In a totally unsurprising announcement, Ayaan Hirsi Ali renounces atheism and declares herself a Christian. I half-expected this to happen — she’s been working at the Hoover Institute with a lot of wealthy conservative Republicans, it was just going to take time to realize who was buttering her bread. I’ve read her autobiography, and it was clear that what drove her was in large part a resentment of the terrible Islamic authoritarians who controlled her life for so long. Well, now she’s come full circle and is identifying with a different set of terrible authoritarians.
As an atheist, I thought I would lose that fear. I also found an entirely new circle of friends, as different from the preachers of the Muslim Brotherhood as one could imagine. The more time I spent with them — people such as Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins — the more confident I felt that I had made the right choice. For the atheists were clever. They were also a great deal of fun.
So, what changed? Why do I call myself a Christian now?
Part of the answer is global. Western civilisation is under threat from three different but related forces: the resurgence of great-power authoritarianism and expansionism in the forms of the Chinese Communist Party and Vladimir Putin’s Russia; the rise of global Islamism, which threatens to mobilise a vast population against the West; and the viral spread of woke ideology, which is eating into the moral fibre of the next generation.
Oh. So she has bought into the conspiratorial anti-woke nonsense, and the usual fear-based bullshit that is the foundation of most conservative thought. The communists are coming to get us! Our only hope is to follow a different authoritarian ideology!
But we can’t fight off these formidable forces unless we can answer the question: what is it that unites us? The response that “God is dead!” seems insufficient. So, too, does the attempt to find solace in “the rules-based liberal international order”. The only credible answer, I believe, lies in our desire to uphold the legacy of the Judeo-Christian tradition.
That phrase judeo-christian
always sets off alarm bells in my head. Misrepresenting what atheism is about also doesn’t help.
That is why I no longer consider myself a Muslim apostate, but a lapsed atheist. Of course, I still have a great deal to learn about Christianity. I discover a little more at church each Sunday. But I have recognised, in my own long journey through a wilderness of fear and self-doubt, that there is a better way to manage the challenges of existence than either Islam or unbelief had to offer.
It’s Jeeeesus. Good luck with that, Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
By the way, nowhere in her long essay does she say a word about why Christianity is a good philosophy, other than that it’s a platform for fighting against Muslims and woke atheists.
She got one half right.
The rise of the totalitarian fascists in Russia and the Chinese are threats to the world in general and us in particular.
OTOH, the place that employs her, the Hoover Institute, and who they serve which is the GOP, are also fascists. They also threaten the world in general, the USA, and…myself and my cat.
Fascists are fascists.
Cthulhu, this is stupid.
The Muslims aren’t any more unified than the xians.
They spend a huge amount of time fighting among themselves. Conflicts in syria, Sudan, Pakistan, Libya, Afghanistan, Egypt, Iran versus Saudi Arabia, Yemen, the Sahel. Somalia, etc.
The rest of the time, a large chunk of them hate the West so much that they risk their lives to move here and become citizens.
She is just wrong here, and the 2000s want their fallacy back.
Cthulhu, another very stupid claim.
Woke ideology doesn’t even exist.
What is immoral about diversity, equality, and inclusiveness.
In point of fact, Ayaan Ali has benefited greatly from this.
A huge number of her fundie xian overlords are white racists who would assign her to the permanent underclass.
She gets 0.5 out of 3 right.
Not impressed. Then again she vaporized her credibility a long time ago so nothing has changed.
Christianity is a good philosophy for the simplest of reasons.
Machine guns and nukes and whenever possible, machine gun nukes.
In His Almighty mercy.
Now, shaddup and hand me the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch. There’s a waskley wabbit to smite, in God’s almighty mercy or something.
Oddly, I suddenly do have a hankering for some rabbit stew. Now, to remember what market I saw rabbits in the freezer section, as they’re rather uncommon in the concrete section of town here. :/
Aw, screw that, I’ll just defrost some chicken, my back’s still angry over yesterday’s foray. Pity I can’t find more artichoke bottoms, they’re wonderful in stew!
And more germane to reality than her bullshit.
As I understand it, Islam is derived from the “Judea-Christian tradition.” Jesus and Mary play an important role, Mary perhaps more so in Islam than in Christianity. And Putin’s Russia is very much hooked into the Russian Orthodox church. Putin and Patriarch Kirill are big buddies. One could argue that China is “Communist” in name only…perhaps CINO a la RINO and DINO…where the “C” really stands for “Capitalism”.
It’s all about authoritarianism lead by the economic elite who exploit religion to insure the loyalty of as many working stiffs as possible.
Mr Street Epistemology seems less interested in deconverting Christians now because the culture warring:
“However, four years later, when Boghossian responded to an invitation to a fresh dialogue, he told me that he was no longer participating in debates against Christians. Indeed, he now felt quite differently about people of faith: “You might be surprised at how much I have in common with you now”, he wrote. His focus had shifted to countering a far more pernicious threat, he continued, of which I would find out more soon.”
[…]
“ Whatever you think of the [grievance studies] hoax, what struck me most was that Boghossian now saw Christians as allies in this fight. He was still an atheist, but his tone had changed dramatically. Christians were no longer the enemy…that was now the progressive left.*
Boghossian’s change of heart is one among many stories. The culture wars have shifted the ground in the dialogue between Christianity and atheism in recent years.”
https://www.premierchristianity.com/new-atheism-has-collapsed-the-tide-is-turning-on-belief-in-god/16350.article
Also the whole street epistemology thing is a tad sus in the degree it plays on stealth of one’s own motives for engaging in such dialogues, Caveman Lawyer style Socratic irony, and the previously implicit atheist agenda of the endeavor. Now it may be getting weaponized against the woke “religion” instead of Christianity. I haven’t kept up and there were sincere ethical concerns being addressed by practitioners about consent and whatnot, so hopefully they maintain independence from Boghossian’s proclivities. It’s one thing to be a gadfly, but this guy is a jackass.
Hers is a more defensible choice than many xtains. Buttered bread and geopolitical biases seem are at least tangible.
I would have thought that the only rational answer to “Why do I call myself a Christian now?” would be “because I believe it to be true.”
That’s why I’m not a Christian (because I don’t).
What Judeo-Christian tradition?
The Reformation wars which killed millions?
The Holocaust which was a xian production from start to finish?
The Crusades against the Muslims?
The Albigensian genocide?
The nearly 2,000 year long persecution of the Jews?
The Inquisition and witch hunts which slaughtered hundreds of thousands?
The support for the colonialists who took over the New World, parts of Africa, and Australia and displaced and slaughtered the native inhabitants.
The Judeo-Christian legacy seems to be a long series of atrocities and large piles of dead bodies everywhere.
Democracy came from the Pagan Greeks and Romans and was reinvented by the Enlightenment.
She is just stringing words together without any care that they actually mean anything.
This rather confirms my long-held suspicion that Ayaan Hirsi Ali has become, secretly, rather stupid. The unthinking adoption of the “Judeo-Christian” nonsense – apparently oblivious of the fact that Christians have spent most of the last two millennia enthusiastically persecuting Jews, alongside the complete failure to notice Putin’s professed devotion to the Russian Orthodox Church, and the pin-headed babbling about “woke ideology”, together suggest that some kind of unpleasant parasite has eaten substantial portions of her brain – primarily those parts responsible for enabling rational reflection. Sad, because while always obnoxious, she did used to appear quite bright.
Her new fellow travelers will still hate her, they’ll just smile while they do it.
Shall we start a betting pool on how long it takes AHA to proclaim the necessity of Making America Great Again?
Imagine if a left-wing atheist had made it clear that they’d become a Christian out of political expediency. Does anyone think any of her conservative friends would believe they were a real Christian?
What church does she attend?
“A different set of terribl authoritarians”
To remind people of how regressive right-wing Christians can be, here is a video where Emma Thorne reacts to “How to be a submissive wife”
https://youtu.be/FKzN5tGv7JI
or possibly
https://youtu.be/FKzN5tGv7Jl
These passage below seem to be the most credible explanation for the ‘miraculous conversion’.
PZ wrote insightfully: she’s been working at the Hoover Institute with a lot of wealthy conservative Republicans, it was just going to take time to realize who was buttering her bread.
