…and this is a 
We aim to misbehave
Category: Godlessness • History
Posted on: April 21, 2007 1:25 PM, by PZ Myers
Larry Moran raised an interesting comparison over at Laden's place. In response to this constant whining that loud-and-proud atheism 'hurts the cause', he brought up a historical parallel:
Here's just one example. Do you realize that women used to march in the streets with placards demanding that they be allowed to vote? At the time the suffragettes were criticized for hurting the cause. Their radical stance was driving off the men who might have been sympathetic to women's right to vote if only those women had stayed in their proper place.
This prompted the usual cry of the accommodationists: but feminists weren't as rude as those atheists.
Were the women saying that men were stupid? Were they portraying them as rubes and simpletons? Were they falling into the trap of making themselves resemble the negative stereotypes of women at the time? IIRC, the answers are No, No, and No. Substitute "atheists" for "women" and "theists" for "men," and the answers are emphatically Yes, Yes, and Yes. It is one thing to be assertive. It is another thing to be gratuitously rude.
This is so blind and ahistorical, I'm embarrassed for the guy. The suffragettes were ferocious firebreathers of a most admirable sort who did not mince words and went far further than atheists have gone — yet. As one example:
To attain the goal of universal suffrage, the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU, known colloquially as the suffragettes) engaged in acts of protest such as the breaking of windows, arson, and the "technical assault" (without causing harm) of police officers. Many WSPU members were jailed for these offenses.
Try reading the literature of the feminist pioneers. They weren't just rude, they were howling at injustice, they were breaking deep social mores, and they were abused, despised, and imprisoned for it — and they still are. Jebus. You think all women had to do to get recognition of their basic rights was to be polite? You think they got the right to vote by asking nicely? That soft voices and meekness are the answers?
I take it back. I should be embarrassed for us atheists. When I look at the history of feminism, I see a ferocity and a record of sacrifice that puts us tame godless people to shame. Maybe we need to get more outraged and outrageous.
If you read some of the great writers of the feminist movement, what you'll find is an eloquence that people like Richard Dawkins echo today. Their speeches were rousing calls to action, not paeans to passivity. These are words that people found "rude" then, and that we still see deplored by chauvinists today (have you ever heard the word "feminazi"?)
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
"The moment we begin to fear the opinions of others and hesitate to tell the truth that is in us, and from motives of policy are silent when we should speak, the divine floods of light and life no longer flow into our souls.""The whole tone of Church teaching in regard to women is, to the last degree, contemptuous and degrading."
Lucretia Mott
"The world has never yet seen a truly great and virtuous nation because in the degradation of woman the very fountains of life are poisoned at their source.""I have no idea of submitting tamely to injustice inflicted either on me or on the slave. I will oppose it with all the moral powers with which I am endowed. I am no advocate of passivity."
Mother Jones
"I'm not a humanitarian, I'm a hell-raiser.""Whatever your fight, don't be ladylike. "
Susan B. Anthony
"Men their rights and nothing more; women their rights and nothing less.""The fact is, women are in chains, and their servitude is all the more debasing because they do not realize it."
"Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputation and social standing, never can bring about a reform. Those who are really in earnest must be willing to be anything or nothing in the world's estimation, and publicly and privately, in season and out, avow their sympathy with despised and persecuted ideas and their advocates, and bear the consequences."
These women were treated as if they were bomb-throwing anarchists by the press, by politicians, by the wealthy elite, by every institution that had an interest in conserving the inequities of society. Even today we've got people like Phyllis Schlafly who decry "intolerant, uncivil feminists whose sport is to humiliate men" — I think everyone can see the similarity to the accusations against those intolerant, uncivil atheists.
Every social movement — and I'd add the labor movement and the struggle for civil rights as equally strong examples — that tries to break the bonds of mindless convention and tradition and that defies established privilege gets accused of being rude and worse, much worse, and there are always weak apologists for the status quo who use that pathetic etiquette excuse to try and silence the revolutionaries. Successful revolutionaries ignore the admonitions about which fork to use for their salad because they care only to grab the steak knife as they launch themselves over the table.
Atheists are calm and mild-mannered, even leaders of the New Atheists like Dawkins and Harris and Dennett — no doubt because our oppression is minor compared to that of women, racial minorities, and labor — but we're still getting these ridiculous claims that we're too "rude". They won't stop until we're completely silent, and there's no point in compromise, so these faint-hearted enablers of superstition are going to have to excuse us if we ever so politely request that they go fuck themselves, beg pardon, and please, use a rolled-up copy of the Republican party platform to do it, if you don't mind, thank you in advance.
Comments
Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful! The hopelessly god-besotted and the timid, meek appeasers of same may flee from your fire-breathing, PZ, but that same fire fills the rest of us with motivation and pride. :)
Yes, we're going to stand up and challenge social mores, and we should be proud to do it! These prejudices need to be resisted and changed, and that change will never come about if we concede that they're basically good ideas but express the hope that a little can be nibbled off around the edges. No, we should take a sledgehammer to the heart of that block, and the sooner the better.
Posted by: Ebonmuse | April 21, 2007 1:34 PM
Letter from Birmingham Jail (1963), Martin Luther King, Jr.
