When you get a chance (but not right now, only when you have absolutely nothing whatsoever else to do) have a look at Matt Nisbet's latest thinly veiled attack on PZ myers*.
It is the usual crap. Atheists are not allowed to express annoyance, disgust, or anger, or to vilify, sillify, or nullify the religious, no mater how whacked-out those religious individuals are. If PZ reads this, he'll probably ignore it, but it is entirely up to him to respond (or not), if he does indeed view it as a veiled attack.
I just wanted to point out one thing about Matt's post.
The following comprises sections of Matt's post, where I have replaced words like "religion" with "racism" and "atheism" with "anti-racism," etc. I've also bolded comparison terms such as "but" and "or" in various places. I think that if you read through this you will get my point:
Ask yourself: What's the best way you can promote racial equality in your community or on your campus?Do you want to gain attention through polarizing attacks at your blog or in public statements, alienating even your moderately racist neighbors? Or do you want to be known as the community builder and leader who happens to also be an against racism?
The latter is a strategy for promoting racial equality at the local and national level that I discussed in a previous episode of the Point of Inquiry podcast.
...
While Kurtz has always been a respectful critic of racism, he has also been a brilliantly successful community leader. He has brought international attention and acclaim to the University of Buffalo, has built two thriving businesses that employ more than a hundred local citizens from a diversity of faiths....
Now notice the train of thought for readers in the Buffalo News article. The focus is on Kurtz as a community leader, someone who is dedicated to Buffalo and its people, and who has been successful locally and internationally. A secondary message is that he is a critic of racism but that he also stands for something else: living life to the fullest in an ethical manner. If every local newspaper in the country were to run a profile of a local against racism, the movement couldn't ask for better publicity than this type of message.
If you skip over to The Intersection and check out the newspaper interview, and compare it with similar press on PZ Myers, I think you will find them remarkably similar.
Matt wants us to believe that someone like Kurtz ... someone that Matt approves of ... would never say anything to offend religious people. Such as:
A religious person "... invents religious symbols, which he venerates and worships to save him from facing the finality of his death and dissolution. He devises paradise fictions to provide succor and support.... In acts of supreme self-deception, at various times and in various places he has been willing to profess belief in the most incredible myths because of what they have promised him."
That would be very offensive to most christians that I know. PZ, how dare you say something like this! .. Oh, no wait, that was Paul Kurtz who said that...
I would think that Matt would approve of something like this:
"I don't think creationists are stupid. I wish people would not attribute that to me, because I simply don't believe it. In fact, most of the active creationists are pretty darn smart."
... OK, I'm getting confused ... who said this last bit about creationists? Oh, right, that was PZ myers in a recent presentation at the Bell Museum.
Humanities & Social Science
Comments
Point acknowledged, but I don't think "racism" exactly parallels "religion". In particular, the "moderately racist" (say like: people who wouldn't be caught dead wearing the white sheets, but would also prefer that no brown people moved on to their street) are still harming the common good, whereas religious moderates are not (nexessarily).
Posted by: Eamon Knight | April 6, 2008 5:17 PM
Eamon: An analogy is never exact. Or it would not be an analogy, it would be a ... a clone-alogy. Yes, a clonalogy.
Posted by: Greg Laden | April 6, 2008 5:22 PM
Exactly what I was thinking when I read it, I'm glad you brought it up. I believe the cheapest shot is the "living an ethical life" part. Is he saying that PZ is an unethical person? Those are serious words and he offers no explanation.
I beleive that Nisbet's main problem is his pandering to the religious fundamentalists, it does not matter what frame he uses, if it is not in the bible, they won't believe it. I think he gives religious moderates no benefit of the doubt.
Posted by: JNavarro | April 6, 2008 5:29 PM
It's not a "thinly veiled" attack. It's a poorly framed one!
Posted by: jdb | April 6, 2008 5:31 PM
If I remember right, Matthew was present at the time that PZ said his bit about creationists at the Bell Museum. I went over to Framing Science and quoted something Paul Kurtz had written in Free Inquiry last year.
Matt has something personal against PZ, and I can't figure what it is.
Posted by: Mike Haubrich, FCD | April 6, 2008 6:31 PM
are still harming the common good, whereas religious moderates are not (nexessarily).
