I feel compelled to write this as it appears to be free attack-atheists-day every day at DKos at the moment, which surprises me given the intent of a forum like this. If you post anything that can be interpreted as critical of the religious influence on something, in any way, it is instantly trolled by people haranguing you for intolerance. Somehow in this forum for discussing political ideas if one couches them in religious clothing then critique of them becomes verboten.
A top recommended diary yesterday by Irishwitch was interesting in that any defense of atheism by anyone in the comments section, or explanation of beliefs by an atheist was described as arrogant, or militant atheism.
I have to ask, what ARE atheists actually allowed to say ever?
I just want to give you my 2c on atheism and why we allow it to go on being marginalised like this at our peril.
And given that we should have, by now, been inoculated against Republican attempts to carve off groups of fellow travelers on the left to weaken our movement, shouldn't we be smarter than to let the religious right set the language and framing to do the same in matters they self-appoint as their domain?
[EDIT: gotta go get some work done - if i don't respond for the next few hours to anyone i am not being deliberately rude - apologies]
I know I run the gauntlet here. Religious themed diaries and comments are often heavily recommended regardless of substance, yet diaries or comments critical of religious influence tend to get heavily troll rated regardless (though throwing in a few anti-atheist comments is often a mitigator).
It is hardly like they are hordes of atheists burning books and forcing their views on everyone. Though this is the message of the Religious Right.
- It's no different to "the gays are out to get us".
- It's no different to "militant feminists are out to castrate all white men".
- Nor any of the usual racially motivated attacks.
The Religious Right does this - attacks with epithets it hopes are repeated to divide those that disagree.
It is the same as the Political Right. Attack standard bearers on the left and get other "moderates" on the "center-left" to join in the attack. You know the sort of thing "that Noam Chomsky/Michael Moore/DailyKos/MoveOn.org is extremist"... We've learned not to follow the dog whistle with political attempts at this but we still do it on the religious side - the beliefs of atheists are free targets for disparaging. The beliefs of atheists are constantly offended or insulted.
Atheists aren't violently forcing any agenda - militant is an epithet. How is it appropriate? There are no fundamentalist atheist - there is no fundamental dogma. Believe there are no gods. If presented with evidence to the contrary reconsider. That's it.
Atheism isn't the absence of any belief in anything, yet this is allowed to go unchallenged as the definition in the broad media - it is the specific belief there are no gods. It is the default position until someone introduces god into the discourse.
Atheism in our society, in which Christianity is poured on from an early age by default, is usually the result of a long process of thinking through an internally self consistent personal philosophy - coming to a morality that doesn't require carrots and sticks. This process leads to one being labeled arrogant - yet the arrogance of the monotheist in their belief that because they do base their actions on carrot and stick, on the dogma in a written text, on the interpretation of that text by an unelected (usually self-appointed) authority figure, they are the only ones with moral views is staggering and hugely offensive. It goes on every day.
Indeed, just the dominance of the acceptance of superstition in the public discourse is overwhelming - a couple of nights ago on the bay area news there was an article about a psychic defrauding someone of $500k to remove a curse... the anchor said the psychic gave good psychics a bad name... I am sorry? Good psychics? The ones that really do lift curses for money you mean? Am i taking crazy pills here? (Is that insulting to those that believe in psychic readings - probably - but when do we get to call a scam a scam... hell we cannot do it with scientology, though thankfully at least the Germans have some sense in this regard!)
While not all atheists are scientists or even particularly versed in science, the debate often gets leveled as science versus a religion - or rather usually science versus Christianity (or another specific religion). This is probably due to the vast majority of active working scientists holding non-theist beliefs.
But it's like comparing apples to oranges. Science isn't a set of beliefs and dogma like a religion (again to clarify - monotheistic religion, I know this is different for Buddhism). Science is merely a process for arriving at answers - it is a framework for questioning and challenging rather than just accepting. So to compare Christianity and science is like comparing apples to oranges.
