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"Militant", "Fundamentalist", "Asshole" Atheists
Loren Michael
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Because the topic comes up all the damn time whenever I or anyone who shares some of my ideas posts anything.
A few comments about it, which provoked a discussion in another thread:
My final missive in that discussion is this, which was intended primarily for Evander, though I would suggest it to others who would like to have an informed discussion:
In addition though, it strikes me that "fundamentalist" is used as a way to pejoratively attack the man, an attempt to regulate and censor discussion by arbitrarily appealing to some notion of civility that applies to religion but not to politics or other schools of thought. Certainly, abortion debates can be filled with invective, and yet I'm not referred to as a fundamentalist in those contexts, even though I use exactly the same tone and arguments that I do in religion threads.
So, discuss. Fundamentalist atheists? I say they don't exist in any recognizable capacity. The people who are normally trotted out- authors like Sam Harris or Richard Dawkins, moviefolk like the guy who made The God who Wasn't There- I would say that they too aren't fundamentalist atheists. Merely outspoken ones. If "outspoken" is the same as "fundamentalist", then I'm hardly alone. There are a lot of fundamentalist feminists, fundamentalist liberals, and fundamentalist everything else all over the place.
A few comments about it, which provoked a discussion in another thread:
Evander wrote:Militant Atheists like yourself are no better than militant proslytizing Christians, who seek to force everyone to believe what they believe.
...
How are you any better than a Christian on a street corner yelling at people that they are going to hell?
What is wrong with letting people believe whatever they like?
My final missive in that discussion is this, which was intended primarily for Evander, though I would suggest it to others who would like to have an informed discussion:
Loren Michael wrote:Except you aren't merely telling people to question, because you both seem particularly bothered by an Agnostic like myself who does nothing BUT question dogma, including atheist dogma.
No. Technically, you could refer to me as an agnostic as well. I prefer "atheist" as I don't actually believe in god, but I'm not opposed to the concept as being a possibility. The only way I am bothered by agnostics is if they give undue credence to religious claims, or compare people such as myself to militants or fundamentalists or similar ideologies and faiths.No, you can rather easily find some orthodox Jews that believe some crazy shit about the world. I don't have a problem with Jews in the cultural identity sense, as I suspect you would identify yourself.Not all religions ignore science, by the way. I take particular offense at you implying that. You don't see Jews arguing for intelligent design. Jews either reconcile their beliefs with reality, or else choose to ignore reality personally, and let the rest of the world do what it likes.
In the religious sense, I only take issue so far as beliefs are actually held (or cover is given to other believers). I celebrate Christmas. Neither I nor my parents are Christian or believe in any form of god(s). I don't take any issue with observing traditions, so long as they aren't held in the face of reality, and so far as they aren't held above critical examination.I don't need to prove that no god exists. I never sought anything of the sort, or claimed anything of the sort. Frankly, this is the oldest and most retarded of arguments for the defensibility of faith, or attacks on atheism. Arguments like yours are why the counterpoint of the flying spaghetti monster has quickly become so clichéd.Honestly, what gets to me, is that you insist people need to prove God, and yet you can't prove a lack of God. Sure, you can pull out Occam's razor, and say that "probably" there is no God, and I'd agree, but you still can't prove that there is truely no God that exists. I would like people like you SO MUCH MORE if you just stopped pretending to be the holders of ultimate truth, which is EXCATLY where you are the same as militant Christians.
I'm not claiming to be the holder of any intellectual truth. I'm asking for intellectual honesty so that we might try in earnest to discern the truth as best we can. Your litany of strawmen and mischaracterizations and excuses is not conducive to such a goal, and your attacks on myself and Qingu earn you a big fuck you, asshole.
In addition though, it strikes me that "fundamentalist" is used as a way to pejoratively attack the man, an attempt to regulate and censor discussion by arbitrarily appealing to some notion of civility that applies to religion but not to politics or other schools of thought. Certainly, abortion debates can be filled with invective, and yet I'm not referred to as a fundamentalist in those contexts, even though I use exactly the same tone and arguments that I do in religion threads.