Well, I believe religious moderates *do* harm the common good, in the same subtle way that moderately racist people do.
A racist would contrariwise claim that moderately racist people don't hurt the common good.
I think the analogy is dead-on.
The deal is, the new atheist stance is inherently offensive to a lot of people. There's no way around it. Feminism is inherently offensive to misogynists; egalitarianism is inherently offensive to racists; etc. The "new" atheist stance is pretty revolutionary. The stance that religious beliefs should be held to rational scrutiny is *not* going to go over well with a lot of people. I don't see any way around it.
Posted by: Abbie | April 6, 2008 6:58 PM
Cuttlefish outdoes himself over there.
Posted by: SC | April 6, 2008 8:48 PM
I don't personally like the name "new atheism."
In the 1970s in high school chemistry class, as I was confronted by the whole class including the red-faced chemistry teacher, yelling at me and berating me as I calmly held my ground and insisted that religion was complete nonsense, was I being a "new atheist?"
Same thing happened in a different high school in my english class.
Some of us have been "new atheists" since the day we were born.
Posted by: craig | April 6, 2008 9:34 PM
We need a word to embody the discriminatory aspects of religious belief. Let me use "religionism" for now. Extreme religionism would be hell and damnation for non-believers and apostates. Systemic religionism would be the sort of off-hand comments we're all used to that imply you need religion to be a better person or to be moral or to live a fulfilled life. We could also include the negative portrayal of atheists as loud, obnoxious, vehement, etc, as being religionist in nature. But not all religious believers would have to be religionist and not all religionists would have to be religious believers.
"Religionism" may not be the right word, since "religionists" is already a descriptive for believers, but I think we need something along those lines. Once you start playing around with it in your mind it becomes clear that this is a civil rights issue and much of the behavior directed towards atheists is similar to racism or sexism or any other form of discrimination. The very extremes of religionism might be long in our past but it clearly still exists as a systemic problem in our society.
Posted by: poke | April 6, 2008 9:52 PM
I have commented a few times in this latest iteration of the Frame Wars and I reckon I'm done after this. Something really smells in the Matthew Nisbet camp. I like Chris Mooney's books and think he is a good science writer. I know others have repeatedly urged him to separate himself from Nisbet and he has not done so, but if anyone has any influence please try again. My gut reaction is that there is not going to be a happy ending to any of this since I either don't understand or get something very basic or I understand all too well. Power, position and insecurity make for bad communication, bad strategy/tactics and bad judgment.
Posted by: charlie | April 6, 2008 10:07 PM
I transfer my post here:
"The only reason that I could have thought of believing in God is for the sake of mental health.
Carl Jung said, "I do not believe in God, I know there is God." I have not yet in that stage, perhaps somewhere in the middle.
The belief in God believes in the thing the way is; in fact, atheists are aiming at this goal also. What is the difference?
The faith in God is to prevent the idol worship and self and collective narcissism, so to speak.
We survive as an individual and in the community. And the history is continuously going ahead; tomorrow and the invisible truth are non-shakable foundation to sustain our mental health. To live in the past and now are not enough; that is the major dilemma of an atheist.
In comparing to Carl Jung, Sigmund Feud had surrendered at his 80's and found his experience in God- a good case study for atheists.
Do religions help us to have faith and experience in God? My answer is yes and no. Everyone has to do his/her own assignment, just like to grow mentally mature is individual's effort mostly.
I guess, just guess, God doesn't care if you are an atheist or not. I envisage that loving parents would not care too much their children's choices to be with them under certain manner. The unconditional love doesn't occupy. Even soul mated couple would be able to achieve more than possessiveness :-)"
Posted by: paiwan | April 6, 2008 10:30 PM
charlie:
They always say they are done but they always come back for more.
Posted by: Elizabeth | April 6, 2008 11:06 PM
About "moderate" vs. extreme racists and religion ... in any given context the acceptable line will be positioned by convention. With racism, what is "acceptable" is not even close to what is acceptable in speaking about atheists. A major public figure can say that it is "normal" to be a Christian in the United states, that a Christian religious symbol may not be an ideal lawn decoration for a public building but the annual erection of a Christmas tree on the white house lawn is an acceptable convention, set. But a major public figure can not make the analogous arguments regarding race because that has become unacceptable.
