It’s been a long busy day, and I am exasperated that I get online now and discover that my fellow atheists have been desperately gleeful to have discovered excuses to justify evading any responsibility for the murders of Deah Shaddy Barakat, Yusor Mohammad, and Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha. The killing was over a parking spot; he was one of those crazy gun-fondlers. Let’s sieze any excuse to deflect an obligation to think. It’s just like with Elliot Rodger: he didn’t shoot those people because he hates women, it was because he was mentally ill.
That he was a member of my group is just a coincidence, we’re blameless, it’s his membership in some other group that is at fault!
I do not accept that. I do not think that atheism compelled him to kill Muslims, just as I don’t think Islam compels one to become a suicide bomber, or Christianity compels one to bomb abortion clinics. But I do think that the ideology must accept some responsibility for failing to teach people not to do those things. And too often, atheism has more than failed to do something, it has actively promoted action. Consider the eloquence of Hitchens attached to the propaganda driving the war in Iraq, and used to foster hate against Iran. Can we honestly say that modern atheism condemns such activity?
We can be outraged at the hypocrisy of the Catholic church that claims to be a force for the highest moral good, yet shelters pedophiles, promotes unsafe sex in Africa, and enslaved women in laundries…somehow, some atheists think they’re better because they declare that atheism imposes no moral obligations at all. We avoid the charge of hypocrisy while instead embracing the charge of amorality.
We have to own our failings. It’s the only way to improve ourselves.
It’s OK to say that atheism doesn’t promote murder of believers — it doesn’t. But we’re going to have to admit that as it stands now, atheism did not equip the killer of Deah Shaddy Barakat, Yusor Mohammad, and Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha with the moral compass to stop and recognize that taking a life — whether it was over a parking spot or their Muslim dress doesn’t matter — was wrong.
Own up to this lethal failure of atheism, and of our culture.
Then we can think about fixing it.
Christ. And then there’s this.
@jennifurret @pzmyers pic.twitter.com/T9G4GpEnci
— AOA (@AtheistsOnAir) February 12, 2015
Yeah. Owning an ATV says absofuckinglutely nothing about whether you should murder your neighbor. And apparently, neither does atheism, and whoever put that image together thinks that’s a good thing.
I can’t imagine why you’re thinking that picture relates to atheism, frankly. That’s a gun fondler argument right there. The intended comparison is between guns and ATVs.
Atheism is, technically amoral. Unlike any religion, it imposes no moral constraints.
Atheism is neither a moral philosophy nor the foundation of one. It’s a label used to demonize us that we ultimately made our own but all it refers to is a thing in which we do not believe.
Atheism therefore has nothing to say about murder.
Because “atheism” is not the name of our moral philosophy.
But we should have one, and it should be one that doesn’t find murder acceptable.
I saw Dawkins’ reaction – dang, what a clown.
My own reaction. Linked ’cause it’s a tad long for a comment.
“Christ. And then there’s this.”
Indeed! Yet, if they accept that logic, then they should just as easily be able to accept, “Mentally Ill Person KILLS THREE. What does this say about others who are mentally ill? Absofuckinglutely Nothing!” Funny that they don’t seem to be consistent on this.
PZ, you lately seem to be confusing atheism, which is a lack of acceptance of others’ beliefs, with a set of beliefs. It isn’t.
Atheists can have moral codes, moral compasses, societal mores, commandments, laws, moral obligations etc. These can come from philosophy, logic, empathy, golden rules, upbringing, or even religious codes with the supernatural bits removed, but they do not and cannot come from atheism itself any more than they can come from not belonging to a political party or not reading a particular book. Atheism is not the basis of anything, it is merely an indication that whatever mores one possesses are not based on religion.
Atheism is a statement of something one does not have. It cannot be used to deduce what some-one does have, nor to indicate that two people have any non-negative traits in common.
Atheism did not equip this guy with a moral compass against killing because atheism does nothing. Humanism might have done so, atheism+ might have done so, as might communism, Raelianism, existentialism, logical positivism, Marxism, Buddhism, or any number of other -isms. From what details I’ve seen, this guy actually did have a moral compass that told him killing was wrong, but which either didn’t kick in quickly enough, or was overridden somehow. Otherwise he probably wouldn’t have turned himself in. I don’t know where he did get his views on acceptable behaviour from, but I seriously doubt he got them from the same place I got mine. His act may be a failure of his culture or his society, but it is not a failure of atheism unless you think atheism is more than simply a rejection of religion. If so, you need another word for that.
Roy
P.S. Being compared to this guy is merely an irritant compared with being compared with Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot
P.P.S. Exactly how do I have any responsibility for these murders? What did I do or not do that would have made any difference here?
I don’t think it’s a good thing that the president of American Atheists is a supporter of “gun rights” who owns several guns. This particular triple-murder would not have happened without strong gun rights. Silverman and I do not share the same values, so I will have nothing to do with his organization.
rthearle #6:
No. But the rhetoric of far too many atheists quite probably did persuade him that Muslims are uniquely and irrevocably The Enemy. Maybe you should go shout at them.
Arsehole.
Take your dictionary definition, and shove it up your ass. It should mean more to you, but if you don’t see, that, there is no talking to you….Your mind is adamantite.
Christ, I am not in the mood for another rousing session of “this is what atheism means and the non-existence of deities presents no implications for humanity”.
Nerd
Maybe you should take the night off.
How many times have we dunned the various Theist brands with “no, you don’t get to use the No True Scotsman defense” when some religious zealot blows up a family planning clinic or guns down some cartoonists ? The sauce is good for the Atheist gander. There’s no getting out of it. An Atheist murdered three people, ostensibly because of the peculiar brand of superstition they followed. You can make any claim you want about how Atheism doesn’t do this or that or eat pie in Cleveland, it doesn’t matter. We’re going to be tarred by this brush, whether we deserve it or not. Whether PZ deserves it or not. This is not the time to dance the sidestep, this is the time to step up, clearly and forcefully say that Atheism does not support murder of any kind, regardless of what witch-doctors the victims followed. It may trouble you in your mind because to you “Atheist” means nothing more than “I don’t believe in magic sky fairy” , but too bad. You’re in it now, whether you like it or not.
@6
If “atheism does nothing,” then it’s worthless, and what are any of these blogs even for? You can’t draw a straight line from “God does not exist” to “Creationism should not be taught in school” (you could go from “God does not exist” to “Creationism is false,” but the idea that we should not teach children false things in school is a value judgment that has to come from somewhere else), but somehow, none of the atheists who are very concerned about the dictionary definition of atheism show up to whine when Meyers talks about that.
rthearle wrote:
Um, “lately”? Don’t be disingenuous and pretend that this is some new revelation that PZ thinks atheism is more than just simple disbelief. PZ has been banging this drum for years, and you’re not fooling anyone by pretending that you’ve been reading up until now and just noticed now.
Furthermore, I assume you’re not a complete hypocrite, and criticize atheist organizations for championing secularism and separation of church and state issues, because none of those have anything to do with simple disbelief, right?
I don’t feel too much in the group, but then again, I do buy the dictionary definition of atheist.
I guess I met too many atheist conspiracy nuts well before meeting the MRA/Libertarian ones.
I love your blog PZ, but am still not convinced that the word “atheist” is worth fighting for.
jedibear:
Religions don’t impose any moral constraints. If they did, the Pope would be a decent human being who leaves his church and publicly denounces it, since that would actually be morally acceptable behavior.
Oh, you mean, saying something is moral even when it isn’t really. Well, no, the nonexistence of gods doesn’t entail anything like that. Indeed, the only thing that forces or compels a behavior in a completely general and systematic way would be physics, if it’s deterministic. On the other hand, if there were souls/gods/etc., then of course it could be an actual thing that you’re literally enthused or “moved by the spirit” or whatever — that would be a way in which a religion (the truth of it) could actually and literally “impose” something on people. But somebody is definitely fucking confused if that’s the direction you think this conversation ought to take.
However, since that’s neither here nor there… atheism does mean there aren’t any gods (or immortal souls or guardian angels or cosmic purposes or plans or whatever else might come along for the ride, depending on the god in question). If you thought none of that had any bearing on morality, then consider me utterly fucking baffled by what you think would have a bearing on it.
rthearle:
Great, so all we have to do is find a clump of dirt that lacks an acceptance of others’ beliefs, or anything which meets that criterion. Then you can call that an atheist, while everyone has a nice laugh. Sounds like good fun. Or you can recognize that your “definition” is not as good as you might have thought.
Wait… it was a lack of acceptance earlier, but now it’s a statement? Do clumps of dirt need to make the statement themselves, or could someone else do it for them? I mean, it’s a weird question, sure, but don’t look at me. It’s your weird fucking idea we’re talking about. Also, some Mormons have been known to baptize people post-mortem, and there are other things like that with canonization for example, where presumably relevant facts about the individual, their perspective or input on the matter and so forth , is given no weight at all. (That is, assuming they have something like a positive position to take on the subject, which you’re evidently not recommending for some curious reason.) Whatever you might think, I would say that sort of thing only trivializes and invalidates what might have been meaningful distinctions that people make about each other. Maybe this calls for some more Deep Rifts in atheism. We could have ourselves a nice schism. Doesn’t that sound nice?
That’s odd. If it did nothing, what would make you think it even exists, much less you give you any confidence to pontificate about it so blatherously? I mean, suppose this idea just crawled out of your ass — then we could at least identify some kind of a source and attempt to reason about it. But this…. being nothing and coming from nowhere is a pretty hard sell. Most people won’t buy such products or even grant to you that you’re not talking nonsense. It’s definitely going to be tough for me to even comprehend what the fuck, if anything, it could possibly mean to you. What’s really odd is that the most charitable interpretation seems to be that you’re bullshitting, you know that, and you presumably want us to know that but not say it. I’ll let somebody else do the smile and nod routine for me.
There are people who will always go to extremes on anything. Was this guy an atheist? Yeah probably. This may get me slapped down but there are likely to be some atheists as driven by unproductive rhetoric from the Bill Maher’s’ of the world as those driven by the crap spewed by the religious right.
I believe there are no gods, as defined by the various religions. This is a statement, as rthearle correctly pointed out. However, rthearle was wrong to think it has no implications for how I live my life:
I am an atheist, therefore I think there is no guiding purpose to the universe.
I am an atheist, therefore I think there is no such thing as fate or destiny.
I am an atheist, therefore I think there will be no supernatural afterlife.
I am an atheist, therefore I think life and sentience are precious due to their rarity and fleetingness in the known universe.
I am an atheist, therefore I think I must make the most of this life I have.
I am an atheist, therefore I think I have no right to infringe on others’ rights to make the most of their own lives.
Oh, look. The beginnings of a moral compass. Where did that come from?
It may in fact be that the murderer’s atheism does less to explain his crimes than his membership in two other groups: he’s white and male.
Fuck us as a species for being able to do this utterly cowardly bullshit.
It’s morbidly fascinating watching all the spinning and twisting that so many people are now engaging in to try to pry these deaths from a word that they are associated with, like it’s some sort of contagion. Social emotions sure suck, but there are better reactions to them than miming the game of “cooties”. I bet an authority like Dawkins feels this stronger than most. I suspect that the emotions related to authority involve feeling like an injury to the group is an injury to the self much more exquisitely. The only way out is to define “your group” in a way that lets lets you act like people doing horrible shit are in your group and work on fixing this shit in whatever group you happen to be. Let the atheists who can’t do that feel the pain. Frankly it’s hard to avoid gratuitously rubbing their faces in it.