So, discuss. Fundamentalist atheists? I say they don't exist in any recognizable capacity. The people who are normally trotted out- authors like Sam Harris or Richard Dawkins, moviefolk like the guy who made The God who Wasn't There- I would say that they too aren't fundamentalist atheists. Merely outspoken ones. If "outspoken" is the same as "fundamentalist", then I'm hardly alone. There are a lot of fundamentalist feminists, fundamentalist liberals, and fundamentalist everything else all over the place.
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Right. And they're totally useless too. I mean, we all know that the only way to effect social progress is to sit down and shut the fuck up.
There is a middle ground, here. The fact that you don't seem to understand that is why you get labeled as a fundamentalist.
Grow thicker skin.
Okay. Demonstrate such a middle ground as applies to this argument, and give me an example from history in which a significant positive social change was effected without annoying anyone who disagreed with it.
Atheists don't have fundamental aspects of their religion to adhere to or worry about, so how could they have fundies?
You're right, most social change is annoying to those who disagree. However, there are levels of behavior, and your treatment of others that decide not only how people now view you, but those looking back also. Ghandi is a pretty good example of this. He didn't sit around spending his day harping on how right he was, and how stupid everyone else who disagreed with him was. He took action, but he did so with steadfast resolution, not with juvenile mudslinging or pious declarations of his superiority.
And Loren, it's not necessarily you. It's combined frustration with any number of people who are heavily outspoken and treat you like a lesser being because you have a faith. When considering how deeply many people hold their faiths, you should expect them to bite back.
I personally simply cannot be an atheist, though I do not identify with any particular religion. I have seen and experienced far too much, and it is far too personal for me to share with random strangers who I fully expect to spit on it as unworthy of their mighty "logic".
The existence of "extreme atheist" is not prevalent in our society for a number of reasons, I'm sure. First starting off from the fact there aren't many atheist to begin with. Then there is the whole nature of atheism and how it is different from a belief that is constantly trying to "prove" something.
1) Loren says something
2) Loren gets hit with strawman argument equating him to a religious fundamentalist and is therefore wrong (no evidence is ever given beyond an implicit "I think Loren is being an asshole so this is true")
3) Loren explains the difference between being a strong proponent of rationalism and telling people the world is six thousand years old and they'll go to hell if they're gay
4) Loren is either ignored or the other party says "even if it's not the same you're still an asshole and therefore wrong, QED"
5) Loren ends up making another thread because of the strawman arguments and ad hom arguments
6) Loren is mocked for being so sensitive
It seems to me that the problem isn't Loren being such a touchy guy, it's the people saying he's wrong for retarded reasons in virtually every topic concerning religion without backing it up at all
And with this: I do think he's right. The reasoning goes like this:
1) Religious fundamentalists are generally abrasive assholes
2) Religious fundamentalists are generally irrational and wrong
3) I think Loren is an abrasive asshole
4) "Loren is a fundamentalist atheist" (implicit "Loren is irrational and wrong" that isn't backed up exclusively because most people here would already agree that religious fundamentalists like Pat Robertson or Kent Hovind are irrational and wrong and are also fundamentalists)
As for civility that applies to religion but not other schools of thought, I think Douglas Adams had a pretty good quote about something like that, but I don't care enough to look it up at the moment
I'm just kind of annoyed that this cycle here keeps repeating itself with Loren getting shit every step of the way for no apparent reason
In other words you've applied your mind to the task and managed to completely misunderstand what being "atheist" actually means, and instead, like just about any other random idiot, defined it as another religious choice.
Bravo! You are the masses and thus never fear persecution!
A religious extremist are the crazy rude ones in my opinion.
But we should probably just agree that extremists suck.
Can we scream 'wooo' randomly and listen to terrible rock/rap music? Because that would be awesome. I mean, talk about taking long strides in toning down the annoyance.
I had a direct response to this which didn't make sense, but for some reason the point that I actually wanted to make was very fundamentally created by this paragraph so i'll preserve the quote. Thanks for the input, Acid, even if I seem to be using it as an example instead of responding to it as a conversation point, I don't intend to demean your addition in any way. I was thinking of ways in which atheists are occasionally dicks, and whether that dickery can be accurately described as fundamentalism. I've got two points for now. Anyone come up with others?
