Because so few people actually listen past their own loud assumptions...Every once in a while I need to restate my principles. I do this because my principles change as I mature and learn and interact with the world. I think this is a very good way to live, and I don't think it's uncalled for to suggest that if more people were more fluid about the things they believe and took criticism less personally, we would have fewer unnecessary conflicts and divisions, and thus people would be less stressed. I really don't know about you but this sounds like an improvement.
I think religion is responsible for a lot of closed-mindedness, but it is not alone. Anytime people invest emotionally in anything, the potential for conflict between closed minds or between closed-minded and open-minded people increases, and communication and conflict resolution become more difficult.
I hate the phrase "The New Atheism" not because I disagree fundamentally with people like Dawkins and Harris, but because of the tendency of the media to reinforce popular perceptions of "intellectual" atheism as a boy's club or as some kind of monolithic school of thought that presumes to have all the important answers. I also think that some (though not all) proponents of "The New Atheism" neglect important distinctions between things like tolerance and respect, as well as between the respect I have for people and the respect some people expect me to have for their ideas. By this I mean that as a naturalist and a critical thinker, I have no reason to respect faith, but this doesn't mean I am intolerant of it. I just don't want extraordinary claims in the absence of good supporting evidence to govern any aspect of my life, which is why I advocate for the strongest possible separation of civil governance from faith-based institutions and ideologies. I sometimes jokingly call this the separation of Guru and State, because as I see it, it's not just organized religion we need to protect the integrity of civil government and pluralism from. These things are also threatened by a lack of critical thinking in general that may or may not be directly related to organized religion. For the same reason we shouldn't be teaching Creationism in public school science classes, we should not be teaching- for example- New Word Order conspiracy theories in Western Civilization or Civics classes. I realize that's an extreme example that probably doesn't occur to often, but I cite it for the purpose of illustrating the double standard that religion enjoys as a separate class of ideas somehow immune from rational criticism. Our society seems to be far more tolerant of the former behavior than the latter, probably because the numbers of Creationists and Intelligent Design proponents in the country are greater than the number of people in America who are NWO conspiracy theorists. Basically, I think that empirical claims about the natural world can be tested precisely because they are falsifiable, and that the government and other public institutions must never promote a particular belief over other beliefs or belief over non-belief. I am perfectly willing to tolerate the fact that many people have ridiculous beliefs as long as those beliefs don't affect the secular and pluralistic stance of neutrality promised by the U.S. Constitution.
As someone with a public persona, I must give Dawkins the benefit of the doubt that in his private life he is far less abrasive than he is publically, as I would be in his position: respectful of my friends if not necessarily those beliefs of theirs I find ridiculous, but willing to stick to my guns in more public discourses. Some atheists have a tendency to sneer at words like "dialog," whereas I reserve these sneers only for those who make dialog impossible. Fortunately for all of us, those who make dialog impossible are usually in the minority. Unfortunately for all of us, they tend to be extremely vocal minorities. The Bush II Regime was an example of this: between Carter, Reagan, George H. W. Bush and Clinton, the political machinery of the Republican Party was taken over by the political interests of evangelicals and conservatives interested in making American government less pluralistic and more in line with their own theo-politics.
When I first found out who Richard Dawkins was, I watched every youtube video I could find on him and found myself agreeing with much (but hardly all) of what he said. Several things eventually became clear to me:
Dawkins is good at stirring up controversy and getting people to think, but this doesn't mean they think critically. Some do, others respond to Dawkins in a reactionary way.
He's a British scientist, and because Americans tend to associate British accents with higher intelligence in popular culture, he makes people who agree with him feel smart at the same time that he makes it easy for his critics to characterize him (and by extension all atheists, or all organized atheists) as arrogant and "elitist."
Though some scientists are or were decent, even excellent philosophers (Gould, Sagan, Pinker, Bacon and Galileo come to mind), Dawkins is not one of them. Though his stance that scientific knowledge is generally corrosive to supernatural claims is something I find myself in agreement with, I find his arguments crude.