Owning up to this on a human level, AND taking personal responsibility in ones own community are both required. This is a twisted fragment of empathy used for primitive purpose, “I’m not like that, therefore it can’t possibly be [atheism, guns, white culture + bigotry, sane human*…]”. They feel the connection to the self, but want far away from that human.
No, it has to be the parking space that is worth talking about because parking spaces will solve human problems. It has to be the [mental problem undefined] because we sure do need to work on [undefined ephemeral hand-waving]. It’s the “not guns”, when no one is saying that killing happens in the absence of guns. It’s the “all humans and nothing more”, which does nothing to look at the patterns created by human minds and historical contingency.
And of course atheists stopped being primates that use symbols like words to conveniently dial emotions around in a social strategy sense when the four hoarsepersons arrived. We certainly don’t feel anything when those seven letters get conceptually connected to murder and bigotry and misogyny and more. At least that is the only reason I can think of to bring up the fact there is no “community of atheists”. Maybe I missed something at the self-esteem conference thingy.
*It’s just “human” of course, but twisted things often have to be typed to point out personal cowardice to the morally ignorant.
@Suido #18
The first three are directly atheist. The rest comes from somewhere other than simply lack of belief in the supernatural. It sounds like some form of secular humanism. Secular humanism is a specific set(s) of positive beliefs. There are many ways an atheist, agnostic, or theist can come to a moral/ethical compass.
I think that there are no moral guidelines handed down from on high*. This aspect of my atheism has direct consequences upon my world-view: I must, somehow, construct a moral framework which does not have a god at its centre.
If not god, then humans.
Thus humanism, in some form.
*Yes, I know we can get all pedantic about #notallreligions on this point.
I spent all day at work today dealing with both the social and administrative fallout from the death of one of our department’s students, which was hitting people especially hard because of the manner in which it occurred (for the sake of legal confidentiality and also broader social norms, I can’t go into detail). This triple murder is another heap of awful on top of that (plus the possibility of yet another quagmire of a war), and I’m feeling pretty burned out, so no long-winded polemics from me tonight, just a statement of agreement with and support for PZ‘s post. Be well.
Daz @22, I agree with you. I guess that makes me a secular humanist atheist, then. Fine, works for me.
If this murder had been carried out by a muslim person on an atheist (or christian), there would have been the usual suspects in the media yelling that “moderate muslims” must condemn these murders in no uncertain terms. Most here would (rightly) decry that call as unfair and bigoted. It absolutely should not be incumbent on muslims or christians or atheists or any large and varied group to denounce every act of violence committed by a member of their group.
Vicki @19:
I don’t think Hicks’ atheism has much to do with his actions. I think it’s much more likely that his anti-Muslim bigotry (combined with a lack of respect for human life) contributed significantly to his actions.
Grewgills @25:
By and large, I agree with you. It isn’t the responsibility of members of a group to denounce the actions of extremists that are members of the same group.
Nonetheless, I chose to condemn the actions of Craig Hicks.
@Grewgills #21:
The fourth had a corollary that I left out for simplicity:
I am an atheist, therefore I think life and sentience are precious due to their rarity and fleetingness in the known universe, NOT because it was divinely created.
To me, that is an atheist response to religious reasons for valuing life. It does draw on scientific knowledge and humanism, so it’s not entirely due to atheism, but I think atheism is an important contributing factor in coming to that particular conclusion.
PZ is exactly right as so often is the case.
Most atheists are ethical, and a few are unethical. Most theists are ethical, and a few are unethical. And usually in the same percentages. The only difference is that atheists require stupid ideologies to drive them to it, while theists rationalize their actions as ordered by some outside force, whether “god” or “satan”. Religion is ideology, so there’s really no difference.
It’s very unlikely that Hicks murdered them because he was an atheist, more likely it’s because he is a hothead (something very common amongst gun fondlers). But pretending he isn’t an atheist won’t win any arguments, it will just makes the arguer look dishonest.
Grewgills #25:
I agree we shouldn’t need to decry it as unrepresentative of our own views. Problem is that there is rampant anti-Muslim bigotry in some parts of the atheist community, and we do need to oppose that, in the same way and for the same reasons we oppose anti-feminism in the atheist community—because it’s wrong and it’s harmful. That would stand on its own right, even if it could be proven beyond doubt that Hicks’s actions weren’t affected by such views.
Grewgills, #25:
I have no problem condemning and denouncing every murder or act of terrorism, period, committed by a member of any group whatsoever. I can get it out of the way right now if you like, since I have no intention of being picky about which ones I’d like to denounce and which I’d support. If you’re not willing to do that, especially in the context of this murder which just fucking happened, because you want to whine about something or other… well then… that’s definitely fucking saying something, isn’t it? Even if you aren’t saying a fucking thing.
Comment left on my blog just now. I’ll paste without commenting on it:
Personally, I don’t look to my atheism for my morality anymore than many theists look to their faith for theirs. I turn to my own conscience to tell me right from wrong, good versus evil.
Yes, an atheist committed a horrible, inexcusable crime and ruthlessly slaughtered three people in cold blood. Do I think it stains atheists as a whole? No. Nor do I think groups like IS, the Boko Haram or the Muslim Brotherhood, represent or stain the image of Muslims as a whole. I think the many crimes still being carried out by some radical Christian sects, are horrible, but know they don’t represent Christians as a whole.
No, the fact that this pyschopath is an atheist that slaughtered three innocent people, makes me ashamed not to also be an atheist, but to be a member of the same species!
deadlyhair @13 is entirely correct. If atheism is a mere nonbelief with no other moral attachments, then atheists should not be arguing for moral principles like “children should be taught science, not religion, in schools” or promoting better science education. Those are moral and political arguments, just as much as “atheists should support charities so that the poor don’t have to rely on churches” or any other supposed “SJW” argument is.
But it’s like any other kind of privileged blindness: my beliefs are invisible and natural, but yours are Politics.
Daz @33:
Eric Atkinson left some incredibly vile and hateful messages on my blog. It’s nice to see that he has some decency and humanity left in him.
Tony! The Queer Shoop wrote:
Regardless, given the fact that some of the biggest names associated with atheism in pop culture are also purveyors of anti-Muslim animus (i.e. three of the four “horsemen”), there is still a very real link. Add to that a number of lesser known personalities that are often even worse (like Pat Condell), and I don’t think any of us should dodge with a “not really about atheism; not our problem.”
Tony! The Queer Shoop #36:
I don’t recognise the name at all, though the writing style seemed familiar. In the circumstances though, it would’ve felt a little cruel not to do as asked.
ck @37:
I think maybe I wasn’t clear. I do think anti-Muslim bigotry is a problem in the atheist community. Many atheists are bigots who have no problem with treating Muslims like shit. I, and many others (a group that, according to the comments I’ve read from you in the past, includes you) categorically oppose such bigotry. When I say that I doubt his atheism had much to do with his actions, I just mean that I don’t think his non-belief affected his decision to kill those three people. That doesn’t change the fact that he’s a bigoted atheist. But that doesn’t mean his actions were “about” atheism and I never said it wasn’t our problem. If you click my link @27, you’ll see my thoughts on the subject.
@12, DLC
Do you know when you can be correct in saying “that person wasn’t truly ______”? When the definition of _____ actually excludes such people.
And when religious people say “no true christian”, do you know what they are doing?
Trying to define goodness into the _______. Because that’s the only way their “no true ____” will work.
And make no mistake, I agree that we have to nurture morality within people of our community, and fight the foolishness among us.
@neverjaunty #35
If all you are is an atheist maybe, but I have never met someone that is only or even primarily defined by their non belief in the supernatural. Thoughtful atheists derive their ethics from a variety of sources including but not limited to humanism and existentialism. Saying I am an atheist gives very little insight into someone’s ethical underpinnings. For that matter saying I am a theist does no more. Saying I am a christian or a muslim goes further because of the generic teachings of those religions, just as saying I am a secular humanist or an existentialist will carry you a ways towards understanding a particular atheists ethical framework. That still only gets you part of the way. Knowing what sect of a given religion or important philosophers to a person carries you a ways further.
In short, there isn’t going to be AN atheist ethic, just as there isn’t A theist ethic. There are going to be a variety of ethical codes followed by a variety of atheists.
Similarly there isn’t AN atheist community, just as there isn’t A theist community. That isn’t the same as saying there aren’t atheist communities, just that there isn’t on monolithic community that we are all somehow responsible for.
To be clear religious bigotry, racism, sexism and just about every other ism are problems in just about any grouping you can name. They are societal problems. There are some atheists that like to think that since they have given up one irrational belief that they are immune to other irrational beliefs and so are immune to the effects of the culture that surrounds them including its endemic bigotries. Those people are idiots.
Atheism, like many words (especially when politics get involved), has multiple meanings in different contexts:
Atheism is a descriptor referring to a lack of belief in deities.
Atheism is also a set of philosophies in which the nonexistence of gods plays a major role.
Atheism is also a set of subcultures (such as this one) in which Atheism (as a philosophy) plays a major role.
Atheism is a small but growing political force motivated by Atheism (as philosophies) and Atheism (as communities)
Saying that Atheism is only one of these meanings disregards how words are in practice defined by how large numbers of people use them rather than having one inherent definition.
You can say that Atheism should be only one of these meanings, but that does not chance the social reality of the word.
You can work to change the social reality of the word’s meaning, but removing some of the meanings does not remove the things they referred to, which are then much harder to talk about without names.
You can try to give those things new names, and people have done so in the case of Atheism (such as Secular Humanism and Atheism +), but their changes have so far not gained widespread traction.
There are numerous issues that need to be addressed with the things described by the latter few meanings of Atheism (such as the sexism in many parts of Atheism (communities) and how the priorities of Atheism (politics) are often skewed towards issues effecting middle class white males), and because of this I say it is more useful to promote having a word that can function as a name for the descriptor and the other things than to promote having a word to precisely mean the descriptor and having no current widely accepted names for the other things.
Where are the dictionary atheists when the Atheist Experience talks about separation of church and state? I should be reading posts from you people demanding that their program consists solely of someone repeating “there is no good” every three seconds for an hour. Anything else has fuck all to do with your useless definition. But somehow…that doesn’t happen….you only get the cries about “but atheism means….” when people start talking about social justice. It even happens to the ACA. Nobody complains about their “nothing to do with atheism” efforts, but when they touch on social justice, bam, arseholes come out of the bushes.
You are not fooling anyone, we know exactly what your real objection is and it’s most absolutely not what you claim it to be, because you are perfectly happy to derive consequences from atheism, just as long as it’s not the social justice that you find so objectionable.
It’s no wonder that it seems to be only priviledged fucks who cry about dictionary atheism….
Hypocrites….cowards….
You know what your definition means? Nothing. It’s absolutely worthless…
The only way it has any meaning whatsoever is if it has something else to it, and you already know that. If atheism is happening in a vacuum, it’s useless and meaningless…..but since it is not, and it has consequences to accept a godless universe, the word atheism actually means something.
