I’m not very impressed with this listicle about 5 Ways Atheists Argue Their Cause (That Aren’t Helping). It makes a few correct points, some bad ones, and the ones that it gets right are poorly argued.
#5. The Closest Atheism Has To Leaders Are Terrible People
True. But I think this is because it’s a movement where leaders were recognized for only one criterion: how forcefully they rejected religion. How forcefully they accepted other bad ideas wasn’t a factor. So this is a consequence of the one-dimensional nature of the atheist movement in the first decade of this century.
#4. It’s Become Tied To Awful Ideas
Yeah, but because #5. We’re still suffering because a lot of the early surge in atheism was thanks to the reaction against Republicans, Islamist terrorism, and general anger with non-secular twits. It turns out that jingo and othering brings a lot of baggage with it: hey, as long as we’re hatin’ on Muslims, let’s also be contemptuous of women.
#3. There’s An Arrogance To It
Wrong. Dead wrong. When believers declare that atheists can’t be moral, when they announce that they’re all going to hell, when they refuse to vote them into office because atheists are evil, you don’t get to declare that the atheists are the arrogant ones.
I’m also going to point out that part of that atheist arrogance comes from being right. Religions is on the wrong side of history on far too many issues, and it’s entirely reasonable to point out when someone else is completely wrong, even if they’re going to interpret that as you being arrogant.
#2. It’s Become Too Defensive
This is incoherent. We’re simultaneously arrogant and defensive? The heart of his argument is that annoying atheists intrude on internet discussions, which is bullshit. Even his own link to make his case is to a someone whining and generalizing about atheists, and complaining that an atheist might show up in one of his diatribes against atheists.
#1. It’s Focused On The Wrong Goals
I’ll agree with this one, sort of. The problem is that movement atheism functionally lacks any goals. I have experience in this; if you only knew how often atheists write to me and fucking insist that atheism means one thing and one thing only, the rejection of god-belief, you’d realize that the current heart of atheism is dead, shriveled, and stupid.
So I’d give it 3 out of 5. That’s a C.
If I had to specify a way that Cracked writers make their arguments (that isn’t helping), one is that the listicle format induces them to too often reach for filler and sloppy thinking to get another number on the list, and there isn’t much incentive to build a reasonable argument that actually hangs together.
Points #3 and #4 together (the arrogance and defensiveness of atheists) is the recipe for a very old defense of religious belief. It’s the “argument from ‘shut the hell up.'”
#5. The Closest Atheism Has To Leaders Are Terrible People
Wrong. We don’t have leaders. We have people who have larger audiences than others, but they have only the power of personality. No one is elected, appointed, or annointed.
My guess is this comes from the worldview of the theiest: they have leaders/authorities, so it seems every other group should have them.
#4. It’s Become Tied To Awful Ideas
Only in some people’s minds. Given any group that is bound not by culture, class, nationality or racial characteristics, and there will be a myriad of members who hold a myriad of beliefs that have nothing to do with the lack of belief in a diety.
#3. There’s An Arrogance To It
Cut-paste from my #4 response
#2. It’s Become Too Defensive
“Too defensive” is a meaningless, subjective term. Atheism is a minority opinion, and in some cultures/countries is against the law or subject to censure. In the US, Atheists are generally seen as untrustworthy, due to the trite, debunked belief that morals require a god.
#1. It’s Focused On The Wrong Goals
A group of people who lack a belief do not have a unifying goal. We have no leaders that guide or command us; we have no ruling body that sets doctrine; we have no laws, rules, or customs. Various and sundry members have their own goals, of course, but it is not necessarily universally shared.
Score: 0/5
I’m fine with the arrogance label. The atheist leaders are certainly arrogant. I admit I can be arrogant. It is just that they selectively don’t apply the same label to comparable behavior and attitudes when it is entwined in religious (specifically Christian) arguments. This might be the one case where I would legitimately want someone to acknowledge that BOTH SIDES do it. Or, really, all sides. Though people imagine moderate religious people, or people with moderate politics, to be more humble, and nuanced, and less arrogant, you should listen to what they actually say. Moderate people can be just as arrogant and assured of their own right-ness as either “extreme”, but they are simply presumed to be less arrogant by default because their position is set in an imagined middle.
(Though looking at the examples given in the article, it seems less about arrogance, and more about…..tone.)
Also, their complaint regarding atheist “defensiveness” is predicated on atheists making “[our] beliefs a large part of [our] identity”. Despite being a comedy site, there is no acknowledgement of the hilarious irony of this statement. And yes, that process, making beliefs a part of one’s identity, is implied to be inherently bad and the cause of any perceived defensiveness. Fancy that.
Also, this bullshit:
Again, the irony.
And finally, more calls for proper tone and civility and pure undiluted logic with absolutely no insults ever period.
