Tags
Religious people: This post mentions the nonexistence of certain things the majority of religious people believe exist, such as God, an afterlife, the supernatural, and any nonhuman force that rewards good and punishes evil in the world. If your form of religion doesn’t believe in those things, that’s very nice for you and I’m not talking about you. If you are upset at the suggestion that these things don’t exist or that the majority of religious people do believe they exist, I suggest you look at Cute Roulette instead, because this post will not make you happy.
Today I would like to complain about the phenomenon of Asshole Atheists. Let me be clear here: when I talk about Asshole Atheists, I’m not talking about people who are loudly atheist. While some people have a tendency to consider you an asshole if you say, loudly and without caveats, that God doesn’t exist, I don’t think that’s true. Of course there are times in which it’s inappropriate to bring up the topic of God’s nonexistence, ranging from small talk to funerals. But
Signs that you are an asshole atheist: If your description of the deity involves the words “invisible,” “sky,” “daddy,” or “fairy.” If you make pedophile jokes about Catholic priests. If you appropriate the struggles of Christian queer people and Muslim women to prove that religion is always and everywhere terrible, without acknowledging the queer people and women who use their religion to defend their liberation. If you believe there is absolutely nothing good that religion has ever done ever, no good moral teachings in the Bible or Koran or Torah or Bhagavad Gita, no Dorothy Day or Oscar Romero or liberation theology (can you tell I’m an ex-Catholic?). If you describe religious people as stupid, blind, deluded, or sheep. You get the idea.
Some people seem terribly smug about being right about one thing. It makes me wonder if this is, in fact, the only thing they’ve ever gotten right in their whole lives.
Atheists are not necessarily any more right than other people. There are atheists who believe vaccines cause autism, homeopathy has any benefits other than the placebo effect, alien abductions happened, the stars control our destinies, alternative medicine is superior to regular medicine because it’s natural*, sexism is over, “I’m colorblind, I don’t see race,” mentally ill people are monsters, and if poor people just pulled themselves up by their bootstraps they would stop being poor. All of those things are factually wrong statements that huge numbers of atheists believe!
Religion is a result of the same cognitive biases that affect every human everywhere. Do you think you’re free from confirmation bias, you who get all your news from fifty people on Twitter who agree with you in every particular? Do you think you have never assigned a mind to something that doesn’t have a mind, you who constantly plead with your computer or your car when it isn’t working right? I’m sure you don’t believe in the Just World Fallacy, which means you’ve never said that with hard work and sacrifice anyone can get ahead, or that cheaters never prosper, or that if that horrible thing happened to someone they must have done something wrong to deserve it.
For, lo, all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of rationality.
And let’s be clear here: I’m not exempting myself from this. I’m wrong. I’m wrong a lot! I’m incredibly cognitively biased! I’m a regular victim of the planning fallacy, and reactance, and the unit bias, just to pick a few random examples. I have been wrong about things in the past (look through the NSWATM archives if you’re curious) and I am wrong about some things now. (Hell, I might even be wrong about some of the things I said were wrong up there.) I am on a lifelong quest to try to be less wrong about things.
The world is a million-question test. The problem with Asshole Atheists is that they look at the first question, bubble in “No” on “is there a God?”, lie back in their chairs, and are like “I got an A!” That’s very nice for you, getting the first question right. Now it’s time to deal with the rest of them.
*Some alternative medicine treatments have been shown to work for some illnesses; mindfulness meditation is actually part of the standard, evidence-based treatment for borderline personality disorder. In addition, it makes sense to take advantage of the placebo effect for certain illnesses, such as colds or mild depression or pain, and altmed may offer the best placebo effect with fewest side effects. Therefore it is not correct to state that alternative medicine is less effective than regular medicine in all circumstances.
Thing of Things 
While I agree with most of the specific criticisms, I object to the creation of an “asshole atheist” archetype. I’ve known atheists to refer to God as the “sky daddy” to appropriate the struggles of queer religious people, to say that religion has never done anything good, and to express colorblind ideology, but I’m not sure it’s all coming from the same people.
Most people are jerks about a few things, and it’s easy to conglomerate all the stuff you don’t like into a single class of “those assholes”. Most people are smug some of the time, but when you read the comments on the internet, it’s easy to think that the smug comments come from a single class of people who are smug all the time. I’m not convinced that this reflects the truth.
PS: I think referring to deities as “invisible” is totally defensible in most situations.
LikeLiked by 4 people
I’ve never noticed that there are more asshole atheists than asshole any-other-ists; fewer, if anything. I don’t disagree with this post, other than your choice of target, which I assume reflects the natural inclination to weed one’s own garden before starting on the neighbors’.
Whom would you single out as an asshole atheist?
LikeLiked by 1 person
I would also like an example of an actual human that you consider to be an asshole atheist. It’s easy to criticize these things in the abstract, but I think it’s much tougher to talk about real people in these terms.
LikeLike
I see no way that this would not result in Drama.
LikeLike
I don’t think such a human exists, because the OP pretty much describes a stereotype. You can probably find some atheists who sometimes behave in some of the ways described in the OP, but it would be very difficult (or even impossible) to find someone who behaves in all of these ways at all times.
LikeLike
I think that a lot of the ire that “asshole atheists” direct at religion is motivated the idea that religion is harmful and that people who engage in religious practice tend to be bad people who hurt others a lot. It’s similar to the way Asshole Social Justice people justify bullying others because they are “privileged oppressors.” If you can convince yourself your target deserves it it’s easier to bully people.