@5 johnx wrote: Hers is a more defensible choice than many xtains. Buttered bread and geopolitical biases seem are at least tangible.
@10 Pierce R. Butler wrote: Shall we start a betting pool on how long it takes AHA to proclaim the necessity of Making America Great Again?
@11 tacitus wrote: Imagine if a left-wing atheist had made it clear that they’d become a Christian out of political expediency
I say: When you subject yourself to the bombardment of how important power and wealth are, It’s difficult not to dump your weakly held convictions and jump on that bandwagon
I think it would be more accurate to say that Ayaan Hirsi Ali has become a White Christian Nationalist. As you note, she says little about Christianity itself, but what she does say could be summed up with 14 words. Her “faith” is appears to be about defending
white“western civilization,” not belief.robro @ 3 discovered the nail and hammer, alongside its proper usage.
As for a properly submissive wife, in my reality, a properly submissive wife stands up against me when I’m wrong, forcing me to go back to being right.
Likely, using a cattle prod to keep me on the right path at times.
Love isn’t about 100% support, even when one’s wrong, it’s lovingly encouraging one to stay on the right path, especially by opposition. Otherwise, it’s not love, it’s neglect.
Technically speaking communism isn’t an ideology. It’s an economic and social system where property, resources and the means of production are held in common and where each contributes according to their ability and receives according to their need. It’s an admirable goal albeit a somewhat idealistic one, but one that no Communist Party has achieved (let alone socialism, by most definitions) and something even the CCP admits it has not achieved.
People claiming that an egalitarian society of shared resources can be achived by totalitarian control of the state by a vanguard party are wrong, but they’re just as wrong as those that claim a truly prosperous and free society can be achieved by allowing unregulated Capitalism to run amock.
=8)-DX
Just another grifter who’s “seen the light” for some perceived gain in status and/or income.
Technically speaking, fundie xianity isn’t a religion either.
It’s just right wingnut politics with a few crosses stuck on for show.
The crosses aren’t important any more.
Fundie xianity is going downhill for a lot of reasons.
One is that the right wingnuts have discovered that you don’t have to be a fundie xian to hate.
I really appreciate the enlightened sentiments of @16 wzrd1 regarding a marriage partnership. It’s what my wife and I practice. And @17 =8)-DX talking about seeking a more ideal society and its Governance is a great and accurate comment. Thanks to you both.
Also, @18 Rob Grigjanis and @19 raven Nailed it,too.
“she’s been working at the Hoover Institute with a lot of wealthy conservative Republicans, it was just going to take time to realize who was buttering her bread. ”
She needs to be made aware that their evangelism is a cover for their hidden deity-Mammon. Not sure he’s so cuddly.
there it is, “unity”.
recently i was trying to work on a video essay or something about “unity”. of direct relevance here is, for example, the “National Unity Party of Canada” i wanted to talk about. guess what their “key” to unity was? and guess whose side of WW2 they were on?
that’s right, they were literally f@sc!sts, and had the same “christianity will unite people, surely” idea:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Unity_Party_of_Canada
to be very clear: you can’t unite people based on christianity. you can’t even unite christians based on christianity! all it can do is fracture into more and more pieces. i shouldn’t have to tell a supposedly informed (former) atheist about that.
It was clear right from the start of her adoption by the media that she was very Right Wing.
=8)-DX @ 17, there is one common failure route to all systems, communism, socialism and capitalism, they’re all perfect systems, notable in the dearth of perfect people to inhabit such systems.
One could make an argument that insects do better, but that’d only be due to lacking any observation of insects and their enforcement mechanisms.
I don’t get it. If she cares so much about fighting “woke ideology”, why not convert back to Islam? Isn’t that the most anti-woke religion?
Adam Lee @ 25, no, Judaism was and remains.
Most anti-female in most ways of rights removal, Christianity are pikers in comparison, in the most fundie mode of non-thinking. Alas, to their own fundie thinking, thought and literacy is also espoused, ruining the conflicts planned and hence, removed from Christianity and some schools of thought in Islam.
Judaism was largely a conflict faith. first vs farmer vs hunter-gatherer, later, iron vs bronze. A wise decision was going towards literalness, learning how to read and write, both a lot. Out-competing other cultures, who then attempted to victimize the actual source of their success.
Hence, why Jews still happily live and refuse to relocate from Iran.
And why so many are happily living within the US, a synagogue literally next door to my home, another two blocks down.
Met a family at the latter location a few weeks back, when resting from a market trip. Nice people, would love to meet them again – once I learned their dietary requirements.
Then, either I’ll manage to afford additional dishes and pots and pans or I’ll request them, under supervised usage and obviously need to feed more guests, who are always welcome.
Fed over 60 people in my home a number of times, 120 people once, after my mother died.
In the latter, feeding people was of great comfort, distracting me from grief and its pain and hence, diluting it.
I rarely do anything for a singular reason. I usually do so for multiple reasons.
Including mental health.
honestly i thank her for this. one less regressive scumbag pushing global fascism while professing atheism. good. harris and dawk next, please.
Ah, Judeo-Christian Values. Like hatred of the other, violence, and pedophilia.
=8)-DX @17
Depends on what is meant by ideology. In its adoptive Marxist sense ideology is roughly akin to false consciousness, something pejorative which the other person always has, especially the proletariat as deluded by the superstructure of free market capitalism. So-called Marxists who don’t adhere to the proper way are also under the spell of ideology. In derivative forms we get stuff like Althusser’s ideological state apparatus.
In the more general non-pejorative sense all is ideology pretty much. Antoine Destutt de Tracy coined the term where Napoleon Bonaparte turned it into an epithet. I think outside Marxism and critical theory it has the general non-pejorative sense.
It’s probably best not to use the term because its tortured history, although it lacks the baggage of memeplex which could be a synonym of sorts for something the other person always suffers (see “mind virus”). Actually ideology is often sadly more a polemic weapon of choice than the useful concept it should have been.
This is the common lie of the christofascists.
Western civilization doesn’t even exist.
It is a large collection of cultures and societies that change rapidly in Real Time.
The Northern California civilization I live in now has very little in common with the rural far northern coast society I was born and raised in. The 1950s are over and they weren’t missed.
And xianity had very little to do with the current West.
Our civilization started in the Middle East which developed agriculture, metal working and writing. Try running our civilization without writing and literacy.
Then the Pagan Greeks and Romans made significant contributions, both to technology and ideas like democracy.
The era where xianity had a lot of influence in Europe was known as the Dark Ages for good reasons.
Our modern world got its start with the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. Science and technology have lately made a huge contribution.
I’m trying to think of some contributions that xianity made and can’t really think of much. Mostly they got in the way a lot.
In my opinion, she was never an actual atheist.
Just said she was, which is not the same thing.
Heh. As if atheism were some sort of faith.
(Kinda like claiming one is a lapsed non-smoker)
@3 robro
It’s all about authoritarianism lead by the economic elite who exploit religion to insure the loyalty of as many working stiffs as possible.
Reminds me of the saying:
The common man says that god is real.
The philosopher says that god does not exist.
The magistrate recognizes that god is useful.
raven @30
To be fair Christianity played no small role in fashioning various forms of European thought, if nothing more than eventual reaction against. The notion of human rights may have been a social construct for not abusing people anymore as Christians had been doing so let’s just say they are self-evident and inalienable to make them seem more than they actually are and bequeath them to white male landholders in fledgling Merka.
In Renaissance Florence from what I recall people were collecting lost tomes rediscovered from the Islamic world. Islam may have gone asunder in so many ways but for some reason we have these funny Arabic derived terms like algebra and (ironically) alcohol. Also in Florence we had a sort of humanism flourishing under the Medici, especially Lorenzo, until Girolamo Savonarola and his disciples set the vanities afire and he himself would be set afire after running afoul of the corrupt Borgia pope. He set an example for what not to do with power as unarmed prophet alongside the positive models of Cesare and Rodrigo Borgia for Machiavelli, a great freethinking political philosopher who would become greatly influential on Realpolitik. Lorenzo de Medici and Niccolo Machiavelli were humanists of sorts who arose within the Christian milieu.
