No More Mr. Nice Guy!

Uppity atheists

The United States was founded by men who were highly educated, very much products of the Enlightenment, and decidedly progressive in matters of religion and its proper relation to the state. Many of them were deists and freethinkers, even outright atheists.

Alas, the massive immigration and "Great Awakening" of the 19th Century changed the character of the country for the worse in many ways. Ever since, politicians have tended to be less educated and much more religious and/or inclined to pander to the fanatical religiosity of their constituents. Though atheists had always been looked on with suspicion, now it was open season on them. Since then, atheists have had to ride at the back of the bus and "pass" as believers if they wanted to be left in peace.

Today, religious-right fundamentalism has a near-monopoly on political, judicial and media power in the US, and often uses that power in incredibly backward and destructive ways. But a small number of atheists have had enough and are calling bullshit. Some high-profile nonbelievers like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris have actually managed to pierce the protective force-field with which the media surrounds organized religion, and have been able to get their points across that religion should be open to criticism like any other human invention, and that it is in fact harmful and dangerous.

The result has been a wildly disproportionate backlash from conservatives and religious liberals alike. In this post I concern myself only with liberal responses, which are often not so liberal after all. For example, a Kos diarist wrote a plea for tolerance from atheists entitled, Atheists, get the fuck out of my face! She has since deleted the expletive, but I remain unimpressed by her claim for the moral high ground.

Meanwhile, many other people who should know better are frantically pushing the meme that anyone who refuses to apologize for lacking belief in a Sky Daddy is a fundamentalist atheist. The Buffington Ghost's R.J. Eskow seems to be the most single-minded and indefatigable in this campaign against fundy atheist strawmen, apparently thinking that weak arguments become stronger if repeated ad nauseum.

I love A.C. Grayling's response to this crusade:

What would a non-fundamentalist atheist be? Would he be someone who believed only somewhat that there are no supernatural entities in the universe - perhaps that there is only part of a god (a divine foot, say, or buttock)? Or that gods exist only some of the time - say, Wednesdays and Saturdays? (That would not be so strange: for many unthinking quasi-theists, a god exists only on Sundays.) Or might it be that a non-fundamentalist atheist is one who does not mind that other people hold profoundly false and primitive beliefs about the universe, on the basis of which they have spent centuries mass-murdering other people who do not hold exactly the same false and primitive beliefs as themselves - and still do?

On the other hand, it's disappointing to see a blogger I greatly respect diving into the fray with both feet in mouth. Maha derides Dawkins for not addressing the ideas of Spinoza, Tillich and other theologians:

The small part of religion he knows and writes about is not representative of the whole. He's like a really backward space alien who lands on the North Pole and assumes the whole planet is covered by ice. And, because he doesn't respect religion enough to study it, he remains willfully ignorant of it. This is, pure and simple, elective ignorance, which is the hallmark of a fanatic.

[...]

If Richard Dawkins wants to apply himself to a criticism of Tillich, or Spinoza, or Dogen, or any other religious teacher or thinker who doesn't fit the religion mold in his head, that's grand. But until he does, he's stuck at the level of claiming evolution can't be proved until someone finds the Missing Link.

Yeah, what a mistake to focus on what ordinary everyday Christians actually believe, instead of dissecting the learned theses of obscure theologians Joe Sixpack has never heard of!

As I see more and more of this backlash against outspoken atheists, one word keeps coming into my mind: uppity. How dare these unbelievers point out the emperor's nudity! Don't they know their place? We can laugh at them, deride them, call them evil and satanic, but they are required to give our religious beliefs uncritical respect and obeisance. So what if our beliefs are irrational, internally inconsistent, incoherent, and contradicted by reality - they're religious beliefs, therefore we get a special pass, and no-one has the right to hurt our feelings. Those atheists should be grateful we don't burn them at the stake for their impertinence, like we used to.

What are "fundamentalist" atheists doing anyway, that brings such wrath down on their heads? Are they forcibly converting people to atheism? Are they passing laws discriminating against religionists? Are they sending suicide bombers into churches? No, that's exclusively the province of the actual fundamentalists.

The only thing people like Dawkins are doing is speaking up and pointing out facts and evidence. That's what scientists do. If you don't like what you hear, too bad - the universe is not going to rearrange itself to conform to your ignorance. As the conservatives used to chant all the time, "you don't have the right not to be offended."

Look, religion is a human invention, and it is subject to critical examination just like any human construct. If you don't like Dawkins' arguments against religion, refute them - if you can. If you think you have an utterly damning argument against atheism, by all means speak it - although it'll probably be something I've heard and debunked a hundred times before.

But if you dismiss Dawkins out of hand as a "fundamentalist" and try to silence him, you are tacitly conceding defeat. You're admitting that religion can't stand on its own two feet, and needs bully-boy tactics to support it.

Also, I find it telling that many religionists use "fundamentalist" as an insult against Dawkins, Harris and the like. It's like creationists denouncing evolution as "just another religion." There seems to be a dim, probably subconscious recognition that religion is intellectually disreputable or at the very least on shaky ground.

You're going to hear a lot more home truths from uppity atheists over the next few years. Deal with it!