I used to be much more vocally nasty towards religion. What changed me was the realization that it usually wasn’t religion in and of itself that was harmful. Rather, it was that people with Authoritarian Personalities that are harmful, and religiousity happens to correlate with having an Authoritarian Personality. Religion in the absence of authoritarianism tends to just be a harmless delusion. And Authoritarian Personalities can be found in nonreligious venues (ie. communists, SJWs, etc).
I think spreading the idea that it is Authoritarianism, rather than belief in supernatural stuff, is the problem, could mitigate AA’s to some extent. At least it might convince some of the less extreme ones to be more civil.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Just because a person does something harmful, doesn’t mean he’s a Bad Person. I have friends who smoke, and they’re great people. I have friends who are religious, and they’re great people too. Sure, I wish my friends would stop smoking and having faith in things, but I’m not going to condemn them because they have failed to do so; nor am I going to pester them with anti-smoking and anti-faith leaflets at every opportunity.
LikeLiked by 4 people
Sure, but religions aren’t exactly agnostic as to whether you should be an authoritarian. Religions do influence people to hold certain value sets- that’s kinda their entire *thing*.
LikeLiked by 1 person
The fact that the authoritarian personality type wasn’t literally clubbed out of the gene pool back when we all lived in forager bands strikes me as fairly good evidence that it’s not responsible for all the ills of the world.
(It is, of course, possible that it was adaptive back in the EEA and only started being responsible for all the ills of the world when agriculture, or industrialization, or Tumblr came along, but that’s a specific enough scenario that I’d be suspicious of it as a post-hoc explanation.)
LikeLike
It’s not responsible for all the ills of the world, but I think that it is responsible for a lot of the problems religion has.
Furthermore, it’s quite possible that it is an individually adaptive trait that is harmful to the species as a whole, but spreads the genes of the individual who has it. It’s been hypothesized that Antisocial Personality Disorder is like this, perhaps Authoritarian personalities are as well.
It’s also possible that Authoritarianism is adaptive like Sickle Cell Anemia, maybe having moderate amounts of the trait results in a lawful and civil personality that is adaptive (like the malaria resistance in SEA), but having too much of the trait results in a destructive Authoritarian (like full-blown SEA).
LikeLiked by 3 people
“If you believe there is absolutely nothing good that religion has ever done ever, no good moral teachings in the Bible or Koran or Torah or Bhagavad Gita, no Dorothy Day or Oscar Romero or liberation theology”
You didn’t do this exactly yourself, but It seems kind of ridiculous to defend the merits of an ideology based on it doing some good things too. I mean, I’m sure Nazi Germany (Godwin, i know, I know) did many good things. They gave people healthcare, they stopped common murderers with law enforcement, they had a welfare system (charity!). And in many of those cases they probably would have justified what they were doing by appealing to the values of Nazism. Nazi German did many good things that were not a side effect or selfish benefit of the bad things they did. But that doesn’t make Nazism not pure evil.
So in an argument about the merits of religion people pointing out the existence of religious charity and religious human rights activism and such seems kind of silly. Shared values do not justify unshared values. And I’m fairly certain most of the people you are describing know about religious charity and stuff, they just see it as the ridiculous red herring that it is.
(Most of the other things you talk about are basically just ad-hominem style discourse).
Most theistic religions* are in kind of an odd position in that they are always, 100% of the time, monstrously evil to my value system, but in some cases (“liberal Christians” and such) it is in a way that is not very relevant to their follower’s actions. This is because they have different standards for what God vs mortals are allowed to do. I still think its probably corrosive to other values to believe things like that though, so not a good idea. (as long as they don’t have power over others though, I don’t care what people believe)
*theistic Satanism is the exception that immediately comes to mind.
LikeLiked by 3 people
As a theist with unusual religious views (animism and Sun worship, unaffiliated to any specific tradition), I am in complete agreement with your stance, as it applies to the Abrahamic religions, and presumably to many others (about which I know less).
I’d add one additional point: It’s not just a matter of unshared values, it’s that teaching that evil is good by authority is monstrous.
It is evil to torture and kill human beings for no reason other than that they dared to publicly disagree with you. It is far more evil to proclaim it good to do the same. But it is unspeakably evil, approaching (I would argue) the very boundaries of the evil that humanity is capable of, to say “I am given authority by God, whose will is the source and definition of what is righteous, an authority whose pronouncements you therefore must never question, and by that authority, I proclaim it good.”
And those who join themselves to that such an authority join themselves to its crimes. Écrasez l’Infâme!
theistic Satanism is the exception that immediately comes to mind.
I am curious as to the specific positions you are thinking of. I’m assuming that you’re not referring to Øystein Aarseth’s professed views, for example.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I enthusiastically agree with your main thrust, but since I’m an argumentative person, I’m going to push back on one thing I don’t agree with.
“If you appropriate the struggles of Christian queer people and Muslim women to prove that religion is always and everywhere terrible, without acknowledging the queer people and women who use their religion to defend their liberation.”
This is a variant of the Argument from Martin Luther King: “You can’t blame religion for racism, because abolition and civil rights were religions movements”. No. That doesn’t work, religion doesn’t get off that easy. The Abrahamic religions are massively culpable for racism and sexism. Let me say it precisely, so I am not misunderstood. The religions themselves, in their holy text and their doctrine, are culpable. Not all religious people. The argument from MLK doesn’t mitigate this culpability even a little bit.
First, from a Bayesian point of view, there is very little reason to believe attestations of religions faith from reformers in religious societies. If you are an atheist woman fighting for feminism in Egypt, would you come out as an atheist? Unless you’re also nearly suicidally courageous, I think not. If MLK had been a public atheist, would you even know his name? Just as only Nixon could go to China, only attested theists can form effective reform movements in religious societies. I’m not saying these reformers all atheists, I’m saying I have no idea what their true beliefs are, and neither does anyone else, aside from themselves.