I)
Faith is anathema to logical debate. This does not mean that it's impossible to have a debate about issues related to faith or the nature of faith as a concept; it does mean that it's impossible to have a debate about an object of faith. You know, like God. Hence the soon-to-be-locked religion thread that has already returned to the issue of burdens of proof.
If you attempt to engage in debate over an object of faith, the only result is that a logical party will crow victory (meaninglessly) while an illogical party will... well, it's by definition impossible to tell what an illogical party will do. It's generally expected that their feelings will be hurt, at the least, and absolutely certain that no progress will be made.
And when feelings get hurt, especially over a topic that is as ingrained into personal identity as religion, there's a predictable, rational, totally justified resentment to the dick who's crowing away. But that guy isn't a fundamentalist. He's a dick who doesn't understand faith. Furthermore, Loren Michael, master of atheist dickery around here, doesn't even do this! Like most people with more than one brain cell rubbing together, he figured this shit out early on.
II)
There is a tendency among atheists... shit, there's a tendency among everyone to consider a class of people whose beliefs differ to be inferior. Lots of the stuff that is said in religion forums makes it seem like prominent atheists are dead guilty of this. They aren't (usually, at least).
There is an important distinction between "I think that religion is a detriment to society" and "I think that religious people are dumb olol". I haven't seen anyone make the second claim. If they have... well, fuck 'em. I'm not defending that.
This is the point that I think really gets people into trouble and marks them as "militant" "assholes" or (wtf?) "fundamentalists". It shouldn't be an issue. If we're going to try to convince people that secular society is superior to theistic society, we should at least be beating them at the "thinking everyone else is a non-person" game.
It, uh, shouldn't be a difficult game to beat them at. Please?
Your right, my vastly superior intellect has come to the conclusion that I cannot both believe in god and not believe in god at the same time. If this is not atheism, I would prefer you respond in a manner besides, "olol your so damn stupid" and not firmly classify yourself as an asshole, atheist or otherwise.
Frankly, Nescientist, I don't usually have a problem with Loren. He's a great debater, and tends to approach things very logically and with the aim of not pissing everyone off. But faith and logic are mutually exclusive to some extent. Or rather, faith and provability are, by definition, mutually exclusive. I have no reason to expect someone else to form their worldview around "my" personal experiences. I would simply prefer if others treated me with the same respect.
I have absolutely no objection to arguements as to wether or not organised religion, or any religion, is harmful to humanity. I simply see underlying errors that make the two sides impossible to reconcile at a middle ground because there can be no agreement on what exactly harmful means in this context. Which generally devolves the arguement into a more base attack on either religion itself or atheism itself, which helps nobody and probably drives mods nuts.
[Edit] The vastly superior intellect part is entirely sarcastic. [/Edit]
And yet, you don't feel the need to take your own advice when arguing for things you believe in. Hello, concern-trolling. What you just posted is basically a thinly-disguised STFU. I've seen it plenty of times, "if only you feminists/coloureds/lefties weren't so *shrill*...". Bullshit.
I'm berating you for thinking that atheist is a group with a mascot and not actually a label. I know plenty of atheists I don't like. I'm not going to run off and form New Atheism because those other atheists are just so wrong and we're going to do atheism our way and become a new US state during the great colonization. Because atheism is a term referring to a characteristic, not a set of beliefs.
If I had to talk about my beliefs, currently I'd call myself Utilitarian.
2. There is no way to put the atheist position (weak or strong) nicely. Anyone interested in claiming to have been insulted, or anyone looking to be insulted, can find it, simply because an atheist, by definition, thinks that any religious person is flat-out wrong about something fundamental to their identity.
3. Richard Dawkins is often criticized for claims he's never made, statements he hasn't made. "The God Delusion" is apparently some vitriolic screed no different from Jerry Falwell's worst...and I can't help but think that people who claim something like that haven't actually read the damn thing. Sam Harris might be a jerk, but I haven't read his works (yet) so I can't comment on them.