Posted by: Andrew | April 6, 2008 11:42 PM
Andrew: I was thinking the same thing. I think the "Net Atheists" feel they need to be a little extreme to move the bar. But they are not being very extreme. Extreme is burning buildings and shooting leaders on the other side and lighting piles of tires on fire.
Posted by: Raymond | April 6, 2008 11:46 PM
It's not a "thinly veiled" attack. It's a poorly framed one!
LOL
yup. On Nisbet's site, someone mentioned being interested in Kurtz's response to his statements and arguments being used by Nisbet in such a fashion.
I wouldn't mind seeing that myself, actually.
I've grown weary of Nisbet, frankly. Boy thinks himself "all that" simply because he published one damn paper on communications in Science?
come back in ten years, Nisbet.
Posted by: Ichthyic | April 6, 2008 11:58 PM
And some others have been "new atheists" since before that.
Posted by: Skemono | April 7, 2008 12:21 AM
On Nisbet's site, someone mentioned being interested in Kurtz's response to his statements and arguments being used by Nisbet in such a fashion.
btw, Nisbet is now heavily censoring his blog.
the post I refer to where the author was calling on a reckoning from Kurtz was deleted.
so were all references to it in that thread.
be warned; not brooking disagreement on his blog only supports my contention that Nisbet is a bit of a narcissist.
... to the point that he's actually a problem for communication the more ears he manages to grab at AAAS.
this guy has troubled me since he did such a poor job defending his Science article to begin with on his blog, and his actions and behavior suggest he's more a problem than a help.
I predict the problem will fester and grow if allowed to, and a couple of years from now, we will be regretting not raising an even bigger stink over Nisbet.
Posted by: Ichthyic | April 7, 2008 12:55 AM
Yet another example of what I think the "frame" should be
Matt Nisbet is horrible at framing.
Posted by: syntyche | April 7, 2008 1:25 AM
I thought the framing debate was stuck in a rut, but here there are considerable changes. Nisbet now identifies outspoken atheism with a negative claim. (While Abbie here shows that it can be a positive claim on using more rational scrutiny.)
Anon over there indirectly points out that such claims have moved the identification of atheism away from strawmen. While Nisbet now is more and more defining himself as a problem instead of a solution.
It ties neatly in with apologists frequent use of the strawman "scientism" though. "Belief in belief" and "special pleading" isn't quite covering the same territory, so I think it is an excellent idea supporting a push for rational scrutiny.
As for a better term I come up blank right now. Maybe the old usage will move aside as it has alternatives?
On the math blogs they discuss category theory as a mathematicians tool to study analogies. This is done by noting isomorphism between structures (analog parts) instead of equalities between them (exact "clone-alog" parts). (Thus coping with larger areas of similar structures applicable on the same object, or different objects.)
I'm not saying that isomorphism is an exact analogy [sic!] for analogies, especially badly constructed such. But I think it points out what a good analogy is used for.
Posted by: Torbj�rn Larsson, OM | April 7, 2008 3:06 AM
Here's the comment I just tried to post on Nisbet's blog (the site told me that my post is being "held for review by the blog owner"--sounds ominous):
-----
Nisbet's attempt to use Paul Kurtz as the shining example of everything that Richard Dawkins and P.Z. Myers should be but are not is an utter joke.
First, anyone who has actually read Kurtz's work--in books such as The Transcendental Temptation and Living Without Religion: Eupraxophy--is well aware that Kurtz is every bit as vicious toward religion, and every bit as offensive to mainstream religious sensibilities, as Myers and Dawkins have ever been.
Indeed, and hilariously in the current context, Paul Kurtz was more-or-less singlehandedly responsible for the 1980 schism among American humanists that resulted in Kurtz and his allies leaving the American Humanist Association to found the Council for Democratic and Secular Humanism (CODESH--subsequently renamed the Council for Secular Humanism).
Kurtz's reason for leaving, and savaging, the AHA (where he had edited the house organ magazine, The Humanist) was that he could not tolerate the substantial fraction of the membership of the AHA who--then as now--declared themselves "religious humanists." Kurtz decided he could accept no association with such people, and his works on the subject drip with derision for them. In light of the events of the 70s and 80s, there are still plenty of AHA members who regard Kurtz as a disgusting, intemperate, monomaniacal anti-religious fanatic. I guess it was just the AHA's bad luck that they didn't have the services of a professional whiner to accuse Kurtz of alienating potential allies and thereby browbeat him back into the fold....