Posted by: Blake Stacey, OM | April 21, 2007 1:38 PM
Obviously, the message we should take from MLK is that they needed to do a better job of framing.
Posted by: PZ Myers | April 21, 2007 1:41 PM
PZ wrote:
ROFL.
That was a very, very good answer.
Posted by: Leni | April 21, 2007 1:43 PM
PZ:
Obviously.
In fact, I think the message we should take from King is that we need to claim the moral high ground. This is difficult to do when the churches have set themselves up as the arbiters of morality (one way in which King definitely had a tactical advantage). In essence, we have to be more moral than God.
A quick glance over God's rap sheet suggests that this is, indeed, possible.
Posted by: Blake Stacey, OM | April 21, 2007 1:50 PM
OK. I promise to slay all the Hittites, and the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, and the Hivites, but I will spare the Jebusites. There! I'm already ahead of God in the mercy and justice department, but I still get to slaughter people!
Posted by: PZ Myers | April 21, 2007 1:56 PM
Being more moral than God is remarkably easy. Step 1: Don't commit mass genocide (the most exhausting activity one can engage in, next to soccer).
The harder part is getting people to recognize it.
Posted by: Stogoe | April 21, 2007 2:00 PM
Posted by: llewelly | April 21, 2007 2:00 PM
The Letter from Birmingham Jail is one of the great pieces of political rhetoric from the twentieth century.
It's also good framing. Instead of calling the moderates racist swine--and a good argument could have been made that residual racism undergirded their hesitancy--he called them on grounds they knew they should inhabit. It worked, too.
I understand, PZ, why you get so frustrated with the frame of framing, and I won't say I don't sometimes agree with you, but I also think it'd be money well-spent for science organizations to hire PR people--and listen to them.
Posted by: adamsj | April 21, 2007 2:01 PM
PZ, you'd probably absolutely love Nellie McClung's "The Parliament of Women," which is a play that was performed before the 1914 election by the Manitoba chapter of the (Canadian) Women's Press Club.
The "white moderates" King was talking about did a perfectly good job of framing their arguments. So good, in fact, that their arguments have been absorbed whole into the popular discourse and are still being used today. (You just wrote an entire blog post about them, even.)
Posted by: Interrobang | April 21, 2007 2:03 PM
No No. You should kill everyone, but offer to spare the virgins and the children.
See, it's the children. They are an impermeable barrier against all arguments.
Posted by: Leni | April 21, 2007 2:04 PM
I agree that MLK's letters are an excellent example of framing, and I also agree that scientists could benefit from PR help.
My complaint all along has been that the framing pros have preferred to tell us that our message is all wrong, that we should drop any effort to persuade anyone on that sacrilegious subject, and that we should just be silent. Will I listen to suggestions to sway those moderates to my side? Yes. Will I pay any attention to suggestions that I should become one of those moderates, and stop trying to pull the whole world in my direction? NO.
Posted by: PZ Myers | April 21, 2007 2:09 PM
And let's not forget my very favorite American feminist/suffragette/troublemaker quotation ever:
"If I can't dance, I don't want to be a part of your revolution."
-Emma Goldman
Posted by: G | April 21, 2007 2:11 PM
The suffragettes were ferocious firebreathers...
What a ferocious, firebreathing, and inspired post. I tip my hat.
Posted by: Graham | April 21, 2007 2:11 PM
Ah, but the question is...was "The Parliament of Women" polite?
(I've never read it, never even seen a copy, but I've seen summaries of it.)
Posted by: PZ Myers | April 21, 2007 2:13 PM
"The rudeness of those damnable colonists is simply beyond tolerance"
-thoughts of George III circa 1776
"We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately."
-Benjamin Franklin
Posted by: natural cynic | April 21, 2007 2:16 PM
PZ wrote:
I can most certainly agree with you there. Of course, it also helps to keep in mind the fact that the vast majority is religious, so if someone on "your side" insists on calling them "God-besotted" or ignorant or what have you, that might not necessarily be a good thing - in as much as it might encourage the majority start thinking in terms of "us vs them."
*
As for this timid, weak appeaser (assuming a quasi-Spinozist counts - and talk about a minority!), what I would recommend is letting people know that you are not religious and that you insist on having the same, equal rights with everyone else - unless of course you have something else in mind. Is the main problem the fact that you are lacking certain freedom, e.g., to believe the way that you do, or that others also have the right to believe differently? Or is it the fact that you are insulted - or that people take insult and otherwise consider it a bad thing when you insult others?
I don't mean to be especially thick, but after all the highly charged, emotional rhetoric, cries of persecution, and angry ennunciations of revolutionary intent, I am still pretty much in the dark about what it is that you are after.
Oh well, I guess some day I might figure it out.
*
As for why you aren't religious, it is likely that many of the religious will have about as much interest in your reasons as you do in why they are religious. So it probably isn't necessary you to bring this up beyond a one-liner - unless they actually are interested. Or at least this is what would seem to be appropriate to a balanced, measured and rational approach.
Posted by: Timothy Chase | April 21, 2007 2:19 PM
I'm going to have to parallel John Petroski here and say:
Christianity only hurts if you fight it.
This god doesn't knock and wait. He breaks down your door, hovers over you in your bed, slaps you around and chokes you until you'll give in. The whole time he's saying, "Free will."