You anti-social justice fuckers could at the very least come forward with what you really want instead of pretending that you actually think atheism is a meaningless word…which you fucking don’t…
@PZ, I live in a country that’s about 93% atheist. As a result, about 93% of murders, 93% of rapes, 93% of theft and assault and everything else you might want to feel guilty about today, they were committed by atheists. Our politicians lead us into someone else’s stupid wars and don’t even mention God along the way, because it’s pretty hard to get elected here if you feel the need to ever mention that your religion might influence your decisions.
In politics we have a left wing, a right wing, a center, and a bunch of splitters, we have crazy survivalists and conspiracy theorists and anti-vaccine folk and all the rest. We have small businessfolk who go broke, and small businessfolk who make hundreds of millions of dollars by random chance just like everywhere else in the world. We have people who love each other and people who hate each other and none of it has anything to do with religion or a lack thereof.
Because God isn’t real, He doesn’t do anything. Nothing changes without God, because you are without God no matter your beliefs. You seem to imagine folk need some sort of community-based representative moral instruction to inspire moral behavior in place of a Church, and I’ve got to just tell you that my country doesn’t have any, at all, and we have much less violence and crime than yours. It’s just nonsense.
Countries with lower crime rates have more equal societies, and some degree of social mobility. Almost nothing else matters. Religion does nothing.
It may be that according to the dictionary definition “atheism” is just a lack of belief. But in practice my atheism has been shaped, like it or not, by the character of the religions whose influence on society I abhor.
Therefore my atheism is characterized by NOT giving me reasons/excuses to arbitrarily hate people.
My atheism compels me to contrast my prejudices with as many facts as I can find out.
My atheism only leaves me with empathy and rationality to decide how I treat others.
My atheism clearly forms the basis for my moral compass. Do others feel the same way?
While I like pz’s writing, I also have always disagreed that atheism necessarily means anything more than disbelief in gods. As somebody said above, atheism isn’t even a real thing – its the natural state of humans and animals. I have no connection to Craig Hicks whatsoever merely because neither of us were brainwashed into a religious faith, and I find it extremely illogical to say so. I do think the people who call themselves “movement atheism” can take a good deal blame for his actions though, because its completely true that their thought leaders and group culture include some deeply racist fuckwads. But yes, all you “movement atheists” trying to shove the responsibility for your own group’s bad culture onto all other atheists, many of whom have never even heard of any atheist “movement”, many of us who have and yet and want nothing to do with so-called movement atheism, is a bit uncool. You claim to speak for and represent atheists but you actually don’t. You represent your own selves, and the people who have read your ideas and choose to follow them. And certainly do not attempt to link me to a man who is the result of YOUR movement’s culture!
They why bother even to post? It is your movement too. Too bad you can’t/won’t think through what is meant by being an atheist, like the need to question religious based morality. I pity you.
“They why bother even to post? It is your movement too. Too bad you can’t/won’t think through what is meant by being an atheist, like the need to question religious based morality. I pity you.”
I bothered to post because I’m offended that the self-elected leaders of a movement that claims to speak for millions of people who have nothing to do with them, have declared me to be a part this movement and is now attempting to tar me with its brush. I find it amusing that you accuse *me* of not questioning my morality. I’m not the one who is part of a “movement” that even this blog can’t stop posting about how much of a pile of dung it is.
Dear Sir,
I think what this event shows is that new atheism is in drastic need of a reform and that moderate, liberal new atheists need to be empowered. Yet given how widespread Hicks’ views are within the atheist community, it makes me wonder if such people exist. The politically correct cries of ‘nothing to do with atheism’ reflect the dishonesty of current new atheism. We also hear the predictable chorus from obscurists that Hicks is not a ‘true atheist’. But new atheists have yet to convincingly argue what exactly Hicks did that was not in keeping with new atheist beliefs. Until new atheists are willing to admit that these killings had everything to do with new atheism, the future for new atheism as a movement is bleak. Such moral confusion and cowardice in the face of this barbarism is simply unacceptable. There will be no peace until new atheism gets its house in order.
In the meantime, extreme but necessary measures will be needed to ensure that such things do not happen again. Profiling of atheists and those who look atheist must be practiced. Police must be allowed to stop, search and harass atheists on the street. Mass surveillance of atheists will be crucial. Liberals may object to this, but what would happen if an atheist ever got hold of a nuclear device? Torture such as water boarding will be necessary to find out what atheists know about planned future attacks. Torturing the wrong people must be accepted as collateral damage.
Conditions must be harder for atheists across the board. No more atheist only conventions or assemblies of any kind must be permitted. The construction of atheist community building must be stopped. Atheists must learn to assimilate. Atheists who express sympathy with individuals like Harris, Dawkins or Hitchens should be forcefully deported. We must also consider the need to invade nations which practice ‘state atheism’. A prolonged campaign of drone strikes against atheist preachers may also be necessary to prevent terrorism. Whether we like i or not, this is a war we are immersed in. It is a war of ideas and a bloody war which must be won.
Anyone who disagrees with these ideas is an apologist who drastically underestimates the evil we are up against.
Regards,
A critic of atheism
I also disagree that atheism implies a particular moral code.
Our morality has evolved along with us. We get our moral outlook from our culture, our history, etc. And, of course, results vary. My culture says it is immoral to not believe in god. Atheism might have something to say about that outlook, though.
Regardless where they come from, I share some aspirations for humanity. That motivates me to point out the harm that religions do, etc. Others take the same aspirations and work to be tolerant of “all” points of view to help everyone get along.
Duane
Finally some fucking sanity.
Thank you!
Atheists can have moral codes, moral compasses, societal mores, commandments, laws, moral obligations etc. These can come from philosophy, logic, empathy, golden rules, upbringing, or even religious codes with the supernatural bits removed, but they do not and cannot come from atheism itself any more than they can come from not belonging to a political party or not reading a particular book. Atheism is not the basis of anything, it is merely an indication that whatever mores one possesses are not based on religion.
This is utter bullshit. Atheism is one of the many “foundational assumptions” (scare-quotes because I’m choosing my words in haste) that inform and form the basis of most of the important moral and ethical choices we make in our daily actions. If you assume that there are no gods to tell us what to do, and that all statements about “God’s will” are unfounded and unreliable, then that leads inevitably to the conclusion that we have to think for ourselves, or at least rely on non-theistic sources to inform our decisions. Even if atheism doesn’t inevitably lead to this or that particular set of principles, it does at least narrow our range of sources, by ruling out principles that are based solely on belief in one or more gods. And that in turn strongly influences which principles we’re likely to adopt, and which we reject. (And yes, so does not reading certain books and not belonging to certain groups.)
As for whether atheism is responsible for this particular senseless murder, that may or may not be the case. Was Hicks responding to actual atheist thought? He could just as easily have been responding to stereotypical depictions of atheist thought by Christian propagandists, which he could easily have been exposed to since his early childhood. Seriously, which of those two do you think he’s most likely to have been exposed to over the long term? This is a very religious, majority-Christian nation — even lifetime atheists can’t avoid seeing themselves in the distorting mirrors of the Christian worldview. And as certain atheist “leaders” have shown, you can be an atheist and still not give up religious thinking.
Regardless, given the fact that some of the biggest names associated with atheism in pop culture are also purveyors of anti-Muslim animus (i.e. three of the four “horsemen”), there is still a very real link. Add to that a number of lesser known personalities that are often even worse (like Pat Condell), and I don’t think any of us should dodge with a “not really about atheism; not our problem.”
I totally agree. But the good news is, a lot of atheists are working on the problem right now. The ones at FTB come to mind for starters — this lot have been fighting the bigotry, sexism, and other rank bullshit we’ve been hearing from the old “new” atheists for years now, and there’s no reason to stop after this latest murder.
While I like pz’s writing, I also have always disagreed that atheism necessarily means anything more than disbelief in gods.
So now you’re telling other people what atheism means to them? If someone — or lots of someones — says that atheism means more to them than not believing in gods, then you really have ZERO factual or logical ground to deny such a statement.
As somebody said above, atheism isn’t even a real thing – its the natural state of humans and animals.
This is somewhere between meaningless, false, and not-even-wrong. The human brain is hardwired more for certain patterns of religious, anthropomorphic and religious thinking than for truly rational thought and decisions; and that makes rational thought a relatively hard skill to practice or teach. So no, atheism is not a “natural state of humans.”
Your liberturdism, saying “nobody tells me what to do”, is showing. We have your number and it is all ego and me, me, me.
“So now you’re telling other people what atheism means to them? ” no? pz is certainly free to have his atheist beliefs lead to political views, he’s just not free to tell people their atheist beliefs must lead to his political views. many people’s atheist beliefs lead to completely opposing political views. you’re just gonna have to get over it and try to convince people to get on your side the rational way.
“The human brain is hardwired more for certain patterns of religious, anthropomorphic and religious thinking than for truly rational thought and decisions;”
religious pattern thinking does not necessitate belief in deities – see: the major world religions or sects thereof which have no deity. major forms of buddhism, shintoism, taoism, confucianism, neopaganism…
Hi everyone; I don’t often post here, but felt compelled to this morning. Hello!
dereksmear @ 51, your modest proposal is a little too on-the-nose to be an entertaining invective, I’m afraid! If this were a blog that regularly called for the actions you’re ironically espousing, perhaps, but posted here? It’s got a tin ear.
Of course there are ethical consequences to being an atheist, just like there are consequences to any belief. When a belief affects how you interact with another person it takes on a moral character. We’re social animals, and most of our activities are about interacting with one another. That’s morality – how to interact with each other.
You can’t isolate beliefs from one another, or human behaviour from ethics. Logic flows. It flows from primary assumptions to consequences like water downhill, gathering up consequences as it goes. This is how science works, this is how rationality works, this is how thinking works. Any time that flow of logic touches the life of another person – it becomes ethical at that point of contact, and you need to examine whether you’re behaving ethically. Period, full stop. That’s what ethics is.
If you consider atheism to be atomic, that’s fine – you’re a reductionist amongst reductionists. But atoms build molecules, and claiming that they don’t interact with one another or affect one another is just plain wrong.
(As an aside, I rather like that name for the “dictionary atheist” position, “atomic atheist”. Maybe a little too 1950’s superhero, but I still like it.)
Whoops! My comment wasn’t directed at dereksmear except for the second paragraph; it was just a general comment. Should have said so!
All cultures that I am aware of have evolved virtually the same set of societal rules (call them morals if you must) in the last fifteen thousand years. No murdering, no thieving, no lying to the judge, respect your folks kids, and no canibalism. Those cultures also have gods that demand no-competition clauses, regular adoration and regular sacrifice. If one gets together with a group of a dozen fellow disbelievers it seems like there is always one sociopath who is an atheist because religion cramp his style. The murderer in question seems to be one of those free spirits, with lots of deadly hardware. Gundamentalism is as much a religion as any other, and the alleged murderer seems to belong to that church.
@Briane Larrieux 48
I have an idea. Why don’t you just bring out your underlying problems with the basic arguments involving social change in general or specific kinds of social change you don’t like? Because so far I am not seeing anything out of you that is reasonable or logical. Much of your contribution in here is fallacious and confused.
Please point out a specific example of someone “shoving responsibility for bad culture” at you. I need to be able to tell the difference between reasonable efforts at group moral pressure that we engage in because we are primates, and whatever it is that is in your head. Preferably something from PZ or one of the commentators here. Like it or not we use social emotions to organize around that word and that fact gives us as much right as anyone else to persuade on matters of culture, and to use the word “atheist” when we do it.