Now, you could compare the principle of accepting written dogma, and the word of unelected authority figures versus a system of proposing falsifiable theories and testing them. Some people think one is a better way than the other to create a world view - fair enough - their prerogative. Once one has chosen a mechanism for arriving at the world view then one can debate the two worldviews, but ultimately they rest on those chosen foundations... the religious are usually not prepared to debate the foundations for the simple reason that when put in stark terms they don't tend to compare favourably in rigorous debate. The debate falls apart. Indeed it isn't a debate - just a statement that it is so because my book/imam/vicar/etc. says so.
Which is where sometimes atheists feel the need to point out that it is invalid to unquestioningly give equal weight to all views. We accept this in the political sphere don't we? In the political sphere we don't give equal weight to the views of those that think for example that one ethnic group or another should be persecuted nowadays (do we?)... the point being we understand that some views have greater weight when assessing validity than others. You wouldn't go to a doctor who held that all views of how to cure disease were equally valid regardless of the results of clinical trials.
But even then, you don't see or hear atheists on TV channels all day every day (i can always switch on TV and find someone espousing Christian beliefs - a televangelist or similar). In fact atheists don't tend to say much. You don't hear much. But every little you do - the occasional book for example - is slammed. Hard.
[And it is monotheists - you don't get the same rap from Hindus, Buddhists, Taoists, Confucianists etc. (didn't think i'd get it from Wiccans but IW disavowed me of that misconception).]
And again, if one attempts to explain or defend the beliefs one is just dismissed as arrogant or superior.
The latter I find an odd charge for anyone when talking personal philosophy - I mean, when you arrive at your belief system by any process of rational thought you obviously pick the set of beliefs you feel are superior to the others you considered, right? You don't think through X, Y and Z, recognize Z as superior then dismiss it and choose X... do you? I mean whether you are religious or not - you choose what you think is the superior explanation? If you don't you'll forever feel insecure and doubting of your beliefs because you will already know of at least one belief system that is superior in whatever way you figure that out... but I digress.
Atheists are accused of being offensive the moment they open their mouths - I guess because some feel that merely holding a belief in no gods is offensive. If it is merely about acting in ways that are offensive to someone else's belief system, well this happens every day for some atheists' beliefs. For starters (personally - not all atheists are offended by these):
- I feel that deliberately hampering the critical thinking skills of a pre-teenage child borders on child abuse
- I believe that having young women growing up believing they are inferior to men borders on child abuse
- I think that performing irreversible cosmetic surgery on an infant that permanently affects the performance of their genitalia, without any possibility of informed consent borders on child abuse
But you don't see Atheists banging down doors, protesting brises or shooting mohels. What is offensive to atheists is... well... tough. And yes it offends me to see women in Burkhas - the fundamental symbol of oppression and a woman's second-class status - the belief that if a woman is not "modest" then a man cannot be blamed for raping her (in a nutshell) is offensive to me. Seeing young girls go to school in headscarves as part of this belief system is offensive to me. Not to all atheists. To me.
Atheists are expected to graciously accept that they will be, throughout their lives, the subject of constant proselytizing - but god forbid (pun intended) one ever happens to say one disagrees with a belief put forward by a monotheist and lay out an atheist view instead.
I never disparaged the views of the little old ladies from the local mental hospital near my school, who I used to take to church on Sundays... it was a comfort to them, and I was happy to help them in such an infirm time of their lives when they had no-one else. I never lectured the poor at the little Catholic medical clinic, on the Guatamalan border I volunteered at, that if their religion wasn't so irresponsible as to prevent condom usage they'd be better off. (Nor the hypocrisy of allowing contraception as a matter of conscience as policy for the US, but holding a hard line in third world countries where the church's grip is tighter.) Switch roles in either of those situations and see if the Christian would hold back on proselytizing at my vulnerable moments.
Talking of which - I do sometimes wonder if many who profess faith have any understanding of the history of that faith - or the history of discussion surrounding it...
- In yesterday's discussion, someone stated something along the lines that religion and rational thought were antithetical and was shouted down as arrogant. He was merely paraphrasing Martin Luther "reason is the enemy of faith". This is hardly an arrogant atheist line but the stated view of one of Christianity's most influential clerics. Yet one cannot hold this up as something to discuss.
- Someone referenced other supernatural beings and was told they were insulting - yet that is at the heart of discussions of Descartes ontological argument for the existence of god for hundreds of years, an argument that had a lot of play in major religious circles.