If you think this is crude, just imagine if in the conception story, Mary had been unwilling. An atheist perhaps?
Posted by: Ryan | April 21, 2007 2:32 PM
Timothy, I'd like to point out that my paternal ancestor arrived at the MA. Bay colony in 1635 and that it is still technically illegal for me to hold public office in 7 states in the U.S. because I am an atheist. G.Bush 41 stated publically that atheists should be denied citizenship. There are many other examples. Maybe you don't mean to be especially thick.
Posted by: Henry Culver | April 21, 2007 2:39 PM
Unalloyed applause.
Posted by: Don | April 21, 2007 2:43 PM
All very good points, but it will change nothing. The people who think we're hurting the cause will still shout and kick and scream whenever we speak. Oh well, at least we can take solace in the fact that we're right.
Posted by: Stuart Coleman | April 21, 2007 2:46 PM
Not to mention the blasphemy laws on the books in several states. And atheists can't join the Boy Scouts, although they can join the Girl Scouts, interestingly enough.
Posted by: anna | April 21, 2007 2:49 PM
The analogy between suffragettes and New Atheists fails. The suffragettes weren't saying that eventually all men should be converted into women in the service of reason and human progress, as the New Atheists tell the theists that their collective conversion to atheism is inevitable and desirable. The suffragettes didn't speak of a zero-sum conflict between women and men.
Sam Harris, Edge.org: "'Science Must Destroy Religion': "The conflict between religion and science is inherent and (very nearly) zero-sum.". I could cite many more such quotes from Michel Onfray et al.
(Do many - if not most - theists use similar zero-sum and martial rhetoric? They sure do. That's one of the things that makes religious zealots irksome.)
These features are what makes New Atheists different from most past atheists and so-called "appeaser" atheists:
1. Slamming those once regarded as allies - a) insufficiently militant atheists (Chamberlainites), b) religious liberals (because they provide cover for fundamentalists), and c) theistic evolutionists (stealth creationists) - as being grossly inadequate allies or even tools of the enemy (namely, theistic fundamentalists who are attempting to impose theocracy and destroy science).
2. Insisting that atheism (and more broadly, metaphysical naturalism) is not just a philosophical position but a scientific one. This position is the opposite of nonoverlapping magesteria: science has falsified God, the soul, and the afterlife. Further, a scientist with a healthy, coherent mind (that is, lacking in deforming cognitive dissonance) is atheistic and naturalistic in all domains.
I understand where the New Atheists are coming from; I used to be more militant myself. They are quite certain that they are on the side of the angels, so to speak. However, the sincere reconciliationist nonbelievers (not those who simply have a different strategy than Dawkins et al. and view 'appeasers' and liberal religionists as currently useful) like Scott Atran and and Mel Konner understand how deeply rooted religion is.
Posted by: Colugo | April 21, 2007 2:55 PM
Of course, first wave feminism was pretty much coopted by the Christian anti-temperance movement, and the disastrous results of prohibition pretty much killed it off.
It's not a fate atheism has to contemplate.
Posted by: Gerard Harbison | April 21, 2007 2:58 PM
I'm coming late to the "framing" debate, but it seems to me that the main problem with Mooney and Nisbet is that, if they're talking to scientists then they're addressing the wrong audience. Who is it that's "framing" the debate against global warming, or in favor of teaching ID in science classes, etc.? Conservative scientists? Mostly, no. It's being done by conservative politicians, think tanks, and religious leaders who are acting in the political sphere. So just who should be "framing" the other side of the debate? The only reason that scientists are being asked to get engaged in this debate is because progressive politicians have totally dropped the ball. The things Mooney and Nisbet are saying might make a lot of sense if they were being directed to, say, the DNC. Democratic politicians have been loath to take on this debate for the same reasons they were all too willing to give George W. Bush everything he wanted regarding Iraq, and it's frankly disgusting. Maybe now that they can see what their lack of spine has brought on this country, they might be a little more willing to stand up for scientific integrity.
One can only hope.
Posted by: Kurt | April 21, 2007 3:00 PM
Dilbet: The Women's suffrage movement was most notably bolstered when the base of brave moderates began grooming their arguments so that men could better understand them.
Mookie: Wow, you are so right. Can I play?
Posted by: Scholar | April 21, 2007 3:02 PM
Timothy Chase wrote
Actually, encouraging the majority to start thinking in terms of "us vs them" is the goal. It can be a winning strategy.
In order to think in those terms, a person must think, actually examine their own thoughts on the subject. This may be in a negative way, trying to get "ammunition" to shoot down their opponent, but in the process some will discover they agree with the other side and didn't realize it before. If the thinking never occured, that realization would never come.
The PR trick is that confrontation can't be the only strategy employed. You have to have a little "good cop/bad cop" going on -- with radical, in-your-face, rude activism kicking people in the brains while the more "reasonable, moderate" activists are there to comfort the shaken while reinforcing the basic message.
Posted by: JohnFen | April 21, 2007 3:04 PM
I presume that I'm not the only person who sees some interesting parallels between "out" atheists versus the skeptical accommodationists who worry about the tender sensibilities of the god-ridden and the drag queens who rioted at Stonewall versus the button-down "straight-acting" gays who preferred an extremely low-key behind-the-scenes approach.