Amongst the Muslims we find those rare birds like freethinking pessimistic antinatalist Abu al-‘Ala’ al-Ma’arri, a forerunner of Schopenhauer and David Benatar. According to Wikipedia those great lovers of freethought, the al-Nusra Front, destroyed his statue in 2013.
John @31:
I disagree. In my opinion, she is still an atheist. But she is, above all, an opportunist. It’s a lot easier for an atheist to pretend theism than vice versa, without fear of eternal consequences.
Raven @ 30
The renairenaissance was made possible by the input from the Caliphate of Cordoba, where Islam was going through a period of intellectual freedom under the influence of the Mutazilite religious faction.
The Caliphate of Baghdad also had such a period of intellectual freedom. During this phase, huge numbers of ancient Greek books were systematically translated to Arabic. Many of those are only known to us today through these translations.
The Arabs successfully added to the inherited knowledge, and passed it on to their Christian neighbors in the north.
.
A pushback from sufi (islamic mysticists) and islamic literalists crushed the period of intellectual freedom as thoroughly as the triumph of Christianity crushed the greek-roman intellectual tradition.
.
Notice to the readers who think I am an islamophobe. I have nothing against muslims who keep an open mind. I loathe the True Believers because they performed a lobotomy on the Islamic intellectual tradition, just like the fifth-century Christians who burned “pagan” libraries.
Today’s Christians are (mostly) past the authoritarian, library-burning phase.
The majority muslim countries are under the thrall of corrupt secular authorities and power-mad religious structures. I have no advice for how the locals may free themselves, I might as well try to solve the riddle of controlled nuclear fusion…
In defence of AHA, if I came from modest circumstances and found an ideological sugar daddy with lots of money, I am not sure of how robust my integrity would prove.
I live with the privilege of never having endured poverty or severe repression.
I don’t know where AHA was born, but someone crawling out from under a burning trash fire will be messed up in ways I cannot imagine.
Myself @ 35
The renairenaissance should be the renaissance, ‘less is more’.
Marcus Ranum @ 9
With a skin color like that, AHA will really stand out from the old white men at CPAC.
The guys who make jokes about Jews and blacks in closed quarters will get uneasy… I imagine that crowd is as base as they are wealthy, while the blue-collar MAGA heads tend to be up front with their bigotry. But I digress.
Might be too soon, but isn’t sabbatical at least a Jewish concept? Debts are supposed to be cleared after seven years due to jubilee, but isn’t that basically how credit scores work?
And were the dark ages really that dark?
hemidactylus, the minutes in an hour are a Babylonian concept (base 60).
As is the 7-day week.
(The Jews were latecomers, even their mythos is basically borrowed)
In some cultures, at some times, perhaps. But not in general.
The “dark ages” are an outdated European concept. World is bigger than that.
But no, they weren’t. Things kept happening even in those blighted lands.
[obs, lunar month, prime factors]
I like the word ”renairenaissance “.
I just wish I could find a place to use it.
The irony of using a site called ‘UnHerd’ for something like this, it’s just too thick. Yeah, good riddance to a poor quality atheist. I’d have to question whether she ever understood the position in the first place.
Considering-her Muslim Thoughtobiography was largely a tissue of lies her conversion is all too convenient. She is probably as much of a Christian as Osama bin Laden. Mind you the two of them probably drank from the same wellspring of hate but used different cups.
She has admitted being a fan of Charles Murray in one of her earlier books so she’s always been suspect in my opinion. I wouldn’t be surprised if she comes out as an alt-right “racial realist” at some point. This talk of “culture” suggests as much.
Weirdly before going to sleep last night I watched Real Time with Bill Maher and he interviewed Ted Cruz then had Jordan Peterson on his panel where they deconstructed the sexual revolution. Despite that I didn’t have nightmares. Anyway in those rare instances of confluence over at WEIT they are pondering Ayaan Hirsi Ali‘s shift to Christianity too and Coyne furnished this video with yet another panel featuring…wait for it…Jordan Peterson with Ayaan Hirsi Ali and others. Coyne time stamped it toward the end with her relevant closing remarks. The more important thing, as commenters there were asking, what the fuck is Jordan Peterson wearing?:
Batman character comparisons like Joker and Two Face came up.
And in his 12 Rules for Life book didn’t Peterson say: “Does that mean that what we see is dependent on our religious beliefs? Yes! And what we don’t see, as well! You might object, “But I’m an atheist.” No, you’re not (and if you want to understand this, you could read Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, perhaps the greatest novel ever written, in which the main character, Raskolnikov, decides to take his atheism with true seriousness, commits what he has rationalized as a benevolent murder, and pays the price). You’re simply not an atheist in your actions, and it is your actions that most accurately reflect your deepest beliefs—those that are implicit, embedded in your being, underneath your conscious apprehensions and articulable attitudes and surface-level self-knowledge. You can only find out what you actually believe (rather than what you think you believe) by watching how you act.”
A true atheist would commit murder? Profound!
with a lot help of the Native populations of North America
Hm, I suppose I will indulge myself and respond to this by Rob:
It is indeed, indeed it is.
But that’s just a heuristic.
cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taqiya
Yeah, gotta agree w/skeptico @6… if your reason for calling yourself a Christian isn’t “because I truly believe that Jesus Christ is the risen LORD, who died for the sins of humanity”, then you might as well be saying “because I’m a liar who finds this label convenient for my current puposes.”
Political theory and worries about ‘Western Civilization’ have no place in that calculus.
wzrd1 @26:
Nothing that could be called ‘Judaism’ existed at the time that hunter-gatherers were common in the southern levant. Nor in the bronze age. There is only some vague continuity from the cult of Yahweh in the iron age hill country to early Judaism of Persian or Hellenic times. The Yahwist religion appears to have venerated a storm deity in the north, and a sun deity in the south, and was likely not much different from the cults of Baal, Chemosh, or Qos (one hypothesis is that Yahweh was derived directly from Qos).
I would say the majority of Jews currently in the US are pretty woke, and they live a woke Judaism. Unfortunately this situation will not last.
It turns out that Ayaan Hirsi Ali lied about everything.
I mean everything.
That isn’t even her real name which is Ayaan Hirsi Magan. She lied about her age.
She never saw a war in her life, having left Somalia before the war broke out. Her parents were nominal Muslims but otherwise not all that religious.
She left the Netherlands because she lied on her immigration application and the Dutch were about to take away her citizenship.
She has always been a pet ex-Muslim for the right wingnuts.
Generic. Another opportunist within the right wingnut echo chamber.
There is more below. I just posted a paragraph.
An Atheist does not say “God is dead.” An Atheist says “God never was.” There’s a huge difference.
…insufficient…too, does the attempt to find solace in “the rules-based liberal international order”.
We don’t fight barbarism by “finding solace” in liberal-democratic order; we fight it by doing our bit to uphold and enforce it.
The only credible answer, I believe, lies in our desire to uphold the legacy of the Judeo-Christian tradition.
One result of that tradition — according to Christian apologists at least — is that “liberal order” she now disdains. Another part of that tradition is the teachings of Jesus Christ — is she following them at all?
I also note that she says she “calls herself” a Christian, not that she IS a Christian or that she’s following that set of rules and principles. That kinda sounds like she’s taking up Christianity as an identity-badge or tribal affiliation. Like joining a gang or an ethnic militia.
Raging Bee @52
Ethic militia may be a bit far in her case. The Maronite Phalangists in Beirut were a Christian ethnic militia who didn’t turn the other cheek after the assassination of Bachir Gemayel. They may serve as an analogue of what aspiring Christian nationalists wish to unleash on us in our own culture war verging on civil war.
To be fair though atheism is more than mere lack of belief, but an identity badge like any other. There’s also an associated identity politics, especially when offense is taken over violations of church-state separation.
Due to developments in recent years with the antiwoke thing, people like Peter Boghossian as I linked above have been rethinking their own identity badges from going after Christians to going after the SJWs who haunt their nightmares. That antiwoke thing may be playing a role in Ayaan Hirsi Ali‘s rebrand. Helps to have an ally in Jordan Peterson. Of all the fuck ups Sam Harris has engaged in over the years, like that morality book turd he floated, giving Peterson exposure to his fanbase ranks up there.
