in a variety of serious mental disorders.” That curious exemption granted religion makes it clear that as far as psychopathological delusion goes, religion so obviously fits the definition of delusional that it has to be granted a special “pass” lest the pointing out of its obvious delusional nature set off a religious war against psychiatry.
Wow.I may not know enough Dawkins’ behavior to call him an “asshole” (which I never did), but I sure know enough about you.
So, how exactly is this an escape from Indiana? Rather than an escape, it’s more like being transfered to another wing of the prison.I suppose one of your co-workers may read my comment an be astounded by what they believe is a ludicrous comparison. To that co-worker: well, buddy, be astounded. If you are deluded enough to believe that a guy writing books is “just as bad” as people who work day and night to deny basic human rights to millions, and you are morally degenerate enough to equate sharp criticism with terrorism… what can I say? How can I possibly communicate with you?Be offended then, if you must. Your mind is bizarre, alien and entirely incomprehensible. There is nothing I can do in the face of that.
Poor Bastards I tend to assume people are Christian, not because I amChristian (I am not) but out of a certain self-defense. I went to a Christianschool and I had to be super-secret closeted about being gay to the point ofdenying it even to myself. I suppose it’s sort of like that. It gets wary aftera while. I can’t believe people equateyou with fucking terrorists domestic or foreign, you’re just trying to chilland survive, just like the rest of us. I suppose I’m a militant gay then? Bastards. We’re extremists because we want to not get thecrapped beaten out of us, or fired from our jobs, or to have to listen to thembreak the law at school (Public prayer at Government University, Discrimination against Homosexuals etc.) butto be extremists they have to blow things up or set things on fire? Disgusting. I wonder, not to attempt to assert Neo-Greek-Pagan authoritybecause I know people with fondness of mythologies similar to mine are oftenwoo filled, but do you get similar harassment from them? I’m curious, and sortof feel obligated to correct them, because, A. I used to be a bit more Woofilled, B I sort of “speak their Language, and C they might listen to mebeing sort of one of them.
Oh my Noodles. That’s fucking Riduclous. Your leadsinger is bag of dicks.
I thought the Pope hated you ever since the whole HenryVIII Divorcing Kathryn of Aragon bit and declaring him self supreme head of the Church on England. And Queen Elizabeth I.
I think the Monarchs of England stopped caring what Popes said a couple hundred years ago…
A lot of small early Christian monastic comunities could be clasified as “Communist”.
“..How elemental is atheism to communism/socialism? Well, probably not very, given that “under god” was added to the pledge of allegiance by a christian socialist…”I love you