I posted some comments along these lines last week, including a picture of PZ, Dawkins, and Mooney on Gay Pride day. I swear! Although PZ came by with a strenuous denial.
End of blogwhoring. Your regular program now resumes in progress.
Posted by: Zeno | April 21, 2007 3:07 PM
Preach it, Brother PZ!
Um... neither? Rather, it's that open atheism will get you nowhere in most sectors of U.S. society, and that standing up for your right to not have to profess belief in god or put up with mass professions of god-belief in public places seems to get you tarred as an anti-American family-destroying loudmouth. Not only tarred, but denied the opportunity to respond.
Even among supposedly enlightened types, atheism is still suspect--it's as if atheists are throwing over what those "white moderates" are holding most dear. Where we look at religion and see a history of cruelty and inhumanity, a legacy of intellectual dishonesty, an entrenched system of ruthless thought-squelching, the "white moderates" see something entirely different. They picture some vague vision of the good old days, when fathers worked hard and mothers baked cookies and everybody dressed up and walked together to church on Sunday morning in the springtime. Religion, for these people, represents tradition and comfort--two commodities in short supply in these fear-mongering times. And why shouldn't it? Political and religious leaders, not to mention the mainstream media, spend plenty of time telling them that it's so.
To the religious person, or even to the lip-service theist who may never darken the door of a church but still believes there must be Something out there, atheism represents an unforgivable challenge. And rather than responding to that challenge with an examination of his own beliefs, it's far easier to respond with "well, I know I'm right, so that other guy must be wrong."
Combine the media-fueled celebration of Spirituality with the vast numbers of atheists (myself, alas, included) who find it easier to just kinda get along than to drag their friends and family into an argument about the existence of god(s), and what do you get? Thousands of non-believers who are just as firmly closeted as was your average gay family man back in the swingin' '50s.
Yeah, we're part of the problem. Yeah, we feel perfectly comfortable trumpeting our atheism on godless forums like this one. But actually telling our mothers-in-law, church-attending neighbors, "spiritual-but-not-religious" friends how we feel? We're way too chicken for something like that. But give us a little credit... a little visibility... a little teeny corner of the mainstream media platform where we can stand unobtrusively so everyone can see we don't have horns... and maybe we'll start getting up the courage to say (in a gentle way) "Hey, you know what? I'm a nice person, and I'm an atheist too."
Or, lacking that, maybe we'll at least get enough critical mass going that there's some kind of Atheist Anti-Defamation League to join, and then at least we can march shoulder to shoulder with our godless brethren instead of wandering around aimlessly all by ourselves.
Posted by: RedMolly | April 21, 2007 3:07 PM
More gratuitous rudeness please.
You, Dawkins, Harris etc. have been saying - hollering from the rooftops - all the things that people like me have been thinking quietly for years. And it's about fucking time.
I read Dawkins book late last year, found your blog, read Harris's End of Faith all within a few months, and let me tell you - it felt like opening the windows after a long, dark winter. Millennia of respectful tip-toeing respect for absurdities just blown away.
Thank you for that.
Posted by: Siobhan | April 21, 2007 3:11 PM
Oh, my, Zeno...and there's Ramsey in the comments again, that time arguing that Martin Luther King was so inoffensive and offered nobody a good reason to hate him, unlike Dawkins.
That guy certainly has a peculiar view of history...all the winners were always so damned polite.
Posted by: PZ Myers | April 21, 2007 3:13 PM
Hip, hip, hooray!
Newsflash:
The Pope has declared that children who die unbaptized can go to heaven.
Isn't that special?
"Vatican watchers hailed the decision as both a sensitive and significant move by Benedict."
http://www.mb.com.ph/MAIN2007042292344.html
The brainless, pointy-hatted doofus has spoken. The brainless, pointy-hat-worshipping doofi have nodded their approval.
What a troop of morons.
Posted by: CalGeorge | April 21, 2007 3:14 PM
A brief point of clarification: I am wholeheartedly in favor of atheism of the New, fire-breathing variety. I am just sort of a timid and retiring person by nature and don't feel comfortable with that kind of direct confrontation; I would rather just shamelessly ride along on the fire-breathers' coat-tails. Little in history has been accomplished by the unfailingly polite; that is why little in history will be accomplished by me.
Posted by: RedMolly | April 21, 2007 3:17 PM
Alonzo Fyfe made a similar comparison with the civil rights movement and black liberation.
He noted that in his letters from Birmingham jail, Martin Luther King, Jr. remarked that it was the fellow blacks who said to be nicer, to "wait for a better time," who are the biggest obstacles to racial equality. So too the moderate religionists and passive agnostics and atheists, who say we should give religion its due respect, to not be rude, to wait for a better time, are the biggest obstacles for equal rights and tolerance for and of atheists.
Posted by: Aerik | April 21, 2007 3:20 PM
Virginia Tech being used and abused by the faithheads. : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9uNtvFSxYM
No comments, no video responses!!!
A few of us co-operated online to make the following response.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_z9WgV5jkQ
If you think it is a good one,
please help to promote it in whatever other fora you frequent.
We should not have to sit idly by, while this juvenile drivel is spouted as truth.
