Despite efforts to avoid such foolishness, Kevin Beck inadvertently drew my attention to what people are calling "Blake's Law," which apparently briefly had its own Wikipedia page, but now appears to redirect to the Pharyngula page. Blogdom really needs a killfile.
Anyway, the Internet "Law" in question is stated as:
In any discussion of atheism (skepticism, etc.), the probability that someone will compare a vocal atheist to religious fundamentalists increases to one.
This is notable mostly for being a really beautiful piece of-- wait for it-- framing.
The "Law" is consciously formulated to echo "Godwin's Law," which is properly stated as:
As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.
Of course, the popular conception of Godwin's "Law" is subtly different than the reality, as is seen from the Wikipedia comment on the new "Law":
As with Godwin's Law, the person who compares the atheist to a religious fundamentalist is considered to have lost the argument.
Putting it into this form is a really clever attempt to claim high moral standing, in a slightly more subtle way than the "civil rights"/ "suffragist" analogies of a previous kerfuffle. By creating an internet "Law" parallel to Godwin's, and invoking it whenever necessary, they can implicitly equate accusations of "fundamentalist" behavior on the part of millitant atheists with Nazi comparisons in other contexts, and thus have them presumptively declared illegitimate.
Of course, this skips nicely over an important point that applies to both "Laws": the fact that such an accusation is often frivolous or illegitimate does not mean that all such accusations are frivolous or illegitimate. Even Nazi references are sometimes appropriate, and even necessary (as xkcd reminds us).
But if you're clever about framing your "Laws," you can undercut even the legitmate arguments, with spiffy Internet rhetoric. It's a nice piece of work.
Sadly, it's another example of one of the least attractive qualities of millitant atheists on the Internet, namely their skill at using spin and "framing" and the connotative meaning of words when it works to their advantage, while working themselves into a froth of high dudgeon at any suggestion that these same principles might be applied in ways that they find inconvenient.
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You're such a nazi about these things, Chad. It could be worse...you could be a BABY KILLING NAZI, though.
I think you're taking the whole thing much too seriously. Myers himself calls Blake's Law a kneejerk internet phrase.
With all due respect, I think you might sit more comfortably without the rod.
I'm glad someone at top level hit on this, considering how blatant it is. The fact that it is only protecting 'vocal atheists', by making only their comparison to evangelicals/fundamentalists the Godwin-ed one is absolutely perfect debate silencing from one side. At the same time various people and groups are compared to 'bad' religious people (evangelicals/religious/ID) all the bloody time... as long as they're not on the ornery atheist side. Because then, you'd be Godwin-ed. Bloody perfect, bloody stupid, and people just gobble it up...
-Mecha
With all due respect, I think you might sit more comfortably without the rod.
Well, as long as it's said with respect...
So what is your epithet/implication here if not framing? Myers himself is putting the phrase in the correct context, Blake Stacey is hardly a militant atheist, and the phrase is like Godwin's law and its supplement an attempt from those that the illicit terms doesn't apply to stop massive abuse.
We have one example here, where outspoken atheists ('vocal atheists') are compared to rigid fundamentalists. Most atheist's view is founded in empiricism, which by necessity is provisional.
Of course the supplements based on such laws have not skipped over the fact that they have appropriate exceptions where the context is legitimate.
There is also nothing that precludes a similar corollary to Godwin's law for religious contexts. Let us call it the "Mecha/Orzel law". Now write a Wikipedia page about it. (It has about the same strength of support as the current discussed 'meme'.)
I think that the main problem with this law isn't so much that it's trying to be parallel to Godwin's law, but that it fails to be parallel to Godwin's law.
In Godwin's law you have someone talking about, for example, emacs vs vi, and someone says someone is acting like Hitler. There is nothig actually Hitleresque about the way anyone is acting in this case. If there was, for example, if anyone suggested that all vi users be rounded up and killed, we wouldn't need to associate them with Hitler, it would just be looked on with shock.
In this case, OTOH, the two ARE related. The vocal atheists are arguing DIRECTLY against the rigid fundamentalists. So, the argument is simply "You are behaving exactly like your adversary." which isn't a non-sequitur.
Finally, am I the only one who sees the inherint ACTUAL implication of Godwin's law here? If I follow the analogy correctly, Blakes law says that associating atheists with fundamentalists is just as bad as associating them with Hitler. Doesn't that very statement associate fundamentalists with Hitler?
