Atheist Diversionary Tactics: My Response
I just saw linked on Fark an article on some Christian Apologist website by some guy named R.C. Metcalf called Atheist Diversionary Tactics. In it, he snidely dismisses the current crop of books on Atheism as focusing too much on the nastier laws of Leviticus, attacking Christianity while ignoring the far-more dangerous Islam, and ignoring the demographic threat of the fast-breeding browner-skinned peoples of the Earth. Then he brings up Iraq for no clear reason.
Apparently, the original website once had a comments feature, but some of my ruder Atheist brethren got so annoying they turned off public comments. They instead put in a tiny tiny comment field that only lets you reply with about a paragraph and promised to read all comments and invite some of the more lucid responders to reply at length with an article to be published later on their site. As anyone who reads this blog knows (probably about three people including me, as with most blogs), brevity is not my strong suit. I'll find some other way to send this to them, but for now, I'm putting this up here. What follows is my response to Dr. Metcalf.
Your Article does touch on one of my own problems with many books on Atheism by my fellow Atheists. They spend too much time skewering the nastier bits of the Bible and historical atrocities such as the crusades and Spanish Inquisition. As Christians and others often point out, the vast majority of believers rightly reject the burning of witches and the stoning of Sabbath-breakers; and self-proclaimed atheists such as Stalin and Mao have compiled their own impressive body counts. Such historical muckraking by Atheists does have a point, as it is the dangers posed by people who take their theology a bit too seriously and literally (whether that theology is theistic or Marxist) that often makes us such angry atheists. But it is not what makes us Atheists in the first place. We are not Atheists because Christians or Muslims are often nasty people. We are Atheists because we believe that gods and the afterlife do not exist.
However, most believers are not actually all that conversant with the niceties of theology or the details of the historical evidence (or lack thereof) for the miracles and other theologically significant happenings of the Bible and Koran. Darn few Christians know anything at all about the Koran or the scriptures of any other faith. Atheist books making more detailed cases against the theology of Christianity and other faiths exist, but just as science books written in layman’s terms sell better than books that are dense with data and equations, books on atheism with more simplistic arguments sell better than ones aimed at a more specialist readership. And books that sell well are more likely to be discussed in the blogosphere.
Also, Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins in particular rightly point out that all those nasty bits in Leviticus are indeed still in the Bible. All those nasty bits in Sharia are still in the Koran. So long as “moderate” religious people still give lip-service to the idea that the Bible or the Koran, according to their affiliation, are the inerrant Word of God (or at least the Word of God and a generally-good guide to how to live a moral life), believers who actually read those books will come across those nasty bits, and a disturbing number of them will take them seriously. Christians who actually try to live out the nastier bits of the Bible may be limited to Fred Phelps and the Dominionist movement, but so long as Christianity and the Bible are with us, we will always have their ilk around to remind us what formal Christian scriptures really do say. So long as Islam is with us, we will always have believers who try to take the Koran as literally as the Koran itself demands they take it, with bloody consequences for the rest of us. Moderate religious sects, while posing little immediate danger to Atheists or other religious groups, are the incubators and protectors of extreme religious sects that pose a great danger to everyone.
After that one marginally good point, you bring up a pair of bad points.
First off, you complain that recent Atheist books tend to mostly pick on Christianity. This is due to the fact that people like Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins are writing in English for a Western Euro-American audience, an audience that is steeped in the Christian tradition. Other authors such as Aayan Hirsi Ali write with an Islamic audience in mind, and spend most of their time picking on Islam. Of the current crop of Atheist books, I confess that I have only read Dawkins’ The God Delusion, not the works of Harris, Dennett, Hitchens, or Ali. But at least in their speeches available on YouTube, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens do spend a good amount of time picking on Islam, particularly picking on Islamic terrorism and theocratic governments. Again, they arguably fall into the trap of complaining about bad acts by Muslims rather than about the existence of Allah or the truth of the revelations of Mohammed, but as I previously stated, they’re aiming their books at a general audience, not specialists.
Secondly, you harp on for several paragraphs about the demographic decline of Western nations and the population boom in the Islamic world. Such complaints by the likes of Pat Buchanan always make me distinctly uncomfortable, for they smell strongly of racism. At first, I thought it ironic that you were using what amounts to a Darwinian argument to oppose noted Darwinian Richard Dawkins and his ideological allies: “Religious people are reproducing more and threaten to outnumber Atheists, therefore Religious people are more fit in a Darwinian sense”. But I can’t recall a single instance in my experience of a prominent Atheist bemoaning the fact that we were being outbred by rival faiths. Perhaps they have but I don’t remember it, or perhaps Atheists aren’t quite so racist.