Concerning the “no gods, no masters” thing …
If a movement wants to be accepted as a coherent set of ideas to a wider audience, it has to have, it seems so me, some sort of organisation or structure. This includes leaders, figureheads, that kind of thing. Perhaps actual persons can be substituted by thesises, manifestos, short lists of commandements or similar foundations, but there has to be a “face”, so to speak of.
This again implies two other things:
First, these faces have to be respected in some way by the movement they are representing. Should be a no brainer, but in a non-hierarchical an free-thinking system as atheism should aspire to be, there still has to be some sort of benefit of doubt, a certain kind of trust in these representations of the system itself. Of course, not blind, not obediently, perhaps even grudgingly, which leads to …
Secondly, there has to be a semi-formal process of self-correction. If the face of the group goes privilege and talks in an unfortunate and rather condecending way about vertically-transport-related issues, then there has to be a way to critizice and, if necessary, impeach said representative. A way for the group to distance itself from him and to make clear that he speaks for it no longer. Same with core ideas, with the difference that those do not make bad public statements so often.
Just saying “we have no leaders, so what he is saying doesn’t concern me”, that is not enough. There has to be … something. Let’s call it a spokespope and give the job to the most endearing orang-utan.
… and what if you had to specify 5 ways?
(ducks)
They could have summed this entire article up in one sentence: Goddamn, isn’t Dawkins a douche?
60% is a C? That’s generous.
3. I’ve spoken with atheists for whom their atheism was a kind of ego gratification, but I do tend to narrow my eyes when the “arrogant” criticism comes from believers. They’d be uncomfortable with any outspoken atheism.
1. I tell people that Atheism isn’t a church – there’s no one deciding which issues are appropriately “atheist” and should be focused on. Instead, we tend to try and focus on the intersection of politics and religion, wherever that falls.
5 Ways Cracked Is Not Helping*:
#7. 90% of “Photoplasties” suck.
#6. The title guy sucks.
#5. Its attempts at being both a source of humor and information often means one undermines the other.
#4. Article quality varies wildly and one article may contradict another, making it an unreliable source.
#3. Many articles and most commenters are dogmatic in their support for The Middle Ground.
#2. Cracked primarily focuses on pop culture so even those that might agree with a political or religious might wince at them covering the topic, because it is often jarringly different from usual subjects and is also often handled poorly because points 4 and 5.
#1. Cracked columnists are incentivized to churn out quick and easy dreck, and most of the problematic stuff comes from a small handful of those that confuse being cranky, bitter, and contrarian with being funny.
*Still pretty good on “SJW” issues though.
In Ermangelung @4:
Why do you feel there must be a face/leader/figurehead for the atheist movement?
It’s hard to imagine anything more arrogant than someone contemplating the awesome sweep of the universe—the countless billions of stars, the billions of years—and thinking, “This is all for me.”
Another route of religious arrogance: Using your own religious beliefs to define what other people really believe.
Example with Protestant Christianity, with a splash of fundie: Atheists know God exists but reject God because they are just that stubborn and evil. Hinduism is the worship of demons. Judaism is a rejection of Christ as savior. Catholicism is Mary worship. And Islam is an ideology of war and conversion by the sword, a vessel by which Muslims export and impose barbaric Sharia Law, helmed by a false prophet and a false god.
None of these redefinitions and mischaracterizations are arrogant, because Religion.
They expect me to believe in their invisible friend, and cower before their illogical belief system, and they call me arrogant!
I read that when it came out. Most of the issues can of course be traced back to Youtube rage peddlers like Amazing A-hole and T-foot.
@10 Tony. Thank you. I am fully able to not believe this or that without being told how to do so. I don’t believe in unicorns or The Sidhe, no matter how much I would love to be proven wrong, but I do not need a national spokesmoron telling me the right way to not believe. Nor even ridiculing Finn McCool and The Stroke Lad and Queen Mebh. If some folks who enjoy the sound of their own voice claim to represent me in claiming that Mebh never existed, and that Celtic folklore is holding Ireland back from more important progress, I would nod, shrug, move on with my life. And yet, Lady Gregory never seems to be quoted in legislative debates about “teaching the debate”. What’s up with that????
5. Of course atheism has terrible leaders. Atheism has no hierarchical structure of leadership designated by vote or appointment, because atheist is not an organization. Of course the loudest, most obnoxious atheists are going to be declared the “leaders” by most people both from the outside and the inside. That is not atheism’s fault and there’s fuck all that atheism can do about it.
4. Similar to above, since atheism is not a belief system, it can be literally “tied” to any idea in existence, which includes the awful ones. However, name an awful idea that atheism is “tied to” more than religion is tied to. Just try. I’ll wait.