Humans organize around symbols. Due to historical contingency there is a social movement organized around the word “atheist” and you are just going to have to deal with that. We are going to use what history and human psychology has left us.
This is just an utterly dishonest bit of text and is basically just more complaining about us doing what humans do without actually giving any reasons why. You don’t strike me as someone who is very good with human nature on a general level.
The first sentence is garbage because PZ does represent atheists. Just like you represent atheists and I represent atheists and Dawkins represents atheists. He was able to gather people that liked what he said and so he chooses to speak at all atheists on matters of morals and ethics. Like it or not PZ is an authority because people choose him as one.
The second sentence is about as bad. Because of the same set of emotions like it or not you are connected to that man just as I am and PZ is and Dawkins is. We are connected on a general human level and at the level of connections to the word “atheist”. It’s why we are all speaking out right now and responding to non-atheist social critics and such. We organize around the word because the social emotions have connected to it for many reasons including social strategy. Despite that capitalized “YOUR”, you are here for a reason and community is part of it. At least be honest with yourself for yourself.
@50
This continues the same problems. No PZ is not self-selected. The process was typical social evolution. He started a blog, people read it and decided to gather around him socially. By coming here the way that you are you basically admit that you feel the pull of those social emotions tied to those words.
Like every other human being, including you here incidentally, PZ and the rest of us here want to see parts of the culture and society change. So he will use his authority and social capital and post about what he does not like in the movement. You are whining about a humans doing what humans do.
So why should I care how these things make you feel when you are a sociopolitical opponent? Especially when you are an opponent with terrible “arguments” that are mere emotional strategy meant to silence? You are here trying to change culture as an atheist, with other atheists, while denying the de facto atheist community. Why should anyone here give you consideration when you can’t even properly recognize the reality of the situation?
I also think you should question your morals because you are awfully confused about human nature and are substituting terrible excuses for persuasion on whatever issues are underlying your visit here.
@58
Emphasis mine. Perhaps this is the core of it. You are not here to persuade. You just want to shut people up by replacing social shaming (perfectly reasonable social emotions and tactics) with “not free to tell people”. We are free to tell people you can sit and sputter if you think otherwise. The very fact that you are here tells me that it’s effective, you don’t want to be shamed. And you keep saying you are not a part of this movement. The reality of human nature and your own actions says otherwise.
To this point your claims of lack of rationality are hard to believe given your command of rationality. I’m certainly going to need to see a quote and explanation from you at this point.
Thank you, Brony! Far better but than I could. I’ll just scrap what I was writing, your post was much more thorough.
Briane @48:
I hope no one ever tries to force you to be part of a community that you don’t want to participate in. You obviously have the right to decide if you want to be part of the atheist movement or the community.
That said, as a whole, atheists in USAmerica are mischaracterized by the media and by society. We-all of us-are seen as immoral because we’re godless. We’re seen as individuals no better than rapists. We’re prevented from holding office. This is how society sees us, whether you participate in the movement or are a member of the community.
We aren’t the ones who are going to link you to the movement. That will be done by the anti-atheist bigots of the world.
dereksmear @51:
I’m sure if you searched–not too far–you’d find the accomodationists you’re looking for. They ain’t here there though. I will remain an atheist and an anti-theist, even in the face of Craig Hicks’ horrible actions. I will still criticize religion when able to, and in the fashion I deem appropriate for the circumstances. Sometimes that will be harsh. Other times the tone might be tempered.
Overall, I don’t think this incident means that atheists need to temper their advocacy for social justice issues or church/state issues.
I do wish this incident meant that more of the atheists opposed to social justice would confront their beliefs and reexamine them, but I don’t know that that’s going to happen. I’ve argued that people who leave religion ought to reexamine their religious baggage upon rejecting god belief, and many people are opposed to that. They don’t want to look at and reexamine the harmful beliefs they hold that are religiously derived (or have deep religious roots).
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/02/12/1363967/-About-That-Atheist-Man-Who-Killed-3-Young-Muslims-In-NC-Don-t-Forget-The-Atheist-Part
Similarly, Amanda Marcotte has a good take:
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2015/02/time-for-atheists-to-take-a-hard-look-at-ourselves/
POL POT!!!!!
I don’t mention this very much because there is a balance between using the language that we have, and making it more precise on a group level. So this is not a harsh criticism, but it’s still a topic worth addressing at some point. I don’t like how the word “hate” is used in these situations. Hate is an emotional state and thus a neutral. I don’t accept that something that evolved for good purpose should be opposed as an object, though I can admit that this particular inherited emotional tool should be used very carefully.
It’s not “spreading hate”, it’s what people do with the hate they feel and what they target it at. It’s not “representing hate”, it’s horrible representations of hate. “Hate in it’s purest form” is a simple emotional response without a target in perception or a response that is attached to the combination of perception+emotion+memory. I think we will be healthier as a species if we focus on awareness, control, and proper use of emotions with awareness.
We’ll always need a word to describe people who don’t believe in gods, and if atheism gets to the point where it also means “and has humanist values”, then we’ll never be able to describe the sociopaths who are also godless as distinct from the humanists who are godless. I don’t think that helps us too much.
More to the point, every single attempt to “redefine” a word and force the new definition onto the public has failed. The public redefines words on it’s own, naturally, and fiat definitions never fly.
Hence, why “atheism +” was a perfect compromise. It said that atheism, which as most people use it only means “doesn’t believe in god” isn’t enough for a good life. I call myself a humanist if I’m talking about my values, an atheist if I’m talking about my belief in god, and a rationalist if I’m talking about my attempted approach at understanding the world, and I’m fine with the distinction. Not every word has to take on every single good quality we can possibly imagine so that we can describe every single aspect of ourselves in one word. That gets confusing, all these “aggregate words”, and allows for a lot of dishonest speech, where conflated definitions let someone say one thing and pretend to mean another (like “go upstairs for coffee”).
So far I think we’re all on the same page. What does that have to do with this? I’m not sure. I never met this guy before. I never had a chance to teach that person humanist values, but we sure could spread the notion of humanist values, and I think that many atheists have done so. I’ve seen and read so very many arguments against “how can you be good without god?” that outline various atheist’s personal moral code and how they got one without god. I’ve never seen a one of them that could be misconstrued as a call to kill someone over a parking spot, even with the worst actors in the community I’ve seen. I think humanist values go hand in hand with what it means to become a moral person after becoming an atheist. I dabbled in libertarian values for about two weeks after I finally admitted I was an atheist to myself, before finally concluding that those were terrible values and moving on to something else (ultimately, humanism). That is the best direction we could take I think. We’re already, by and large, advertising such values to people but we could go further and not limit this sort of advocacy to “counter arguments” against those who hate atheists. Perhaps if we specifically targeted this towards atheists unsure of what their new-found lack of faith means in terms of social responsibility?
As well, as posting about atheism, Craig Hicks was also a vocal gay-rights proponent. I haven’t seen any gay-rights groups step up to acknowledge the responsibility we have in this murder. Gay rights didn’t propel Hicks into murdering his neighbors but we failed to teach him that standing up for ones right to love whom one loves, doesn’t justify us to kill others who ostensibly belong to a religion that opposes homosexuality as Islam does.
I think gay rights advocates need to own this and stop gleefully evading our responsibility.
After all, logic is logic.
woozy @71:
Has a segment of gay rights advocates created a climate of anti-Muslim bigotry within the Gay Rights Movement the way a segment of atheists in the Atheist Movement have?
This is not at all the same thing.
^ All of that. All of it. Right there. ^
http://i.imgur.com/4cwIS5n.jpg
It sure is, buddy. It sure is. *wipes tear*
azhael, #45
And all of this too. Of course, you won’t get a response from the Pure Atheists to that because there can be no response to it.
Okay, Tony. That’s a fair point.
… but … do you honestly think the atheism movement has taught people to hate and kill? I mean, seriously, “But I do think that the ideology must accept some responsibility for failing to teach people not to do those things”. Hicks, is fucking grown man. Did he really need to be “taught” that it’s not okay to murder? Is there some axiomatic hypothesis you all are assuming that I’m simply not getting? I mean we don’t put on and off our morality like a pair of trousers when we join one group or another, do we?
Also, doesn’t it seem a little thin? He has an online presence as an atheist, as well as for a gun rights, and a gay rights advocate. (He’s the first pro-gay gun-fondler that I know of; kind of weird in my preconceived mindset. And we *are* playing with preconceived midsets, aren’t we? Those dang Dawkins/Harris MRA libertarian islamaphobic atheists… except those atheist don’t tend to be pro gay rights). One segment of atheism is known fro its anti-muslim bigotry. He kills his neighbors; a young progressive family from an islamic culture… hence it follows it was the muslim-bigotry of his atheist philosophy that propelled him?
Okay, maybe. Why not? If it didn’t compel him it compelled others. But it’s hardly a foregone conclusion. And I guess it’s foregone conclusions that bug me about this story. The original PZ post began with a Tweet from an idiot saying “Ha! I bet he read PZ Myers, ’cause can’t you just see PZ blowing a bunch of people away” (Seriously, fuck that noise). So, seriously, no someone’s dumb preconception of PZ a gun-toting hater is *not* okay. But then we immediately go into our own preconceived notion of Hicks as some sort of Dawkins/Harris libertarian MRA islamaphobic one of those other atheists, because they all are. Well, preconceived notions are dangerous. They may be true most of the time and they may play the numbers pretty well but they are always preconceived notions and they are always dangerous. And he’s a gay-rights activist. (“Huh? That doesn’t fit?”)
I can’t own Craig Dicks ’cause I don’t know him. Maybe he’s my twin. And maybe he’s an other. But I don’t know.
woozy
Given certain axioms relating to when lethal violence is acceptable (notably ones relating to nationalism and what constitutes national defence), that would indeed be a reasonable conclusion to arrive at from the rhetoric of, say, Pat Condell. In case you’re not familiar, he’s an atheist vlogger who warns about the ‘creeping Islamicization’ of Europe, and how the West must be on guard against this subtle invasion aimed at toppling our societies and eliminating all we hold dear in the name of a World Caliphate. So, if you’re already armed and primed to defend yourself against the day to day threats of suburban living (note: sarcasm may be present), and you’re continually following the likes of Condell and Sam ‘Profiling and torture are just fine to root out those evil Muslim terrorists’ Harris, that might just influence you in an unwholesome direction. Possibly.
The major figures and faces in atheism are ridiculously Islamophobic and regularly demonize Muslims as violent and uncivilized, and characterize Islam as an inherent and barbaric evil with no redeeming qualities (often going out of their way to ignore the ways in which their criticism of the ideology or scripture of Islam could equally apply to Judaism and Christianity). Hitchens was infamous for this shit. He made himself prominent by being the one of the Four Horsemen who most vocally supported the Iraq War, doing so as a blatant polemicist who won many right-wing friends in the process. Harris made a name for himself by focusing on how Justified one is to profile Muslims at an airport, or to bomb the entire Middle East because of how dangerous Islam is. And, of course, he also loves to justify torture, especially when it helps justify the U.S.’s policy of actually torturing brown people. Dawkins is now continuing the game of “look how barbaric the Middle East is!” and barking about how Palestine deserves whatever it gets from Good Ol’ Israel. And I believe Bill Maher is doing the same shit too.