Posted by: Brian Coughlan | April 21, 2007 3:24 PM
Colugo: The suffragettes weren't saying that eventually all men should be converted into women in the service of reason and human progress, as the New Atheists tell the theists that their collective conversion to atheism is inevitable and desirable. The suffragettes didn't speak of a zero-sum conflict between women and men.
It really depends on the definition of "zero-sum". If it's purely a sense of political power, then enfranchisement of women will be a zero-sum situation - men lose some power while women gain that much power. The same thing for one theist becoming one atheist. But I don't think of the situation in those simple terms. The suffragist movement was more about empowering women than disempowering women - it was for making a place for women at a larger table so as to include women. At least at this point in time, the position is that atheists are excluded from the table simply by being atheists. See the Bush quote above. Many theists would exclude atheists from the body politic and even exclude them from citizenship. This is the situation now, and it needs to be eliminated. The fact that one is an atheist should not be a consideration for holding public office, military service, having one's opinions respected or other manifestation of full participation in society. The problem IMHO is marginalization of people due to their lack of religious feelings just as women were excluded from full participation in society due to the lack of a Y chromosome.
Posted by: natural cynic | April 21, 2007 3:28 PM
Hmmm, might my post 36 be an example of proper framing of the issue?
Posted by: natural cynic | April 21, 2007 3:31 PM
"Atheists are calm and mild-mannered, even leaders of the New Atheists like Dawkins and Harris and Dennett -- no doubt because our oppression is minor compared to that of women, racial minorities, and labor -- but we're still getting these ridiculous claims that we're too "rude". They won't stop until we're completely silent, and there's no point in compromise, so these faint-hearted enablers of superstition are going to have to excuse us if we ever so politely request that they go fuck themselves, beg pardon, and please, use a rolled-up copy of the Republican party platform to do it, if you don't mind, thank you in advance."
Bully for PZ!
Posted by: John Pourtless | April 21, 2007 3:33 PM
Apartheid did not begin to crumble until the ANC began training outside South Africa with military weapons and tactics. The realization that the ANC was going to war against the SA police is what brought apartheid to an end.
It wasn't 'asking nice' or 'being polite' or 'showing respect'. It was making them shit their pants.
Posted by: JebusCripes | April 21, 2007 3:34 PM
Timothy, there two issues here, demonization and irrationality.
Demonization means that essentially admitting you are an atheist in those areas where the people we are having problems with are dominate (and that isn't every place where there is religious belief) means loss of *everything*. You can lose your family, your friends, your job and even in extreme cases your life. Why? Because *we* are supposedly some vast evil cabal whose sole purpose isn't to try to tell the truth to the best we *understand it*, but instead to undermine and destroy every single person in the world that likes to insist that the truth lies in what they *believe* about it. Well, no. We don't really have a problem with the ones that think rationally. The ones we have a problem with are the nuts that twist their own holy book into a pretzel so they can ignore all the stuff that they **know** doesn't work, while still forcing on everyone around them the stuff they *believe* still does.
This is the second issue. Irrationality. The idea that exorcism is acceptable, even if it means that you tie someone to a bed and beat them, but stoning isn't. Why? Not because either one makes fracking sense, but solely because the former is still "approved", while the later isn't.
Lets put it this way. If two people invented drugs. One permanently cured cancer and AIDS, and also gave everyone double the life spans, but it made you a crave sex continuously for two hours after taking it. The other *only* cures AIDS, has no life extension at all, and renders everyone that takes it incapable of thinking about sex. Guess which one the people *we* have a problem with would pick and why... See, curing nearly every serious disease we have today and making people live healthy lives twice as long is *less* important than if they want to screw someone more than normal for two hours. Just look at the HPV vaccine issue. Here we have what is practically a cure for a major cause of death among women and its being apposed by these loons based on what? That some kids *might* ignore the "Just say no to sex!", message even more than they already do *if* you cured them. This makes about as much damn sense as if the Bible declared coughing a sacred act so they denied people Hepatitis treatment on the grounds that infecting more people was "holy", in that it made them all cough more. It makes no damn sense, but its exactly the sort of BS we have to put up with.
Want a better example? If we found out that in two years a big rock would hit the earth and kill every living thing, but the scientists determined that it was made of something that could be broken up into fist sized chunks with one missile hit, saving all of us, who the hell do you think is going to be standing in long picket lines outside the launch facilities, or worse, using sniper rifles to try to kill the people working on launching the missile, Atheists? The irrationality of these people is dangerous and could get us all killed some day, whether from some plague they refused to let us cure, it being God's will, or some other crap, especially if they get more and more power in the political process and can torpedo sound science, research, health programs, medicines, foreign policies, etc. Not mind you that I find dipshits like Pelosi, whose solution is to kiss the ass of the leader of one of the countries we *know* are the number one worst offenders for supporting Jihadists, any better. The left has its own idiots, obviously, but they tend to limit their lunacy to specific tasks, not make wide sweeping attacks on *everything* to try to force our round world through the too small cross shaped hole in their knowledge and logic.