Second, and this is really the point that the Argument from MLK was devised to doge; The reactionaries have always had the better theological argument. Especially when it comes to women. The old testament really does contain warrants for genocide, slavery, and a brutally misogynistic social order that even an modern day Egyptian would call extreme. The Koran is hardly better. We should not let people who claim to revere these texts forget it. Though I am happy to see a liberal, quasi-diestic, neutered form of religion thrive at the expense of the more reactionary and literalist sort; I have to say the reactionary form is the more logical and honest of the two. Liberal religion is a transparent rationalization. A duct-taping of modern values onto an ancient and wicked doctrine. It’s that doctrine that we must attack, and if we can do it without hurting their feelings, all the better, but it would have been a hell of a lot easier to do so if they had just become unitarians or buddhists or something.
LikeLiked by 7 people
I’m less certain than I used to be that reactionary theists are more devoted to the literal truth of the scripture than moderates. I keep coming across instances of reactionary theists saying and believing things that are not justified by the literal scripture, and in fact often require great leaps of logic in order to justify them. These include:
-The Taliban’s ban on music, justified by an obscure hadith of questionable authenticity.
-Christian fundamentalists’ use of the story of Onan to justify their opposition to masturbation, even though Onan was obviously punished for failing to do right by his brother and sister-in-law, not for sex without conception in and of itself.
-Christian fundamentalist’ talking about the Antichrist as some sort of supernatural evil monster, again not in the Bible. The word Antichrist seems to refer to people who are against Christ, not some kind of supernatural monster.
-Most descriptions of the Devil and how he acts, which are usually huge extrapolations from the little the Bible says about him.
It’s probable that reactionaries obey their literal scriptures slightly more frequently than moderates. But they take lots of ridiculous liberties too. I think the explanation for their behavior is that they are horrible people who hate happiness and fun, and are also paranoid about “evil” influences. It is their personalities that drive their behavior, if the scripture doesn’t justify them doing evil stuff they’ll rationalize just as much as the liberals and moderates.
LikeLiked by 4 people
I was kinda with you, but then you said this:
“I think the explanation for their behavior is that they are horrible people who hate happiness and fun”
In addition to being simply wrong on the facts, this is a profound breach of civility. It ought to be considered a normative error by all rationalists.
Do not dehumanize outgroups. Never Ever.
(on “normative error” https://anastomosed.wordpress.com/2012/01/07/the-culture-of-surgeons/ )
LikeLiked by 3 people
Yeah, “horrible people” was probably going to far. I would argue, however, that there is a strong streak of anhedonia in a lot of religious fundamentalism. There is a notion that happiness and fun is bad for you, or at least morally suspect. And I would also argue that this anhedonia drives some of their more creative interpretations of the scripture.
Of course, anhedonia is not limited to religious fundamentalists, you can find it elsewhere as well (SWERFs, for instance).
LikeLike
I do not think that is a reasonable description of anti-sex-work feminists; it seems to me like their arguments are rooted less in hating fun and more in a distrust that sex workers are indeed fully capable of consenting to sex work.
LikeLiked by 1 person
You know, I think I’d respect them better if they did just hate fun.
LikeLike
To be fair, much of what the fundamentalists believe about “the Antichrist” is derived from the depiction of the two Beasts in Revelation, rather than merely being wild extrapolation from the passages that use that word.
LikeLike
I’m not sure makes sense to hassle people about malevolent parts of parts of their holy texts that they’re ignoring.
You’re got people who, by social pressure and custom and probably personal preference, are *not* behaving badly, but are associated with something which recommends bad behavior. It’s possible that they’ve already solved the problem of what’s in the text.
It may work better to work in inculcating decent behavior (which I assume is what you really want) instead of trying to prevent relatively remote risks.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yes of course they are not behaving badly, but whether the religion recommends bad behavior is relevant to whether they are good because of their religion, or good despite their religion. Most Catholics are fine with abortion, but it’s legitimate to criticize Catholicism for being against abortion.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I’m actually really scared of criticizing the more negative parts of my religious friend’s religion, because I’m scared that if I convince them their religion says to do something awful, they might bite the bullet and do awful stuff instead of deconverting.
LikeLiked by 1 person
My problem with atheists appropriating queer Christian/Muslim struggles is perhaps different from Ozy’s. I find that some atheists use their struggles to score ideological points, and yet show a surprising lack of empathy for the people they’re using. It’s said that queer religious people brought it upon themselves, or that leaving religion is the only viable solution for them.
LikeLike
>“You can’t blame religion for racism, because abolition and civil rights were religions movements”. No. That doesn’t work, religion doesn’t get off that easy. The Abrahamic religions are massively culpable for racism and sexism. Let me say it precisely, so I am not misunderstood. The religions themselves, in their holy text and their doctrine, are culpable.
Citation kinda needed for this, mate.
Sexism, I can buy. Although, you know, the fact that almost every society ever found features something might be a clue that it has nothing to do with your political enemies in our small tribe – I can buy that they impeded attempts to move past it, and so are “culpable”. Fine.
But racism? That’s just … nonsense. I’m sorry, but there’s just no way you could say this without talking out of your ass.
Do you have the slightest idea what you’re talking about?
Christianity has been staunchly opposed to racism in all it’s forms since the beginning. The Catholic Church fought slavery and discrimination for centuries. The only forms of Christianity not opposed to slavery were specifically invented by Americans to justify it, and no-one else believed their tortured rationalizations for a moment. They butchered the text – even the parts that were about slavery, which are moderately horrible by modern standards – to support an institution that was completely unjustifiable.