I note that the phrase "All due respect" is never accompanied by a statement of how much respect is actually due.
"Despite efforts to avoid such foolishness, Kevin Beck inadvertently drew my attention to ..."
This implies that I'm the one making efforts to avoid foolishness. I appreciate the oblique compliment, but unfortunately I never try to avoid foolishness, although I occasionally accomplish this as the result of making a foolish mistake.
"I note that the phrase 'All due respect' is never accompanied by a statement of how much respect is actually due."
Ha. Not that you should read any of my garbage, but I love paralipsis!
Unfortunately, whatever Blake meant by it, my protest is not related to whether the comparison is vacuous or not. (I can't speak for Chad.) It's about the tone it sets, where comparing vocal atheists to fundamentalism and religious are wrong (Blake's Law), but comparing Nisbet, or Ed Brayton, or me, or anyone who protests a vocal atheist's methods, no matter what they are, or who they are, or what they believe, is perfectly valid and done as a matter of course. To me, that, apparently strangely, seems unfair.
-Mecha
Which they nontheless hold should be applied to areas that other people believe are not suitable for empiricism to address at all. It is the scientism that some atheists espouse that is the narrow belief that (fairly or unfairly) is viewed as being as rigidly held as some religious beliefs.
It has to also be noted that this usage of calling someone a "fundamrentalist X" has expanded way beyond capital "F" Fundamentalists, the religious or even atheists. I've gathered examples of people using the term for capitalists, socialists, communists, feminists, environmentalists and others. I think it is clear that it has lost its connection to a particular group of Christians who self-identified with the term and has entered the language to describe any strongly held belief that tends to accompanied by intolerance for dissent, especially within the perceived group of the holders.
Ah zealots. Ironically, Wikipedia informs me the term 'zealot' originated as the name of a religious movement. While I don't doubt that atheists can act like fundamentalists, the similarities between PZ Myers (say) and fundamentalists are fairly weak. Though it should probably be pointed out that capital "F" Fundamentalists are not all alike, and don't necessarily act like fundamentalists either.
At least three of the contributors to the essay series called The Fundamentals, from which the movement took its name, George Frederick Wright, James Orr, and R. A. Torrey, were supportive of evolution.
Calling someone "a fundamentalist" is intended as a term of abuse. In that sense, it need not be all that accurate -- any more than PZ's description of theists in general as "ignorant," "deluded," "wicked," "foolish" or "oppressed." Such terms serve their rhetorical function if they amount to nothing more than an exageration of the actual truth.
I think a discussion on Godwin's law in general, and the parallels, would be most fruitful compared to a discussion whether it applies or not.
The problem with the above is that Godwin's law and its supplement covers Nazi's in general and Hitler especially. And the main purpose isn't that it is a non-sequitur (which it is) but that you can't give a proper answer to a non-sequitur. The non-sequitur is made to end and 'win' the discussion - Godwin's law reverses this to prevent derailing of a thread.
Since most atheists aren't rigid (evidence would falsify their claim, they are often former theists et cetera) it is often a non-sequitur. The reverse proposal which I made would not so often be so, so it may be less valuable.
That doesn't make atheists contention internally inconsistent. On the contrary, it makes it the task of the others to provide evidence, probably empirical, why the atheist contention is inapplicable to the world we observe.
To demand evidence for claims on nature isn't "scientism", it is empiricism.
That's a non sequitur as far as I can see. The rhetorical ploy of calling someone a "fundamentalist X" does not imply inconsistency.
Demanding that others, who do not accept your premises in the first place, disprove that those premises are inapplicable to their beliefs, is itself a narrow, rigid position that, as far as I can see, at least justifies the use of the term as a rhetorical ploy.
But the atheists who get called fundamentalists aren't content with limiting themselves to that:
That's scientism.
"... disprove that they are inapplicable ..."
Damn double negatives! You know what I meant ...
;-)
John:
Back after a long weekend.
I was answering specifically to your claim of suitability and scientism. Regarding fundamentalism, see my previous comment on empiricism being "provisional".
If your are going to argue that some premises are unacceptable, you have to show why they are so. If you can't show inconsistency you have to go after something else.
This is after all what scientists are doing, showing why religious superstition as applied on empirical questions is an unacceptable. So it is neither rhetorical, narrow or rigid. It is a matter of praxis.
This is as far as I can see the same claim as before.