Does that answer your question? And its the same damn argument that thinking people, never mind atheists, who are just the latest target of their ire, have been having with the same sort of clowns since some Greek philosophers dared to suggest that Zues might not be much of a god. We just make a more obvious target, because we tell them, "Zues can't possible look like, act like, or intervene the way you keep insisting, since there isn't one scrap of evidence he does, has or ever will, nor can **you** even agree from one moment to the next *if* he should, does or will do so, so he might as well not exist.", instead of doing something **safe**, like saying, "Zues just doesn't make sense, but now Hera on the other hand..."
Posted by: Kagehi | April 21, 2007 3:38 PM
PZ, regarding comment #12, I wouldn't have it any other way.
Posted by: Scott Hatfield, OM | April 21, 2007 3:50 PM
natural cynic: "The fact that one is an atheist should not be a consideration for holding public office, military service, having one's opinions respected or other manifestation of full participation in society."
I wholeheartedly agree.
There are several related but distinct movements that are sometimes conflated by all sides:
1) separation of church and state (civil libertarian First Amendment Issues)
2) teaching of evolution in public schools (e.g. Dover)
3) advocacy of public policies related to science (global warming, stem cells etc.)
4) skeptic/rationalist advocacy (CSICOP/CSI)
5) atheist/freethinker visibility and rights (Free Inquiry, humanist movement..)
6) New Atheism: zero-sum game / martial rhetoric; science = atheism; slamming "appeasers" and theistic evolutionists (stealth "creationists")
Atheists, freethinkers (Deists, agnostics..) and non-fundamentalist theists can be allied on 1), 2), and 3). Even some theists may be on the side of skeptics on 4). 5) is about rights and visibility. 6) is about making scientific claims regarding God and metaphysical naturalism (as opposed to methodological naturalism), and just as importantly, atheist proselytism. These movements, while rooted in rationalism and progressivism, are not inseparable.
One of the defining moments in the early New Atheist movement was when Richard Dawkins broke down the boundaries between advocacy of science, skepticism, and atheism when he proposed at the 1992 CSICOP conference that religion was a "mind virus." That was very controversial within CSICOP and the skeptic movement at the time.
Posted by: Colugo | April 21, 2007 3:51 PM
Kahegi: Not mind you that I find dipshits like Pelosi, whose solution is to kiss the ass of the leader of one of the countries we *know* are the number one worst offenders for supporting Jihadists, any better
Gee, it seems to me that you should include James Baker in this too - that's what his commission wanted and that's what GWB was too pigheaded to do. And the message that Pelosi had for Assad was that Democrats didn't want him supporting Hezbullah, but were willing to make contacts. Somebody had to make the effort.
Otherwise, pretty good post.
Posted by: natural cynic | April 21, 2007 3:56 PM
John Fen wrote:
I don't know as if you have noticed, but people don't seem to be terribly good at thinking when they feel like they are being attacked. In fact the opposite is generally the rule - especially when it comes to what is at least potentially an ideology, and certainly has been at times in the past.
*
Religion is particularly well-suited to becoming a kind of "weltanschaung" which always has a response of sorts to any criticism which might be raised against it, typically in the form of ad hominem, much like classical Marxism, I suppose. But the parallels goes a little further than just this: Marxist science discovered that any failed prediction is at least potentially subject to reinterpretation and thus the preservation of its status as the one true science can always be assured.
Then again, one could argue that Marx was religiously inspired - with the proletariat being his "chosen" and the establishment of the perfect communist society being his heaven. Didn't actually turn out all that terribly well, but there are still a few out there that would argue we should still give it a little more time - and are otherwise keeping the faith, still waiting for the end of history - after the Apocalypse.
Come Judgment Day, everyone will finally see that they were right.
About everything.
As a rule, not really the sort of frame of mind one might wish to encourage - although perhaps there are exceptions.
*
In any case, it would seem that if one wants people who one disagrees with to be rational, one should go about it without making them feel attacked. In fact, this would seem to be the rational approach, more along the lines of Martin Luther King than Malcolm X, I suppose.
John Fen wrote:
Well, that would would certainly seem applicable in the case of Malcolm and Martin. Not sure how well it maps onto this, however.
Posted by: Timothy Chase | April 21, 2007 4:05 PM
I think you need the fire-breathing, rude so's-and-so's, if for nothing else, than to make the more moderate types show up in the center of the debate. That's why Coulter, Limbaugh O'Reilly et al. don't really get much criticism from the slightly more moderate right. If Coulter's out there spewing crap, it makes these others seem less radical.
Posted by: BillCinSD | April 21, 2007 4:15 PM
Up here in Canada a group of Mohawks is blocking a major rail line between Toronto and Montreal as a protest over a land dispute. A reporter asked a Mohawk protester why they were taking this action and he said it's because the whites NEVER listen otherwise. I'm afraid he's absolutely right.
Posted by: Richard | April 21, 2007 4:35 PM
Re. comment 23. The suffragettes weren't asking men to become women. They were asking _men (and women) who didn't think women should have the vote_ to become _men (and women) who did think women should have the vote_. Similarly, atheists are not asking Gods to become Mortals :) they are asking people who believe one thing (that gods exist) to become people who think differently (there's no evidence that gods exist).
Posted by: Stephen Wells | April 21, 2007 4:36 PM
You know, speaking (tangentially) of framing, I wonder if the term "Godless" that you have adopted is less effective than a simple variant: Godfree.