Abolition and civil rights weren’t religious movements despite Christianity – they were based and founded on Christian theology; that all humans were created in the image of God and are intrinsically valuable, that everyone is equal in the eyes of God; that all men are brothers. How the hell can you not know this?
(Judaism, obviously, is firmly in favour of racism when it’s helping Jewish people; so we can definitely blame it for all that pro-Jewish discrimination that has caused so many atrocities in recent history. Oh … wait, no.)
Yeah, I’m a theist, I should have bugged off and watched Cute Roulette or whatever substitute still exists. Sue me. This is ridiculous.
LikeLike
I think a weaker version of the argument you’re attacking might be defensible. It goes something like this:
Sure, religion did not invent racism, nor is it uniquely culpable for propagating it (outside of some minority religions such as Mormonism or possibly Hinduism). However, religion can still be instrumental in propagating racism, because religion, and Western-style monotheism specifically, can be very easily adapted to propagate any meme, be it beneficial or harmful.
Religion places a very high value on faith, and deprecates the value of evidence. In practice, this has the effect of reinforcing the power of authority, and preemptively weakening (if not outright destroying) any possible intellectual opposition. For example, you say that “[Americans] butchered the text – even the parts that were about slavery, which are moderately horrible by modern standards – to support an institution that was completely unjustifiable”; however, from their point of view, they found the true meaning of the text at last, and it is you who is the heretic. Who is right ? There’s literally no way to answer that question, since the answer ultimately comes down to faith, and faith is a personal experience that cannot be adequately communicated. Meanwhile, the authoritarian structure of religion is working overtime to make sure that as many people are as piously racist as possible.
On the flip side, Christianity has been used to justify the fight for civil rights, as you said. This is a good thing, but once again, Christianity served as a useful tool that could be easily adapted for the purpose, and not as a primary motivator.
Overall, we’d be better off if we based our public policy on evidence, and not on what our religious leaders decide our faith dictates today — despite the fact that some religious leaders are using their powers for good.
LikeLike
You’re right, Bugmaster; that’s a pretty good argument, and one I take seriously. (Although I would argue that, insofar as this is true of religion, it’s true of any philosophy.)
It’s also precisely the opposite of the one I was replying to. though, isn’t it?
Lawrence was explicitly saying we should be focusing on the “true meaning of the text”, (as most religions would agree;) and that racists are the ones doing this, while anti-racists are twisting the text to suit their preexisting secular intuitions and are probably secret atheists themselves. Which is, y’know, the opposite of true.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’m gratified to see you concede the sexism issue.
I thought about it for a while, and while I still don’t agree with you, I think I need to downgrade my stridence on the race issue, at least for Christianity in particular. There’s explicit warrants for racial enslavement and genocide in the old testament. That simply cannot be denied. On the other hand the new testament certainly gives a motivated reasoner enough wiggle room to claim that stuff is pure history, non-applicable outside its context, etc. There’s also bits like the parable of the good samaritan that are explicitly morally universalist and therefore anti-racist. I could fall back on claims that religion goes hand in hand with tribalism, which goes hand in hand with racism, but that’s a different argument. In terms of pure scripture and doctrine, I’ll back down to saying Christianity is ambiguous between being good and being truly wretched on the race issue, depending on which parts you pay attention to.
Judaism is still totally on the hook for racism. Islam may not be but it makes up for it with theocracy and religious intolerance.
LikeLiked by 3 people
“Judaism is still totally on the hook for racism.”
Because, based on your outstanding scholarship and knowledge of Judaism, Judaism uses only the Old Testament and nothing else.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Details about Judaism and racism? The very idea of races was invented long after Judaism.
I picked up from The Curse of Ham that the idea that Ham (a son of Noah who was cursed with slavery) wasn’t originally imagined as black.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Jiro, I really don’t think I need to be a talmudic scholar to say what I’ve said. I’m well aware that there are liberal jews with oh-so-sophisticaed ways of explaining away everything despicable about their “holy” scripture. There are even muslims like that too! I’m glad they’ve got their explanations, but at the same time if they are going to keep calling despicable books holy, they can keep expecting people to point it out.
nancylebovitz: So the genocides in the old testament aren’t racist because “Amalekite” wasn’t a “race”? I kind of take your point that projecting modern assumptions on ancient text can distort its meaning, but whether kind of -ism you want to call it, it’s still just as bad.
LikeLiked by 2 people
In re Amalekites: As I understand it, the Amalekites were never wiped out. The ancient Jews were as compliant about that order as they were about everything else.
Generally speaking, I prefer an atrocity first framing. Bad things are bad because they’re bad, not primarily because they’re racist.
LikeLike
As a rhetorical strategy intended to convince your opponents, saying things like “flying resurrecting beard-man” is obviously highly ineffective – but there may be other reasons to say it. First, it tells your opponents that you’re not going to let them silence you – it’s the equivalent of baring your teeth. It’s undiplomatic, but sometimes undiplomatic solutions are called for. Second, there are people who are too afraid to speak up about being an atheist, or that it’s too outside the Overton Window for them to consider – maybe they’d lose more social capital than you by being outspoken, maybe they know that everyone would gang up on them if they voiced their thoughts, etc. This kind of attitude encourages them, as long as you don’t make yourself into too much of a pariah. Third, there are reasons for atheist groups to use this kind of rhetoric internally – it better displays the importance of fighting religion, and is also useful as a point of comparison for other false beliefs, e.g. “X is obviously nonsense, for the same reasons that the invisible sky fairy is.”
This strategy is still inferior to being outspoken and uncowed while being polite. But people aren’t going to have exactly the right amount of assertiveness, so the question is whether it’s better to err in the direction of slightly too much or too little. Given the current state of the world, I think erring in the direction of Asshole Atheism is the less bad of the two options.
