…and this is a 
The delusions of John Gray
Category: Godlessness
Posted on: March 15, 2008 4:03 PM, by PZ Myers
The critics of atheism seem, without exception, to be lacking in imagination. Over and over again, what we hear from them is desperate attempts to pigeonhole atheism as just another religion; they squat uncomprehendingly in their hovels built of faith and peer quizzically at the godless, seeking correspondence with their familiar theological nonsense, and crow in triumph when they find something that they can sort of line up with their experiences. "They want more people to think rationally — why, that's evangelism!" Never mind that you could, with the same legitimacy, argue that when one person mentions to another that it is raining, they are attempting to evangelize their precipitational worldview. "They are so damned sure that they are right — they're fundamentalists!" Jebus, but I'm tired of that "fundamentalism" claim: it's the surest sign that you're dealing with a clueless, dissembling, frightened apologist for religion when they start flinging the "fundie" accusation at atheists. And yes, it is exactly like accusing the fellow who walks through the door in a wet raincoat, to the sound of raindrops pattering on the roof and the occasional distant boom of thunder, of being a fundamentalist rainist because he can show you the deluge.
The latest entry in the dead-eyed zombie moan category of the standard atheism-is-a-cult criticism is John Gray's complaints about "the atheist delusion". There is no thought, no creativity in it; it's simply another tedious retread. By finding a few opportunities to stretch the meanings of words, he wedges atheism and religion into a forced propinquity; then he tells us how awful, wretched and wicked this amalgamated godless religion is; and then, of course, he complains that atheists dare to find religion unpleasant, never mind that his entire critique depends entirely on labeling atheism a religion. I swear, sometimes I think it's the defenders of the faith who have the lowest opinion of religion, since they all seem to believe that all they need to do is tag anything with the label of "religion" or "belief" and presto, they've killed all of its credibility.
And yet, at the same time, they readily equate human virtues to religious belief. Gray makes this false equivocation multiple times; for instance, he damns humanists (humanists, atheists, secularists, scientists…they're all the same to these critics) with "It is a funny sort of humanism that condemns an impulse [religion] that is peculiarly human." Yet what you'll find in humanists (and atheists!) is an appreciation of what is specifically human — the need for community, the construction of institutions that facilitate altruism, the shared human values of sympathy, empathy, friendship, and family — that can exist entirely in the absence of the unnecessary baggage of blind faith, belief in superstition, or the acceptance of an authoritarian hierarchy. We don't conflate human impulses with the artificiality and error of religion, but John Gray does, oblivious to his mistake. I can figuratively spit in the eye of the Pope, for instance, and only a thoroughly indoctrinated Catholic would think that such an act represents an assault on universal ideals. Similarly, we reject the bullshit of religion without demeaning humanity; to the contrary, it's the people who equate humanity with belief in bullshit who clearly have the lowest opinion of ourselves.
There's another common theme, that I also saw in the recent diatribe by Chris Hedges, the self-defeating idea that there is no hope, no chance of bettering ourselves, and so we might as well just give up and believe in nonsense, since reason sure isn't going to do a better job … and any suggestion that maybe there are practical alternatives to guesswork culled from iron age mythologies is rank "utopianism". It's another plank in their attempt to equate religion with something they dislike, in this case science. The logic seems to run along the lines of "If religion is a crappy method of acquiring a realistic vision of the world, then science had better be crap, too — after all, if we've got a method that is empirically better than faith, I'd look awfully foolish clinging to the old myths." To accomplish this game, they have to abolish the whole notion of cultural progress and ignore most of history, pretending that nothing has ever changed.
The problem with the secular narrative is not that it assumes progress is inevitable (in many versions, it does not). It is the belief that the sort of advance that has been achieved in science can be reproduced in ethics and politics. In fact, while scientific knowledge increases cumulatively, nothing of the kind happens in society. Slavery was abolished in much of the world during the 19th century, but it returned on a vast scale in nazism and communism, and still exists today. Torture was prohibited in international conventions after the second world war, only to be adopted as an instrument of policy by the world's pre-eminent liberal regime at the beginning of the 21st century. Wealth has increased, but it has been repeatedly destroyed in wars and revolutions. People live longer and kill one another in larger numbers. Knowledge grows, but human beings remain much the same.
It's true: secularism does not anticipate uniform perfectibility of human nature, or even any kind of perfectibility. We will always have conflict, we will always have shortcomings, any advances will come in fits and starts, and there will be setbacks of varying magnitude. But hell yes, we can do better, and we will do better, but we will only accomplish improvements in the human condition if we strive for them. These defenders of religion all seem to be the most appalling defeatists.
Perhaps John Gray should imagine living the life of a hunter-gatherer; better yet, the life of a hunter-gatherer woman, 10,000 years ago. If that's too harsh, how about the life of a laborer in a Sumerian city-state — surely there is little difference between his life now and toiling in the mud for a king. Or perhaps his life now is no different than living in the squalor of a medieval European city, sans hygiene, medicine, or any books other than priestly recitations from the bible? Maybe that's still too distant, though — maybe he'd trade places with a prosperous middle-class 19th century gentleman, and willingly watch half his children die before puberty?
People do not remain the same. Prosperity and freedom of the sort brought by science and technology enable deep changes in attitudes and opportunities. Culture changed for the better between the 19th and 20th centuries for people who benefited from modern industry.