After all, when they set up a zone around a school from which people wish to banish certain drugs, they call it a "drug free zone", not a "drugless zone". Similarly, my undergraduate school had certain "substance free" floors from which tobacco and alcohol were banned. Likewise, compare the connotations of the word "childless" with the name of the livejournal community for adults intentionally without offspring: "childfree".
The pattern here is that when in English (at least American English) one wishes to express that some undesireable feature is not present, one uses the word "free". When one does not wish to convey the connotation that the thing that isn't there is intrinsically unpleasant, one uses "less": for example, sellers of "smokeless tobacco" presumably have less against tobacco smoke than those seeking to establish "smoke free environments".
I can see the argument of reclaiming a term used as a perjorative, but I'm not sure if in trying to reclaim "Godless" you're fighting not only established prejudices but connotations of word particles deeply embedded in the English language.
Posted by: Daniel Martin | April 21, 2007 4:44 PM
You know, this is the kind of thing I'd berate my students with. When you are using a comparison in an argument, it is with an element of the two situations -- you are not trying to establish perfect equivalency.
When we compare atheists to feminists, the labor movement, gays, or civil rights, we are not saying these are identical; in this case, it is to a narrower similarity, that these are movements to change a social attitude, and the question is whether past movements have accomplished this with deference to the existing situation, and whether "rudeness" played a role in breaking down barriers.
You do not invalidate the comparison by saying "Suffragettes wore bloomers; atheists do not wear bloomers; therefore the comparison is false", or by trotting out any similar irrelevant difference.
Posted by: PZ Myers | April 21, 2007 4:52 PM
Colugo:
Sorry, but if you don't understand the argument, you don't get to criticize it.
By definition, science cannot falsify God, the soul and the afterlife, because all three are axiomatically non-falsifiable claims. Science doesn't claim that the supernatural doesn't exist. In fact, the scientific method explicitly allows for its existence provided sufficient substantiating evidence, because that's the whole damn point of the scientific method: establishing truths based on evidence and logic instead of raw assertion and making shit up as you go along. Science doesn't claim that the supernatural can't exist, it merely concludes that there is at present no verifiable reason to believe that it does exist.
That is the New Atheist argument, not the one advanced by that little straw-atheist of yours.
In short: Science isn't about what you believe. What you believe is irrelevant. Science is about what you can prove.
Posted by: Dan | April 21, 2007 5:10 PM
Paul Nelson just stepped in that one big time over at PT by the way.
Posted by: RavenT | April 21, 2007 5:12 PM
I should have quoted PZ, as that's what I was responding to:
Paul Nelson just stepped in that one big time over at PT by the way.
Posted by: RavenT | April 21, 2007 5:14 PM
Remember PETA? You know, these guys are very, very, very rude. And as a matter of fact most people (myself included) are simply repulsed by them. It is not that we are unsympathetic to their cause of improving the living conditions of animals, but their extremism puts us off. You see, I'm all against torturing little critters, but throwing blood at people wearing fur, or protesting in elaborate campaigns against fast food chains or setting labs (which conduct animal research) on fire makes me want to kill a cute, little bunny right in front of them, just to spite them (okay, well not killing a bunny, 'cause I ain't that cruel but at least eating some chicken from KFC. That should do the trick.).
Now imagine the "radical New Atheists" are the PETA guys, the "appeaser atheists and agnostics" are mere vegetarians, the fundamentalists are cruel and sadistic factory famers and the theists are the average meat-eating person. Not nice, eh?
Notice, I do not say that "New Atheism" in its current form is bad, or hurting the cause. I just want to point out that becoming even more radical, like these PETA nuts, may result in even greater repulsion, thus hurting more than helping. As a matter of fact I approve of and admire all those atheists who speak out against the irrational masses but not if they should actually hurt people physically or their property.
Btw. Timothy Chase, it is "Weltanschauung".
Posted by: Skeptic | April 21, 2007 5:17 PM
PZ: "When we compare atheists to feminists, the labor movement, gays, or civil rights, we are not saying these are identical"
Of course not.
"in this case, it is to a narrower similarity"
Right.
The question is, which similarities - and which dissimilarities - are most relevant? In the case of both women's suffrage and atheism, is it just a matter of contrasting styles or is it also about contrasting goals?
earlier: "these faint-hearted enablers of superstition"
Reconciliationists like Mel Konner, Scott Atran, Michael Ruse et al. are accommodationists - while they understand the problems of religious fundamentalism, they foresee coexistence between theists and nonbelievers rather than one side triumphing and the other disappearing (in the peaceful battle of ideas). Similarly, suffragettes foresaw mutually respectful coexistence between men and women.
In this analogy it is really the "appeaser" atheists who are closer to the suffragettes, while the New Atheists are more like militant separatists who want to reproduce via parthenogenesis (ex. Mary Daly).
In both cases - New Atheists and pro-parthenogenesis separatists - they are wholly lawful, peaceful, and not interested in infringing on the rights of others, and they certainly have some legitimate grievances. But their goals are simply not the same as their more moderate counterparts.
Posted by: Colugo | April 21, 2007 5:26 PM
I seem to remember from my UK history classes that British women started to be given voting rights in 1918 after recognition of their contributions in factories, farms and so forth during the Great War. It took another ten years for them to get the same rights as men.