Ray Ceeya @51
In Nietzschean parlance it was the idea of God we killed I think, not the literal God.
hemidactylus:
Um, why do you think I was an altar boy when I was 15 years old?
I was no less atheistic then than I am now, but it was not worth the hassle to reveal myself.
So, no. It can be more, but need not be more.
Lack of belief in deities, is what it is. Privative a- prefix.
Well, he was not too keen on Christianity.
Slave morality, he called it. For the weak.
So, by that parlance, Ayaan is not doing too well.
Some quotations: https://www.azquotes.com/author/10823-Friedrich_Nietzsche/tag/christianity
John Morales @54
I can see him taking issue with Christianity but what the hell is Fritz’s problem with alcohol? Was it the Germans and their stereotyped love for beer?
https://www.azquotes.com/author/10823-Friedrich_Nietzsche/tag/beer
You know what? Fuck Nietzsche. He’s dead now to me and to God too.
Stories about atheists converting to a religion are extremely rare from what I’ve seen. The only prominent ones I know of (I say this before actually doing any research) I know of are C. S. Lewis and (now) Ayaan Hirsi Ali. It’s notable that both of these were originally strongly religious before turning to atheism.
[Google session starting now :)]
[Update to my previous comment]
I didn’t find any direct research on the subject. The few relevant articles were hosted on christian websites and for the most part were anecdotal. The few specific cases I found tend to support my view that the atheists were ex-christians returning to the fold. The overall consensus among the articles was that the converts were ‘angry’ at god or disliked christians, which indicates to me that these people were at heart believers. I didn’t find any specific cases of people like myself (i.e. never ever religious) who converted at a mature age.
Hahahaha, what a fucking grifters. It’s also very funny to see the good folk at Jerry’s blog try to cope hard with this news. Hahaha, amazing news.
I had a lot of respect for Ayaan Hirsi Ali once. Read and blown away by her Infidel autobiography a good many years ago and was awed by it. A very different sort of life lived and horrendous childhood.
Now? Not so much and saddened to read this.
Yeah, to choose those weak and cynically expedient reasons to become a “christian” of, I guess, cultural / ideological / arguably not really Christian despite calling yourself that sort leaves a metaphorical bad taste and stinks.
I’ve no doubt she’s had a pretty awful life and is messed up and Ive been privileged tolead really avery sheltered one so who am I to judge but yeah.. Just sad here really. I did expect better of her and disappointed. I know, no heroes and all that. Still.
StevoR @59:
Did you read raven‘s #50? She’s been grifting the whole time.
But Ayaan Hirsi Ali did no such thing – see raven’s link@50. Her backstory of surviving civil war and a forced marriage is a pack of lies.
Do some more research.
I even put in a link to the Alternet article.
Her autobiography is fiction.
She actually had a secure childhood in Kenya and was educated in a well regarded Muslim school for girls.
@raven:
Max Blumenthal is a horrible source, utterly unreliable and I would never trust anything written by him.
@63 lotharloo
OK. I had never heard of Max Blumenthal.
We will try the Guardian instead.
The Guardian says more or less the same thing.
I’m just cutting and pasting articles with links.
Anyone interested can just read them.
She did have to leave the Netherlands with the authorities after her.
“The only position that leaves me with no cognitive dissonance is atheism.” – Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Actually, I wouldn’t mind Hirsi Ali (or anybody else, for that matter) become Christian if it wasn’t so opportunistically anti-Islam.
Wonder what her good buddy and BFF Sam Harris thinks of this? He used to praise her to the skies, but I notice that she doesn’t mention him as one of the atheists who were so stimulating to talk to. He’s probably off crying into his napkin somewhere.
I await his public statements on this development.
The fact that she had lied was well-known, retorted Hirsi Ali…
“Well known” to whom? To the people processing her application at the time? Lots of people knew Donald Trump was lying about a lot of things, but that doesn’t justify or excuse any of it.
…making the point that was she was fleeing a forced marriage. Not so, said van Dongen, using testimony from her brother and husband to allege that the marriage was not made under compulsion.
In fairness, those two men aren’t exactly credible witnesses on this subject.
Nor van Dongen said, was Hirsi Ali raised in a strict Muslim family. An old story, said Hirsi Ali.
Yeah, an old story, just like all those reports of Donald Trump cheating everyone within reach, hiding behind multiple bankruptcies, and raping teenage girls.
Actually, I wouldn’t mind Hirsi Ali … become Christian if it wasn’t so opportunistically anti-Islam.
I wouldn’t mind if it wasn’t so INCOMPETENTLY anti-Islam. She seems to be taking the side of bigots who are little better (if at all) than the haters she’s pretending to fight; and explicitly opposing most of the same things her enemies oppose. Seriously, whose fucking side is she on?
Walter Solomon@44, your comment makes me think of Camille Paglia. Her stance seems to pretty much come down to “Yes, women are inferior to men. Except for me of course, because I accept the truth women are inferior to men.”
@Raging Bee #68 – “Seriously, whose fucking side is she on?” – She has been on the bigot’s side for quite some time now. She started her career in the PvdA (the Dutch Labour Party) but quickly moved towards the right when right-wing populism was rising. Her sole enemy is Islam and her enemy’s enemy is her friend.
To be fair though atheism is more than mere lack of belief, but an identity badge like any other.
Both-sides deflection noted.
There’s also an associated identity politics, especially when offense is taken over violations of church-state separation.
That’s not “identity politics,” that’s reaction to an in justice that’s known to cause harm. Just like Black people reacting to racist rhetoric or policies. (Also, atheists aren’t the only people who oppose the former injustice, just as Blacks aren’t the only people who oppose the latter.)
Her sole enemy is Islam and her enemy’s enemy is her friend.
She seems to be sorely mistaken in thinking her “friends” are really “her enemy’s enemy.” Her new “friends” very clearly hate the same people her (alleged) enemies hate, more than they hate her (alleged) enemies.
@60. Rob Grigjanis & #62 raven :
Yes. I understand that now. At the very least its unreliable and not entirely trustworthy or accurate. At the time I thought she was completely honest and believed her. Now, not so much. She’s definitely an unreliable narrator and her words need to be taken with a cometary nucleus worth of salt.
@57 & 56. piscador : Maybe this case?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antony_Flew
Except there are some pretty big questions over whether hismental faclties were in decline at the time he chose that.
Not really.
Anthony Flew was very old and known to be suffering from some sort of age related cognitive impairment.
The fundie xians hovering around him and exploiting him were common ghouls, feeding on the almost dead.
Not too long after his so called conversion, he died of age related causes.
#46 @unclefrogy
Indeed, in the 17th century French priests brought back Algonquin democratic ideas which could well have influenced the Enlightenment.
Re: piscador @ #57…
Not a subject I tend to post about, and anecdotal, to boot… My late wife was raised by non-religious/atheist parents. At 21, she joined the Roman Catholic church. Her parents were rather distressed about it. One of her life-ling goals was to convert me to Catholicism. If she had been the sole example of a member of the faith I encountered, and I’d had no outside information about the church and it’s history, she would have had a much better chance. Personally, I think she’s a much better case for canonization than most of the people they pick.
@ 74. raven : Quite so. Yes. That’s what I was alluding to there with the “..pretty big questions over whether his mental faculties were in decline at the time..” bit.
I’ve also personally known a few religious people that have changed from, I don’t know about atheist but non-religious, to Christian. One was a a homeless junkie at the time who turned his life around through Christianity – among other things – after having a religious experience who I knew & became a good friend of mine much later in his life when he was a married and well-established writer and a really good if ecccentric bloke. FWIW which given anecdata not much. Still.
For clarity the ït here :
Refers to Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s autobigraphy.
FWIW Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s wikipage has the following section :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayaan_Hirsi_Ali#Dutch_citizenship_controversy
Of relevance here. Anyhow, point is I no longer trust or believe Ayaan Hirsi Ali and don’t think others should do so either.
whheydt @ 76, similar distress, but said daughter, being an RN during the pandemic and usual emergencies, rather burned out and distanced and learned a bit.
Unlinke previously, when hostile and ignoring call attempts. she instantly accepts my calls now.