Do I even need to point out that his grand counter-example, that torture has been adopted as policy by the "world's pre-eminent liberal regime at the beginning of the 21st century", is a consequence of the election of an extremist conservative president who claims justification for his policies in divine communication? That's simply dishonest, to imply that atheism is to blame for the shame of George W. Bush and the religious right.
There's yet another tactic that the apologists for religion commonly fall back on: that science and religion rule over different domains, and tritely, that religion is responsible for "meaning".
The growth of knowledge is a fact only postmodern relativists deny. Science is the best tool we have for forming reliable beliefs about the world, but it does not differ from religion by revealing a bare truth that religions veil in dreams. Both science and religion are systems of symbols that serve human needs - in the case of science, for prediction and control. Religions have served many purposes, but at bottom they answer to a need for meaning that is met by myth rather than explanation.
If there's one thing science is really good at, it is at surprising us and generating unintended consequences — Gray is so far off the mark in his claims about what science is good for that I think that alone is sufficient to throw out his whole argument. The world is not what we want it to be, or what we expect it to be, or what authorities in the supernatural tell us it should be. It is what it is, and science is a tool for probing its nature that tries to get around our presuppositions and our desires, and that when it works well gets us closer and closer to understanding reality. It's not science, but religion, that is all about control: about filtering and shaping our beliefs to a desired outcome, and getting the tribe to work as one towards a goal, whether that goal is reasonable or reachable or not. If you want social control, it's religious pablum you should reach for, not the unpredictable honesty of science.
As for meaning, we all want it, atheists and theists alike. Gray gives away the store with that last comment: religion meets that need with myth, science meets it with explanation. Which would you prefer, or which do you think is better for society: glib, happy lies and hateful provocation from the religious, or best assessments of reality from the scientists?
There's another unresolved inconsistency here. On the one hand, Gray wants to claim cultural stagnation and the futility of striving for personal and social betterment, and dismisses scientists and atheists as hopeless dreamers who can't possibly change anything; on the other hand, he wants to assign responsibility for purpose and meaning to the gatekeepers of faith. Taken together, that's an admission that religion is a failure, even in its role as an institution for maintaining human hope and other such noble aspirations. Why should we hand the keys to our future to such a dreary, bleak collection of losers?
One last thing. In a long collection of tired nonsense, John Gray manages to regurgitate one of the tiredest, wrongest, dumbest of the believers' canards. We have been hearing over and over lately the claims that the Holocaust was all Darwin's fault, but Gray puts a new twist on it: it was all the atheists' fault.
Dawkins dismisses any suggestion that the crimes of the Nazis could be linked with atheism. "What matters," he declares in The God Delusion, "is not whether Hitler and Stalin were atheists, but whether atheism systematically influences people to do bad things. There is not the smallest evidence that it does." This is simple-minded reasoning. Always a tremendous booster of science, Hitler was much impressed by vulgarised Darwinism and by theories of eugenics that had developed from Enlightenment philosophies of materialism. He used Christian antisemitic demonology in his persecution of Jews, and the churches collaborated with him to a horrifying degree. But it was the Nazi belief in race as a scientific category that opened the way to a crime without parallel in history. Hitler's world-view was that of many semi-literate people in interwar Europe, a hotchpotch of counterfeit science and animus towards religion. There can be no reasonable doubt that this was a type of atheism, or that it helped make Nazi crimes possible.
Science is a kind of totemic word that is invoked by many, including John Gray, to represent all kinds of nonsense. Ask people what science means, and many will chant, "Television! The Internet! Airplanes! Perpetual motion machines! Intelligent Design! Quantum healing by the vibrational properties of tuned crystals!" As Gray and too many others use it, it's divorced from meaning and used as a prop to support any claim they want to make, ignoring all the evidence. Hitler was no more a fan of science than is Deepak Chopra. Both simply steal words and tack them to whatever unfounded belief they want to grant some incantatory pretense to validity.
Science is about inquiry. It's about asking questions, honestly trying to get answers, and communicating the methods and results to others for verification. Deciding that entire ethnic groups are evil and must be exterminated is not formulating a scientific hypothesis; butchering people by the millions and burning them in ovens is not a scientific experiment. The Nazis were driven by a hateful ideology that had its foundation in Protestant anti-semitism and a bizarre paganism that was one part wish-fulfillment and one part delusional self-aggrandizement, not science.
Note also the amazing leaps he makes in that paragraph. Nazis had a pseudoscientific rationalization for their acts; therefore they were scientists; therefore there can be no doubt that atheism put "Gott mit uns" on those belt-buckles and sent the legions of largely Catholic and Lutheran German soldiers marching out to conquer the world.
There's a reason I dislike religion. I suspect that it's related to the fact that only under the brain-damaging influence of religion can anyone regard dreadful tripe from the likes of John Gray as serious, rational, intellectual scholarship.
Comments
You would think they would realize at some point that their argument is so self-defeating.
Of course, most of them are blatantly unaware of the physical properties of the world they live in, and blissfully unaware of the way that logic works.
Posted by: Jimmy Groove | March 15, 2008 4:15 PM
oh when, oh when will the whispering by jesus into the ears of men end? come on jesus, send us all a text message.
Posted by: genesgalore | March 15, 2008 4:19 PM
To be fair to relatively enlightened religious people, they will often claim that groups who do horrible things in the name of some religion aren't really religious, or praticing religion (the way Nazis weren't practicing science).