How incredibly amusing, then, that Matt Nisbet is trying to use Kurtz as a poster boy for inoffensive anti-religious advocacy. In his heydey, Kurtz had no qualms about detailing the horrors and irrationalities of religions of all sorts. His severe rejection of the AHA for the religious humanism it harbored is the direct predecessor of the Dawkins/Myers/etc. critique of appeasement-friendly schools of skeptical thought--a critique that Nisbet now, conveniently, reflexively bashes. The only reason that conservative believers don't hate Kurtz just as much as they do Dawkins is that, by and large, they have no idea who Kurtz is or what he's written.
As far as offensiveness to mainstream religious sensibilities is concerned, Paul Kurtz is Richard Dawkins, except that Kurtz is sixteen years older and considerably less well known. The idea that Kurtz is friendlier or more congenial to religion than Dawkins is is an utter misrepresentation of reality.
Moreover, Nisbet is mendaciously misconstruing Kurtz's own critique of Dawkins, Myers and company; the notion that Kurtz's critique matches Nisbet's is a full-blown lie.
Kurtz has an axe to grind, one that indeed is his life's work: humanism. I have yet to see Kurtz complain, a la Nisbet, that Dawkins and company are big anti-religious meanies who are therefore hurting the cause, boo hoo hoo. Instead, the sole complaint I have seen him voice about Dawkins and company (though, in Kurtz's real context, it's a very mild "faulting") is that they're not selling Kurtz's product. But of course they're not trying to sell humanism; they're trying to promote science and reason (which are different, albeit closely related, products to humanism). Given the difference in intentions and the difference in audiences, it's little wonder that there are differences in emphasis as well.
Nisbet's attempts, then, to twist the comments of Paul Kurtz--the fervent anti-religious loudmouth of a previous generation--in an attempt to support his own attacks on honest, forthright religious criticism like that of Richard Dawkins and P.Z. Myers are an embarrassment.
Nisbet should be ashamed of himself, and this ridiculous vendetta against all things P.Z. must end.
-----
Given that Nisbet has to approve this, I suspect it will never see the light of day on his blog. What a joke.
Posted by: Rieux | April 7, 2008 3:16 AM
Physioprof wrote in comments: "There is room for both moderation and no-holds-barred honest advocacy."
From a self-termed "moderate" atheist point of view, I agree. I'm just spread too thin to deem militancy a high priority in my life right now. I always hated selling things, which is what proselytism is in my view. And I also hate getting aggressively sold at, leading to my avoidance of the souk in Marrakech, Baptist churches and most TV.
So I let PZ and Richard and Eugenie speak for me, and I am grateful for it, even if they sometimes take it farther than I would. If I wanted to get out there on the front lines, then I would do it. Thank goodness for militants!
Posted by: Alethea | April 7, 2008 3:57 AM
Then you have a disagreement with Gary Wolf of Wired because he coined the term in an article, titled "The Church of the Non-Believers", published in November 2006.
The title itself should give an idea of the spin he was putting on the story.
"New Atheists" was then picked up by other journalists to fulfill their need to label people.
It wasn't coined by any atheist, out-spoken or otherwise.
Posted by: Peter | April 7, 2008 4:11 AM
It is amusing that the shrill and divisive 'New Atheists' are accused of nothing more than freethinkers have been accused of in the past, as obstacles in the way of the yellow brick road which the new High Priest of communication foresees.
What would he think of Thomas Paine or Ingersoll? Too shrill in their promotion of reason over superstition? What good did Paine do America anyway? He should've been quiet about his decisive opinions, for the outcomes of his polemics did cause bloodshed after all, far more than PZ ever will.