But I was thinking of atheism as a characteristic, and myself as a person who could never share in that characteristic and therefore label. Please note I don't equate organisation with belief, if you particularly need me to change my word usage so that it better meshes with your own... too bad. =P
Though I can see how my comment about not being a member of an organized religion could have mislead you. I merely meant that simply because I'm not in an organisation doesn't mean that I don't have beliefs.
[edit] Before anyone feels the need to read any more into my words than I meant, I never meant in any way to imply that atheism is a religion. It and religion are however mutually exclusive by all I've heard, meaning that to say I am one, atheist or religous, means by extension I am not the other. Therefore declaring it impossible to be an atheist because I have religious beliefs is not an assertion of it being a religion, merely an assertion that I fall one side of the equation and not the other.
XBL : lJesse Custerl | MWO: Jesse Custer | Best vid ever. | 2nd best vid ever.
Richard Dawkins is something of a jerk on the subject of religion, but I think he kind of deserves to be bitter.
Frankly, I do disagree with certain aspects of how Loren argues his points, but he and I have been over that enough, I think, that we don't have to go through it again.
Thank you for explaining you have no idea what atheism or agnosticism actually is.
Edit: Also logic.
I keep losing track.
Atheism is generally accepted to mean the lack of belief in God, though it can also refer to the positive belief that there is no God.
Agnosticism is the belief that knowledge of God is inherently unknowable, or that that no-one can claim to have certain knowledge of God.
Wikipedia has a couple of good articles.
I'll give it a shot. Agnosticism and Atheism are usually divided into "strong" and "weak" categories, and many add some additional qualifiers to Atheism that I"ll discuss (and are discussed in some depth in The God Delusion).
Weak Agnosticism is the belief that we do not know whether or not God exists, so our judgment on the matter must be deferred until we can know. A weak agnostic might claim that it is currently impossible to make any determination either way, but that such a determination might be made in the future, or that there is inconclusive evidence already existing either way. As an analogy, a weak agnostic is someone who doesn't know if it is raining outside and so won't conclude that it is or is not until he looks outside the window, only it may be very difficult or a long time before we can get to the window and look out. In short it is basically: I don't know.
Strong agnosticism is the belief that we can not know whether or not there is(are) a God(s); that an all power-god could always conceal his existence, and so we can never know beyond any doubt. A strong agnostic is someone locked in an inescapable box and so can never look out the window to see if it is raining. Strong agnosticism is also technically entirely correct with regard to "true knowledge", but this is not necessarily relevant as I'll get to in a moment. Basically, it is I can never know.
Weak atheism is just the statement: "I do not believe in gods." Strong atheism is the statement: "Gods do not exist."
Now, here's the clarification on Strong Atheism- it isn't actually "I know for absolute certainty gods do not exist." That would (even according to Dawkins!) be an unreasonable claim, since we can not have absolute certainty for anything other than mathematics and our own existence. It is therefore more accurate to state: "The gods almost certainly do not exist." Here is where we reconcile the problem of absolute truth and eliminate agnosticism as a good answer. God's existence can not be disproved, because by definition an omnipotent being could conceal its existence. But, I can reasonably conclude that given the complete lack of evidence for God, the many myriad of possibilities other than any particular God and the many logical problems inherent in the idea of God, that it is very probable he does not exist. So probable that to even mention it as a possibility becomes a waste of my time, and so I can say "God does not exist."
Agnosticism basically depends on the idea that God's existence and nonexistence are two equally possible realities, a 50/50 shot. Atheism is based on the idea that it is more like a 99.9999999999/.0000000001 shot.
One of Dawkin's points in The God Delusion is that we view agnosticism or "non-overlapping magisteria" positions as reasonable because of the prevalence and power religion holds over our society- that in effect, agnosticism is seen as a "reasonable compromise" out of politeness. It's a difficult jump for many to go right to Atheism, even though it is by far the most reasonable position to take, because we're uncomfortable with the idea of it for many reasons and face social stigma for accepting it in many places. There's no reason to just accept the idea that God's existence is a question unanswerable by science (as in Gould's NOMA theory), and Dawkins suggests we do so because religion gets special dispensation in our society. This is one of the major criticisms Dawkins has of faith- that it isn't allowed to be questioned, that this is seen as rude or demeaning to demand evidence or explanation behind religious devotion. Society exempts popular religions from skepticism, basically.