While I have some sympathy for their position, the problem with that notion is that it assumes there is some coherent, consistent definition of religion. And that people can't claim any random bullshit is religion. Which, in fact, they can. Unlike science.
Posted by: Charon | March 15, 2008 4:35 PM
Do realize that these are the sorts of people who have made Martin Luther's rant about how "reason is the whore of the Devil" their personal (unofficial and/or official) motto.
Posted by: Stanton | March 15, 2008 4:39 PM
If the monotheists actually believed in their god then they would never take offense at those that disagree with or even ridicule their god or beliefs. They would let their god handle it.
It is only because they know deep down that their religion is a lie that they respond so violently to criticism.
Posted by: Jaycubed | March 15, 2008 4:43 PM
Instead of being offended or annoyed by this nonsense, I am just amused to remember some of my favorite rejoinders, such as:
Atheism is a religion the same way that bald is a hair color. Or:
Atheism is a religion the same way that off is a television channel. Or:
Atheism is a religion the same way that not collecting stamps is a hobby.
Why don't you start a contest to find the most charming "Atheism is a religion the same way that ______________" response with the winner (as determined by your readers or just by you as the sole appointed judge of all that is humorous) awarded a suitably framed picture of your favorite denison of the deep.
Posted by: AnswersInGenitals | March 15, 2008 4:47 PM
Gray's piece is truly some of the most tiresome, self-indulgent and dishonest discussions of this issue I've seen-- an that's saying something. Maybe he deserves some kind of recognition for his accomplishment... Oh-- there's the very idea, proposed just above the comment box. AnswersinGenitals, you have it.
Posted by: Bryson Brown | March 15, 2008 4:55 PM
PZ, I've been waiting for this post ever since my eyes glazed over trying to read Gray's article the other day. It was simply *exhausting* to finish his piece. Once you cut away his hoity-toity verbiage, it was nothing more nor less than "atheists are exactly the same as religious fundamentalists, ha-ha, isn't that ironic?!" What does he expect atheists to do? Give up saying "Yeah, wow, you got us, we've never heard that one before! Better pack it on in."
Actually, yes, that's precisely want he wants. Fuck that dude.
Posted by: Will E. | March 15, 2008 4:55 PM
Hitler was an avowed christian who persecuted atheists. That's reality. And we need to say it every time the theists pull this "Hitler was an atheist" bullshit.
Posted by: Nemo | March 15, 2008 5:07 PM
What is sad to me is that religion is often a topic that is off-limits. In my family it is the big white elephant. My parents are devout and I am very much atheist. However, any discussion of the matter quickly leads to retreat as most religious people live in their little foxholes of circular reasoning. The entire "Atheism is a religion" is just another logical fallacy (My favorite of all Sagans set of quotes) in terms of trying to refute atheism or support a religious worldview. But, somehow I feel like I'm preaching to the choir here :)
Posted by: Eric | March 15, 2008 5:10 PM
"You would think they would realize at some point that their argument is so self-defeating."
And yet, no. By casting atheism (or secularism or whatever) as a religion, they can just say that their religion is better than that a-religion because they have all the pretty symbols and stuff.
"Slavery was abolished in much of the world during the 19th century, but it returned on a vast scale in nazism and communism, and still exists today."
Can anyone explain what exactly he is referring to when he says slavery in communism and nazism? And is nazism even a word?
And as for the whole torture thing, well, fuck off and die, John Gray. How in the world does not believing in that for which there is no evidence keep getting us juxtaposed with the neo-cons?
Posted by: Rey Fox | March 15, 2008 5:13 PM
"The proposition that God exists," (Dennett) writes severely, "is not even a theory." But religions do not consist of propositions struggling to become theories. The incomprehensibility of the divine is at the heart of Eastern Christianity, while in Orthodox Judaism practice tends to have priority over doctrine. Buddhism has always recognised that in spiritual matters truth is ineffable, as do Sufi traditions in Islam. Hinduism has never defined itself by anything as simplistic as a creed. It is only some western Christian traditions, under the influence of Greek philosophy, which have tried to turn religion into an explanatory theory.
It is again interesting how what atheists consider THE central issue -- does God exist? -- is blithely ignored,and brushed carelessly to the side as an insignificant little question. Does God exist? Is there a supernatural realm? Are we being guided and advised by a Higher Intelligence? In response, we get "the incomprehensibility of the divine" and a lot of blather about how everyone has always been terribly, terribly vague about God and what it is. And religion really isn't about what makes it unique and different from philosophy or ethics -- the transcendent realm of the supernatural. No. Apparently religion has nothing much to do with believing in Gods or higher powers, and trying to follow what they think is right.
And then he goes on to make the now peculiar point that belief in God has always been terribly, terribly important to people and their art and their meaning. It doesn't matter if God exists, or if people can know what God is like. What matters is the belief itself, and how bloody sure they are, and if this bothers you then you're just as bad as they are. At least they're being vague about God. Except when they aren't. But how human it all is, and to be admired.
The attempt to eradicate religion, however, only leads to it reappearing in grotesque and degraded forms. A credulous belief in world revolution, universal democracy or the occult powers of mobile phones is more offensive to reason than the mysteries of religion, and less likely to survive in years to come. Victorian poet Matthew Arnold wrote of believers being left bereft as the tide of faith ebbs away. Today secular faith is ebbing, and it is the apostles of unbelief who are left stranded on the beach.