For example, does anything PZ says go any further than this from God and the State Mikhail Bakunin 1871
We know what followed. The good God, whose foresight, which is one of the divine faculties, should have warned him of what would happen, flew into a terrible and ridiculous rage; he cursed Satan, man, and the world created by himself, striking himself so to speak in his own creation, as children do when they get angry; and, not content with smiting our ancestors themselves, he cursed them in all the generations to come, innocent of the crime committed by their forefathers. Our Catholic and Protestant theologians look upon that as very profound and very just, precisely because it is monstrously iniquitous and absurd. Then, remembering that he was not only a God of vengeance and wrath, but also a God of love, after having tormented the existence of a few milliards of poor human beings and condemned them to an eternal hell, he took pity on the rest, and, to save them and reconcile his eternal and divine love with his eternal and divine anger, always greedy for victims and blood, he sent into the world, as an expiatory victim, his only son, that he might be killed by men. That is called the mystery of the Redemption, the basis of all the Christian religions. Still, if the divine Savior had saved the human world! But no; in the paradise promised by Christ, as we know, such being the formal announcement, the elect will number very few. The rest, the immense majority of the generations present and to come, will burn eternally in hell. In the meantime, to console us, God, ever just, ever good, hands over the earth to the government of the Napoleon Thirds, of the William Firsts, of the Ferdinands of Austria, and of the Alexanders of all the Russias.
Posted by: Euripedes | April 7, 2008 6:31 AM
That last part above should have been included in the blockquote. (A perfect example of poor framing ;))
Posted by: Euripedes | April 7, 2008 7:14 AM
Ichthyic and Rieux aren't the only ones to face censorship on Nisbet's blog, it seems. I posted a question several hours ago, asking him to qualify the differences he sees between Myers and Dawkins, and Kurtz, since I had problems seeing any. Since this was right after he posted his last comment (and right after I noticed several comments suddenly disappear, on a page refresh), he might've turned on moderation and gone to bed at that point (meaning we'll see our comments appear later), but I'm not holding my breath.
If he really is censoring his blog, not only of opposing viewpoints, but even polite questions to clarify his position, Nisbet has lost all credibility, even what little he had left after telling Dawkins and Myers to "shut up".
Posted by: Kaerion | April 7, 2008 7:47 AM
I think Nisbet's sentiments are closer to this:
Of course, no analogy is exact, but considering that Nisbet is highly unlikely to see religion to be a good analog for racism, this is at least less of a strawman.
Posted by: J. J. Ramsey | April 7, 2008 8:46 AM
Grrr, curse the screwy "blockquote": The paragraph "Do you want to gain attention ..." is from Nisbet, not me.
Posted by: J. J. Ramsey | April 7, 2008 8:49 AM
And some atheists want to express annoyance disgust or anger, to vilify, sillify or nullify the religious no matter how reasonable and rational those religious individuals are in every area of public life.
If you want to stake the support, protection and promotion of good science on the elimination of religion, it makes sense, but not if you want to make the immediate aim the support, protection and promotion of good science.
Greg (or anyone else of the same alignment on this issue), do you express annoyance, disgust or anger at or vilify, sillify and nullify the religious people you run into when you engage in politics, canvassing for a candidate, attending a meeting of your political party, etc.?
Posted by: Mike from Ottawa | April 7, 2008 9:08 AM
Mike from Ottawa has a point. BTW, here's Merriam-Webster's definition of vilify:
1: to lower in estimation or importance
2: to utter slanderous and abusive statements against : "defame"
Synonyms: see "malign"
An observation: Just about every time I've seen the word "vilify," it's been in the second sense mentioned.
Posted by: J. J. Ramsey | April 7, 2008 9:42 AM
Mike:
I think your question is a bit off the point, but it is still important. Religious/spiritual people often expect me to share their point of view, which I don't. When I resist this there is often a presumption that being non-religious is not normal. Sometimes there is then an implication that being non-religious is suspicious, and in some cases there is even an implication of evil. And so on. It can get increasingly obnoxious.
I prefer to engage in calm, rational conversation with people. But a calm rational statement in response to the presumption of religion or spirituality often invokes fairly strong reactions. This is not my problem, it is the problem of the recipient of this rational perspective. If I say to a christian that I believe that the bible is not the word of god, that can be considered a very insulting thing to say. I can say it as nicely and calmly as possible, and it is still deeply insulting. But that insult comes from a problem the christian has, not a problem I have or my failure to make the point in some painless way.
Posted by: Greg Laden | April 7, 2008 9:59 AM
Euripedes – I’ve been meaning to share that excerpt here on Sb for some time now! Thanks! For anyone interested in reading more, “God and the State” is available online here:
http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_archives/bakunin/godandstate/godandstate_ch1.html
(In some ways a product of its time, it is tainted by antisemitism, and is also vehemently anti-German, but I think both of these derive largely from Bakunin’s profound hostility to Marx. In any case, these views are incidental to his broader arguments. I have some criticisms, but it’s as powerful a piece of anti-religious/anti-authoritarian writing as you’re likely to find.)