With some exceptions, most people do not drop deeply ingrained beliefs on the basis of evidence alone. People don't become atheists because there is no mention of the value of Pi in the Bible. They don't become atheists because the digestive mechanisms inside the stomachs of whales and large fish would do irreparable harm to a human being over a period of three days. There are many reasons why people decide that they don't believe supernatural invention, and they are too numerous to list here, but because these are decisions they evolve emotions. All decisions, even those that appear arbitrary like whether to quench your thirst with water, orange juice or gatorade, or which shade of blue your prefer to paint your bedroom, involve emotions. Although the physiology behind emotions can be studied scientifically, an emotional experience will always be a subjective experience unless some kind of technological remedy is found that allows us to store and transfer emotional experience between brains like we can store and transfer files on USB keys. Granted, I think such a technological breakthrough is very, very unlikely.
Back to Dawkins, I am not sold on his use of the phrase "child abuse" to refer to religious upbringings. I think he is throwing around a very loaded word without concern as to what child abuse actually is and what the consequences are of lumping things together to create boogie men. Dawkins however is not using the word in a legal context. He is using the phrase to make a point. I just think it's naive of him to think that his critics are going to pick up on that. More than that, though, I think it's insensitive to victims of child abuse, much as I think the 9/11 Truth Out movement is insensitive to the victims of the attacks on the World Trade Center. If we are to label a certain kind of upbringing as abusive (again, not in a legal context but to make a point about the vulnerability of children to exploitation by adults) then I would insist we label as abusive any upbringing that leaves a person unable to tolerate differences between themselves and other people. While examples of religion being used to instill this kind of mentality in children are widespread, they are not the only ones. Hatred is hatred, no matter where it is coming from, and I have no interest in the reverse pissing contests that so frequently crop up on the internet between supporters and critics of religion, which basically consist of throwing numbers of fatalities at each other. Religion DOES NOT have a monopoly on irrationality, and I have never claimed that it does. It's just that irrationality is a major ingredient of religion, but irrationality exists elsewhere and to label all irrational beliefs as "religious" is disingenuous and hypocritical. If we want to be critical of religion it is my contention that we should be critical of religion as we would be critical of any idea, because we don't just accept ideas for the sake of ideas. We evaluate their merit. This is why I frequently say that whether we are believers or non-believers, it's a mistake to treat religious ideas as a fundamentally different category of ideas. I realize that an intelligent response to this is how, then, we can advocate for something like separation of church and state, but my answer is probably predictable: we need to keep society pluralistic, and secularism, non-establishment, and the neutrality of the state with regard to religion is the best way of protecting the liberties of as many people as possible. To paraphrase Thomas Jefferson, I really don't care if my neighbor believes in no gods, one god, or a thousand gods. I will gladly engage my neighbor in civil debate. The second it gets uncivil, though, I don't feel any obligation to put up with my neighbor's crap, because my neighbor then has made dialog impossible. When I advocate for secularism I often find myself on the same side as many religious believers, and I am grateful for their support and their tolerance, as I hope they are grateful for my tolerance. But I will always make the distinction between tolerance and respect, and I will never confuse respect (or disrespect) for a person with respect (or disrespect) for their beliefs unless they so egregiously make a fool out of themselves that any intelligent response on my part is futile. In that case, yes, I believe mockery is an effective means of criticism. We can learn as much from parody as we can from the subject of parody. This is why I get so frustrated when people- believers and nonbelievers- direct me to the South Park episode "Go, God, Go" (a great episode, by the way) in what I find to be an underhanded way of saying, "See, even South Park says there's no reason to organize around atheism. OMG STOP BITCHING AND GET A LIFE!" Though I try not to take things personally, I sometimes wonder if this isn't a disguised attempt to insult my intelligence. These same people tend not to respond to me when I point out that most organized atheists are actually organized around things like humanism, or skepticism, or secularism, or freethought, which are NOT synonymous with atheism. Come to think of it, specific people I am thinking of fail to respond when I address the points they make in an intelligent and reasonable manner. It's the kind of thing that ruins my day, because I like to think most people are capable of being more than nay-sayers and butthurt trolls. I don't appreciate the passive aggressiveness or the selective responsiveness (which is just cowardly), and I don't appreciate the drama this crap generates.
Do I find Dawkins grating sometimes? Yes. Do I want to silence him? No. I just wish his critics would stop conflating him with all of us. Often these critics have not actually been to local meetings of non-theist groups, and don't respond to open invitations to come and maybe even have their presumptions dispelled so they might question where their particular perspective came from and see that other perspectives exist. They don't bother to show up because their opinions have already been formed by popular culture and the way that the media latches onto Dawkins as though he were some kind of authority on what atheism is, where it is going, and why we organize.