Given that we've always been so very, very vague on what God is supposed to be and the "mysteries of religion," just where does Gray get off talking about "grotesque and degraded forms" of religion? What would those be -- those forms he doesn't like? Aren't they mysterious enough for him? Degraded from what? The real version of God? Are we allowed to ask that? Not seriously.
The fact that violence and war have "survived" has never been chalked up to their credit, or held against people who have fought for peace and human rights. Pointing gleefully towards religious belief and its ability to "carry on" despite critique should not automatically gather respect for it. On the contrary, a hope (not "credulous belief") in such things as scientific progress, universal human rights, reason, and open inquiry is far better grounded than the existence of God -- and anything good which might, by sheer accident, fall out of our "myths."
Disappointing essay.
Posted by: Sastra | March 15, 2008 5:14 PM
PZ wrote:
That's also, in part, the echo chamber effect. The apologists all read and repeat each other's ideas in different (and sometimes not so different) words. There's also a bit of echo chamber effect in the atheist books and blogs.
Posted by: Norman Doering | March 15, 2008 5:15 PM
"Atheism is a religion the same way that not believing that Friday 13 is unlucky is a superstition."
Posted by: Monado, FCD | March 15, 2008 5:19 PM
"There's a reason I dislike religion. I suspect that it's related to the fact that only under the brain-damaging influence of religion can anyone regard dreadful tripe from the likes of John Gray as serious, rational, intellectual scholarship."
I wish I'd simply read PZ's final paragraph (above) before I waded through Gray's tedious bullshit in today's Grauniad.
Good work fella.
(In future, I must remember to go straight to the Sports pages, and not take the bait...)
Posted by: JBS | March 15, 2008 5:21 PM
"At least they're being vague about God. Except when they aren't. But how human it all is, and to be admired."
But if they're lukewarm, then won't He SPUE THEM OUT OF HIS MOUTH-AH?!
Posted by: Rey Fox | March 15, 2008 5:27 PM
This was so great. Being a blue-collar-type (I'm a carpenter - not a scientist, but if you paid for palletizing my tools I'd renovate your home and make you so much more than proud - something tells me tho, this isn't all that much of a priority for you - maybe it would be for your wife tho - they seem to run these important things)
I live in Anchorage, currently occupied territory. It'd probably be 'bout $2 per lb given current gas prices. (I'd work just to enjoy sun and pick your brain a bit over good beer or something stronger.)
I just enjoy your well-articulated view of life and reality. Reading posts like this makes my day and reaffirms views of life that have been so hard-won for me. This is payment enough.
(Well, okay, I'd probably charge through the nose like any contractor would...)
Posted by: Bob Vogel | March 15, 2008 5:28 PM
Rey Fox @11:
"Can anyone explain what exactly he is referring to when he says slavery in communism and nazism"
He probably means the forced labor in Nazi camps and the Soviet gulag. In "Koba the Dread", Martin Amis describes how Hitler planned to turn Western Russia into a slave empire after the Soviets had been defeated: "It does sound crazy, but then you realize, a slave empire was what Stalin had there already."
Posted by: Andrew Weinrich | March 15, 2008 5:30 PM
#16 - The spewing will be done in a vague, unspecified manner. Probably a metaphorical spewing, but no one knows for sure.
Posted by: M. Robert Bond | March 15, 2008 5:31 PM
I infer than that he's referring to the forced labor that took place in the gulags and the concentration camps. These prisons were not just to hold people, but also to get them to work for the respective states that held them, which had two effects that those states found useful: they made money from the prisoner labor, and the prisoners were theoretically kept too busy and exhausted to plan and work towards escape.
Not that any of the above has anything to do with atheism or theism.
Although, how come the bible itself speaks approvingly of enslaving people?
Posted by: Owlmirror | March 15, 2008 5:32 PM
I suppose one could consider gulags to be slavery, but since the slaves there were at least ostensibly criminals, then it doesn't seem quite the same as slavery as was practiced in America, where a class of people were forced in slavery merely due to being members of that class. It's all a red herring anyway, I guess, with the stink of "atheism = commienazism" about it.
Posted by: Rey Fox | March 15, 2008 5:37 PM
Both Nazi Germany and Stalin's Russia used slave labour on a vast scale - in Germany, prisoners in the camps, and in Russia, inmates of the Gulag. I suspect that's what he's referring to, and is true. Hey, that makes him 1 for what - a thousand?
Posted by: oakfed | March 15, 2008 5:41 PM
This reminded of something else I read recently: that Hitler was aware of the etymology of the word "slave", and his plans for Russia reflected that awareness:
The German for "slave" is after the Middle Latin: "der Sklave | die Sklavin"
Posted by: Owlmirror | March 15, 2008 5:44 PM
Rey Fox:
If frequent occurence in dictionaries and in popular and academic writing can turn a sequence of letters into a word, "nazism" is one.
As for slavery, I imagine he's refering to the habit of both regimes employing millions of forced labour. The Soviets mostly used convicts (in many cases convicted on entirely ridiculous charges), the Nazis both concentration camp inmates and nominally free civilians, mostly from Eastern Europe. The Nazis sometimes rented them out to private companies.
You might argue they weren't technically slaves because they weren't bought and sold, but the difference is pretty academic.