The west is in demographic decline not due to Atheism, but due to wealth, industrialization, and development. In a modern technological society, it makes Darwinian sense to have few children, but heavily invest in the education and well-being of each one. With their basic survival all but assured by modern healthcare, abundant food, and so forth, those investments are not likely to go to waste, and the children will be well-equipped to become wealthy themselves and attract high-quality mates. In a less technologically advanced society such as most of the Third World (or poorer areas of the First World, such as Muslim banlieues in France or black ghettoes in America), where basic survival is less assured, it makes more sense for parents to invest in quantity of children rather than quality. Many affluent religious groups in technologically-advanced societies such as the United States are also seeing a declining birthrate compared to previous levels.
Finally, you bring up the Iraq war for no clear reason. Like “New Atheist” author Christopher Hitchens, I personally support the War On Terror in general and the campaign in Iraq in particular. I have my own personal problems with some of the tactics and strategies chosen by our present political-military leadership in these struggles, but I agree that their aims are noble ones and I fervently hope for victory. My problems with their tactics and strategies are generally a complaint that we’re not doing enough, sending enough troops, or spending enough on reconstruction and propaganda (including raising the standard of living for ordinary Iraqis), to ensure victory in a reasonable timeframe. I bemoan the fact that many of my fellow atheists, apparently motivated by dislike for the overtly-religious rhetoric of President Bush in particular (and, for some of my European friends, for the too-heavily-religious United States in general), have an annoying knee-jerk reaction against the Iraq War and pretty much anything else that Bush and/or the United States have done in recent years.
In conclusion, while I agree in large part with at least one of your points, I think you misunderstand the current Atheist mindset. You also misunderstand your own fellow believers. I will always be fascinated by the gulf between the formal scriptures and doctrines of religious faiths on the one hand, and the actual beliefs of most ordinary believers on the other. Usually at least one of the two sets of beliefs is outright insane. And, just as you will rarely find two Democrats or two Republicans who are in complete agreement on all political issues, you will rarely find two Christians, two Muslims, or even two Atheists who are in complete agreement on all religious issues. And when you do, only one of them is actually thinking anything more profound than “I agree with him.”
Apparently, the original website once had a comments feature, but some of my ruder Atheist brethren got so annoying they turned off public comments. They instead put in a tiny tiny comment field that only lets you reply with about a paragraph and promised to read all comments and invite some of the more lucid responders to reply at length with an article to be published later on their site. As anyone who reads this blog knows (probably about three people including me, as with most blogs), brevity is not my strong suit. I'll find some other way to send this to them, but for now, I'm putting this up here. What follows is my response to Dr. Metcalf.
Your Article does touch on one of my own problems with many books on Atheism by my fellow Atheists. They spend too much time skewering the nastier bits of the Bible and historical atrocities such as the crusades and Spanish Inquisition. As Christians and others often point out, the vast majority of believers rightly reject the burning of witches and the stoning of Sabbath-breakers; and self-proclaimed atheists such as Stalin and Mao have compiled their own impressive body counts. Such historical muckraking by Atheists does have a point, as it is the dangers posed by people who take their theology a bit too seriously and literally (whether that theology is theistic or Marxist) that often makes us such angry atheists. But it is not what makes us Atheists in the first place. We are not Atheists because Christians or Muslims are often nasty people. We are Atheists because we believe that gods and the afterlife do not exist.
However, most believers are not actually all that conversant with the niceties of theology or the details of the historical evidence (or lack thereof) for the miracles and other theologically significant happenings of the Bible and Koran. Darn few Christians know anything at all about the Koran or the scriptures of any other faith. Atheist books making more detailed cases against the theology of Christianity and other faiths exist, but just as science books written in layman’s terms sell better than books that are dense with data and equations, books on atheism with more simplistic arguments sell better than ones aimed at a more specialist readership. And books that sell well are more likely to be discussed in the blogosphere.