LikeLiked by 3 people
“Third, there are reasons for atheist groups to use this kind of rhetoric internally – it better displays the importance of fighting religion, and is also useful as a point of comparison for other false beliefs, e.g. “X is obviously nonsense, for the same reasons that the invisible sky fairy is.””
(1) I don’t see how this rhetoric displays the importance of fighting religion any more than throwing around phrases like “aspie neckbeards” displays the importance of fighting misogyny.
(2) Aside from it being important to do fun things, I’m not sure that it is in fact important to fight “religion” as a broad category (is it important to fight unitarian universalists? quakers? Buddhist monks? ….why?), and I think that’s where I jump ship from this kind of thinking.
(3) Its use as a point of comparison isn’t clear to me…maybe a concrete example (rather than the placeholder “X”) would clarify things? In any case, I don’t get much mileage out of understanding what’s wrong with the “invisible sky fairy” versions of religious belief, since literally every religious person I’ve ever talked to seems to ascribe to more nuanced versions. (Obvious qualifier that this could be an artifact of my only talking to people about religion when I think they’ll have interesting things to say.)
You frame the issue in terms of too much or too little assertiveness, but personally–given the current state of the world–I think it’s better to err on the side of steelmanning rather than strawmanning. The “invisible sky fairy” rhetoric falls squarely into the latter camp.
LikeLiked by 1 person
“Invisible sky fairy” is shorthand for saying “the things that religion claims would be considered ridiculous in any context other than religion”. That consideration would not be similarly important in fighting misogyny, and the insult you describe is not about how ridiculous anti-SJW claims are anyway (and in fact is not about claims at all–it’s a way to avoid addressing claims, while “invisible sky fairy” is addressing claims).
LikeLiked by 2 people
In addition to what Jiro said, the biggest problem with “aspie neckbeard” in fighting misogyny is that it targets mostly people who are not misogynists. Calling it collateral damage is too generous, its clear that target was chosen not because of high local concentrations of misogyny but because of bigotry. I don’t think that they are analogous terms.
(not that I necessarily support sky fairy type rhetoric. I think it’s probably not very effective at fighting religion (ad hominems and strawmans ted to annoy me personally anyways regardless of the ideology in question, but that is separate from whether they are justified or not)).
I do think that it is important to fight belief in the afterlife even among “liberal” religious believers, because people believing in the afterlife is an obstacle to defeating aging.
LikeLiked by 3 people
This is probably just an expansion of your second point, but I’ve been told that atheists who are revolting against an authoritarian religious upbringing really want to be able to dump their rage– it’s something they weren’t allowed to say, and were told they weren’t allowed think. They’ve been told that the religion which abused them is the real religion, so it may take them a while to be able to calm down enough to see that the category of religion includes much milder variants than what they grew up with.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Jiro/Illuminati, your distinction between satirical(?) characterization of a claim and ad hominem is well taken. I didn’t mean to suggest that “neckbeard” and “invisible sky fairy” are the same kind of attack or equally unjustifiable; the main similarity I intended is that they both presuppose, rather than display, the importance of fighting anything. (Compare, e.g., “it is important to fight belief in the afterlife . . . because people believing in the afterlife is an obstacle to defeating aging,” which actually does make a display.) The analogy was apparently a bad way to convey that point.
“told that the religion which abused them is the real religion” Thanks Nancy, this seems about right.
LikeLike
Fourth, it can illustrate more accurately than anything else how descriptions of gods can sound to those who were raised without belief in any.
I was raised without belief in any gods, and when people pop up trying to convert me to religions, they often *do* sound to me like they’re asking me to up and believe in a “magic invisible sky daddy.” A magic invisible *abusive* sky daddy, on top of that.
I don’t mean this to be at all offensive. And I guess I can’t really ever understand how offensive it really is to believers, because I never was one. But it *is* an accurate portrayal of how they sound to me, and IMO that accuracy has value.
My guy’s family is very religious, and his sister’s husband converted in order to marry in. (I OTOH remained the evil atheist seductress who’d stolen their sweet little boy. ;)) This BIL advised me that I could “just let yourself want to believe” as he had, and then faith would come. I said, “But I don’t *want* to believe,” and I think I freaked him out a little. And gave him the opportunity or maybe even the obligation to write me off as evil: After all, I didn’t *want* to believe in the all-good!
But if I could have said what I wanted to say:
“But I don’t *want* to believe *in an invisible abusive sky daddy*”
–then maybe he could’ve
(a) understood *why* I didn’t want to believe, instead of being freaked out and writing me off as evil, and
(b) understood how his religion was coming off to me more generally, and maybe even
(c) come up with some explanation why his god was not in fact an “invisible abusive sky daddy” and communicated better with me; and maybe *even* (though I doubt it)
(d) come up with a way to convert me…
…but if honestly communicating how conversion attempts are coming off is “assholish” and out of bounds, then none of that can happen.
Note, again, I did *not* say that, and so I *was* written off as “just evil” for not wanting to believe.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Hey, 2 anecdotes replying to the same comment with the same experience on the same day! Internet high five, deconversion buddy!
LikeLike
Fourth, the sky fairy rhetoric can actually be effective for a small percentage of people. It helped me to deconvert, at least as I remember the experience. Taking an old idea and putting it into a new light helps encourage people to reevaluate it.
It conveyed a few different messages to me: A. “Supernatural” or “miraculous” explanations are literally the same thing as “magical” explanations. As almost all magical explanations are known to be false, this is evidence against supernatural ideas. B. It highlights the complexity of an explanation relying on God. When it comes to fairies, it seems natural to ask, for example, how they do their magic and why their magic is so often invisible. The comparison encourages using the same standards when thinking about deities. C. The idea that God lives in the sky is medieval and bizarre. We know he doesn’t, because we have telescopes. While this can be explained away, doing so requires encountering complexity penalties.