- I found it mindboggling that these protestent churches all over american promoted Gibson's Catholic passion play, something (passion plays) that was one of the clear arguments Luther used against Catholicism
Atheists are often attacked with straw men arguments like - "so you are saying there is never any good to come of religion..."
It's a dumb line - of course a simplistic easily defined moral framework can have real benefits in a limited way... one great example being in this article here comparing the slums of Turkey with people of traditional Islamic faith in a fiercely secular society maintaining a poor but orderly simple existence - to the slums of West Africa riven by violence and disorder... that's clearly a good in this case, so far as I see it.
I know a lady who runs a clinic for the poor on the Guatamalan border that I volunteer at from time to time who is devout in her faith as are the nuns that work there... but she'd have been a good person regardless of her belief system - it isn't her faith that makes her good... though i have no doubt it provides her comfort. (Though the faith does make the nuns refuse to deal with the sexually transmitted diseases of sinners.)
...and when you say that you are often countered with "then if you are not ascribing the good to faith then the bad cannot be: - but that isn't true - because at the heart of it monotheistic religion - and it is almost always monotheism being referred to in the US when we talk religion in this way - is a good tool for hierarchical organizing of lots of people - it's good for rallying the mob - and the mob is always rallied by people with their own agendas... now you can blame the agenda not the religion - but the religion is what enables them to command such numbers of people to carry out atrocities... rampant unquestioning faith is not harmless
The point is the religious right likes to draw in others and say - you are one of us - look at those nasty atheists attacking us - when in reality many of those so drawn in have more in common in their belief system with the atheists than the fundamentalists.
Often fellow travelers such as pantheists and panexperientialists are carved off. People on DKOS should know better than to fall for this crap.
Oh - am i an atheist by the way?
Well, like most people for whom it is important to spend time thinking about such things, I suspect, the reality is that my own personal belief system would take a lot more time to discuss and explain... But I reject religious labels either way, by and large, as much as I reject political labels most of the time... everyone seems to have a different definition.
The problem with them is... well let's use an analogy...
I think there is a difference between how religious labels and political labels are used and understood in common debate, and how they actually REALLY are... and it is similar to the difference between file folders under Windows, and tags on websites... something can only be in one folder, and once in the folder policies and definitions are set at the folder level... but tags can be applied to many various items, items have multiple tags, and it is often the cloud of various tags that define an item, not one specific defining folder... and this lets you arrive at a more accurate description than force-fitting something to a pidgeonhole that is often defined differently by a third party than was ever initially intended.
For example, what a group of middle aged people at a vicarage tea party in home counties England think of as Christian, and what a Southern Baptist thinks of as Christian have only the scantest of resemblances.
The danger of the rise of fundamentalist religion is staggering - it is hardly surprising atheists occasionally speak out. It is a much bigger problem in this country than is allowed by the media. 20-30% of people hold fundamentalist Christian beliefs in the US compared to a handful of atheists that occasionally get the chance to have their say.
We're moving into a very dangerous time in the world - having people of fundamentalist faith with fingers on triggers is very nerve wracking for those without. It is not unreasonable that when people are basing their worldview, that will impact decisions of life and death, on a view that after one dies there's a better place to go to, so death ain't that bad anyway, one who doesn't hold those views might want to debate this before letting leaders move forward.
The threat of Peak Oil collapsing our society, the impact of climate change on mass migration... the coming stretched resources and massive dislocations of people - not just abroad but here at home are likely to lead to (by our own government's recent admission, sneaked out buried in a report released by stealth) a breakdown of the structures of society... let me say that again our own government's report on the potential impacts of Peak Oil suggests a risk of the complete breakdown of the structures of society - even without that, the financial meltdown, unstable wars, climate change induced population stress - into such vacuums stride demagogs...
Allowing the religious right to continue to marginalize those who derive their worldview from other avenues, to continue to allow the growth of superstition at the expense of reason... which is what you do when you ally with the religious right... is a very dangerous road to go down... and I doubt it leads to a place where many Kossacks would feel comfortable, regardless of whether or not they believe in God, or pity atheists for not feeling His presence.