On another note, in response to part of marc buhler’s comment to Nisbet on the other thread, suggesting that “Perhaps it is a 'Social Scientist - Scientist' thing behind the scenes…”: While it’s clear from the conclusion of the sentence – “…and that is something *you* need to work out for yourself” – that he was referring to individuals (I see a strong element of this as well) and had no intention of implicating entire disciplines, I wanted to speak up for the sake of further clarification. MAJeff has expressed it well elsewhere, but I will add my own voice to those seeking to make a distinction between Nisbet’s “social science” and social science as I understand and practice it.
As a social scientist who has worked with cultural frames/framing for years, I find Nisbet’s presentation of framing, and our work in general, rather offensive. “Framing,” in my field at least, is a conceptual tool that can be useful in understanding the dynamics of social movements. It is not a Grand Theory of Social Communication. Social scientists analyze cultural change using the conceptual apparatus we have available and attempt to draw conclusions based upon the evidence. Good researchers realize that this process is unavoidably political and that we do not stand outside or above the social reality we are trying to understand. In some cases (my own included), we draw upon this knowledge in our work as activists and advocates - I would certainly refer to my research findings in defending my position in internal debates in the movements in which I am involved. But neither I nor any of my colleagues would make the arrogant and untenable claim that our scholarly knowledge automatically trumps other positions by sheer virtue of its being based in social-scientific theory or research. Oh, and neither are we glorified marketers.
OK, I needed to get that off my chest. I feel better now.
Posted by: SC | April 7, 2008 10:23 AM
Greg Laden: "But a calm rational statement in response to the presumption of religion or spirituality often invokes fairly strong reactions."
True, but let's not pretend that this is the entirety of atheists' treatment of religion, or even yours. It isn't as if there aren't atheists who exaggerate the evils of religion or otherwise vilify religious people.
Posted by: J. J. Ramsey | April 7, 2008 10:23 AM
Greg:
The last time I got treated this way was somewhere around 5th grade when one of my classmates called me stupid. Maybe the difference is that I have lived my whole life on the East Coast. But I think that it's important that you understand that, for many of us, our experience of religion is very, very different from yours.Posted by: Alan B. | April 7, 2008 11:28 AM
Alan: You have hit on a very important point. I'm certain that these experiences are regional. I lived on the East Coast as well, including 17 years in Boston. I've been in Minnesota for 10. I think the Boston/Minnesota comparison for me is the most valid because I was similarly educated and grow-ed up in both places. The difference is vast.
This is probably why I am much less annoyed by religion than my wife, a native of Minnesota, is.
Posted by: Greg Laden | April 7, 2008 11:34 AM
Thanks SC!
If you haven't read it I can highly recommend Rudolf Rocker's 'Nationalism and Culture' for a good bit of anti-authoritarian/religion analysis.
As a lay person, the little I have read about dealing with the religious is that having 'thou shalt not lie' hammered into you from childhood produces interesting effects when authoritarian/fundamentalist children start to encounter a wider world view, involving challenges to the truth claims about their religion.
For example in Bob Altemeyers studies in Authoritarianism, he found that:
The full text is available at
The Authoritarians
But what Nisbett seems to be saying is that we shouldn't tell the religious what we believe to be true, whereas the evidence tells us that at the very least teaching science and reason has a strong effect on fundamentalists, even if it only leads to a softer view of religion, which must surely be beneficial in the long run not only to atheists, but also the 'moderates' who feel that they are drowned out by the extremists?
Posted by: Euripedes | April 7, 2008 11:37 AM
I'm going to echo what SC said, in particular, "As a social scientist who has worked with cultural frames/framing for years, I find Nisbet’s presentation of framing, and our work in general, rather offensive," except that I'm not a social scientist; my background is in rhetoric and communications theory, and I find Nisbet's presentation of framing really offensive.