So, growth is possible, alas, after some rather impossible to remain sane conditions. She dealt with one teenage hanging suicide, another teen burned horrifically, then COVID-19.
And originally, she wanted to go into veterinary medicine, which was fairly impossible at the time.
So, I guided her into medicine, specifically nursing over physician, due to cost and requirements.
Long and short, I trained her, taught her and guided her, so I trust her judgement, so when she needed time off, I supported it and she took it, then went back into the saddle.
I’ve literally driven men to a mental facility for good reason and insisted, with full senior NCO mode reinforcement of views, “Keep him until he’s successfully treated or else” attitude and well, long and short, they got successful treatment – even after, via the VA.
Ain’t a shout, it’s a growl on occasion, the rest, a stony glare threatening retribution.
We earn that glare via experience.
Entertainingly, that eldest observed, “You don’t make the best life choices, but you give excellent life advice”, to which I countered, “How do you think that I can give such advice, save for such choices?”. Utterly confounding her for a valid reason.
I make such choices so that they don’t make them, the rest of the time it’s a safe pathway.
Make things better for the next generation.
Howinhell is that a complicated message?
Annoyingly, a message from my own parents and grandparents.
As for US citizenship, that mess was long ago established, asked and answered, nuke yourself from orbit, only to be sure about things, moron.
Anyone arguing wants a machine gun vs civilians and they’ll find my bayonet within their anus.
The Constitution is my bible.
The other bible, only a guide, which is what it was intended to be, fucking morons. Moral guidance, not a guiderail.
Let’s say I was a god, guiding the universe. Give a general guide as societies gain the ability to record things beyond the verbal word, so then finally give general rules. First being, “don’t be a fucking asshole”, write and record as various cultures are able to record.
PZ comes along and says I don’t exist, don’t give a flying fuck, gave a message, moved along, as I fucked up and created a universe and did give general rules.
Tribes fucked things up, not my fault and overall, not my fucking problem.
Hey, yet another creation theory, which closer meets facts, barely, if massively drunk.
Can thunk up a thousand more idiotic theories as well, possibly upon drink. Or farts in the wind or something.
PZ’s opinion, entertaining, as it’ll be educational.
And hopefully, scathing, in the extreme.
Because, it’s zero evidence vs zero evidence at the end of the day.
And I can point to a hell of a lot of zero evidence theories on physics, doesn’t make their invalidations of views without merit.
Upside, she’s caring for patients again, after dealing with frustrating insurance companies non-support.
Frankly, I’d probably have contract killed a lot of such bastards, being the recipient of such paid for non-care…
I’m nice in person, but I was so with dealing personally with terrorists. In reality, I’m the best friend anyone can have in life, the absolute worst enemy.
And yearns for peace and fucking quiet. As in, thinking of relocating to the Kuiper Belt.
And I loathe cold.
My reaction to all things like this (i.e. personal changes in an individual and their apparent relevance to ideas) is, as always:
1) And?
2) So what?
The ideas and evidence are what matter when it comes to atheism or politics or whatever. The team an individual is on is irrelevant.
Oh I know for practical purposes, team sports and rhetoric and characters matter when convincing people of a thing. Still, if we’re talking about “truth” or even just “accuracy”, one Christian convert, one charlatan (if this is the case here), one character (or even many) makes not the blindest bit of difference. And, since what I care about are the ideas and the evidence when it comes to this sort of thing, I can barely manage a shrug.
It’s why I can’t get excited about Dawkins doing X (apart from the shittiness aspect of some things), or 500 “climate scientists” think it’s a hoax letters etc (and if you ever read the famous letter, it ain’t 500 climate scientists!) etc. It’s just not where the argument is. It’s always playing the man not the ball, and it’s fun to have some whaaarrrrrgarbl about, but it’s not serious.
Since I’m feeling all quote-y today for some reason, I am reminded of this:
“If I were wrong, then one [author] would have been enough!”
Einstein’s retort with regard to his theory when he heard that a book titled “100 Authors Against Einstein” was published in Germany. Quoted in Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time (London: Bantam, 1988), 178
Does Hirsi-Ali matter? Not really. I wish her well in her endeavours as a human being, and if she keeps coming out with drivel, I wish those who can be remotely arsed to engage with it the best in refuting it.
Louis
The Dutch documentary on Ayaan Hirsi Ali which Max Blumenthal* appears to get his information from is available here, with English subtitles.
*Who I agree is not a reliable source
Not a whole lot.
She never had much to say that wasn’t generic right wingnut babble and wildly nonfactual claims that the Muslims are all coming to get us.
I never paid much attention to her.
You should rethink that.
She and her right wingnut masters want you and your kind dead and the USA converted into a fascist xian themed dictatorship.
They might settle for tossing you into a reeducation camp though, if you aren’t too high on their enemies list.
These are fascists and they don’t hide what their goals are.
The paragraph of her article that I found seemed the most informative was this:
To paraphrase:
1) “atheism” was less useful;
2) atheism did not provide “spiritual solace”;
3) atheism does not address purpose.
These points seem to be about whether atheism (and it’s primary thesis of the nonexistence of “gods”) is useful/cheering/good, not whether it is true. This confusion (or at least conflation) seems closely related to Hume’s is-ought distinction. (My impression is that “purpose” usually seems closely tied to the notion of “ought”.)
She apparently prefers for now to abandon a philosophy that is consistent but incomplete, in favor of one that seems more complete but inconsistent, rather than look for (or perhaps after failing to find) what additional axiom would provide answers to the questions she wants without becoming inconsistent.
@Raven, #82,
Sorry, I should have been clearer! :-)
Obviously, the failure of the Big Funtime Fascists of both our fine nations is profoundly to be desired. I was being a wee bit facetious re: Hirsi-Ali’s future actions as a human. I hope she has a nice place to live and food on the table, i.e. what I wish for all humans, mostly without exception! I was being dismissive, not supportive. The second bit of the sentence was intended as a giveaway.
Louis
The “lack of meaning” perspective of Ms Ali is interesting, as I have had a few re-conversions of my own under cultural pressure and existential crisis, but I’m on my last deconversion. I have embraced that a happy fallacy (whether authoritarian or not) is no substitute for reality, and am much more comfortable with both life-purpose and mortality of the soul in an atheistic perspective, while having finally shook the psychological controls that religion subconsciously implants. I think she will eventually tire of this conversion as well, because the more exposure she has will reveal the same hypocrises that drove her from Islam.
Forgive me @Ray Ceeya #51, I promise I am not having a pop at you! You just provided me with an excellent opportunity for a hobby horse!
Oh bollocks! Hit the wrong button in my 86, and didn’t want to use the “comic sans” quote either! Fuck’s sake. Sausage fingers. Mea culpa.
Right, back to the res. (And I know I am risking Dictionary Atheism here, but I’ll do my best to avoid it!)
Atheism, in its simplest form, is a lack of belief in a specific positive claim. In this instance, the claim is the existence of a deity or deities, theistic, deistic, and/or other. There are other implications and axioms, for example, epistemological priors relating to faith and reason as mechanisms of acquiring “knowledge” (as “justified, true belief” and other forms). The theistic/deistic claims are that a deity of some kind exists, i.e. these are positive claims which, in principle, reason can act upon. Faith-based claims in the absence of reason being indistinguishable from one another. Atheism is an intellectual, not faith or belief-based (epistemological), position that the positive claims re: deities are unproven, sensu stricto.
Being exceedingly picky (again, not about YOU, Ray!), the “god never existed” statement risks being a positive claim open to disproof. Now, obviously, this could easily be the case, but it’s an example of one of the bear traps theists set for atheists: “Ah! You believe god never existed! Prove it!”. It is one of the fallacious shiftings of the burden of proof our chums enjoy.
Now, I don’t want to say Ms Hirsi-Ali never understood atheism, how can I know such a thing? I would say, however, that her apostasy appears to me to be motivated by something other than the epistemology underpinning atheism and theism. I could be wrong of course, religion is a deeply personal thing so obviously, I cannot know her reasons. What she has said (quoted above) seems to be a fairly standard “religion as palliative” story (plus, as others have mentioned, a fucking excellent part of a gift). To paraphrase Yoda: Succor, safety, solace…atheism has not these things. A reason-based approach to the world might have them (depending on the species of approach), but the simple type of (yes, dictionary) atheism cannot have such things, any more than my scepticism regarding fairies at the bottom of the garden can.