Also, Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins in particular rightly point out that all those nasty bits in Leviticus are indeed still in the Bible. All those nasty bits in Sharia are still in the Koran. So long as “moderate” religious people still give lip-service to the idea that the Bible or the Koran, according to their affiliation, are the inerrant Word of God (or at least the Word of God and a generally-good guide to how to live a moral life), believers who actually read those books will come across those nasty bits, and a disturbing number of them will take them seriously. Christians who actually try to live out the nastier bits of the Bible may be limited to Fred Phelps and the Dominionist movement, but so long as Christianity and the Bible are with us, we will always have their ilk around to remind us what formal Christian scriptures really do say. So long as Islam is with us, we will always have believers who try to take the Koran as literally as the Koran itself demands they take it, with bloody consequences for the rest of us. Moderate religious sects, while posing little immediate danger to Atheists or other religious groups, are the incubators and protectors of extreme religious sects that pose a great danger to everyone.
After that one marginally good point, you bring up a pair of bad points.
First off, you complain that recent Atheist books tend to mostly pick on Christianity. This is due to the fact that people like Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins are writing in English for a Western Euro-American audience, an audience that is steeped in the Christian tradition. Other authors such as Aayan Hirsi Ali write with an Islamic audience in mind, and spend most of their time picking on Islam. Of the current crop of Atheist books, I confess that I have only read Dawkins’ The God Delusion, not the works of Harris, Dennett, Hitchens, or Ali. But at least in their speeches available on YouTube, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens do spend a good amount of time picking on Islam, particularly picking on Islamic terrorism and theocratic governments. Again, they arguably fall into the trap of complaining about bad acts by Muslims rather than about the existence of Allah or the truth of the revelations of Mohammed, but as I previously stated, they’re aiming their books at a general audience, not specialists.
Secondly, you harp on for several paragraphs about the demographic decline of Western nations and the population boom in the Islamic world. Such complaints by the likes of Pat Buchanan always make me distinctly uncomfortable, for they smell strongly of racism. At first, I thought it ironic that you were using what amounts to a Darwinian argument to oppose noted Darwinian Richard Dawkins and his ideological allies: “Religious people are reproducing more and threaten to outnumber Atheists, therefore Religious people are more fit in a Darwinian sense”. But I can’t recall a single instance in my experience of a prominent Atheist bemoaning the fact that we were being outbred by rival faiths. Perhaps they have but I don’t remember it, or perhaps Atheists aren’t quite so racist.
The west is in demographic decline not due to Atheism, but due to wealth, industrialization, and development. In a modern technological society, it makes Darwinian sense to have few children, but heavily invest in the education and well-being of each one. With their basic survival all but assured by modern healthcare, abundant food, and so forth, those investments are not likely to go to waste, and the children will be well-equipped to become wealthy themselves and attract high-quality mates. In a less technologically advanced society such as most of the Third World (or poorer areas of the First World, such as Muslim banlieues in France or black ghettoes in America), where basic survival is less assured, it makes more sense for parents to invest in quantity of children rather than quality. Many affluent religious groups in technologically-advanced societies such as the United States are also seeing a declining birthrate compared to previous levels.
Finally, you bring up the Iraq war for no clear reason. Like “New Atheist” author Christopher Hitchens, I personally support the War On Terror in general and the campaign in Iraq in particular. I have my own personal problems with some of the tactics and strategies chosen by our present political-military leadership in these struggles, but I agree that their aims are noble ones and I fervently hope for victory. My problems with their tactics and strategies are generally a complaint that we’re not doing enough, sending enough troops, or spending enough on reconstruction and propaganda (including raising the standard of living for ordinary Iraqis), to ensure victory in a reasonable timeframe. I bemoan the fact that many of my fellow atheists, apparently motivated by dislike for the overtly-religious rhetoric of President Bush in particular (and, for some of my European friends, for the too-heavily-religious United States in general), have an annoying knee-jerk reaction against the Iraq War and pretty much anything else that Bush and/or the United States have done in recent years.
In conclusion, while I agree in large part with at least one of your points, I think you misunderstand the current Atheist mindset. You also misunderstand your own fellow believers. I will always be fascinated by the gulf between the formal scriptures and doctrines of religious faiths on the one hand, and the actual beliefs of most ordinary believers on the other. Usually at least one of the two sets of beliefs is outright insane. And, just as you will rarely find two Democrats or two Republicans who are in complete agreement on all political issues, you will rarely find two Christians, two Muslims, or even two Atheists who are in complete agreement on all religious issues. And when you do, only one of them is actually thinking anything more profound than “I agree with him.”
Labels: Atheism
posted by Martin The Mess at 12:58 AM
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