As framing is practiced and understood within the field of rhetoric and communications theory, it is a tool for conveying a message in a way that will be most easily received by one's audience. A lot of science communicators (and I find PZ Myers suffers from this one from time to time) seem to feel that whichever way they present the facts, it's up to the audience to do the work of interpreting the message into something they can handle, which is not at all the case. (Obviously if a listener is not within the communicator's intended audience, they're going to have some catching up to do, which is not my point.) Audience analysis and subsequent tailoring of message -- of which framing is a substantial component -- is the communicator's job.
On the other hand, framing, as it's understood from a discourse analytics perspective, doesn't mean apologetics or mollycoddling one's audience either, nor lying or spinning. Personally, I think Nisbet has done more to discredit the concept of framing (choosing words carefully to convey a point in a particular way) among the scientific section of left-leaning communicators than any other figure I've yet seen. By allowing the prevailing religious frame to stand, he's effectively ceding the entire argument.
For what it's worth, I also do think there's quite a bit to poke's comment about what I'd call "religionormativity," after "heteronormativity," in that the two phenomena really are rather analogous -- they're ubiquitous, pervasive, and systemic, and you don't notice either much until you're outside them.
Posted by: Interrobang | April 7, 2008 12:11 PM
SO, may I politely inquire, what exactly is wrong with us "religious?" I have been a practicing Protestant Christian all my life, and I also have an M.S. in Oceanography. I've never seen a problem reconciling the two, nor do I think there should be. Each is a way of understanding the world, each can lead you to rational, moral action, and each has processes that I find compliment the other. So if your beef is with fundamentalist or literalists Christians, or any other stripe of fundamentalists, say so directly. To paint us all with a single brush is to dismiss many of your colleagues, and that's not supposed to be a tactic of scientists, or is it?
Posted by: Philip H. | April 7, 2008 12:43 PM
Philip H., my problem with the religious is this tendency they have when I say, "I value rationalism very highly, and this thinking has led me to atheism," to reply, "How dare you call me irrational? That's not nice!" I know it's terribly self-centered, but sometimes I just want to talk about me.
Posted by: Stephanie Z | April 7, 2008 1:02 PM
Philip: You are totally correct except for one thing: A very very large percentage of people who are religious but don't consider themselves overtly obnoxious in their judgment of atheists only think they are not being obnoxious. My grandmother in law went through pains at Easter to welcome all the people of all the different faiths (in her pre-food consumption prayer) and made it very clear that the important thing was to have faith. She had no idea how deeply insulting that was to a large number of people in the room, across three generations. We all, of course, dutifully ignored us, because we did not want to be uppity.....
There is not a universal inability of the religious to understand this, but the problem is simply NOT confined to the evangelicals. It is very widespread.
Posted by: Greg Laden | April 7, 2008 2:02 PM
Interrobang, can you suggest some authors in the field of communications theory who have a different take on framing than Nisbet? Nisbet and Mooney have a habit of dismissing all criticism as being from ignorant non-professionals, so I'm wondering if there's another voice out there who they might actually respect.
Posted by: jdb | April 7, 2008 3:00 PM
Greg:
First, replacing religion with racism in that passage isn't an analogy, it's Mad Libs. Let's replace "religion" with "defecating dogs" now!
(The basic trouble with the analogy is that it assumes what you are supposedly trying to demonstrate. Racism is ALREADY an object of extreme opprobrium. By sticking "racism" in where religion used to be all you demonstrate is that moderation is not the way to treat objects of extreme opprobrium. But the question at hand is precisely whether religion and racism are analogous in this way or not--whether or not it should be treated as an object of extreme opprobrium. So the analogy is completely boneheaded and pointless--it doesn't make an argument on the way to a favored conclusion, it simply assumes that favored conclusion. Looks like a technique out of the religious apologist trickbag!)
Sorry to hear about your awful, offensive Easter Dinner. It must be horrible to be so offended . . . Did you ever consider that your problem might not be religion--maybe you're just a bit of a sissy? You're a sensitive plant too easily injured by what you imagine others might be thinking about you. Where this insecurity comes from, I suppose you are in the best position to judge. But wouldn't you think it more in keeping with your atheistic feeling to NOT CARE if even your mother-in-law erroneously presumes you believe in some God.
Posted by: Oran Kelley | April 7, 2008 4:14 PM
Oran:
Actually, I was not trying to make the point you are supposing. I was trying to demonstrate how a dialog sounds when you take words linked to a doctrine that is agree to be offensive for which we are linguistically sensitized and use those words to see what a doctrine that is also offensive but for which we are not linguistically sensitized sounds.
