Monday, June 23, 2008

George Carlin, 1937-2008

I was saddened to read this morning that comedian George Carlin has died. In my opinion, the greatest thing about Carlin was his appreciation for language and his Orwellian understanding of its distortion. His comedy was vulgar and irreverent, but it was always tinged with erudition. He was pretty much uneducated, but he had a far greater understanding of the world than most Americans.

Carlin was acerbically critical of the American political system and religion ("Three out of four people now believe in angels. What're you, fuckin' stupid?"). His assessment was insightful, and his explanation of how language is used to manipulate public opinion was as eloquent as that of George Orwell. He dismissed religion as mind control and had a similar view of the consumerism so pervasive in this country. Any form of orthodoxy or attempt to craft a "received reality" was suspect. Carlin ridiculed politically-correct euphemisms as ruthlessly as he attacked the owning class in America. He was a free-thinker and one hilarious motherfucker.

Some responsible YouTuber posted a piece from his most recent stage show about death:

Saturday, June 21, 2008

What if you're wrong about the Great Juju at the bottom of the sea?

I love this video of Richard Dawkins owning a theist:



This speaks to one of the early questions that drove me away from Christianity. How can I know that my religion, I asked myself, is true, when there is just as much evidence for all the other religions (that is, none)? This is a very important question that religious people need to ask themselves if they are at all concerned about being intellectually honest.

Monday, June 2, 2008

Why I am not fundamentalist

Over the past week I have witnessed a series of flame wars in the Religion and Theology forum at Democratic Underground, where I wasted an exceptional amount of time last month. For five or six successive days, people who don't know each other traded insults and fallacious arguments, diagnosed each other with various neuroses, and squabbled over who was the bigger crybaby. The protracted flamefest started over the suggestion, not unknown in those parts and rarely well-received, that atheism is a religion. Two posters, both themselves atheists, spent days antagonizing other atheists while proclaiming their good intentions. In all, it was an effective demonstration of one of the strongest criticisms of atheism (which nonetheless falls victim to the fallacy of suggesting that atheism is a unified movement, but I will address that shortly): many atheists have a vicious contrarian streak and need to feel superior to others. If there are no believers around, other atheists will do. I have gone through this stage at least once, so I am acutely aware of it in others.

I didn't see much to gain from getting involved, so abstained from the argument for the most part. One intercession that I made was to observe that there were three definitions of "fundamentalist atheism" at work. Generally speaking, a fundamentalist is a person who adheres to a strictly literal interpretation of a religious scripture. Since atheism is not itself a philosophy but merely the condition of lacking belief in a god or gods, there are no central tenets for atheists to adhere to. The term is generally applied to vocal atheists how don't feel obligated to show respect for the supernatural beliefs of others. Beyond that common thread, the term is amorphous and serves different users in different ways, shifting as necessary to apply to many thinkers and positions.

The variation of the definitions I encountered intrigued me. I delineated the them as follows:

1). A fundamentalist atheist is one who will not acknowledge that atheists such as Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot committed atrocities. Also,they dogmatically refuse to acknowledge that fundamentalist atheism exists.

I think the person who advanced this definition meant to say that fundamentalist atheists refuse to admit that Stalin et al. were motivated by their atheism in their atrocities, which is the usual construction of that particular meme. I don't think anyone, at least at DU, had ever claimed that Stalin's purges or the Cultural Revolution didn't happen, but I checked carefully, and that was indeed the accusation made by the poster in question.

I also like the catch-22 couched in the second half of this definition. All you have to do to be a fundie is claim that you are not a fundie. It's artful, if pedantry is considered an art (as it is on some Internet boards). The gist of this person's concept of fundamentalist atheists is that they refuse to accept any criticism of atheism and form a quasi-religious clique to reinforce their delusion. It is convenient for use against anyone who defends atheism against attack, because they seem to tacitly acknowledge that they are part of a larger movement.