Dawkins is not the whole of the New Atheism. Nor is the New Atheism (I really, really, REALLY hate that phrase) is not the whole of the larger movement of non-believers who, seeing a rapid and promising increase in their own numbers, have decided to be more vocal about their criticism of religion and other irrational beliefs.
Dawkins is a smart guy who's not the best debater on the planet. After all, he is a biologist and not a philosopher or a lawyer. Sometimes he flubs. Sometimes he puts his foot in his mouth. Maybe he should apologize for being human? Or maybe his critics should stop holding people to unrealistic standards. I am not Dawkins' biggest fan. I'm not exactly a vociferous critic of his, I just don't like when these circle jerks of like mindedness pop up and lend credence to many of the generalizations that people make about atheists as a group. It's counterproductive and I don't think it's unfair to say that we can do better. At the same time, comparing Dawkins and his less critical fans- those who largely parrot his opinions and refuse to even consider other points of view- to cult leaders and their followers like Ayn Rand and her "Collective" of Objectivists is a false comparison. There's a difference between a cult of personality and a destructive cult (Ayn Rand's ironically named Collective and the Church of Scientology being examples of the latter).
I'm also a bit upset right now because I had to cut someone out of my life today who I thought was a friend but who I now realize has no interest in dialog, in the free and open exchange of ideas, but only in bringing up points of contention and then refusing to respond when others try to make the noble disagreement a civil one as opposed to a bullshit fest of drama and passive aggressive attempts to provoke emotional responses. I'm talking about a selective listeners who are just a step above professional quote miners. I just don't have time for people like that in my life, and I'm sorry that it had to be this way. There are very few things I am intolerant of: these include the existence of poverty despite overwhelming material abundance, and intolerance itself.
By the way, I am taking the "intolerance of intolerance" line from Chris Hedges, the very same Chris Hedges who after writing an expose of Christian Dominionism proceeded to write a book which I regretfully have not yet read, but I am given to understand was extremely critical of the rhetoric of the New Atheism. While I don't agree with all of his points, I'm not about to write him off as some a yokel just because he criticizes some people I admire (like Christopher Hitchens and Samuel Harris).
Most of all, though, I frakking hate it when people take complex realities and simplify them to the point where all they generate are intellectual masturbations, ideological circle jerks and petty bickering that goes nowhere. It's not groups that are characterized by being "open minded" or "closed minded," or "rational" or "irrational." At the end of the day, it's masses of individuals whose behaviors affect the perception of groups, and if someone can't appreciate that, if someone can't tolerate on ongoing disagreement without resorting to a combination of passive aggressiveness, cowardice, and generally uncivil behavior. I have no interest in people who only seem to know how to complain and nitpick, and who then give me the silent treatment when their expectations are smashed like fossil skulls on limestone instead of doing the appropriate thing and apologizing for making assumptions and seek resolution to the conflict.
I'm going to finish this rant with a little story: once, I wrote a short document describing a particular political agenda. I sent it to a friend of mine and asked for his opinion, and he replied with a very harsh criticism. Guess what I did?
I didn't take it personally. Instead, I went back and tried to match his criticisms to specific faults with the piece. I am grateful for his insights because they challenged me to do better than I had. I think this is a good way of approaching criticism. Exchanges like that give me hope that people are more intelligent than pure cynics assume.
Now please excuse me while I indulge in several uninterrupted hours of high quality science fiction (IE the pure bliss that is
Farscape).
::storms off and slams door with enough force that the glass vase falls off the windowsill ad shatters on the floor, then pops back through the door and blames the architect::P.S. I realize that I leave myself open to the criticism that discussing certain IRL conflicts on this post is in itself hypocritical, as it could be seen as passive aggressive. However, I will always be interested in resolving any conflicts I have with other people civilly and reasonably. I have not used personal names here, or provided any clues to individual identities that would be picked up by people who aren't already aware of the conflict. Many of my posts are aimed at a specific audience, that audience being politically and socially active atheists. This is one such example of a post aimed at a particular audience for the purpose of sharing my experience as a godless activist with other godless activists who may be dealing with similar conflicts. I'm just sorry that such a conflict had to ruin what I thought was a good friendship, but as I said, I have no patience for people who make dialog impossible.
Posts