Posted by: Andreas Johansson | March 15, 2008 5:48 PM
You might argue they weren't technically slaves because they weren't bought and sold, but the difference is pretty academic.
It's all a red herring anyway
both correct.
Posted by: Ichthyic | March 15, 2008 5:52 PM
Ah, xpost.
Posted by: Andreas Johansson | March 15, 2008 5:52 PM
And these are exactly the same arguments that gave Heller his Templeton prize. Just listen to his interview for NPR Morning Edition last week.
Posted by: Coturnix | March 15, 2008 6:01 PM
I'm going to be the dissenter and say that I enjoyed Gray's article. That's not to say I agree with it all, or even much of it. I think some of his underlying suppositions are fundamentally flawed, but as far as religious apologism goes, it's a pretty well-rounded, non-dogmatic, sane piece of writing. I don't think it deserves the vitriol and name-calling PZ is lunging at it.
I do object to two main ideas:
1) The idea that Dawkins, Dennet, et. al., are evangelists for atheism. I've read their books, and nowhere have I seen evidence of that. Evangelism requires some kind of structure or mechanism for changing minds, often a coercive one. None of the atheists I've read propose any sort of mechanism. They only lament that people don't use their brains more often.
2) The hogwash that secular humanists believe the Earth exists for the benefit of humans. That's absolutely untrue, and against the affirmations of the Secular Humanist movement. In fact, one of their affirmations is this:
We want to protect and enhance the earth, to preserve it for future generations, and to avoid inflicting needless suffering on other species.
...which suggests to me the opposite viewpoint.
Posted by: Plastic Flag | March 15, 2008 6:08 PM
As one of those dirty socialist types that Gray and his ilk despise, I imagine he's talking about "being enslaved to the state" or something like that.
Posted by: Pope Guilty | March 15, 2008 6:17 PM
Ouch, my sympathies PZ, that back must really hurt.
But aside from putting the hurt on Gray the post was fodder for thought, and far from the unimaginative drivel of the seriously deluded on the subjects science and atheism.
In other words, it is not even wrong.
Posted by: Torbjörn Larsson, OM | March 15, 2008 6:18 PM
That's funny, I've only read Dawkins TGD so far and he presents very explicit mechanisms for changing minds - supporting science and education to increase knowledge, and disallowing religion from child indoctrination.
And I'm not sure anyone needs to propose new mechanisms. Whichever you think is the cause or effect, if most of the best minds becomes atheist, or the atheists becomes the dominant among the best minds, it is a fact of life as evidenced by statistics. It has probably always been so, hidden or not, and there is no reason why this natural recruitment would stop.
Posted by: Torbjörn Larsson, OM | March 15, 2008 6:37 PM
"Slavery was abolished in much of the world during the 19th century, but it returned on a vast scale in nazism and communism, and still exists today. Torture was prohibited in international conventions after the second world war, only to be adopted as an instrument of policy by the world's pre-eminent liberal regime at the beginning of the 21st century."
Of course, what Gray doesn't point out is that both institutions were once nearly universally accepted, and now, whenever they pop up are nearly univerally regarded as wrong. I'd say that's some measure of progress.
Of course, what's a small omission like that, especially when it's something that doesn't support his thesis.
Posted by: Brent | March 15, 2008 6:48 PM
One of this article's many serious faults was only brushed over by PZ: the NOMA-based idea that "science answers the 'how' but religion answers the 'why'." This is laughably untrue: science answers plenty of 'why' questions. On the other hand, the answers that religion provides for the 'why' questions are often not very helpful. "God wants it that way" is not a satisfying answer -- it is no better than "because".
Posted by: Opisthokont | March 15, 2008 6:49 PM
One of this article's many serious faults was only brushed over by PZ: the NOMA-based idea that "science answers the 'how' but religion answers the 'why'." This is laughably untrue: science answers plenty of 'why' questions. On the other hand, the answers that religion provides for the 'why' questions are often not very helpful. "God wants it that way" is not a satisfying answer -- it is no better than "because".
Posted by: Opisthokont | March 15, 2008 6:51 PM
All of the criticism above would be a little more worthwhile if people had bothered to find out what Gray's (ir)religious views are (he's an atheist), and were able to control their outrage at any suggestion that the holy words of Saint Dawkins may not be sacrosanct. Gray is fundamentally a nineteenth-century liberal in his political and social outlook, an unpopular position today (especially among some of those who label themselves liberals), and nothing he has written in the last couple of decades is "religious apologism" - it's a firm defence of liberalism in the sense that Mill, for example (another atheist), would have understood it.
Posted by: a | March 15, 2008 6:52 PM
Oops.
Posted by: Opisthokont | March 15, 2008 6:52 PM
grr, AnswersInGenitals... beat me to it. "So what kind of car do you have?" - "None" - "Oh, what color is it?"
Posted by: slang | March 15, 2008 6:56 PM
Boy, have you got the wrong belt buckle, PZ-- it's like blaming Lysenko on the Czar
Posted by: Polyester Mather | March 15, 2008 6:57 PM
Rey Fox wrote...
"I suppose one could consider gulags to be slavery, but since the slaves there were at least ostensibly criminals, then it doesn't seem quite the same as slavery as was practiced in America, where a class of people were forced in slavery merely due to being members of that class."
