In Praise of Toleration: Don't Be A Dick
Jul. 10th, 2011 08:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hawkwing_lbMuch shiny happy birthday today. Although, my people, it transpires we are the cliché of the lengthy pub philosophy discussion.
This is what happens when you put four classical archaeologists and a theology graduate at the same table. Particularly when two of us are socialists and one is an animal rights activist.
Riffing off the philosophy theme, I want to mention![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jennygadget's post from yesterday, The (Fucking) Tone Argument, in order to jump in a different direction.
If you haven't heard about the current kerfuffle over Movement Atheism's backlash towards some rather reasonable statements from Rebecca Watson, you've been missing the spectacle of Richard Dawkins making an arse of himself on the internet.jennygadget points out that in this case, Dawkins' choice to go from ridiculing Watson to making the tone argument on his own behalf is pretty damn ironic:
But that's not what I want to talk about.
This particular kerfuffle has had the effect of exposing me to the existence of atheism as a semi-organised movement. I'm an atheist, for various reasons which are (I have recently discovered) in the main quite neatly encapsulated in the text of Bertrand Russell's 1927 lecture, "Why I am not a Christian", but I emerged into atheism from a Catholic milieu through deductive reasoning,* not through exposure to the work of men like Dawkins, who have made themselves into Atheist Spokespeople to the Public-At-Large.
So you'll understand my quite reasonable surprise when I find that most of the spokespeople in semi-organised Movement Atheism are prepared to demonise and Other Islam and dehumanise its adherents at the drop of a hat.
All religions are bad and superstitious, say the Spokespeople of Movement Atheism, but Islam is particularly bad and superstitious, barbarous, cruel. P.Z. Myers is prepared to support the statement that:
I hope I'm not the only one to notice a logical fallacy here. I want to point something out. I want to underline it.
Violence against women is a cultural phenomenon, not a religious one. It is perfectly possible to be both Muslim and a feminist, just as it is perfectly possible to be both Christian and a feminist. It might not be possible to be a conservative member of either denomination and a feminist, but I challenge you to find me a secular conservative who is also down with these here radical ideas about gender equality.
(I'd also like to point out that Sunni Islam, lacking as it does an official organised hierarchical clergy, is potentially much more inherently democratic than a religion with a clergy that answers to, say, archbishops. Top-down appointed congregational leaders. Kings and queens and popes.)
I understand the impulse to blame religion for the vast majority of the world's ills, I really do. And likewise I understand the impulse to hold someone or something, somewhere, as the worst example of its type, which seems to be the function Islam serves for certain more vocal Atheist Spokespeoplemen.
But that impulse leads to conclusions that vastly oversimplify the truth. As self-professed rationalists and sceptics, Movement Atheists out themselves as hypocrites if they let their emotions rule their speech and their action. Calling out the Tone Argument (asjennygadget does) means acknowledging that it is sometimes really important to be angry. But it's also important to be right.
Dear Vocal Atheist Spokespeoplemen: A little more acknowledgement of the complexity engendered in the interconnectedness of Culture, Society, and Religion in future would be nice, k?
Addendum:
All of us, everywhere, are swimming in the swamp of our inherited prejudices, predispositions, and assumptions. And personally, I get really twitchy lately when people single out Islam for condemnation, rather than appreciating that throughout history, the dar al-Islam was far more likely to be home to toleration than was 'Christendom'.
Reaction and fundamentalism in modern Islam is, like reaction and fundamentalism in its sibling religions, a response located in a worldview wherein fear and insecurity loom largest. This phenomenon of insecurity is as much emotional as physical in countries with a high Human Development Index; as much physical as emotional in countries with a low HDI.
Fear makes people desire certainty. Reaction is the attempt to assert (or recreate) old certainties ever more stringently (and ever more violently) in the face of new challenges.
It was a poet from eleventh century Muslim Syria, Abu'l-'Ala' al-Ma'arri, who first coined the tag: The inhabitants of the earth are of two sorts: those with brains, but no religion, and those with religion, but no brains. In 1098, less than half a century after the poet's death, his hometown of Ma'arra was taken and sacked by crusading Christian knights. Murder and rapine were crowned with cannibalism: as Frankish chronicler Radulph of Caen later recorded, our troops boiled pagan adults in cooking-pots; they impaled children on spits and devoured them grilled.
Does religion qua religion have anything more to do with promoting good deeds or bad ones than providing people with an excuse one way or the other?**
I find myself strangely unconvinced that it does.
*The equivalent of a minor in biblical and theological studies only deepened my conviction that Pascal's wager is inherently flawed in the absence of a simple binary God/NoGod; that the universe is sufficiently vast and complex as to resist human understanding; and that my reasons for rejecting the competing truth-claims of the religions of revelation held good in the face of fairly strict examination.
**The argument that religion promotes ethics and morality has been made. In my view, living ethically without following the dictates of religion is quite possible. Utilitarian ethics is a minor philosophical field, or so I've heard. But it really boils down to Don't be a dick.
Post scriptum: I'm being wordy around here lately. I doubt I'll be able to keep it up, but there's something very satisfying about disgorging my opinions at length. (Possibly I'm just enjoying a surfeit of intellectual energy and ferment, brought on by reading such happy volumes as In Praise of Idleness and On Sparta.)
This is what happens when you put four classical archaeologists and a theology graduate at the same table. Particularly when two of us are socialists and one is an animal rights activist.