As always, my first question is “Which bits of the Judeo-Christian tradition?”, and my second is “How does Islam lack those things?”. Because let’s be blunt, the first addresses the enormous cherry-picking one must do to propose Judeo-Christianty as a sufficiently unalloyed good basis for any “unity”. How many schisms do you need to demonstrate a comprehensive LACK of unity? The second addresses the enormous cherry-picking one must do to find only the naughty parts of Islam. The overlap of the “good bits” from the Judeo-Christian tradition and the “good bits” of the Islamic tradition is significant. It’s almost like these religions are related somehow…
The third question is “Okay, nice, you’ve read or at least heard of Nietzsche. Did you ever have a chat with your high-profile atheist chums about the underlying epistemology of atheism and other reason-based approaches to the world?”. Statements like Ms Hirsi-Ali’s are just depressing in their point-missing.
For me, why the more “dictionary atheism” end of the spectrum is useful here is that it’s not necessary to go further when dealing with this kind of statement from Ms Hirsi-Ali (or anyone else). These things fall at the first hurdle. A question here or there exposes the holes, just as, presumably, the same holes were exposed when the “pre-conversion neo-theists” asked the same questions.
Louis
This is just wrong and shows that she isn’t even bothering to think things through.
.1. Atheism doesn’t tell you what the purpose of your life is. And that is a good thing.
As humans, we make up our own purposes and live our lives the way we want to.
In practice, no matter what the xians claim, they do the same thing.
If you look at Ayaan Ali’s life, that is exactly what she is doing.
.2. Xianity doesn’t provide any purpose in people’s lives either.
There is no agreement among xians about anything, much less the purposes of their religion.
The fundie xians, the group she is now following, say that they only purpose of xianity is to believe jesus is god. And be born again. That is it.
Once you are born again, all your sins are forgiven and you get to go to heaven.
Many or most fundie xians also believe, “once saved, always saved” so it doesn’t matter what sins you commit.
The Calvinists among them go further and say there is no purpose in life. You were predestined to go to heaven and hell and have no choice in the matter.
Other xians would claim that xianity is about being a good person. Or else getting sent to hell.
Or, that the purpose of the religion is to give money to the churches and their leaders, so they can be rich and buy a lot of things.
Or that because they are xians, they should rule over everyone else, i.e xian Nationalism.
.3. It’s all irrrelevant anyway.
If the xian gods don’t exist, xianity isn’t providing any purpose in anyone’s life.
It’s all imaginary.
In real life, even the xians come up with their own purposes and live their lives the way they want to.
Atheism, in its simplest form, is a lack of belief in a specific positive claim.
Not sure if this is relevant to Louis’s point, but that’s not quite accurate. Atheism in general is the dismissal — for lack of evidence and other good reasons — of all positive claims for the existence of god(s) that we’ve heard so far. I, for one, think atheists have a wide range of beliefs regarding what MIGHT BE “out there” that we don’t know of yet, or what a truly omnipotent and all-knowing god might “look like;” but the common factor is our rejection of the claims we’ve heard from past and present human religions, and, most importantly, the refusal to let any such unsubstantiated claims influence our priorities or our life choices.
@Raging Bee, #90,
I like the distinction! :-)
I’m not sure I agree, though. I think there’s a difference between the “simplest philosophical/epistemological” sense of “atheism” (which is the risky/dictionary atheism thing) and the “social phenomenon” of “atheism”. Although, admittedly, no perfect demarcation exists in anything so human and messy. Maybe I’m being picky and semantic about the word “dismissal”. Maybe I’m using it in a way you’re not. Let’s find out! :-)
The question of “dismissal”, to me, only comes up due to religion’s prevalence as a social phenomenon. We’re socially expected to take a side in some way: are you in Group A or B, what do you think about X or Y. Therefore, as part of finding ourselves in a different philosophical position, as social entities, from a perceived norm or majority, there is a process by which an active dismissal of the theistic claims becomes socially necessary. We only have a word (“atheism”) for this because religion comes free in every box of cereal. We are embedded in social contexts that necessitate the act of dismissal to varying degrees.
There’s nothing philosophically/epistemologically in theism for me to reject or dismiss in a philosophical sense. Theistic claims are “not even wrong”; they haven’t even got enough merit to be dismissed. Granted, that sounds dismissive or like a rejection itself in colloquial terms, but I see rejection or dismissal philosophically/epistemologically as something that can only be applied to a coherent proposition that possesses some supportive evidence and can be contrasted with another proposition dealing with the same phenomenon. My point here is merely that atheists don’t have to dismiss theistic claims in the philosophical sense. To paraphrase Monty Python, dismissal’s too good for ’em. Some versions of String/M-theory lack any evidence at all, but they are internally consistent, offer at least a potentially evidence-based explanation for observable phenomena, and by this description can be dismissed in this reason-based, epistemological sense. There’s something THERE to dismiss.
The concept of “bdurk” equally has no merit. I can come up with descriptions of bdurk, and I can state my belief in bdurk (whether or not it is an entity, idea, or just some weird mangling together of letters. It’s not a deity though). Any examination of bdurk reveals it is totally internally incoherent as a concept, indistinguishable from dburk. Am I an abdurkist? An adburkist? I don’t think so. Bdurk and dburk have exactly the same degree of evidence and internal logic that theistic claims do, but different social standing. I don’t need to dismiss or reject them in a philosophical sense, they haven’t got the philosophical merit as concepts to even be dismissed. There’s nothing there to dismiss from an epistemological standpoint. Part of what I am saying here is that, philosophically, epistemologically, atheism isn’t special. Socially, it is. The claims of theism aren’t special philosophically or epistemologically. They’re just as incoherent as anything else incoherent. Socially? Different ball game.
In statistics, as I am sure you know, there is (simply put) a thing called “hypothesis testing”. A test hypothesis is advanced, contrasted with the relevant null hypothesis, and some sort of test is done to distinguish them. Skating over some important statistical niceties, the simplistic view is that based on this test, it is possible to reject the null hypothesis or the test hypothesis (or at least get as far as: we can’t tell the difference). The reality is a lot more complex than that, obviously, I’m trying to make a simple analogy that I hope works! This is similar to what I am thinking about in terms of “dismissal” in the purely philosophical sense. An incoherent test hypothesis (or null) can’t be tested this way. No evidence to test, no internal logic, and statistics (analogous to “reason” here) cannot operate on it. Trying to do so is at best a category error.
So maybe we’re differing on the “general”. Where I part company from Dictionary Atheism, is that I think there is no such philosophical thing as “general atheism” (socially there might be, but I am sceptical of that!). I think there is a set of epistemological processes by which we humans interrogate the world, atheism in the simplest (i.e. philosophical) sense is just the result of that set of processes being applied to a specific proposition. The reason-based bit of epistemology cannot be applied to this specific proposition because it isn’t a reason-based proposition (hence: category error). No different from bdurk in that sense. However, contrast this with our old friend as sceptics: Bigfoot. There is an internal logic to the claims made about the existence of Bigfoot, evidence is advanced. There is something there to reject or dismiss philosophically. Reason-based epistemology can operate on this claim.
Regarding “what might be out there”, I’m not sure it matters re: atheism as I’ve been discussing it. Socially, it matters, of course, I just think it’s philosophically unrelated because we’re then talking about the beliefs of individual humans and all the potential contradictions that that entails. Someone could be an atheist and believe in bdurk, for example.