The “magic sky fairy” phrase is often found within hostile arguments. But I don’t think it’s intrinsically hostile. It can be used to make some legitimate points in a way memorable enough to be remembered, as it was used for me.
LikeLike
LikeLiked by 5 people
Wait – your Genius Leader wanted to encourage people to evaluate ideas not on “is this true?” but “will it cause me to gain or lose status?”
That’s not very rational, is it? I might personally believe that saying “Brown eyed people should pay double taxes” is a stupid idea (some of my own family have brown eyes, after all!) but if it’s a popular idea that will get me elected to the position of Grand High Panjandrum with adoring masses cheering me on – goodness, would that be an idea that would cause me to gain status? Maybe I should adopt it, then!
Honestly, what else did I expect from a man with apparently no conception of Beauty? At least eventually the penny dropped and he realised “Duh – creating gangs of Cool Kids who will be the class bullies by gatekeeping who is in and who is out based on assigning status is maybe not a good idea after all.”
LikeLike
…is it really necessary to say that someone who reads this blog has no conception of beauty?
I’m not going to ban you for this, but I will side-eye you heavily.
LikeLike
Eliezer is a good bit smarter than most people, but this doesn’t exempt him from needing to learn things. It isn’t all that common for people who engage in asshole atheism to give it up.
LikeLiked by 1 person
“Honestly, what else did I expect from a man with apparently no conception of Beauty? “
me: something something neurotypical supremacism
(I have no idea if Eliezer has a conception of beauty or not. I wouldn’t hold it against him though.)
LikeLike
Can’t we just be against assholes generally? Or are there certain assholes who are OK?
LikeLiked by 1 person
It may be necessary to be specific about assholish behavior. I think some asshole atheists believe they’re just telling truth to power and/or defending the human race from a serious menace.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I’m mixed on this position. On the one hand, being an arsehole to people who support Aztec human sacrifices (to pick a non-controversial) could be justified; both by the necessity of saving lives and as an emotional response to seeing someone you care about sacrificed.
On the other hand it’s too easy to say the outgroup automatically qualify as a valid target, so maybe it would be better overall if a blanket ban on arsehole behaviour is imposed.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Actually I think that the human sacrifices one is a great example of why NOT to be an arsehole about it. If your aim is to save people from sacrifice (or queer people from persecution, or women from FGM or whatever) you really need to think above all about what will WORK. Perhaps it would be more effective to say “If the great god Tlaloc requires you to burn and eat your own children just so it rains perhaps you need a more merciful god.” or “Are you sure you haven’t misunderstood the words of your holy book? It says here that god is forgiving.” Toning down the worst excesses of religion (and everything else) has worked quite well in the past, whereas pointing and laughing hardly ever works unless you’ve already won (in which case it’s just adding insult to injury).
LikeLiked by 4 people
I’m sort of amazed that there are 30+ comments and no one has linked to this yet. Asshole atheism is one of the actual examples used in the post.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Ozy: I suspect that most “asshole atheists” are “anti-theists” as described here: http://www.religionnews.com/2014/06/09/academic-activist-apatheist-kind-unbeliever/
It is difficult to be strongly partisan and remain charitable. It’s hard not be an asshole when one lacks intellectual charity for one’s ideological opponents.
I’ll quote the relevant text, “The Anti-Theist doesn’t just disbelieve religious claims but is actively, diametrically and categorically opposed to them and to the influence they have on the world. In the words of the researchers, the Anti-Theist “proactively and aggressively” asserts his or her view, challenging religious ideology as dangerous ignorance that harms human dignity and well-being, and tends to see individuals associated with religion as “backward and socially detrimental.” Many of the most prominent and well-known voices in modern atheism, including Christopher Hitchens, are best described as Anti-Theists. Even though they are often seen as the “typical” atheist, Anti-Theists made up only 14.8 percent of the nonbelievers in the survey — one in seven.”
LikeLiked by 2 people
The results described under “Nominal Comparison of Scales by Nonbelief Type” strengthens my suspicion that the “anti-theists” are over represented amongst “asshole atheists”
http://www.atheismresearch.com
LikeLike
Umm… doesn’t it seem kind of not new information that the people mocking religion will usually be the people morally opposed to it?
Something weird seem to be going on with the way people treat anti-theism. First off is that people tend to conflate “opposition to an ideology” with “wanting to ban or shame people with said ideology” but only when it comes to religion. If I wrote an angry article criticizing libertarian ideology, most people would interpret me as saying “libertarians should never be in power” rather than “we must arrest/execute/bully libertarians”. But with religion, people seem to confuse the two, so that people who angrily criticize religion are interpreted as wanting to hurt religious people somehow rather than wanting to remove religious influence from positions of power. I’m pretty anti-theist, but I don’t really care if someone is religious if they don’t have power over others in a way that could harm them. Similarly, I’m a socialist but I don’t care if people are libertarians as long as they don’t have power over others in a way that could harm them.
I think part of the issue is that with many religions (unlike libertarianism, but like sexism, homophobia, homeopathy, transphobia and general gender traditionalism***), “power over others in a way that could harm them” includes teaching their children their doctrines. I would argue that telling children they will be tortured for eternity for doubting the existence of God is a form of child abuse. People seem to react quite negatively when you try and tell them they can’t raise there children how they want.