You don’t just get to fucking ignore that little detail when trying to sweep atheism under the rug and pretending it has no role in this.
And no, just because the murders erupted due to a “parking dispute” doesn’t mean it is the fucking sole cause, and anyone suggesting otherwise is a fucking ignoramus. It is a blatant attempt to wash away racism and it happens every fucking time a crime like this happens. It doesn’t matter how much bigotry that person expresses beforehand, or how ridiculous their non-racist motive is for the crime, there is always some handful of dumbasses every fucking time who barge into the conversation to say that it cannot possibly be racism unless the killer was wearing a KKK outfit and spray painted racial slurs on the dead bodies. Racism fucking exists and racial violence often has an “excuse” (see: police shooting of unarmed black people). Stop playing fucking games.
woozy @76:
No, I don’t the atheist movement has taught people to kill*. I do think that within the atheist movement are assorted homophobes, transphobes, misogynists, and yes, anti-Muslim bigots. Those with anti-Muslim bias other and demonize Muslims. They treat them as less than human. They dehumanize them. This is a climate that I worry Craig Hicks stewed in. Stew in that climate for too long, and sometimes something horrible happens (for a comparison, look at Elliot Rodger and how he stewed in misogynistic spaces).
*While I am not aware of anyone in the movement actively preaching anti-Muslim hate in the way that the KKK preaches white supremacy or the Family Research Council preaches homophobia or TERFs preach anti-trans hate, it wouldn’t surprise me if someone or a group of someone’s like that exists. Even if they don’t though, hate manifests in more ways than simply saying “I hate Muslims”.
woozy @76:
Sorry, forgot to respond to this-
A few of us have said we think Hicks was a libertarian based on the things he has said. It wasn’t a preconceived notion. It was something we gave thought to based on the evidence we have available.
Tony! The Queer Shoop wrote:
I’d agree with that. It’s certainly not a problem with atheism, but the prevalence of anti-Muslim atheists who happen to be the public faces for atheism has definitely made it an atheist problem.
Sadly, Amanda Marcotte has already noticed that people are using this as a cudgel against atheism in general: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2015/02/having-criticized-atheism-now-its-time-to-defend-it-against-strawmen
woozy #76
Put it this way; under a story of the murder of Muslims by Buddhists in Myanmar, the other week, I saw a comment by a person who I know to be an atheist, to the effect that any group who are against Muslims are alright by him. I’ve seen far too many statements along those lines. Okay, it’s not voicing an intent to use violence, in and of itself, but yeah: the fact that that much lacking of empathy toward Muslims, and that level of bigotry and othering are even slightly common is worrying as hell, to me.
Well, atheist, gun fetishist, supporter of marriage equality in the American political context pretty much mean libertarian. Add in the anti-muslim bigotry and that puts him in the Harris libertarian islamophobe camp. I have no idea if he is an mra type, but wouldn’t be surprised if he thought he was John Galt.
Wait! I think I know this one. I’ve seen it before somewhere. We don’t have to own it.
All we have to do is define Atheist in a way that precludes such acts and then claim he’s not a “true” Atheist.
Slight problem. What do we call those that don’t exactly subscribe to whatever we arrive at? Got it. Atheist-?
Duane
@84 duanetiemann
I get that you think you were being clever and funny, but i’m afraid you failed. Unfortunately for you, nobody is saying that people who don’t agree with certain conclussions are not atheists…..we are owning it because these fucker is and atheist, no matter how much of a murdering arsehole he is…he is an atheist. You also fail in that nobody is trying to redefine atheism….what people are advocating is merging atheism with other possitions to create something of value…rather than keeping atheism in isolation as a pointless label that means nothing at all and gets you nowhere…
His wife, who attorneys said is in the process of getting a divorce, described her husband as someone who believes everyone is equal. Karen Hicks told CNN affiliate WTVD, something inside his head must have snapped before the shooting.
Neighbors told reporters that Craig Hicks was known for angrily confronting people over everything from loud music to parking issues in the area. One described him as someone who showed “equal opportunity anger.” At one point last year, the situation got so bad neighbors organized a meeting “to talk about how he kind of made everyone feel uncomfortable and unsafe,” she said.
But at the Finley Forest condominium complex where Hicks lived, neighbors painted a different picture.
Christopher Lafreniere, a driver who often towed cars from the complex, told WRAL that Hicks called so much to request that cars be towed that it became a problem for the company.
“He didn’t like people parking in his space, and he was really, really adamant,” Lafreniere said. “I didn’t understand why.”
Last year, the problem became so severe that members of the community had a meeting to discuss it, Samantha Maness, 25, told the News & Observer newspaper.
“There were just a lot of instances of him getting people’s cars towed, and just being very aggressive towards anyone who came, visitors, residents,” she said. “And so someone in the community organized a meeting to talk about how he kind of made everyone in the community feel uncomfortable and unsafe.”
Asked whether she thought the shooting had anything to do with religion, Maness said Hicks displayed “equal opportunity anger.”
“I have seen and heard him be very unfriendly to a lot of people in this community,” she said.
“He was very angry, anytime I saw him,” she told WRAL.
And yet, despite his “equal opportunity” anger, when he hauled out his weapon and executed a few neighbours, it just randomly happened to be a family of visibly Muslim people that Mr. Angrypants Religionhater chose.
Complete independent of his following a number of people who make a living off their anti-Muslim bigotry.
William of Ockham must be roiling his dust.
duanetiemann #84:
If you’re gonna make lousy jokes, at least use the right symbols.
Atheist- (that’s a dash) is not the same as atheist− (that’s a minus sign).
@89 Well, today I get to learn something. How did you make the nice minus sign? I always thought they were the same.
@85 The basic deal is that a bunch of us resist redefinition. We could say that bald includes wearing a tie. I don’t have anything against social justice or ties. But what in the world is the connection? Why not just advocate both on their own merits rather than fake a connection? Should social justice advocates exclude non atheists? Why?
I do understand that there is a need to push back on folks saying atheists are bad. But this as a push back seems more of a muddle. The stats pretty much back us — or at least don’t damn us. The Barna studies show fewer per capita atheist criminals, etc.
Minus sign. The named entity is easy to remember: − (see also: ÷ and × ÷ ×)
As to redefinition, what do you claim is being redefined? The claim is that atheism, which is, yes, the lack of belief in gods, necessarily has consequences on one’s worldview.
@91 Thanks.
@92 It seems to me that that there are 2 branches here. I disagree with them both.
1. There is a specific effort to broaden the the definition of Atheism to include a moral stance. As in @85 where azhael says “what people are advocating is merging atheism with other possitions to create something of value…rather than keeping atheism in isolation as a pointless label that means nothing at all and gets you nowhere…” (right after saying there is no redefinition). Note also the use of the term “dictionary atheists”.
2. Per you at @92, “atheism has consequences on your worldview”. I’m not sure what is being claimed by this. I do agree in a narrow sense. e.g. one consequence is that not believing in a god is generally not considered immoral by atheists, though even that might not be universal. The faithful sometimes have doubts and become ashamed of their lack of faith until they can talk themselves back into believing.
That aside, I don’t see that atheism has moral implications. The idea that there are no gods does not imply that it is wrong to lie, cheat, steal, murder, etc. I expect we all regard those things as wrong, but they are no more logical implications of atheism than they are gifts from a god. They come from somewhere else. And they evolve. They are not things that we can discover. They are things that we decide for ourselves whether we realize it or not.
Duane
Argh, Jesus fuck….How many times….?
@93 duanetiemann
There is no redefinition of atheism because it still means lack of belief in gods. The “merge” that i talked about is not a definitional one, it’s an ideological one, i suposse. Atheism is NOT happening in a vaccuum, for fuck’s sakes. It’s happening in the mind of someone with OTHER ideas, other believes, and lacks of belief. All of them together shape and create that person’s worldview. That means that someone’s atheism is shaping their skepticism, and their naturalism, and where their morality is derived from….
This is already the case, for everyone, it’s not like anybody here is advocating something radical and new…because nobody’s atheism exists in isolation. It has already been said repeteadly, but hey, what’s one more fucking time….Nobody ever seems to have a problem when atheists promote separation of church and state. However, that has fuck all to do with the definition of atheism. How the fuck do you get to state and church should be separate from a lack of belief in gods alone? You don’t, that’s how….You arrive to that conclussion when your atheism meets with all your other ideas and beliefs.
An isolated atheism is not worth the letters it takes to write the word…it’s nothing…Your atheism is not isolated, and you already know that, so stop pretending that you can disassociate it from all your other beliefs, including the ones you use to derive a moral judgement. You, and all the other dictionary atheist only pretend you can do that (you can’t) when it’s convenient…..it’s very dishonest and very transparent…
Well said, azhael.
duanetiemann #93:
You’re welcome.
It’s worth noting that to someone using a screen-reader, 3 x 2 = 24/4 is gobbledegook (try reading it literally), where 3 × 2 = 24 ÷ 4 is a perfectly reasonable statement. Inclusivity matters.
</OT>
This statement is as stupid as the statement that allowing more people to be married redefines marriage. There is a specific effort to broaden the moral stance taken by the atheist community. This does not redefine atheism, it attempts to redefine the goals of a community of people.
@95 CaitieCat
*blushes*
@96 Daz
That’s a great way to put it.
duanetiemann #93:
Gee, a dictionary atheist getting morals by osmosis. In most cutures, that would be religious based morals. Which shows you haven’t thought about the consequences of deciding no gods exist, therefore religious based morals should be examined. If you are a FreeThinker, then you look at empirical evidence to decide what is and isn’t moral due to the effects of the consequences. But, that requires actually spending a few minutes thinking about the situation, which appears to be too heavy of a burden for dictionary atheists. They osmose, they don’t think.
@98 >osmosis
I think that is a pretty fair characterization. A moral sense emerges and folks sort of absorb it. Xians and Atheists alike. Slavery comes to mind. It used to be regarded as OK and now it’s bad. I view those who think it was always bad and in the past folks were just mistaken about it as shallow.
Consequences are generally an effective way to assess a moral stance, but there are some fine points. Is abortion OK based on consequences? Early on, a life/potential life is extinguished and the woman is freed of a substantial burden. By my calculus, the net happiness is not hugely different from the potential life never existing at all. Opinions vary, of course. Later, say near birth, opinions are more murky. After birth, there is a huge consensus. Baby killing is bad. But, in terms of consequences, what is really the difference between just before and just after? As a society, we have strong moral feelings here, but they don’t really match up with consequences. If we really want to get confused, try figuring out how which consequences get to be regarded as positive. That ends up being something that is decided rather than discovered as well…
In the universe, there is no good vs evil dichotomy that is there for us to discover. It is something we decide for ourselves, though we’re not usually aware of the process that creates our moral sense.
BTW, that is different from issues of fact such as the existence of gods. Gods exist or not. We should be able to discover the (highly) likely truth of the situation. Morality is not an issue of fact. It is something that is decided, not a truth that can be discovered.
Which, with prima facie evidence, shows your shallow thinking.
How? Unevidenced assertion, dismissed without evidence.
While true, that is where the consequences come. Do YOU want to be on the recieving end of somebody saying you are unworthy of health insurance/unemployment benefits, welfare/disability? That is where you must supply empathy, and the golden rule: do unto others as you would like them to do unto you. Morality isn’t a swamp. There are solid pathways if you don’t decide they aren’t there.