Lastly, I think atheism and “… the refusal to let any such unsubstantiated claims influence our priorities or our life choices” are unrelated in an epistemological sense. It’s possible to be a theist and do this, a deist, an atheist, an agnostic theist/deist/atheist etc. Don’t get me wrong, I agree it’s part of the wider social aspect of atheism, or at least it can be, but it ain’t necessarily so. Even just in relation to religion. If we extend the idea that atheists refuse to let unsubstantiated claims influence us, I think we’d both agree that this is impossible. It’s the “Straw Vulcan” concept we Pharyngulites of various generations have discussed before. Worse, I think by refusing to let the unsubstantiated claims of theism influence our priorities or life choices, we’re, paradoxically, doing exactly that. I don’t, by the way, think this is a bad thing! In this sense, yes, absolutely we are rejecting, dismissing. We are dismissing the “right”/rejecting (if you like) for a set of social pressures to steer us in a specific “direction” because the claims that “direction” is said to rest on are unsubstantiated. We are reacting to that. We do the same thing for other ideas, I reject fascism, I dismiss it as a social phenomenon that I will allow to influence me in a specific manner, by doing so it is influencing me, just not as intended. Hopefully! After all, when one gazes into the abyss…
Does that clarify where I was coming from a bit better?
Louis
Louis: you appear (to my reading at least) to be confusing “dismissal” with “refutation.” They’re not the same thing, either in argument or in criminal court proceedings.
Theistic claims are “not even wrong”; they haven’t even got enough merit to be dismissed.
They certainly don’t have enough merit, or even substance, to merit the effort to refute them, and such effort would probably be fruitless. That’s why they must be dismissed instead. As in “show us some actual evidence and maybe we’ll take you seriously.”
Granted, that sounds dismissive or like a rejection itself in colloquial terms, but I see rejection or dismissal philosophically/epistemologically as something that can only be applied to a coherent proposition that possesses some supportive evidence…
Again, that’s refutation you’re talking about. Incoherent propositions and assertions need to be dismissed, not refuted.
Hi again Raging Bee,
I see what you’re saying. I get why “refutation” would fit the bill in some senses above. I do think that you’re using “dismiss” colloquially, which is obviously no bad thing, sounds like a good idea to me! What I was trying to point out in part is that this is a social act, not a philosophical one. So, orthogonal to what I was originally talking about. And luckily, I’m not in a court of law, or applying those standards or definitions! That should keep me out of gaol.
Why I have an issue with the word “dismissal” from a philosophical standpoint is that there is no reason to dismiss, philosophically, incoherent claims at all. In fact, we do the reverse! We engage with the claims. Do we dismiss (philosophically) them afterwards? No! We might dismiss (socially) them, but ultimately, as reason cannot address them, we just leave them alone until such time as they can be addressed (either via new claims or new tools). That’s no more a philosophical dismissal than me walking into a different room is a dismissal of the room I left.
However, a theist (or mystic e.g. some Buddhists) would claim faith (c.f. reason/evidence) is a method by which knowledge could be acquired, or that the lack of coherence was part of the merit/evidence in favour of their faith-based claims. Ineffability being the point, not a problem. Using that epistemological method, incoherent ideas would not be dismissable (philosophically), nor would they be refutable. Their irrefutability is part of the point. I don’t think reason-based and faith-based epistemologies are equivalent (LOL no), the axioms of one are not the axioms of the other, but faith-based epistemologies exist and would (wrongly IMO) argue that refutability is not an issue. In fact, we see this all the time, the faith-based claims of religion A are dismissed (philosophically and socially) by adherents of religion B. They’re not refuted.
Additionally, a coherent/evidence-based claim could be “not-refuted” but still dismissed. See again my comment re: string theories etc. Some physicists dismiss the entire field (in the social, colloquial sense you’re using the word), but string theories remain open to refutation and perfectly derived from reason. Hell, some physicists would argue that string theories are dismissable on the basis of philosophy. Above my physics pay grade I think! Equally, it’s possible to refute a proposition, but not dismiss (philosophically) it. For example…erm, well…string theories! They are open to refutation but are still worked on, regardless of their status re: having supporting evidence, because dismissing them would be to abandon a (promising?) work in progress. The point was that coherent, evidence-based claims can in principle be refuted, or rejected, or dismissed on the basis of evidence etc, but that there exists states in which all or none of those things can be/have been done. And all points in between. I didn’t use the word “refutation” because I didn’t mean it (I did use rejection, though. Which is, to be fair, close if not identical).
Regarding this:
“Incoherent propositions and assertions need to be dismissed, not refuted.”
Do they? I can’t prove my wife is beautiful and my children intelligent (per Mencken) nor is it necessarily internally logical as a claim, but I damned well assert it! No logic underpins that, maybe even no evidence (Arguable! Oh, I’m in trouble for THAT one), but I believe so regardless. Dismiss that claim? Meet me outside! ;-)
Next:
“That’s why they [Theistic claims] must be dismissed instead. As in “show us some actual evidence and maybe we’ll take you seriously.””
This is what I mean by dismissal in the social, not philosophical, sense. There’s no “must” here at all. The (epistemological) toolbox we’re using doesn’t address those claims, or vice versa, those claims cannot meet the criteria to be addressed using that toolbox. This is why I didn’t use “refute”. Refutation requires that the claims be addressable using the tools in the toolbox. It’s a reasoned process. Same for rejection (philosophical). Even dismissal in the philosophical sense (but not the social) requires that the claims are addressable to even be open to being dismissed. I can’t fix my car’s engine with a balloon whisk. I don’t dismiss the car or the whisk in any relevant sense of the word. Wrong tool for the wrong job. Hence why I mentioned “category errors”.
Things like your comment:
“As in “show us some actual evidence and maybe we’ll take you seriously.””
Are a dead giveaway that this is a social/colloquial use of “dismiss”. Again, it’s no bad thing, just not what I was talking about. I can take someone perfectly seriously even if they are a theist, I can even take their claims perfectly seriously as a simple result of them being a person making those claims. First, as a point of principle as long as they don’t require anything of anyone else, why do they need to show any evidence for their beliefs/claims? If their beliefs are essentially neutral regarding everyone else, then so what? Of course, the millisecond those beliefs impact on anyone else: evidence, please! As you said above, we don’t share their beliefs, their beliefs are (using the reason-based tools at our disposal) gobbledegook, so why the hell do we have to act in accordance with them? We don’t! This is a social phenomenon, not a philosophical one.
Even addressing theistic claims, engaging with them in order to do or understand anything, is the antithesis of dismissal (philosophical). Each person has to engage with the claims on their own. Of course, this can be/is informed by all the cumulative work done before, but no one can “do the homework for you”, as it were. I can’t understand atheism for the next atheist in the queue. So, atheist by atheist, each individual must at some point grapple with theistic claims themselves, or else what distinguishes that atheist from a parrot? That the individual atheist then dismisses the theistic claims (social/personal) is their own affair.
Dismissal (philosophical) is a final point. It doesn’t mean refuted it means that something has been decided to be of no further importance or worthy of consideration. That could be done in the absence of refutation (or refutability). It’s also a value judgement. How do I decide what value theistic claims have? What metrics am I using? How or why are they important or not?
We can cheerfully agree that, using our evidence/reason-based tools no evidence for theistic claims exists, does this mean the claims cannot at some future point have some evidence/coherence? I don’t think they will! Am I 100%, no decimal places after 99%, definitely 100% philosophically sure? No. How can I be!? The limitations of knowledge apply to us all. I’ll grant you it’s a finicky philosophical nicety, but I was talking about finicky philosophical niceties! Do I dismiss theistic claims socially and personally? Of course! But I’d be lying if I said that in the strictest philosophical sense I dismiss anything, regardless of the practicalities. I can’t know everything, so in principle, philosophically, I cannot dismiss anything. Hence why I am making the social vs philosophical distinction. After all, I don’t live like some extreme parody of a Lawful Good D&D character, interacting with nothing on the off chance I accidentally cause something evil to happen. I live in the real world, I dismiss a thousand things a day socially and personally. The infinitesimal philosophical niceties only affect my actions insofar as I’ll argue about them on the internet! :-)
Louis
Or how about this:
Lacking a belief is passive, i.e. not doing something. Dismissing something is active, i.e. doing something. I don’t need to do anything to be an atheist, I just need to lack a theistic belief. As in the old saw “I contend we are both atheists, I just believe in one god fewer than you.”. I don’t even need to know any theistic beliefs exist to be an atheist. That’s the minimum, the base, simplest philosophical point at which one is or isn’t an atheist.
Of course, we do more than that (socially, personally, and philosophically), especially if we’re not a “default atheist” (i.e. the one ignorant of the existence of theistic beliefs), but I can’t think of/remember a simpler basis than the above off the top of my head.