Riffing off the philosophy theme, I want to mention
jennygadget's post from yesterday, The (Fucking) Tone Argument, in order to jump in a different direction.If you haven't heard about the current kerfuffle over Movement Atheism's backlash towards some rather reasonable statements from Rebecca Watson, you've been missing the spectacle of Richard Dawkins making an arse of himself on the internet.
jennygadget points out that in this case, Dawkins' choice to go from ridiculing Watson to making the tone argument on his own behalf is pretty damn ironic:I’m going to note, simply because it amuses me in a darkly humorous sort of way, that Mr. Dawkins is not only asking us to explain why men do not have the right to ask women to fuck them, he is asking us to do so while not using the word “fuck.”
But that's not what I want to talk about.
This particular kerfuffle has had the effect of exposing me to the existence of atheism as a semi-organised movement. I'm an atheist, for various reasons which are (I have recently discovered) in the main quite neatly encapsulated in the text of Bertrand Russell's 1927 lecture, "Why I am not a Christian", but I emerged into atheism from a Catholic milieu through deductive reasoning,* not through exposure to the work of men like Dawkins, who have made themselves into Atheist Spokespeople to the Public-At-Large.
So you'll understand my quite reasonable surprise when I find that most of the spokespeople in semi-organised Movement Atheism are prepared to demonise and Other Islam and dehumanise its adherents at the drop of a hat.
All religions are bad and superstitious, say the Spokespeople of Movement Atheism, but Islam is particularly bad and superstitious, barbarous, cruel. P.Z. Myers is prepared to support the statement that:
there are much more serious abuses of women's rights around the world, and... Islam is a particularly horrendous offender. Women have their genitals mutilated, are beaten by husbands without recourse to legal redress, are stoned to death for adultery, are denied basic privileges like the right to drive or travel unescorted. These are far more serious problems than most American women face.
I hope I'm not the only one to notice a logical fallacy here. I want to point something out. I want to underline it.
Violence against women is a cultural phenomenon, not a religious one. It is perfectly possible to be both Muslim and a feminist, just as it is perfectly possible to be both Christian and a feminist. It might not be possible to be a conservative member of either denomination and a feminist, but I challenge you to find me a secular conservative who is also down with these here radical ideas about gender equality.
(I'd also like to point out that Sunni Islam, lacking as it does an official organised hierarchical clergy, is potentially much more inherently democratic than a religion with a clergy that answers to, say, archbishops. Top-down appointed congregational leaders. Kings and queens and popes.)
I understand the impulse to blame religion for the vast majority of the world's ills, I really do. And likewise I understand the impulse to hold someone or something, somewhere, as the worst example of its type, which seems to be the function Islam serves for certain more vocal Atheist Spokes
But that impulse leads to conclusions that vastly oversimplify the truth. As self-professed rationalists and sceptics, Movement Atheists out themselves as hypocrites if they let their emotions rule their speech and their action. Calling out the Tone Argument (as
jennygadget does) means acknowledging that it is sometimes really important to be angry. But it's also important to be right.Dear Vocal Atheist Spokes
Addendum:
All of us, everywhere, are swimming in the swamp of our inherited prejudices, predispositions, and assumptions. And personally, I get really twitchy lately when people single out Islam for condemnation, rather than appreciating that throughout history, the dar al-Islam was far more likely to be home to toleration than was 'Christendom'.
Reaction and fundamentalism in modern Islam is, like reaction and fundamentalism in its sibling religions, a response located in a worldview wherein fear and insecurity loom largest. This phenomenon of insecurity is as much emotional as physical in countries with a high Human Development Index; as much physical as emotional in countries with a low HDI.
Fear makes people desire certainty. Reaction is the attempt to assert (or recreate) old certainties ever more stringently (and ever more violently) in the face of new challenges.
It was a poet from eleventh century Muslim Syria, Abu'l-'Ala' al-Ma'arri, who first coined the tag: The inhabitants of the earth are of two sorts: those with brains, but no religion, and those with religion, but no brains. In 1098, less than half a century after the poet's death, his hometown of Ma'arra was taken and sacked by crusading Christian knights. Murder and rapine were crowned with cannibalism: as Frankish chronicler Radulph of Caen later recorded, our troops boiled pagan adults in cooking-pots; they impaled children on spits and devoured them grilled.
Does religion qua religion have anything more to do with promoting good deeds or bad ones than providing people with an excuse one way or the other?**
I find myself strangely unconvinced that it does.
*The equivalent of a minor in biblical and theological studies only deepened my conviction that Pascal's wager is inherently flawed in the absence of a simple binary God/NoGod; that the universe is sufficiently vast and complex as to resist human understanding; and that my reasons for rejecting the competing truth-claims of the religions of revelation held good in the face of fairly strict examination.
**The argument that religion promotes ethics and morality has been made. In my view, living ethically without following the dictates of religion is quite possible. Utilitarian ethics is a minor philosophical field, or so I've heard. But it really boils down to Don't be a dick.
Post scriptum: I'm being wordy around here lately. I doubt I'll be able to keep it up, but there's something very satisfying about disgorging my opinions at length. (Possibly I'm just enjoying a surfeit of intellectual energy and ferment, brought on by reading such happy volumes as In Praise of Idleness and On Sparta.)
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2011-07-10 09:52 pm (UTC)I don't think this can be said enough.
Also, I don't really see what Movement Atheists think they gain - other than feelings of superiority - by placing Islam into the same box that Christian Conservatives do. Seems to me that - similar to your reading of Pascal's Wager - acknowledging the variety within religions and accepting the goodness in relgions that are not yours is often an important step towards rejecting dogma.
no subject
Date: 2011-07-10 09:56 pm (UTC):P
no subject
Date: 2011-07-11 06:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-11 10:21 pm (UTC)