Citation mother fucking needed. Why do I detect a bigot/liberturd? Oh, right, attitude and failure to use the golden rule, thinking you won’t need any benefits from society….
azhael #97:
Thank you.
duanetiemann #99:
I agree this is what happens in many, probably most, cases. I don’t see such a process ,which advantages tradition over thought, as being particularly good. We should be encouraging people to think about, and discuss, such matters.
I’m currently in the middle of proofing the OCR of a mid-nineteenth-century book entitled Bible Defense Of Slavery. Having seen in disgusting detail the arguments being made at that time, your view seems, to put it mildly, naïve. And I’ll drop this lest it become a derail.
Consequences are generally an effective way to assess a moral stance, but there are some fine points. Is abortion OK based on consequences? …
And also this rather confused mess. Especially as it seems to have sod-all bearing on the idea that the atheist movement should, or should not, be involved in social justice issues not connected directly to secularism, or to the OP, which discusses anti-Muslim bigotry.
In a universe lacking a supernatural arbiter of morality, this is indeed true. Oh look! A moral consequence of atheism!
Total rubbish. We cannot disprove the existence of a god, but may merely show it to be extremely unlikely.</derail>
Going back the the OP: There is far too much anti-Muslim bigotry in the rhetoric of far too many atheists. Even if it were to turn out that Hicks didn’t act on such bigotry, the fact that rhetoric is far too common is still something we need to face. Do you agree with this statement?
Oops! My paragraph beginning ‘consequences are generally an effective way’ was a quote from duanetiemann’s #99.
Oh, wow, it turns out the reason duanetiemann doesn’t see the obvious connection between “everything a person believes and disbelieves” and “moral judgements” is because xe doesn’t develop moral judgements at all….xe just does whatever his society is doing….by osmosis. Makes sense, i suposse, if your idea of how to develop a moral judgement is to go with the cultural motions, it’s easy to miss how someone’s atheism is relevant to their moral judgements.
I’m so fucking sick of this pig-ignorant assertion that atheism means anything more than it’s dictionary definition. It’s not a philosophy anymore than not believing in psychic powers, talking snakes, leprechauns, or an afterlife are. As a matter of fact, one can believe in all of those absurdities and still be an atheist. One can be an atheist and be a humanist. One can be an atheist and be a murderer. But neither logically follow from atheism. I do not understand PZ’s obsession with expanding the definition of atheism. He is not the arbiter of what words mean. He wants to add to atheism humanistic principles? Great, but atheism is not humanism. Unlike atheism, humanism is a philosophy a worldview, an ideology devoted to ethics and morality. Atheism is none of these. Using atheist to mean what it actually, literally means keeps confusion at bay and invalidates anti-atheist accusations from those who want to make connections between bad behavior and atheism. Accusations like: “Atheists hate Christians” and “Atheists are immoral.” Neither of these logically follow from merely lacking a god belief so reminding a religionist what being an atheist means leaves them with nothing to attack.
Come to think of it, not only does humanism encompass values that PZ has been trying to attribute to atheism so does, and I’m pretty sure PZ’s familiar with this word, freethought.
Atheism does not encompass humanism or social justice activism and it doesn’t need to. One can be a social justice activist and a humanist in addition to being an atheist, but by itself atheism has nothing to do with either. I’ve read PZ’s arguments to the contrary for years. None of them have ever been convincing. Stating, as he did a few years ago that no one is a dictionary atheist was patronizing because many atheists, rightly, see themselves as merely non-god believers If you want to pretend the word means something else, fine, just keep in mind that you’re deluding yourselves. And don’t expect people to know what you’re talking about when you use your unjustifiably expanded definition of atheism.
Come to think of it, since murder does not rationally follow from atheism, one must add something to it or change the definition in order to be motivated to murder by atheism. Something like Atheism + anti-Muslim bigotry + an unhealthy attachment to guns + being a hyper-literal anti-theist + entitled white man + a controlling personality + a bizarre, irrational over-attachment to a parking space. None of these things necessarily add up to murder and there’s likely some causality that we’ll never be privy to (the non-conscious functions of his brain being one that no one will ever be privy to, not even the murderer). Or it could be just one thing.
If there are those of you who don’t think that it’s possible that this madness was about a parking space and nothing else, allow me to share a personal anecdote. Less than two years ago, in late spring, it was a beautiful, clear, warm sunny day. I decided to lay out in my backyard to get some sun. Shortly after I’d settled myself in the reclining outdoor chair, the next door neighbors’ sprinkler started to spray through the chain-link fence. I (a white male) asked my neighbor (also a white male) if he could please move his sprinkler so that it it wasn’t spraying into my yard and on me. I asked nicely. I said please. The response I got was a huge shock. He yelled at me, “Fuck you! Why don’t you lay out on your porch…. and mow your lawn!” I responded in kind, yelling back at him that it’s my yard, I’ll lay out where I want and mow my fucking lawn when I want. At that point he growled at me, “I’ll put a bullet in ya.” All this occurred in less than 5 minutes – a polite request that escalated into my neighbor threatening to shoot me. I called the cops and a police officer spoke to us both separately. My neighbor of course lied to the cop about threatening to “put a bullet” in me. Later in the day my wife and I were in the backyard and I noticed that there was a recently finished cigarette butt in our yard (neither my wife nor I smoke). He and his wife were outside. I picked up the cigarette butt with a napkin and threw it back in their yard telling them not to throw their trash in our yard. He came to the fence and started yelling nonsense. His wife walked over and dropped her cigarette but in our yard. She told him I was just being “ignorant.” I responded by yelling because I was fed up, anxious, and angry and his wife didn’t know what she was talking about because she didn’t hear her husband threaten to shoot me. My neighbor – the man – immediately threatened violence again, albeit not with a gun this time. He tried reaching through the trellis to grab and punch me. He went to a spot where there was no trellis and unsuccessfully attempted to climb the fence. I was quite frightened and went inside to call the police again. The next day the son threatened me. I called the police again. I didn’t feel safe in my own backyard for months, always wondering when I might be shot. Remember, this started because I politely asked my neighbor to move his sprinkler. That’s an example of how dangerous people can get over the stupidest, most petty minor issues. His problem with me could not have been racial. It could not have been about religion because I barely ever spoke to the guy and never mentioned that I’m an atheist. It could not have been xenophobia. And the direct clash happened over the course of two days. I’m not saying that Hicks definitely killed 3 Muslims over a parking space, I’m just saying that it’s a possibility.
Above PZ says, “…I do not think that atheism compelled him to kill Muslims, just as I don’t think Islam compels one to become a suicide bomber, or Christianity compels one to bomb abortion clinics.”
This is either incredibly naive or willfully ignorant. I agree with the first part because atheism has no doctrine or holy book stating: Atheists must kill [whoever]. But Islam does have a doctrine that polytheists, which includes Christians (the Trinity is polytheistic) and idolaters, which includes people in most Western countries, should be killed:
Quran 9:5 “And when the sacred months have passed, then kill the polytheists wherever you find them and capture them and besiege them and sit in wait for them at every place of ambush. But if they should repent, establish prayer, and give zakah, let them [go] on their way. Indeed, Allah is Forgiving and Merciful.” Source: http://quran.com/9
And while suicide is forbidden in Islam, martyrdom (of which “suicide bombing” is an example) is not considered suicide:
Quran 9:111 “Indeed, Allah has purchased from the believers their lives and their properties [in exchange] for that they will have Paradise. They fight in the cause of Allah , so they kill and are killed. [It is] a true promise [binding] upon Him in the Torah and the Gospel and the Qur’an. And who is truer to his covenant than Allah ? So rejoice in your transaction which you have contracted. And it is that which is the great attainment.” Source: http://quran.com/9/111
And of course, martyrs earn themselves a special gift in paradise (Not just the 72 virgins – all men in Islamic Paradise receive these, per the Quran and Hadith):
Quran 4:74 “So let those fight in the cause of Allah who sell the life of this world for the Hereafter. And he who fights in the cause of Allah and is killed or achieves victory – We will bestow upon him a great reward.” Source: http://quran.com/4/74
In addition to these passages from the Quran, there is the undeniable fact that Muslim extremists use these scriptures to motivate other Muslims to become suicide bombers, something that has happened multiple times in our modern world.
So despite PZ’s assertion to the contrary, Islam does compel one to become a martyr – those who “kill and are killed”, which is an accurate description of a “suicide bomber”. It’s just that thankfully and obviously most Muslims, who, like most of their fellow humans, would prefer to live a peaceful life that allows them to strive for happiness and contentment (including the 3 Muslims who were senselessly murdered), do not take this path, but such a path is compelled by the Quran, and thus Islam. As with most Jews and Christians, it’s good for everyone that they ignore the more vile elements in their holy books.
To some small degree, I agree with the last part of PZ’s statement: “I don’t think…Christianity compels one to bomb abortion clinics”. There is really no scriptural justification for being anti-abortion. In fact, Christian scriptures are, on balance, pro-abortion and not pro-life in any meaning of that term. So Christians have nothing scriptural to back up their so-called “pro-life” stance. That said, over the past 40+ Christians of nearly every denomination have made anti-abortion into a modern Christian doctrine with it’s own unevidenced dogma: abortion is murder, abortion will make a woman infertile, abortion causes cancer, abortion causes some vaguely defined emotional or mental illness. When one is convinced that they are saving lives by bombing an abortion clinic, they don’t see themselves as committing murders, but as defending the “lives” of the defenseless. Even though that sounds seriously irrational to me. But there are also atheists who are pro-life so this is not a specifically Christian ideology. It’s deeply misguided, but does not compel one to bomb abortion clinics.
We’re fucking sick of pig ignorant unthinking assholes who fail to recognize their decision has consequences. And have to tell us in detail why they are unthinking assholes who fail to recognize those consequences.
If atheism has no consequences in light of your other believes, if it has no ramifications to how you make decissions and what kinds of decissions, then what fucking good is it..? Why would you even bother to have that word, let alone use it as a label?
I’m going to assume that you haven’t even read the thread based on your post…because i can’t believe that despite how many times it has been repeated, someone could still be dishonest enough to pretend that people are claiming that certain morals are intrinsically specific to atheism. That straw-man you are battling is already dead…you should stop wasting everybody’s time and engage with the actual argument.
I’m so fucking sick of smug arseholes who want me to have a completely useless label and pretend like all of my believes don’t add up to create my worldview.
satanaugustine,
There’s atheism the idea and there’s atheism the movement (no matter how loosely organized) that exists as a response to religion. This movement is not a bunch of people reciting “There’s no god” over and over. It’s a bunch of people asserting that public life should be governed by certain principles (reason, fairness) and not by dogmatic thinking and tradition.
It’s the latter that we talk about when we say atheism needs to truly embrace reason and fairness and let go of the same prejudices and bigotry that it criticizes religions for.
I can’t put it better than Daz already did in #96
The word atheism still means and still should mean absence of theism. We’re not talking about the word. We’re talking about the behaviors of some of the humans who call themselves atheists. We’re talking about bad trends that exist among some of those people.