Agnosticism is, to Dawkins, more than just the simple statement about the impossibility of absolute truth- in reality almost all atheists are also strong agnostics, at least if they want to be intellectually honest- but he views adopting agnosticism as if it were opposed to atheism as a sort of cop-out, a retreat from making a definitive statement.
Absence of evidence is not proof of absence. This is true, but the agnostic goes further- he argues that without proof, no conclusion can be reached. Dawkins argues that while it is true that absence of evidence is not proof of absence, we do not demand such rigorous proof for a whole manner of things we accept (proofs are for math!), and that absence of evidence is evidence of absence, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence before we acknowledge their plausibility and that these two principles constitute sufficient evidence that we can make a conclusion, i.e., no god. We just have to accept that if God appears, we have to admit we were wrong.
I mean, if God showed up tomorrow, I would have absolutely no choice, once convinced it was really the big G, to believe in it.
In short, atheism is: I consider it very unlikely that god exists. Now, if you make the statement: I know God does not exist you are technically breaking the very rules of skepticism that makes god a poor hypothesis in the first place. There's a whole segment of The God Delusion on this kind of atheism and how Dawkins doesn't consider it rational.
Strong agnosticism suggests "I can never know." Dawkins basically suggests, "I can never know, but I can estimate likelihood and go with the most probable."
I'd have to say that although my religious beliefs are probably most similar to Loren's, in this debate I tend to agree with Evander.
FSM is a shitheel argument. Not only is it fundamentally logically flawed, not only is it a slippery slope argument along the lines of "gay marriage will lead to tree fucking!", but it also relies on ridiculing your audience in order to make your point. The FSM argument is an allegory for the current atheistic revival in this country. It is fueled by ridicule of the other side, haughty intellectual snobbery, undeserved self-righteousness, and many other qualities which unfortunately do resemble the qualities of the less desirable among the religious fundamentalists.
Atheism can be so much more palatable. Not just by shutting the fuck up, that isn't necessary. It can be outspoken. But it is so much more palatable when the rhetoric at least appears to acknowledge that the majority of the world, including a lot of really wonderful and brilliant people, are religious, and adopts some amount of humility for it's stance.
That being said, I've never particularly felt that Loren himself is the asshole type of atheist. He seems more in line with the palatable type I just described.
Also, thank you Prof. Phobos, that cleared up a lot of questions I had about definitions. I believe it's the politeness that's always gotten to me about agnosticism. I've met a few people who were agnostic because of their own beliefs, and a myriad who were agnostic only because they didn't want to offend.
EDIT: it's not an argument for why theism is stupid to me, it's purely an argument for why the above particular line of (non)reasoning is utter trash.
I agree completely. Then again, I've sort of a antichristian bias.
I mean, it's a weak reductio, and the absurdum that you're reductio-ing to is an FSM or a teapot or something, right? Well, such things are only "absurd" in contrast to the implicitly non-absurd traditional judeo-xian God concepts. So the argument sort of relies on the typical Christian concept of God being non-absurd in order to make its point.
Additionally, it misunderstands the "you can't disprove it" argument. The "you can't disprove it" argument isn't just the silly notion that anything which cannot be disproven ought to be given full credit. The "you can't disprove it" argument might more accurately be stated as "you can't disprove it, but you act as if you have disproven it" or "unless you have actual proof that I'm wrong, get out of my face and quit challenging my beliefs." FSM doesn't do a whole lot to counter either of those.
EDIT: Which is why when I see a bunch of atheists intellectually rallying around "YEAH YEAH FSM IN YOUR FACE" I just want to punch them all, even harder than I want to punch people who try to argue creationism because of a peanut butter jar or something.
I think the reason FSM is annoying is because, as a satire, it is intended to be annoying. Much like Swift's A Modest Proposal, it is not meant to be polite, but rather to inflame and provoke reaction. And in that regard, it seems quite successful.