Actually, religion tends to mess with issues of consent in a lot of ways. If someone wants a drink of soda, but the soda cup is poisoned, and you try and tell them and they don’t believe you, does it not seem like forcibly taking the cup from them is the right thing to do. They didn’t consent to drink poison, they consented to drink soda, they just lack information. Similarly, can someone who believes in the afterlife really consent to suicide? I mean, theoretically if they would also consent to cease existence at the same time they could, but that’s not going to be easy to determine. This applies to theoretical anti-aging tech as well, not taking it is jut another form of suicide. Should we actually just let people who believe in the afterlife unknowingly end their own existence? I wonder if this is the difference. Religion and secular ideologies both make empirical claims that others ideologies disagree with, but usually only when one (or both) of the ideologies in question is religious are those differences usually big enough in the right situations to justify intervening in someones “personal” life. (homeopathy is an exception that immediately comes to mind).
And I know a lot of people are going to say things along the line of “its not OK to intervene even if they are blatantly factually wrong in a way that means they didn’t actually consent and will be seriously harmed as a result”. But I don’t agree. Some other people will probably say giving any organization that much power over people is too dangerous. Maybe. Not entirely sure about that one.
***(this isn’t just a list of “ideologies I disagree with especially“. Teaching children racial supremacism, as long as they are the “right” race, does not seem like it would cause them excessive psychological harm, so isn’t on that list despite my viewing it as just as bad of an ideology.)
LikeLike
… I just realized I contradicted myself mid comment there. wow.
Amend “power over others” to include “have factual beliefs that cause them to harm themselves” I guess. Though I only think this is enough to justify intervention in extreme circumstances (ie. suicide)
LikeLike
…Actually it wasn’t entirely contradictory now that I think about it. I still don’t care what they believe, juts what they do.
LikeLike
ugghhh broken italics and sorry for comment spamming.
LikeLike
I agree it isn’t strange that those who mock religion are also morally opposed to religion. I don’t think either of the links I posted take a on stance on whether antitheists “[want] to ban or shame people with said ideology”. Both posts were descriptive, not normative. The second was explicitly so. (ctrl+f “Nominal Comparison of Scales by Nonbelief Type” on the second paged linked and read the paragraph that follows, for instance.) I do agree that there are people out in the world who make bad arguments about atheism. I’d argue this isn’t a problem unique to atheism.
Having said that, antitheists explicitly do attempt to shame the religious. One doesn’t have to read much Dawkins, Hitchens, or Harris to come across statements whose intent is partially or completely the shaming of those with religious beliefs. (While it can’t be laid at the feet of those particular New Atheists, the flying spaghetti monster is a good example of this.) Personally, this bothers me only to the extent that it worsens cultural divides that are societally harmful***.
Your poison example is a strange one. Religion’s risks don’t have the certainty of soda that is known to be poisoned. My personal suspicion is that some religions, while not *true*, actually have net utility for the religious and possibly the world. But let’s presume we have a God’s eye (heh) view of the world and religions are net negative. The data available to us do not support that the consequences are as grave, as certain, or as personal as poison. If the consequences are net negative, they are more like motorcycles than poison. That is to say, they are emotionally appealing, but net moderately dangerous to the user. Also, the consequences extend beyond the individual is ways that the consequences of poison do not.
As an aside, for problems that do reduce to the poison example, the moral thing to do probably is to (at a minimum, temporarily) take away their cup. As a society, we, in fact, do this. Read about medical capacity and legal competence if you are interested. Scott of slatestarcodex has occasionally discussed these issues in the context of his experience as a psych resident.
Religion is not poison. It is no worse than a fleet of motorcycles. (Personally, I don’t think it’s even that bad. I suspect it’s net positive with some nasty side effects. Perhaps like DDT.** Perhaps that isn’t a perfect analogy, but it’s better than poison at least. To be clear, my beliefs are provisional. I could be persuaded otherwise.)
I would further argue that anti-theism, itself, is a cognitively blinding meme. (Note: I’m arguing specifically about anti-theism as defined in the linked articles above, not the other mentioned types of atheism.)
Dawkins, for instance, doesn’t just believe religion is false. He believes that the consequences of religion are overwhelmingly net negative, a dangerous parasitic meme. This is a falsifiable idea. Indeed, there is enough evidence contrary to Dawkins’ supposition that reasonable people should consider that some religions under some circumstances may be net positive– at minimum for their believers and possibly the world in general. I’ve never seen Dawkins seriously engage with the literature that suggests that religiosity tracks with a variety of positive outcomes. (Life expectancy, happiness, and income in multiple American cohorts, for instance.)
(***That is to say, it bothers me quite a bit, but only to the extent that it is an instantiation of a more general societal problem. Read the work of Dan Kahan if you are curious. For instance: http://www.culturalcognition.net/blog/2014/3/4/a-nice-empirical-study-of-vaccine-risk-communication-and-an.html)
(**http://www.cdc.gov/malaria/about/history/elimination_us.html)
LikeLike
The soda and poison example was specifically about belief in an afterlife (without “suicide sends you to hell”, which some but not all afterlife religions have) plus suicide leading to a situation in which it is questionable that they can give any sort of informed consent to death because they don’t understand the consequences which are severe. I was not trying to say religion as whole is like letting someone drink poison, usually the effects are not so negative.
Really I think I ended up sounding like I was advocating something much more authoritarian then I was and was sort of confusing myself. With that specific example, I was essentially just saying that it seems like people who believe they will go to a heavenly afterlife should possibly not be able to consent legally to suicide, though now I worry that, with present tech, that might be a bad idea because precedents and slippery slope, plus it might end up doing more harm than good via religious people who would also rather cease to exist if there is enough of them, now that I think about it. Things get more complicated when anti-aging tech comes.