2). A fundamentalist atheist stubbornly asserts that no benefit has come from religion and that religion must be eliminated, usually be violent means.

As Carl Sagan once said, "Also pretty vague, but, also pretty different." While there is some commonality between this definition and (1), namely the tendency to ignore evidence, the distinction here is that (2) treats atheism as a philosophy with a set doctrine about the destructive nature of religion, whereas (1) treats atheists as a cohesive group that defends its own members.

A major problem with (2) is that many of the people labeled "fundamentalist atheists," including Dawkins, et al., don't actually make that claim. In particular many of the atheists labeled as part of the "clique" on DU do not agree with this position. I read the claim many times that most of the atheists on that discussion board advocate putting the religious in mental institutions, but it was always unsubstantiated. One user posted a thread in that forum explaining how most atheists enjoy religious music, holidays, cathedral architecture, and so forth; the main advocate of (2) was shocked, shocked at the fact that most of the atheists on the board had positive things to say about religious culture. I'm not sure whether the incident changed his conception of "fundamentalist atheism."

There are people who can accurately be named "anti-theists," but I'm not sure Dawkins and his colleagues ascribe to that label. I would place the four so-called New Atheists on a continuum, starting with Christopher Hitchens, the most vituperative critic of religion, followed by Sam Harris, Dawkins, and Daniel Dennett, the most objective and scholarly. Both Hitchens and Harris are apologists for neoconservative foreign policy, arguing that Muslim fanatics are a unique threat to Western civilization which can only be eliminated by force. Their position is perhaps the origin of the misconception that many atheists advocate violence against the religious. Dennett and Dawkins are strongly critical of American imperialism and violent coercion of any kind. Not even all of these four consider violence justified; to impute that position to a majority of atheists is an egregious exaggeration.

3). Fundamentalist atheists are those who insist that the only proper reading of a religious text is a literal reading and that all believers must adhere to such an interpretation.

This definition cemented in my mind the notion that the three posters who provided the definitions were merely drawing them around grudges and appealing to past experiences on the board to provide content for the chimera that is fundamentalist atheism. (3) happily eschews the common factor between the two preceding definitions, effectively depriving all three of any credibility. The practice of denying counter-evidence is tellingly absent from this definition; if there was any legitimate basis for the term I would expect that to be a universal component.

I understand the argument which gives rise to this definition. It was in fact instrumental in my own transition away from belief in God. When I was a child I believed everything in the bible was the literal truth, but the Cosmo Kramer that is reality inevitably imposed itself on my little bubble. The stories of the Flood and the Creation are simply contrary to fact, and when I abandoned them I couldn't settle on a liberal interpretation of Christianity. The New Testament, with all its miracles, is no less fantastic than the Old Testament. Without the story
of the Fall, the Resurrection narrative doesn't make any sense. Once the Old Testament myths are suspect, the New Testament miracles must fall under the same scrutiny. If the miracles are discounted, what is the rational distinction that can be made to assert that some parts of the New Testament are historical, while others are mythical or allegorical? Any standard that might be applied to distinguish between the two is, as far as I can see, completely arbitrary. The only cohesive readings of the bible are a literalist view (which must contend with a mountain of evidence against its veracity) and an allegorical view.

The above reasoning is either misinterpreted by a believer or misapplied by a disbeliever to create the negative interactions of the kind which lead to (3). This seems a rather personalized definition of "fundamentalist atheism," but then, all three definitions seem highly personalized. Regardless of the definition, though, I only ever see the term used as a pejorative. It is applied as a catch-all for anyone who steps out of line and expresses their ideas about religion. There is only one fundamental of atheism: not believing in God. You don't even have to make the claim that God doesn't exist; all you have to do is refrain from making the claim that He does. There is no central atheist authority, and no foundational creed to subscribe to. Out of such a non-contiguous group, the "fundamentalist" label tends to fall upon anyone whose behavior is judged impertinent.