Easter was mostly just fine for me, again, having been raised "out east" and having come from a long line of nuns and priests, it just rolled off my back. But I don't think it rolled off everyone's back.
Posted by: Greg Laden | April 7, 2008 4:24 PM
Just to update my comment above--there's still no sign of my treatise on Paul Kurtz the Uppity Atheist being posted on Nisbet's comment thread.
And, regarding Kaerion's post mentioning me, I seriously doubt that Nisbet has directed a censorship campaign at me personally. (Probably Kaerion didn't mean to suggest otherwise, but I'm not certain.)
I doubt Nisbet has any idea who I am; the most significant role I've played in this exchange is when I asked Nisbet a pointed question about atheism during the Q&A session of the Nisbet & Mooney vs. Greg & P.Z. debate in Minneapolis last fall. As a result, I can't believe that he could have added a setting to his blog to blacklist me particularly. Instead, I'm reasonably confident that the moderation my comment received is just a broad prior restraint that Nisbet is placing on all comments (or perhaps all comments to atheism-related threads), not just mine.
That's still ridiculous censorship, of course. And the fact that my comment appears to have been memory-holed suggests how interested Nesbit is in open communication--about, say, who Paul Kurtz actually is.
Posted by: Rieux | April 7, 2008 4:56 PM
Whoops, addendum: it appears Ichthyic and I (among others?) have been silenced because we're screechy monkeys.
Terrific!
Posted by: Rieux | April 7, 2008 4:59 PM
What?!
You are demonstrating that different words have different meanings? That different meanings have different emotional valences? What exactly are you illustrating that isn't . . . mmm . . . perfectly obvious to everyone already and aknowledged by everyone?
I mean you acknowledge there are degrees of "offensiveness," no? And isn't the degree of the offensiveness precisely what is at issue.
I mean if you wrote a post saying that children taking aspirin into school should not be punished by expulsion (as it has been) and I said well look what his post looks like if we replace the word "aspirin" with "crystal meth" and the word "analgesic" with "deadly poison" . . . wouldn't you say I was missing the point, which was precisely that aspirin IS NOT ANYTHING LIKE CRYSTAL METH?
Pointing out that we are "more sensitized" to words like "crystal meth" than we are to "aspirin" does not improve on the pointlessness of the analogy, because all the analogy accomplishes is to elide the very distinction made by the original writer.
Posted by: Oran Kelley | April 7, 2008 7:14 PM
Listen: There is no way to calibrate across these analogies, and that is why they are analogies and not clones. But I think it is possible that you are totally misunderstanding what I'm saying.
I am asserting that on balance the only real difference between the two tropes is level of sensitization. People are not sensitized to the degree of offense that religious presumption generates to the non-religious. Religious people have absolutely no idea how offensive they typically are.
They are both offensive doctrines. But in society at a whole, these days, in the US, one is widely understood as offensive (racism) the other is not so understood even though it is. ... most people have no clue.
Posted by: Greg Laden | April 7, 2008 7:53 PM
re: "Matt has something personal against PZ"
I don't think so: I think Matt has something FOR positive messaging, even if the message is toned down for a minute--the message will outlive the sender if it is a positive one.
It is basically just a clash of egos: one, a large bio-science based ego thaqt benefits every tinme the sciborg hit counter clicks on this controversy; the other a media savvy pundit and PR man who wisely has proven--in the very least--that framing works, especially the 'conflict frame'.
re: Abbie "Feminism is inherently offensive to misogynists; egalitarianism is inherently offensive to racists"
Really? is that what US prison growth, spurred by the ever fearful voice of white, privileged female voices that has largely defined lower income men as criminals has done? Is that why the single mother raised sons have enlisted for a tour to Iraq instead of a four year stint in college, like their same age female counterparts?
I am reminded of hard working Chinese women professionals, all of whom smirk at the idea of male privilege; and those same women who chase their husbands down the side-alleys of Chengdu with butcher knives in hand; those hard working Chinese women who out work and out-compete men daily yet, in stark contrast to white privilege entitled white women, seldom get involved in the 'loudly complaining about inequity between the sexes' routine.Hmmm...something in there about 'doing, rather than talking about d