I blame lots of stuff, like Sam Harris’s slanders against Muslims and Palestinians (e.g., “There is every reason to believe that the Palestinians would kill all the Jews in Israel if they could. Would every Palestinian support genocide? Of course not. But vast numbers of them—and of Muslims throughout the world—would.”) on elements of anti-theist culture, and my first inclination is to believe the same of the Chapel Hill murderer … but the evidence, as detailed in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Chapel_Hill_shooting, simply doesn’t support it. Unlike the familiar Muslim slanderers, the murderer did not have a particular animus against Muslims over other theists; he was at least as hostile to Christians, as indicated by
I disagree that there was a “lethal failure of atheism” in this case … I don’t think there is any evidence that atheism had anything to do with the murders. But I do agree with the sentiment … atheist blog and youtube culture does have a great deal to do with the hostility toward Muslims expressed by many atheists online and promoted by atheist leaders like Sam Harris.
I view those who don’t think it was always bad to be morally corrupt. And what’s shallow is the simplistic “It used to be regarded as OK” and the ridiculous strawman of “those who think … in the past folks were just mistaken about it”.
At least the rest of your post isn’t idiotic.
@88
Ockham’s Razor is no substitute for examining evidence. The way you use it has been applied to justify many a lynching and erroneous conviction.
#104, Satanaugustine:
Good for you, that you are so selfishly entitled that you don’t even want people to talk about asking you to be humane. You’re an atheist, you don’t need that kind of bullshit!
@83
Interesting how you respond to a comment about making ungrounded assumptions with a series of ungrounded assumptions. On Facebook he wrote “Some call me a gun toting liberal, others call me an open-minded conservative.” — while that could indicate libertarian, he doesn’t self-identify as one, and there’s no basis at all for believing that “he thought he was John Galt”. There is also no evidence of anti-Muslim bias (and the circular argument that his killing of Muslims is such evidence won’t do).
I don’t think the question is properly framed. I do honestly sincerely think that elements of the atheism movement have encouraged and reinforced hatred, particularly of Muslims; one would have to have their head in the sand not to have seen it. The more public figures like Sam Harris hedge it with claims that they are talking about the religion, not people, or just about “radicals”, but a) it’s disingenuous and b) the consumers of their rhetoric drop the hedge. Witness again, from Harris:
When Harris wrote that, I asked Dan Dennett to please talk to him, as it undermines Dan’s humanist agenda. He said he was talking to him about it … I hope that actually happened and that something positive came of it.
Eh? Dawkins, Harris, libertarians, and atheists are all generally pro gay rights. In fact, while I know of a few elderly atheists who are uncomfortable with teh gay, I don’t know of any atheist who does not support gay rights. Why wouldn’t they, when opposition is grounded in religious doctrine? And when it comes to Islamophobes, even right wing Christians who are not normally friendly to gays use intolerance for gays by Islamic regimes as part of their anti-Muslim propaganda.
satanaugustine #104:
And yet, millions of Muslims, regardless of what you claim they are ‘compelled’ to do, quite obviously don’t take this route, just as millions of Christians don’t advocate death camps for LGBT people, or the shooting of abortion providers. Rather than focus on what the Qur’an, or indeed the Bible, ‘compels’ people to do, would it not be more reasonable to address the real situation, and to treat believers as free agents, some of whom are extremists and some of whom are not?
Frankly, this ‘They are compelled to do such-and-such because their holy book tells them to’ argument is dishonest at worst, mistaken at best. It’s useful when confronting fundies—who claim that their book of choice is the unerring, unchanging and literal truth, to be obeyed in every jot and tittle—with the immoralities that they should be adhering to if they are correct. That is, it’s a useful method by which to point out to them that even they do not actually treat the book as unerring etc. As a way to show what believers actually believe, or how they actually act, though, it’s pretty much useless.
@106: “If atheism has no consequences in light of your other believes, if it has no ramifications to how you make decissions and what kinds of decissions, then what fucking good is it..? Why would you even bother to have that word, let alone use it as a label?”
It just highlights a particular philosophical position. Having a word for that can be useful, I would think. For instance, the position of “incompatibilism” in the free will debate simply intimates that one believes that causal determinism and free will are mutually exclusive. It, in and of itself, does not engender any particular robust set of moral, cosmological, social, or other sorts of conclusions. Nonetheless, I think it’s useful to distinguish between compatibilist and incompatibilist views of free will, just the same as it would be to distinguish theistic and atheistic views.
If people are so intent on claiming the word “atheist” to mean something other than its current denotation, all the more power to them. It’s just marks on a page/screen and a set of sound waves. I’ll just use a different word (non-theist perhaps?) when talking to people who want to use the word “atheist” in that way. Either way, I don’t see anything significant riding on it.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no….NO. Read the fucking thread, for crying out loud.
Atheism as a response to theistic claims means what it means…nobody is even remotely suggesting anything to the contrary. We are just pointing out that atheism doesn’t happen in isolation…it’s part of an entire landscape of believes and disbelieves that shape someone’s thinking processes. We are also pointing out that atheism as a movement, needs to be a lot more than just shouting “there are no gods”, which everybody already knows…it’s just that some people are very happy to include science, separation of church and state, etc, but object to social justive on the ridiculous grounds that the definition of atheism doesn’t include that (as if it includes science and separation of church/state……pffffff….).
Why yes, yes it is useful. Why do you suposse it is that it’s useful? Could it be because it provides you with relevant information? It’s almost as if the believes and disbelieves that someone holds affected other believes and disbelieves and formed a net of positions that create that someone’s worldview….
Would you say that there is a difference between theistic and atheistic morality? Even if it’s not absolute, would you say that distinction contains no information at all? Would you agree that being an incompatibilist is a position that can and even should inform other believes you have, including ones about morality?
@117:
I have.
Then why are P.Z. Myers and other commentators attempting to tie social justice initiatives and various other normative projects under the moniker of “atheist?” Isn’t the very OP trying to do precisely the opposite of what you suggest here?
Sure. And that part of one’s network of beliefs and disbeliefs seems to have virtually no positive normative implications. One’s atheism does not, from a matter of what is strictly logically entailed, provide one with any particular set of moral beliefs or norms. Again, if you want to expand the definition of “atheism” to include those things, I have no issue with it. “Atheism” is a set of marks on a page or phonemes. I have no particular attachment to ink, electrons, or sound waves. I’ll just have to use a different pattern when trying to point out the distinction that the word “atheism” was originally used to refer to, at least when speaking to others that want to adopt the particular use of the word that PZ Myers and others seem to recommend.
To be honest, I’ve never really understood the whole concept of “atheism as a movement.” In reality, I can’t say that “atheism” has informed me much at all on my positive beliefs across the board. From a strictly logical perspective, there’s nothing preventing theists that want to fight for separation of church and state and all sorts of initiatives. (Many already do, by the way) I think the conflation comes from confusing the particular constellation that many atheists of a particular demographic have, with atheism itself. Again – keep in mind that I’m not dogmatic about words. For me, there’s just sound waves or marks on a page. If you want to use “atheism” to include all of those sorts of things to result in some particular highly rarefied position, albeit one that may be held in common amongst many believe who disbelieve in God or believe that God does not exist, that’s fine. I’ll just have to resort to a different word to refer to the original, undiluted distinction.
Also, I do find some value in trying to distinguish myself as an “atheist” (or if you insist on including progressive social justice initiatives and other normative conclusions, I could use the word “nontheist”) as distinct from those conclusions. When I say I’m an atheist, I don’t mean to imply that I share this particular constellation of normative conclusions and social justice initiatives, especially since I have philosophical disagreements with a variety of those positions.
Insofar as we’re talking about atheism simpliciter and theism simpliciter, no, there are no particular robust normative conclusions you can get to. You can be an atheist and be against gay marriage. You can be an atheist and be in favor of gay marriage. You can be a theist and be against gay marriage. You can be a theist and be in favor of gay marriage. You can be an atheist and be in favor of gun control. You can be an atheist and be vehemently opposed to gun control. You can be a theist and be in favor of gun control. You can be a theist and be against gun control. You can be an atheist and approve of civil rights initiatives. You can be an atheist and think that black people are subhuman creatures. You can be a theist and approve of civil rights initiatives. You can be a theist and think that black people are subhuman creatures. And so on, and so forth.
Now, naturally, you might ask “Well, wouldn’t theism incline one towards one set of norms versus another, compared to atheism?” Again, there, I imagine one isn’t talking about theism simpliciter anymore. You’d be talking about something a lot more specific – like Christianity, or Islam, or Hinduism. (Even that’s too broad, even how many takes on those religions exist) Likewise, on the atheistic side of the coin, one would no longer be talking about atheism simpliciter. You might be talking about secular humanism, or atheistic existentialism, or some other sort of atheistic philosophy. As far as I can tell, neither atheism in and of itself (nor theism) provides any sort of robust normative conclusions.
But again, I need to re-iterate, I have no issue if you insist on using the word “atheist / atheism” to describe disbelief in God / the belief that God does not exist, plus a certain constellation of moral and political positions. I’d just use a different word to refer to the original distinction. And then, at that point, I’d have to ask what the point of the exercise has been all along, since all we’ve done is trade one inherently meaningless set of sound waves / electrons / marks on a page for another.
Fixed that for you. Significant different there…
Are you serious? Do you really think that the fact that someone is an atheist, and a human (a social creature dependent on others), and may also be a skeptic, and a naturalist, maybe a humanist….doesn’t inform how they derive moral judgements?
What is strictly logically entailed is that if you are atheist, you can’t consistently base your moral judgements on what deities are claimed to say. It means that you have to use some other means…do you not see how that is VERY relevant indeed?
Of course it doesn’t provide one with a particular set of morals…see, that’s why i’m skeptical of your claim that you have read the comments, because that has been repeated, explicetely, several times. However, just being atheists means that we all share not having gods to tell us how to behave….and if you add to that other positions we might have in common, you end up finding that there are certain conclussions that most of us would agree on. Like say, life being valuable, suffering being, generally speaking, a bad thing, etc, etc…
And when these people who agree on many things, including that there are no gods, group together to try and achieve certain goals using atheism as a label, then it turns out that behavioural and moral norms among the members of that group, are very relevant, as they are whenever two or more humans meet. Morality is required for movement atheism because it involved a plural number of humans….and whether you asociate with movement atheism or not (you do, you are posting in an atheist community) is irrelevant to whether it is a thing (or posibly things), which it is (are).
Oh, do elucidate, please.
So which religion is secular humanism’s counterpart…is it christianity? What’s the difference between atheism as in rejecting all religions, and atheism as in rejecting theism? I know that there is some..but how significant is it, really..?
Also, secular humanism doesn’t necesitate atheism which is why many of us don’t choose that label. The point of the matter is that an atheist rejects ALL of the moral pronouncements enforced by any religion on the basis that they are true because a religion claims it to be…which means that a human atheist that has aspirations to live, is going to require another way to develop a moral system, and that moral system is going to ideally be consistent with atheism, and therefore informed by it in the sense that it is one of the conditions.
Wow. Where to start? First of all let me reestablish what I thought was clear in my original comment – I’m fed up with reading over and over again that atheism is something more than a lack of god belief, not just in this blog post, but in many of PZ’s post since he took up the mantle of declaring that atheist is NOT just god belief.
Nerd – Please, exactly what decision(s) of mine are you talking about? Not that I expect a reasonable response from you, given all of your other posts in this thread, but maybe you’ll prove me wrong.