Ultimately I see religious beliefs as delusions like any other, and think religious beliefs should be treated roughly like any other delusion. Which means that you shouldn’t be an “asshole” to people who have them, Often the best thing to do with delusions is to NOT intervene, because even if it is causing them to act in ways un-optimal to their own desires, trying to force convert them or restrict them is just going to make them miserable. However there are certain extreme circumstances (homeopathy, suicide and afterlife, etc.) in which case the result of following their beliefs would lead to such great harm to themselves that intervention is justified. This is what the poison cup analogy is for (where as taking away their soda cup by force if its actually orange juice is definitely not worth it. Though simply trying to explain that its actually orange juice is fine. Similarly…).
(But when other people are involved (such as people’s children), then things become a whole lot more problematic. And while someone being delusional on their own is often harmless, I’m not sure I’d want them as president. And additionally there is the problem that widespread belief in an afterlife could slow/impare anti-aging research, which means propagandizing against religion is probably important.)
(BTW, the flying spaghetti monster was not originally intended to shame anyone, it was intended to mock the special consideration given to Abrahamic creationism in some American schools. Also I still feel like this issue is getting special treatment here- you hear kinds of similar attacks in secular arguments all the time, It’s odd that this is considered a special problem for anti-theism and not say, liberalism or conservatism).
LikeLike
Homeopathy? Really? The central case of homeopathy usage seems to me to be someone who has the flu taking some basically-water, which seems fundamentally harmless.
LikeLike
I like this angle and the connection to anti-aging research is strong. The suicide example might not be effective in discussions because most religions with an afterlife, as far as I know, tell you that it’s very bad to commit suicide (you’ll go to hell or something). So people are likely to get hung up about it or confused about how generally you intend for the argument to apply. (Is all religious belief like drinking poison? etc.)
Vaguely related: I know someone very well who I’m almost sure would have attempted suicide if they didn’t believe in reincarnation (they’re Buddhist). So I think it’s fair to say that they can’t consent to life. I’m in the awkward position of being glad about it even though I think that the belief is false and that people should be permitted to commit suicide under the right circumstances, but I guess that’s just a feature of generally bad things (false beliefs) not having 100% undesirable effects.
LikeLike
@Ozy
OK, homeopathy was probably the wrong word. I’m thinking of someone refusing to take life saving medicine because they believe in “natural cures” instead or something. Which honestly I’m not sure how often stuff like that happens.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Though now I wonder if keeping people who believe that death will not “delete” them alive against there will is going to make them miserable enough that it might be better to just let them do it. But if so, the corollary to that is that the stereotypical asylum patient who thinks that if they don’t kill themselves great harm will continuously come to people and becomes miserable when kept alive should be allowed to autoeuthanize. I’m not sure how to feel about this now.
LikeLike
@Ozymandias: That is probably the central case, but not the only one.
@Illuminati Initiate: But if so, the corollary to that is that the stereotypical asylum patient who thinks that if they don’t kill themselves great harm will continuously come to people and becomes miserable when kept alive should be allowed to autoeuthanize.
In general, anyone has the right to kill themselves for any reason they please. My life is my absolute property, else I am a slave, and is it not my right to dispose of my property as I wish?
Some circumstances might provide legitimate exceptions. Acute psychosis comes to mind. But if the condition is lasting, then it becomes irrelevant to the rights of the sufferer, which puts them back in the general condition.
LikeLiked by 1 person
That site seems like an argument in favor of the harmlessness of homeopathy, tbh, if the best examples a skeptic can come up with include a homeopath performing surgery they were not trained for, a person refusing to seek real medical care even when their homeopath begged, and an example from the nineteenth century.
LikeLike
@ozymandias: That site has a bad habit of throwing together essentially any examples they can find, but some of them are rather stronger, e.g.:
Jacqueline Alderslade: Died (asthma attack, 2001): A homeopath told her to give up her asthma medication. She later died of an asthma attack.
Lucille Craven: Died (untreated cancer, 2000): Lucille concealed the diagnosis of breast cancer from her family. She secretly consulted a naturopath and took homeopathic remedies. She also used quack treatments like blood irradiation. Her cancer raged out of control and she died.
Isabella Denley (Age: 13 months): Died (untreated epilepsy, 2002): Isabella was prescribed medications for her epilepsy. Instead of using them, her parents consulted an iridologist, an applied kinesiologist, a psychic and an osteopath. She was being treated purely with homeopathic medication when she died.
Paul Howie: Died (untreated cancer, 2003): A natural health therapist & homeopath told Paul and his wife that he would die if he used conventional medicine. The treatable tumor in his neck grew to the point where he died of suffocation.
Francesca “Chex” Linke: Died (untreated cancer, 1986): She rejected traditional treatments for her breast cancer, instead choosing homeopathy.
That takes us about halfway down the page; presumably there are more below.
LikeLike
Reblogged this on διά πέντε / dia pente and commented:
“The world is a million-question test. The problem with Asshole Atheists is that they look at the first question, bubble in “No” on “is there a God?”, lie back in their chairs, and are like “I got an A!” That’s very nice for you, getting the first question right. Now it’s time to deal with the rest of them.”
LikeLike
Pingback: Morning coffee 2015-01-07 – Caricature and the new atheism | Mangy Dog
Pingback: The Inestimable (and Also Really Cool and Interesting) Power of Concepts | Research to be Done
Pingback: Against Asshole Atheists | Back To Natural Order
I’ve since found another example– attacking Judaism on the grounds that it was invented by bronze age shepherds. Aside from the details that it was probably iron age and it was plausibly developed by educated people, the important thing about an idea is whether it’s true or not, not the tech level and occupations of the people who invented it.
LikeLike