3. An arrogant atheist will call your god a sky pixie. An arrogant religionist will pass laws against your existence, or maybe just out and out kill you.
2. Defensive? Hell yes we’re defensive. See above.
1. What you said.
As I pointed out in the comments section to the original article (probably buried a few hundred deep by now), every single one of these points is also a criticism of religion:
5. The closest [religion] has to leaders are terrible people: name for me a religion whose public representatives aren’t, at best, trying to sell woo for profit and, at worst, trying to kill people. (Even Buddhism now has a genocidal leader.)
4. It’s become tied to awful ideas: “become”? Religion is the source of a lot of awful ideas, and most religionists never met a bad new idea they didn’t like.
3. There’s an arrogance to it. “To sum up: 1. The cosmos is a gigantic fly-wheel making 10,000 revolutions a minute. 2. Man is a sick fly taking a dizzy ride on it. 3. Religion is the theory that the wheel was designed and set spinning to give him the ride.” — H. L. Mencken
2. It’s become too defensive: ever met a religious person who didn’t secretly believe that their religion was losing ground, and act accordingly?
1. It’s focussed on the wrong goals: how many Christians do pretty much anything Jesus is supposed to have asked his followers to do? How much effort does Israel put into belligerance? What percentage of people killed by Muslims in the last century were, themselves, Muslims? For people who believe in an afterlife and a judgement, religionists spend a heck of a lot of time working towards temporal goals their own scriptures certainly condemn, by implication if not explicitly.
Really, religous people are on the wrong side of history??? Have you taken a glance of a list of Nobel Peace winners?
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/
Most of them are relgious.
Are the reverend ministers of the Moral Monday’s movement on the wrong side of history?
Or the ministers charged w/ feeding the homeless in Florida?
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/90-year-old-man-2-pastors-charged-with-feeding-homeless-in-florida/
I can readily understand how obnoxious religious holier-than-thou types can be in the US. It annoys me.
But would it really kill you just to judge people on the content of their character? To not worry whether or not they are religious and take them as you find them?
Alice Marshall @18:
Please re-read what PZ said:
The ‘…on far too many issues’ is the relevant part.
@18 Alice Marshall
Well, maybe there is a typo here:
I think that should be “Religions ARE” not “is”.
Anyways, since many truth claims and moral conclusions of various religions are wrong, those features of those religions are on the wrong side of history.
The religions of the people in your examples will only be right so far as they come close to approximating Humanism. The rest of their traits will be wrong.
*I meant to point out it wasn’t “religious people” it was “religions”. There’s a difference.
Issue #5: Closest Atheism has to leaders are all bad people: This is because claiming one is an Atheist, a Feminist, a Skeptic, etc. makes one no more a good person than calling one’s self a Christian, Muslim, Jew, Buddhist, Hindu, etc. Religion has shown us that even those who are considered pious, righteous, or holy are really just plain old people who struggle with the same prejudices, bigotry, emotions, sexism, etc. with which all humans struggle. And, what has been demonstrated by the atheist/skeptic movement is that even atheists and skeptics are still subject to human frailties like, hero worship, misplaced and unjustified expectations in others, projecting, etc. Good people can express bad ideas and bad people can express good ideas. We can agree with and accept the good ideas, while criticizing and rejecting the bad ideas. We humans seem to have this notion that, if a person says something with which we agree, that person must be a good person. This is simply untrue in most instances; most of histories “heros” did some really awful things. Are we to reject human accomplishments, because many of them were done by assholes? If so, we’d never advance as a species. We must keep working to educate and enlighten people; rewarding those who change and deriding those who refuse, until and unless they change.
Alice Marshall #18
Nobel Peace Prize.
Barack Obama has one.
Mother Teresa.
Henry Kissinger.
you need a better argument
Another problem I see with the “most Nobel winners are/were religious” is that most people in general are religious. So it doesn’t tell us much about religion. The question I have is whether the population of Nobel winners is significantly more or less religious than the general population of their culture.
Another hallmark of the Frustratingly Inane Internet Argument: “Refuting” an argument by imagining it included an “all” that doesn’t exist. It sure makes it easier to refute, but it usually means you aren’t addressing the substance of what the original argument meant to say.
Totally gonna use that if I’m ever in a public debate. “Although I refuse to listen to her, my opponent insists upon making claims she believes to be true! Does she have some unhealthy predilection for gratuitous truth-telling, or has she mistaken me for someone reasonable? Either way, she’s clearly deranged and I win all arguments forever.”
I’m so tired of the “arrogance” bit. It’s become nothing more than a handy ad hominem to fling at someone who is confident in their stance and is making it clear. It’s why one of my favorite Doctor Who lines from last year was on “Mummy on the Orient Express”, when a character commented on The Doctor being either extremely brilliant or extremely arrogant. “I am frequently both”, was his reply.