Louis
Wow, that’s rather verbose, Louis.
I prefer my version: the privative definition.
Not a theist? Then an a-theist.
Me? Verbose?
Perish the very thought, John!
Louis
You definitely can do it both ways, Louis. :)
Really? REALLY? Are you making it THAT easy? Okay, but this is your fault:
“That’s what SHE said.”
There. Are you happy now?
Louis
Oh yes; I do like a happy ending.
Johnathan Middle Name Morales!
That is exceedingly naughty. Go and stand in the corner and think about what you have done.
Mummy (née Louis)
From the linked artilce by Ayaan Hirsi Ali – emphasis added by me :
Oh FFS! AYA is a Climatet Science denier too now? So much for her sef-proclaimed respect for suppsoedly “Western / Christian” advanced science and reason then.. I presume that;s what she’s on abiot with that throwaway line..
@StevoR, #101,
This is a thread that just keeps giving… me my pet peeves. Dammit, people, stop reminding me I’m an irascible, intolerant prick! :-)
“Virtue signalling”? In the immortal words of the Prophet (or Profit): Jesus Titty Fucking Christ!
It’s (another) term used by our ideologically unpleasant chums that is a real giveaway. Like “political correctness”. It’s an assertion that the people they are talking about are lying/bullshitting (per: Harry G Frankfurt), that their views aren’t real, that they’re faking for some reason, that they’re insincere, that they’re playing some “team sport”, that they are somehow denying what the person using the term thinks is reality (BIIIIG caveats on THAT) for reasons not related to the facts. It’s purest, unadulterated, straight, intraocularly injected projection.
The people who use these terms (oooh…”champagne socialist” is another) are, in the words of The Youth(TM), showing their whole arse.
The use of these terms is politics by vibes, playing the man not the ball, it’s shallower than a small puddle of spit, and designed to boil the piss of the interlocutor by being dismissive, patronising, and not addressing the substance of the topic. Can you tell I’m a fan?
Of course “in-group signalling” is a real phenomenon, of course some people are dishonest, of course some people are insincere, or deny reality, or say anything they think supports their “team”. And? When people use these terms they are talking to an individual, or a group they feel they can identify (usually defined by them using some really simplistic associated characteristic that widely misses the variety within said group), that they have precisely zero idea about. Before you talk to person X you don’t know for sure if they’re going to be insincere in that conversation. The use of these terms is a staggeringly good example of the “ad hominem” fallacy.
Why is it showing the whole arse of the person using them? Because it is a guarantee that the shallow-thinking fuckwit is doing EXACTLY this. “Virtue-signalling”? What are these pricks doing? “Vice-signalling”? “Political correctness”? What are these pricks doing? Just being raging bigots?
GAH!
I need more coffee or I am off out to going on a killing spree and a campaign of bombing. (I’m not, but I will imagine it a bit)
Louis
I could swear those typos weren’t there when I typed that..
More deconstructing AYA’s conclusion here. Numbers added for clarity (I hope!) :
.1 Withstand? What exactly is meant by that? We = who exactly? Does AYA think one or all of these three countries (“civilisations?”) are going to destroy us? How? I mean Russia could be close to destroying the US using Putin’s stooges like Trump & Moscow Mitch and rotting away our democracy with Conspiracy lies but the USA did survive Jan 6th.. It kinda begs the question “withstand” them in what way? Militarily, well WW III would be the end of all our current civilisations and Global Overheating might be destroying all of us combined too. Maybe we should consider co-operation as a mindset rather than war huh AYA?
Culturally? What sort of threat is that? Cultures are always changing and evolving and shifting. Also isn’t dogmatic regressive Christianity something that also poses a serious threat to the secular pro-science, pro-“human life, freedom and dignity” & pro-“rule of law to the institutions of science, health and learning” culture that epitomises our best to use Ali’s own words? I mean who is currently imposing book bans, removing reproductive and LGBTQUIA rights etc.. in the USA and elsewhere in the West? Who is ruining, say, the SCOTUS by putting partisan religious extremists and precedent ignoring Justices on it? Or making the legislative branch a joke by having igorant wreckers like MTG, Tommy Tuberville, Jim Jordan and even outright traitors like Josh Hawley & Lauren Boebert.*
.2 Which would be why even? To be Christianist rather than Islamist or Maoist not that the latter is even a thing in China now really is it? It matters that we win – what? If humans are happy and successful and the world is better even if the West hasn’t won or been destroyed somehow or had its culture replaced with, dare I say, a better one is that ..bad? If so why?
.3 “Woke” ideology is “determined to destroy” Western civilisation? Really? It is “destroying”our civilisation if we take out the bigotry and recognise other perspectives and be more feminist and environmentally conscious and fight racism and imperialism? Is it? I don’t think so. Isn’t “wokeism” the better part of Western civilisation and culture and a product as well as a socio-political movement (?) within it? If its anything other than a term for stuff fascists and the fascist adjacent don’t like?
.4 Can’t we? Why not? Metaphorically countering Islamism with Christianism, one regressive religious extreme with another seems like fighting fire with fire versus fighting it with say, water. Or carbon dioxide, or a fire blanket.
.5 Yeesh, you think videos on Tok-tok (a product of Chinese culture yeah?) are all & themain thing we’re using to win Western Muslim hearts and minds? AYA, you were a Western Muslim once and long before Tok Tok was around you left Islam for the West so.. well, go figure huh?
.* See among other places :
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/gop-lawmakers-were-intimately-involved-in-jan-6-protest-planning-new-report-shows
The last big fake insult of the right wingnuts was…Cultural Marxism.
Cultural Marxism doesn’t even exist.
All they are doing is putting two scary words together, Cultural and Marxism. It’s just a meaningless insult.
Before that it was Social Justice Warriors.
It’s supposed to be an insult.
As a Social Justice Warrior for the last 50 years, I couldn’t even bother to be insulted.
A few years ago, it was Post Modern and Post Modernism.
Which also more or less don’t exist either, except as failed philosopical ideas.
Post Modernist as an insult never really caught on.
Mostly because it is way too esoteric for the right wingnuts to even understand what it means.
At least when you see someone like Ayaan Ali using these words, you know they are right wingnut idiots. It’s always nice that they identify themselves so easily.
PS: George Orwell had something to say about this inventing of new and meaningless language. It’s Newspeak to go with their Doublethought.
hemidactylus @53 wrote:
Folk here are focusing on the wrong thing: her insincerity. What is actually interesting here is her honesty in that the account here is transparently screaming the insincere nature of her conversion. Very, very few people would read her piece on Unherd and come out thinking that it was relating a sincere episode of religious conversion to Christianity. There is a particular narrative that she is communicating and it is not one of sincerely held religious belief.
You have understand that this is not a case of mincing words to lie by omission because an overt lie would leave Hirsi troubled. The context here is that Hirsi has absolutely no problems whatsoever in shamelessly lying for the benefit of Hirsi. If she had wanted to communicate sincerity in her “conversion” to Christianity, she would have done exactly that. There would have been 100 different ways she could have done it (scales fell from my eyes, I did a mushroom trip and…, the pastor asked us to accept Jesus as our lord & savior & I was born again,… etc.) without actually communicating insincerity & none of them would have been falsifiable.
She is not trying to cash in by trying to fit in with just any conservative by adopting Christianity. She is trying to target a specific type of conservative. In fact, if you read the Unherd piece it tells you exactly the type of conservative that she is targeting. jimf @30 is relevant because it touches on this type of conservatism.
jimf @30 wrote:
The message is the same, but I have seem it as:
“Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful”
—Seneca the Younger
She is targeting the more “intellectual” conservative elite who wants religion in society (preferably the more conservative strains of Christianity) because it is alleged to be useful to society (or at least useful to the elites who matter because they know best). The importance of religion in this context is what it does when it is believed by the masses. Whether a given individual actually believes or not is not actually that important (particularly if they are part of this alleged intellectual elite). The entire Unherd piece is relating this very message. The only difference between the piece & this sort of conservatism is that the piece focuses exclusively on the Christianity vs. Islam clash of civilizations whereas these conservatives might be a bit less monomaniacal than that and actually care about other things too.
She is signaling that she is one of them.