The gulag system was very definitely a collection of slave labour camps. People would be arrested for no particular reason in most cases. In one example there were quotas for people to be supplied to the camps - a fixed percentage required from people from a number of identified groups. What were those groups? Here's a hint - in English there would be 26 of them.
Posted by: Dale | March 15, 2008 7:07 PM
a wrote:
Well, he's an atheist who apparently takes the theist echo chamber too seriously and repeats them.
Posted by: Norman Doering | March 15, 2008 7:23 PM
About Hitler and the Slaves :
"Slaven sind Sklaven" (the Slavic people are slaves by nature) was a favourite saying among the leaders of Nazi Germany.
Posted by: Christophe Thill | March 15, 2008 7:30 PM
If atheism is a religion, then sobriety is a drug.
Posted by: mgarelick | March 15, 2008 7:30 PM
Oh, is this the same John Gray who wrote "Men are from Mars, etc. " ? He most definitely seems to be from another planet, but which one, I couldn't say.
Posted by: Christophe Thill | March 15, 2008 7:31 PM
I'm not seeing this guy saying that atheism is just another religion. I'm not seeing him saying that religion is good.
I'm seeing him say that the difference between a westerner with Christian values who believes in God and a westerner with Christian values who doesn't believe in God is the belief in God, nothing more. He certainly gets some stuff wrong about the Nazis, but he gets a lot right.
And if you think the purpose of myth is to make us feel better, you clearly need to sit down and read some Shakespeare or Homer. The purpose of myth is to give us stories around which we model our lives. One doesn't need to believe in the stories as "real" events in order for them to have very significant meaning.
Posted by: JDP | March 15, 2008 7:36 PM
Gray is making the usual mistake of taking the hobby horses of public atheists as 'gospel' for those who share similar views. The only idea they have in common is that There Is No God. How a society that has utilised god belief as a touchstone for millennia should act, when that touchstone is taken away, is a difficult question.
Ultimately, Gray's mistake is failing to recognise that atheists are not wanting to change the world, we are wanting one less pollutant in the global thought process.
Posted by: Sam | March 15, 2008 7:38 PM
"All of the criticism above would be a little more worthwhile if people had bothered to find out what Gray's (ir)religious views are (he's an atheist)"
Bullshit. We argue ideas here, and it does not matter a quack what he is, his article was pathetic. All the MORE so if he is an atheist, he should know better.
Plus progress is slow, but it does happen. Slavery even if practiced, is no longer accepted, unlike in the old testament. More women have equall rights than ever before, and there is only one leader of a suposedly civilized nation who will publicly approve of water-boarding, and he will soon be gone.
Posted by: sailor | March 15, 2008 8:03 PM
Why don't you start a contest to find the most charming "Atheism is a religion the same way that the pope shits in the woods" response with the winner (as determined by your readers or just by you as the sole appointed judge of all that is humorous)
Posted by: genesgalore | March 15, 2008 8:05 PM
Wait, i bet that if i just fling this polished up turd another way, it might stick!
Posted by: Dutch Delight | March 15, 2008 8:19 PM
I haven't read the article in question but I'm familiar with John Gray and his usual shtick is to opposes secular humanism because it retains too much of its Christian heritage. He's a fatalistic atheist (he refers to humans as "Homo rapiens" because he thinks our destructive nature can't be reigned in) and not a religious apologist. He's an incredibly sloppy thinker though.
Posted by: poke | March 15, 2008 8:32 PM
Posted by: wintermute | March 15, 2008 8:53 PM
Glad to see you do a number on Gray's garbage, PZ. I was steaming about this one after I read it this morning. I'm also steaming about how a once-fine liberal newspaper (The Guardian) seems to have become one of the most frequent publishers of anti-atheist drivel.
Posted by: Jack Rawlinson | March 15, 2008 8:57 PM
Gray: "It is a funny sort of humanism that condemns an impulse [religion] that is peculiarly human."
[Snortlaugh.] Gray's just playing childish word games here: "Humanists are supposed to love everything that's human - it's right there in their name, humanist. Whaddya thinka that, huh?" In the words of the departed Frink Tank, "Q.E.D., bitches."
By the same pseudologic, he could say that humanists are hypocrites for condemning violence, since it's clearly a deep-seated aspect of human nature.
Posted by: MPW | March 15, 2008 9:29 PM
Here I am, late to the party again.
AnswersInGenitals, I like your competition but now you've made me imagine a web site where LOLCatz meets "Everything I need to know about life I learned from internet porn" - and I daren't google for it just in case I find it ;)
My contribution, rather on the geeky side:
Atheism is a dogma in the same way tha[NO CARRIER]
Posted by: Hematite | March 15, 2008 10:05 PM
I must say, PZ this is really some of your best writing. If you ever do decide to put out a book of collected blog posts, (as many have suggested and pleaded and would line up to purchase as if an eighth Harry Potter suddenly materialised) consider this for inclusion, really do.
Your writing is always coherent and cogent, and then there are posts like this that spike up to new heights.
Posted by: The Flying Trilobite, fcd | March 15, 2008 10:34 PM
Answers in Genitals:
(Why can't I come up with a nom de keyboard like that? I almost hurt myself reading it.)
Anyway..."denisons of the deep"? Benthic Marine Chili (with beans)?
Hulk want.
Posted by: Hulk | March 16, 2008 12:01 AM
@ a
I was going to write what you said but less coherently. Luckily I checked the thread before posting.