Azhael – I find utility in calling myself an atheist because it’s an accurate statement about my stance on god-belief and it helps to normalize the word atheist and to illustrate to people who otherwise think we are immoral monsters that we’re just like them. I have read the thread and I don’t know how you can claim that it’s not been primarily about “people…claiming that certain morals are intrinsically specific to atheism.” Some version of this claim has been repeated and refuted multiple times in this thread.
Saad – I agree that all public life should be about reason and fairness, but not all atheists agree so I find the terms freethinker, humanist, and skeptic more accurate in some situations. There are atheists who believe the book The Secret is credible and helpful. These same people could not accurately be considered freethinkers or skeptics. There are skeptics who believe in god(s) and religious humanists. I like precise terminology. That’s why I don’t think atheism should be used to mean humanism or freethinker. These latter two, especially freethinker, have much broader definitions than atheism. I can get behind this statement you quoted from another commenter in this thread:
That sounds like adding something to atheism (like humanism, social justice, freethinking) rather than trying to redefine the term and thus makes sense to me. The thing is, I thought I made that clear in my original post. Maybe not. Maybe I typed too much (I do tend to get wordy).
satanaugustine #120:
Good grief. You know the quote (mine, by the way) which you agreed with…
While I cannot read PZ’s mind, I am pretty damn certain that that quote encapsulates his stance on this matter. That redefinition of the very meaning of the word ‘atheism’ which you claim he’s attempting? He is not fucking trying to do that! He is trying, as any member of the atheist community has the right to do, to redefine the goals of that community. He is pointing out what he personally sees to be the consequences of atheism, and trying to persuade others to his viewpoint.
Why don’t give a reasonable response. Like, if you don’t want social justice, go away, and quit bothering those who do with the same stupid and fuckwitted arguments we have heard since Atheism+ tried to get off the ground. You have nothing new to say, and your opinion sways me not. I listen to those I consider better authorities. You are wasting your time.
Daz – You take issue with the following statement I made:
“In addition to these passages from the Quran, there is the undeniable fact that Muslim extremists use these scriptures to motivate other Muslims to become suicide bombers, something that has happened multiple times in our modern world.”
And you respond by saying:
Did you perhaps miss this part of my comment:
Also note in your quote of me that I said: “…Muslim extremists use these scriptures to motivate other Muslims to become suicide bombers…” First of all, I noted that this behavior occurred in “Muslims extremists” (who are by definition a fringe group making up only a tiny percentage of Muslims) who, along with scripture, motivate (compel) “other Muslims”, via brainwashing or force, “to become suicide bombers”.
satanaugustine #123:
I have no idea how I did, but obviously I did. My apologies.
My points on that still stand in general; far too many people do make the arguments I alluded to. But, again, my apologies: you didn’t.
Nerd – Please point out to me where I said I don’t want social justice! I’ve merely stated that humanism and social justice do not equal atheism. They are different things. I’m all for atheists being humanists, social justice activists, skeptics and freethinkers. I just don’t like the idea that atheism = any or all of these things. Does that really not make sense?
I’m all for Atheism + as well as long as the plusses are the ones I’ve typed out above! You know, good, positive life-enhancing plusses; probably the same things you’d agree with.
Daz:
What I’m railing against is PZ’s ongoing contempt for what he terms dictionary atheism and his attempts to redefine atheism. This one goes so far back it pre-dates Jen’s Atheism+ and Freethought Blogs. February 1, 2011…
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/02/01/why-are-you-an-atheist/
After all this time, I’ve grown quite tired of this. Note that PZ “hates” dictionary atheists.
Thanks for the apology, Daz. Accepted and appreciated! : ) Maybe that some of my comments got lost in the wall of text I typed out.
I too have heard or read “far too many people do make the arguments [you] alluded to.”
@azhael 119
“So which religion is secular humanism’s counterpart…”
Unitarian universalists probably come closest. The value sets have a lot of overlap.
@ satanaugustine 126
Where is PZ redefining atheism? I’m not seeing it in your link.
Brony – Here’s an example of PZ trying to expand the definition of atheist at that link:
“I explained that there is more to my atheism than simple denial of one claim; it’s actually based on a scientific attitude that values evidence and reason”
This is not atheism. It is freethought. I don’t understand why atheism must include the definition of freethought. The two terms work perfectly well on their own.
At that link, PZ also irrationally criticizes those he calls “Dictionary Atheists”. He refers to them as assholes and says he hates them. He’s made other anti-“Dictionary Atheists” posts over the years. Given the irrational hatred he feels for people who, to my knowledge, simply disagree with him (dictionary atheists), it’s hard to trust him anymore. I just see the need to decry dictionary atheists and to expand the definition of atheism as unhelpful and divisive. Humanism, social justice activism, freethought, and skepticism can get things done without PZ’s confusing attempt to insist that words mean more than they literally mean. Somewhere along the way, PZ lost the plot.
@129: I will extend you the same courtesy as you did Daz, and assume you just missed a crucial word in what you quoted, satanaugustine.
That word is “my” as in “my atheism”. There is no redefinition there, solely a personal declaration that for PZ, there are implications to atheism beyond those which were considered core by the former, educated-white-male constituency of atheism at large.
You are impressive, Don Quixote, but the windmills yet turn.
@ satanaugustine 129
This is not a redefinition. This is an observation of the reality of the experience of words. Keep in mind that words are merely proxies for concepts and the actual use of words depends on individual emotional connections to the word. Language is defined and understood by our experience and use of it, and dictionaries change based on actual use, not previous use.
All words are necessarily more than their definitions. Atheism is our collective experience of it.
This is atheism. It’s one persons experience of being an atheist. Words are not just their definitions, they are also their functional use and the connections of the word to the people that use them. Atheist is it’s definition and it’s relation to people that use it.
I can admit to wishing that people were more precise with their language. For example I’m not fond of the term “spreading hate”. But I can recognize the way that words tend to be used and admit that it’s the actions based on hate that people don’t like. I don’t believe for one minute that PZ actually hates these people.
It is however appropriate to hate what they do. And one cannot hate what a person does without actually hating a part of them. It’s just important to keep that in mind and I have no reason to think that PZ is not keeping this in mind.
I’m going to assume you meant to say “I just don’t see the need…”.
I’m sorry that you don’t see the need, but your lack of understanding will not stop us. I will try to explain though.
It’s because the actions described by the term “dictionary atheist” absolutely useless and divisive as well. It is obvious what the dictionary definition is, we know it. PZ even says that he is not changing the definition in the article you provided. What he is saying is that language is more than just the definition of words. It’s how those words are used together in the world we have. It’s the people that are affiliated with the word atheist now and the history and society they have. We are using the meaning attached to the word and the social emotions attached to it to be persuasive in the community that actually exists.
Like it or not atheists have formed a community through a “circling the wagons” type of psychology. It’s not wise to define ourselves by what we are not, but that is the reality we are dealing with. The word atheist is connected to social instincts. I can admit to being an activist and advocate and using the reality of the situation (see my response to someone in #62) to my benefit. Just like dictionary atheists are using the definition (regardless of their intent) as a smokescreen to ignore how social change works in reality. Dictionary atheists are a strategy, not an argument.
@129 satanaugustine
Holy shit…
The reason why PZ, and others like myself around here are not showing any love towards “dictionary atheists” is because people are using that as an excuse. You don’t see any people declaring that it’s ridiculous to distort the definition of atheism and whining about “atheism means bla” in threads about separation of church and state…..but you do get that in social justice threads….isn’t that curious? People are using the dictionary atheist excuse to troll and derail certain threads and certain topics, dishonestly…and selectively…and that’s what has some of us so angry at them.
In your opinion, not mine. I win;
One problem I have with dictionary atheists is that they appear to fall into two categories. Philosophical purists, of which you may be one. I don’t live in that pure refined world, and find the world messy and imprecise. Their claims for intellectual purity seem quaint, but unrealistic. Personally, my atheism includes social justice because in looking at religious based but bigoted societal morality, I can dismiss it and ask pertinent questions that lead to progress outlook with social justice when one looks at the consequences and empirical data. I didn’t arrive there until after I admitted I was an atheist.
The another group of dictionary atheists is the MRA/liberturd/RWA contingent. They want nothing to do with anything resembling social justice, as they bigots, either overtly or in the closet. They don’t even want to be near the concept of true equality and helping others, and if atheism a movement goes there, they will find something else for them to feel superior about. Which doesn’t bother me one iota.
satanaugustine:
This is my take on the issue — what is the point of being an atheist if there is no consequence? If one declares oneself to be an atheist, and then continues the economic destruction of the prosperity gospel; promulgates the misogynistic and xenophobic ideas of Christianity and Islam and Judaism; and embraces the heirarchical patriarchic paradigm of most western organized religions, then why bother? Atheism means that I do not believe in gods. Any of them. Which means that the revealed wisdom — the poor will be rewarded in the afterlife so we (the privileged) should keep them down now, women were created to serve men in the home and the bedroom, women do not have the brains or stability to make their own choices, men rule the household as god rules the world — should also be tossed out. Bigotry, sexism, misogyny, patriarchy, rape, women as possessions, natural order to human relations, all of that shit comes, in our current society (and I am speaking here of the US), from religion and they religious leaders claim it comes from god. All that regressive, reactionary, conservative, and, yes, libertarian, nonsense is actively killing people in the name of gods. So, I ask again: what is the point of being an atheist if there is no consequence, if nothing follows from that philosophical position?
@ azhael 132
I think that one thing that complicates this is that not every dictionary atheist is doing it consciously, or are conscious of their motivations. Often people are not aware of their fallacious reasoning. I’m not by any means asking that you stifle your anger, I would not dare. Rather I’m pointing out the nature of the targets so that one can think of strategy.
@132 azhael
Many people come to atheism through skepticism and a desire to develop their moral principles on a basis that they choose for themselves. Even if they share some or all of your moral principles, they don’t want another atheist telling them how they should feel about those things any more than they want a priest or pastor telling them.
@136, chris61: yes, it’s practically criminal how PZ put that virus out that forces people to read his blog. You’d think he’d have respect for one’s right to not listen to someone else’s free speech right.
Oh wait, that never fucking happened, so again: what’s the point of whining, if not to focus the thread on how important your opposition to someone else’s self-definition is.
@136b chris61
But i’m not telling people what to do or how to feel.
At most, trying to influence somebody’s morality is a suggestion, which should be accompanied with reasons why it should be adopted.
@135 Brony
I think you are probably right, but there certainly are people who are doing it consciously, and to be honest, even if people are not aware that that’s what they are doing, it’s still what they are doing, and it’s a problem.
It is precisely because of this that i’ve attempted (but possibly failed) to make my position clear, repeteadly, rather than just telling people to fuck off or dismissing them altogether.
@ azhael 138
I would not know what you need to do, but it’s good to know what you are experiencing. I spend a lot of time encountering “all the kinds” whatever that means and I often have to switch strategies. I’m still active on one of 4chan’s descendents that is more tolerable (to me anyway) and includes people I like.
The “atheism only means…” complaint is a shamelessly self-serving one. It never seems to come up when atheists are speaking up about separation of church and state or about putting stickers in high school biology textbooks. But when it’s about speaking against rape culture or cat-calling or transphobia, the scope of atheism all of a sudden becomes very, very narrow indeed.
Oops. I misread satanaugustine in 129. They did mean to say “I just see the need…”. I’m not sure what happened there but I don’t think it altered my reading of their meaning.