I think the moral of this is that atheists will start to gain recognition for their cause when they do something useful........
Posted by: Andy Groves | April 21, 2007 5:32 PM
Dan: "By definition, science cannot falsify God, the soul and the afterlife, because all three are axiomatically non-falsifiable claims. Science doesn't claim that the supernatural doesn't exist"
That is my position as well. That is the traditional atheist/freethinker position. That is why I believe that methodological naturalism is crucial to science, metaphysical naturalism is not - and the existence or nonexistence of God is a philosophical question, not a scientific one. (Philosophically, I accept both atheism and metaphysical naturalism.) As I wrote, this position distinguishes traditional philosophical atheism from New Atheism.
Victor Stenger: "[T]he supernatural hypothesis of God is testable, verifiable, and falsifiable by the established methods of science."
http://www.colorado.edu/philosophy/vstenger/Godless/FlynnGodRvw.htm
Not all New Atheists would use the term "falsified" in regard to God. They might say "disproved," "impossible," or some other term. What is important is that they claim that science itself - not just a particular philosophical perspective - has shown that God does not exist.
Posted by: Colugo | April 21, 2007 5:38 PM
I think the moral of this is that atheists will start to gain recognition for their cause when they do something useful........
What, and all that breeding, raising of children, cooking, cleaning, weaving, tanning, sewing, animal husbandry, farming, and being the reigning monarch etc. prior to WWI was useless?
Posted by: Siobhan | April 21, 2007 5:41 PM
When I spent a month in the hospital after a blood clot in my superior mesenteric artery, I really appreciated all the doctors, nurses, and others who helped me a-theistically; that is, without bringing theism into it at all (and to the two fanatic nurses, one Christian, one Falun Gong, who used my vulnerable status for proselytizing, I totally consider you two to be vultures). I don't have any idea how theism could have made that help any more useful than it was to me, so I consider them already there.
Of course, much like the unpaid labor of British women before WWI, it's easy not to see the value of something if you're determined not to.
Posted by: RavenT | April 21, 2007 5:42 PM
Before I launch into some perfunctory cerebral points let me just say...
RIGHT ON! ;)
I apologize if this repeats what others have said, but the comments are coming so fast I will never be able to read them (infinite regression).
While it may be rude to follow your convictions and otherwise say what you mean and mean what you say, IT IS ETHICAL.
It is interesting how religious types tend to call themselves "moral" and atheists call themselves "ethical". Personally, I think the differences between these two words have gone beyond merely connotative. By in large, I find atheist significantly more ethical than those that would call themselves religious. Ironically, it isn't the atheist that thinks it can be moral/ethical to lie after swearing an oath to God not to.
Posted by: Thought Provoker | April 21, 2007 5:44 PM
Arg. My prior comment should have this bit of stupidity in the blockquote: "I think the moral of this is that atheists will start to gain recognition for their cause when they do something useful........"
Posted by: Siobhan | April 21, 2007 5:45 PM
Andy Groves, are you going to apply this 'usefulness' test to the theists, or do they receive THEIR recognition automatically?
Posted by: Elf Eye | April 21, 2007 5:47 PM
What is important is that they claim that science itself - not just a particular philosophical perspective - has shown that God does not exist.
I don't think a philosophical perspective can "show" anything anyway.
Would you say that science can offer no information on which philosophical or metaphysical perspectives are, dare I say, more 'correct' than others? Is Cartesian dualism still as valid as ever?
Posted by: windy | April 21, 2007 6:08 PM
Guess I should quit teaching and start looking for something useful to do.
Posted by: MAJeff | April 21, 2007 6:09 PM
Don't be too mean to Andy -- he is an atheist too, you know.
Unless, that is, he likes it rough.
Posted by: PZ Myers | April 21, 2007 6:26 PM
You mean when they start doing things that earn them Nobel Prizes?
Atheists with Nobel Prizes. *snort* That'll be the day!
Posted by: Dustin | April 21, 2007 6:27 PM
People like Colugo have simply fallen for a line of religious propaganda that construes any plain-spoken assertion of atheism as "unhinged."
Nowhere is that more plain than in the construction "militant atheist." It's a hilarious double-standard that you actually have to pick up a gun and kill somebody to be considered a "militant" believer, but all you have to do to be considered a "militant atheist" is write a book.
By definition, science cannot falsify God, the soul and the afterlife, because all three are axiomatically non-falsifiable claims.
They don't get to be non-falsifiable just because you define them that way. If you've also defined them as "actors that can effect change in the universe" - in other words, if there's something you think their existence explains - then it's a contradiction in your own terms to refer to them as "axiomatically non-falsifiable."
God, the afterlife, and the soul are falsifiable, because they've been falsified. QED. By definition, the "unfalsifiable teapot in my kitchen" is unfalsifiable, but to then assert that I've just proved that you wouldn't be able to go look in my kitchen and see if there's a teapot would be to engage in a fallacy of equivocation. The problem with your "unfalsifiable by definition" God is that you're missing the step where you prove that your definition is actually the one that would describe the God we're talking about.
Posted by: Chet | April 21, 2007 6:30 PM