Gray's idea is actually quite obvious: myths and narratives drive history in the form of ideology. They can be evoked in order to do terrible things - in defence of "the nation", "God", "our race", and equally against all of those concepts. Atheism, or anti-clericalism, or anti-theism, while they might be defensible ideas, are a potential wellspring of violence as much as any other ideas. For a liberal philosopher, all militant "movements" are potentially troubling - that's why Gray doesn't like Dawkins, Harris et al. He thinks revolutions and totalitarianism are often driven by the type of utopianism and black-and-white thinking Dawkins displays.
Posted by: Springy | March 16, 2008 12:06 AM
"There was nothing wrong with it... until I was about 12 years old and that no-talent ass clown became famous and started winning Grammys." -- Office Space
Posted by: John Gray | March 16, 2008 12:25 AM
But it was the Nazi belief in race as a scientific category that opened the way to a crime without parallel in history.
A real conversation I had:
Friend: Science has led to atrocities, like Hitler.
Me: Bullshit. That wasn't science.
Friend: Ah! A True Scotsman argument! You always complain when Christians claim that the Crusaders weren't 'true Christians', but now you're doing it!
Me: Not at all. Remember that science is all about empirical observation. What possible empirical observation could you make to conclude that a race was 'inferior'? That idea came from their crappy value judgements, not from scientific observation.
Friend: Well...
Me: I mean, you could try and say that Population X shows these attributes or those behaviours, but then as soon as you say 'and therefore, they're inferior', you've started on the value judgements again. And you've stopped doing science.
Friend: (Concurs.)
Don't blame science for people doing not-science.
Posted by: Daniel | March 16, 2008 12:31 AM
For a liberal philosopher, all militant "movements" are potentially troubling - that's why Gray doesn't like Dawkins, Harris et al.
then he's wrong about that, too.
neither Dawkins nor Harris are militant, and neither call for any kind of violence whatsoever.
OTOH, we can point to innumerable examples of people calling themselves "christians", "muslims", or even "scientologists" for that matter calling for violence.
Dawkins thinking is nothing but reactionary, not dichotomous.
What's more, there is a need to drive the discussion towards a recognition of the value of non-religious thought.
Dawkins has done a fantastic job of this in the role he plays.
so does PZ, for that matter, if on a less globally recognized scale.
It is indeed very sloppy thinking to consider Dawkins "militant". Either that, or you have to redefine to the extreme the term "militant" to begin with, and that smacks of intellectual dishonesty even more than sloppiness.
so which is it?
Is Gray being intellectually dishonest, or merely sloppy?
Posted by: Ichthyic | March 16, 2008 12:35 AM
I'm not trying to defend Dawkins from claims on shallow thinking, he is eminently able to do that himself. But as I have only read TGD and some scattered texts of Dawkins I don't know this side of his writings, and I'm curious.
So what is Dawkins utopia, and where does he do black-and-white thinking? [TGD has neither of those, as he discusses science and religion from a fact perspective.]
Posted by: Torbjörn Larsson, OM | March 16, 2008 3:23 AM
Answers, of course not collecting stamps is a hobby. I have spent many hours not collecting stamps.
Posted by: Flamethorn | March 16, 2008 4:06 AM
ReyFox you need to read your Solzhenitsyn. When Stalin needed engineers to oversee the great construction projects the Zeks in the Gulag were building he simply decided there was a conspiracy amongst the engineers, convicted them of anti Soviet activities and et voila! a trained cadre of slave engineers. For a time Solzhenistyn was in a special prison in Moscow for techie types. He was working on voiceprint recognition systems. That institute was the place that enable Stalin to find the Soviet diplomat who tipped the Americans off about an atom spy, probably Julius Rosenberg. The Gulag Archipelago was a self contained country with enslaved engineers, nuclear scientists, technicians, all sorts of doctors, they even had travelling theatre troupes.
Posted by: Peter Ashby | March 16, 2008 5:05 AM
It just struck me how emo John Gray seems to be, sulking in his room about what a mess the world is, wearing black and listening to My Chemical Romance.
Posted by: Physis | March 16, 2008 6:14 AM
I agree with John Gray, that I find atrocities committed in the name of science far worse than religion. The latter seems expected, but the former seems like a betrayal.
Posted by: Unstable Molecule | March 16, 2008 7:21 AM
To answer the question above, the author of Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus is a different John Gray.
This John Gray, however, seems to be an absolute nutcase. The above article, if anything, is one of his better works. It's difficult to pin down precisely what he believes in, due the absence of any coherence or consistency. However, the following would be reasonably close: "Humanity, reason and civilisation are all worthless and anyone who disagrees with me is a stupid utopianist".
Posted by: hyperdeath | March 16, 2008 7:21 AM
OK I'm going to play devil's advocate here: see where it gets me.
First I have to say that I think that Myer's original post is terrible: he obviously has only skimmed the Gray piece and doesn't know where Gray is coming from at all. He seems to think that it is justifying religion (it's not: what Gray is saying is that religion will always be with us and he's right), and he also seems to think that Gray is saying that 'atheism is just a kind of religion'. If you believe that, find me piece of text where Gray says that, or anything like it.
Second, and this is VERY important (and no one has picked up on it, at all), Gray is making a political point. It is simply a fact that ALL of the 'new atheists' are either relatively vapid liberals (Dawkins, Dennett) or veer off to the extreme Right. The simple fact is that the 'new atheists' did NOT arise because people were worried about Bush's America (and if you think that, you're deluding yourself) they arose after 9/11. This is about Islam. I'm sorry to have to state the obvious but Hitchens and Harris are quite clear about it and we should pay them the respect of paying attention to their arguments. Hitchens and Harris are perfectly clear that they support the invasion of Iraq BECAUSE they are atheists. If you don't believe me, write them an email and ask them. What Gray is asking is: 'why'? Why is it that atheism, which used to be associated with the Left, is now associated with aggressive right wing imperialism?
This is what Gray's article is about, and regardless of whether you think he's an idiot or not, you should respond to his article and reply to the arguments he actually made, not the arguments you think he made.
I might add that (despite the fact that a lot of people seem to think it is true) it is simply false that atheists are any better than anybody else. Not believing in God does not make you a good person, any more than not believing in Santa Claus makes you a good person. Moreover, being an atheist does not make you any more rational or intelligent than anybody else. All it means is that you know one particular fact. It's like saying that 'I know what the capital of Burkina Faso is. This proves I am rational. Only people who know what the capital of Burkina Faso can be rational. After all who starts all the wars and persecutes women? That's it: people who don't know what the capital of Burkina Faso is. Proof if proof were needed.' (And yes I know the analogy is not exact, but to make it more precise, it's like saying that people who believe that the capital of Burkina Faso is Bangui are irrational, evil, whatever).
And please spare me the counter-argument: 'ah but they won't give up their beliefs in the face of contrary evidence'. Who does? Not Dawkins for one: cf criticisms of the 'selfish gene' idea: when Dawkins is criticised he does what everyone does: hits the roof and attempts to shout his opponent down, cf recent letters of his in New Scientist).
Scientists are not any more rational (let along better people) than anybody else.
(Actually I don't actually know what the word rational means, but that's another story).
Finally, it is absolutely to the point that Hitchens, who proclaims rationality, is completely irrational on the subject of Iraq, or that Dennett apparently believes that the internet will defeat religion (an irrational belief if ever there was one) or that Sam Harris appears to be some kind of lunatic Buddhist/occultist. To repeat: being an atheist doesn't make you any more rational or intelligent or morally good than anybody else. There is absolutely no evidence, none, that the world would be a better place if everyone was an atheist. Iraq was about oil. 'We' wanted 'their' oil. Religion had nothing to do with it: in fact a more hard headed (i.e. less moral), 'rational' approach to foreign affairs would probably lead to more wars than the contrary, as more powerful countries steal the natural resources of less powerful countries.
And it is this fact (and it is a fact) that, amongst other things, Gray's article is about.
Gray is (I think) an atheist, incidentally.
Posted by: Hidari | March 16, 2008 8:23 AM
Dawkins claims that he has changed his mind regarding major questions in the field, just not this one; but IMO, it would be stupid for Dawkins to change his mind now, when the evidence for gene selection is just coming in (see Burt & Trivers' new book) and the Wilsons have not presented any "contrary evidence" or actual models to speak of.
Posted by: windy | March 16, 2008 8:49 AM
"I'm seeing him say that the difference between a westerner with Christian values who believes in God and a westerner with Christian values who doesn't believe in God is the belief in God, nothing more."
Given that "Christian values" would cover a rather broad range of ideas and expressions across increasingly large swathes of the world over nearly 20 centuries, and that some of the values being described as such here are probably fairly recent, culturally specific, and in some ways a striking departure from the main thrust of that tradition, perhaps a term like 'Western values' or 'modern classical-liberal values' or whatever would be more useful?
" The purpose of myth is to give us stories around which we model our lives. One doesn't need to believe in the stories as "real" events in order for them to have very significant meaning."
Sure. The issue here is that a lot of folks do in fact believe in the stories as "real" events, with results that can, best-case scenario, be completely unobjectionable or even ethically praiseworthy, true, but also include the neverending attempt to destroy science education, or the craziness expressed by folks like Hagee - with access to the GOP presidential candidate - that we need to act in ways that all but ensure conflict or even open war in the Middle East because Daddy Jesus is coming!
Posted by: Dan S. | March 16, 2008 9:12 AM
Windy
I advise you to look out the New Scientist of a couple of months back when Dawkins replied to Wilson. He didn't just register his lack of agreement with Wilson, he hit the roof.
Incidentally, you might want to sample this interview here
http://www.salon.com/books/int/2008/03/13/chris_hedges/index.html
Hedges is a believer, which I'm not, but he makes similar points to the ones I was making.
Posted by: Hidari | March 16, 2008 9:14 AM
I've read them. Do you mean the one where he felt that one of the Wilsons had lied about him? That's a bit different from simply objecting to criticism.
I'm not saying that scientists don't on occasion "hit the roof", but it's useful to know a bit of the background before criticizing someone for not changing his mind (that's what you originally did, now you simply seem to be decrying his lack of politeness? Do you think Dawkins is ignoring large amounts of evidence stacked against his theory, or not?)
Posted by: windy | March 16, 2008 9:22 AM
As an atheist, I've given this issue a lot of thought - and there is simplicity beyond complexity.
Can an atheist be reasonably termed a fundamentalist? NO
Can an atheist be reasonably termed an evangelist? YES
Why we can't be fundamentalists: S