2.27.2015

Perhaps Mere Atheism Really is Sufficient For Some People

Anatomy of a Murder 2
By D. Wiberg at en.wikipedia

Following the murders of three young Muslims in Chapel Hill, NC, and the arrest of a suspect who appears to be an atheist, Neil Carter (Godless in Dixie) wrote a post in which he made a couple of interesting points which are sure to be controversial in some circles. First, Neil suggests that religious ideology should not be blamed for murders committed by religious zealots. Second, he says that atheists should "have an ongoing discussion about prejudice and bigotry within our ranks..." and should be part of groups that reinforce humanist values.

I think these points are worth some discussion. I recognize that people will hold different opinions on both of them. I think it would be great if we could acknowledge that differences of opinions - even of such important subjects - can be held without needing to condemn those who might hold different ones from our own.

Religious Ideology and Murder

Should religious ideology be blamed for murders committed by religious extremists, and if so, how much blame seems appropriate? Referring to the 1994 murder of a physician by Christian extremist Paul Hill, Neil writes:

You can argue that his ideology didn’t provide sufficient condemnation for retributive murder, and perhaps there’s some room for that discussion. But it’s simply not fair to lay the blame for his actions at the feet of his theology. Anyone who understands that ideology well knows that even for theonomists Jesus’s censure of retributive violence in the New Testament trumps that element within the Mosaic law. Hill should have understood that, but he didn’t. Was that the fault of his theological system? No, it was the result of a dysfunctional personality.

2.24.2015

Popularity and the Truth of a Belief

Logic probe
Logic probe (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In a recent post about belief, I mentioned that reality is not a popularity contest in the sense that a false belief does not somehow become less false because large numbers of people hold it. This is something with which I expect most atheists will be very familiar. If you are an atheist living in a country with a vast religious majority, the odds are good that you have been on the receiving end of this argumentum ad populum (appeal to the people) many times. "Of course Christianity is true! Just look how at how many Christians there are."

The notion that "this many people can't be wrong" is quite bizarre. History is replete with examples of a great many people being wrong about many important things for long periods of time. Most of us have little difficulty recognizing that denying women the vote was wrong and that the rationale used to do it was serious flawed. Most of us recognize that sexism, racism, anti-LGBT bigotry have led countless people to do awful things, but few of us hesitate to discard the justifications they offered as false. Almost everyone living today can spot many of the problems with slavery, and yet, there was a long period of time where this was a common practice justified with several false beliefs. The vast majority of people used to hold false beliefs about the nature of illness and how it should be treated. This did not make their beliefs any less false. You get the idea.

2.20.2015

10 Years of Atheist Revolution

Fireworks on the 75th. Golden Gate anniversary
By Mireia Garcia Bermejo (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Today is the 10 year anniversary of Atheist Revolution! I started Atheist Revolution on February 20, 2005, and it is almost impossible to wrap my head around the fact that I've been at it for 10 years now. I certainly did not expect it to last anywhere near that long when I started.

As I sit here trying to write this post, I am struck by the realization that I have absolutely no idea how to summarize the last 10 years. I'm not even convinced that I want to try to do so. Perhaps this is because I've been in a bit of a funk lately where I've found it difficult to find the inspiration to write. I have been extremely busy at work, and my desire to write usually dips when that happens. Or perhaps it has more to do with the fact that it does not feel like it has been anywhere close to 10 years. In any case, I can't help thinking that I am not the same person I was 10 years ago. Maybe it makes sense to focus on that and see what comes.

Roots of the Revolution

Prior to 2005, I was aware of only a handful of active atheist blogs. After reading them for awhile and realizing how much I enjoyed them, I found myself thinking about adding my voice to the mix. The problem was, I had no idea how to start a blog and even less of an idea about what sort of voice I wanted to have. The bloggers I read at the time seemed to be so sure of themselves. They had strong opinions and expressed them with consistent voices. I wasn't always sure how I felt about some of the topics they addressed, and I was ambivalent about pretending otherwise. I decided that I wasn't ready to start a blog and set the idea aside for awhile.

2.19.2015

Mob Justice Should Make Atheists Nervous

Zola sortie
By Henry de Groux (http://expositions.bnf.fr/zola/grand/z264.htm) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Every individual has a right to express his or her opinion. I would assume that we can all agree with this statement. It seems rather uncontroversial, doesn't it? We can recognize one's right to express an opinion without having to like the opinion he or she expresses. In fact, most of us probably recognize that the point of having a right to free expression is to protect the expression of unpopular ideas.

Those of us who are atheists living in thoroughly religious cultures generally seem to recognize that if any group of people would be denied the right to express unpopular opinions, we would be among the first to be denied this right. If anybody is going to have their right to free expression limited, it is likely to be us. Thus, it makes sense that those of us who identify as atheists, humanists, secularists, and/or freethinkers might be a bit more sensitive to the importance of free expression than some others. One could even argue, as I have, that we are in a good position to take the lead on defending free expression.

2.17.2015

Islamic Extremism and Freedom of Speech

I'm inclined to agree with this post by Sean McGuire (My Secret Atheist Blog). Freedom of speech does apply to forms of speech we do not like, including that which comes from Imams who oppose democracy, civil rights, and other Western values in the name of Islam. I have written about how the real test of someone's commitment to free speech is not speech with which they agree but speech they find reprehensible. Much of what Hamza Chaoui fits that description for me. But like Sean notes, Chaoui has the right to express his views. And I agree that having them out in the open where they can be rebutted is preferable to alternative like trying to suppress them through legal sanctions.

Of course, none of this means that I particularly enjoy the prospect of defending Chaoui's speech or that I do not struggle with doing so. I don't like it one bit. I view it as necessary even though I feel a certain amount of revulsion at the same time. This sort of inner conflict is one of those important reminders that defending the freedom of speech is rarely easy. Then again, I guess most important rights are not easy to preserve.

2.12.2015

The Appeal of Christian Hell

Domenico Beccafumi's Inferno: a Christian visi...
Domenico Beccafumi's Inferno: a Christian vision of hell (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
When atheists discuss the concepts of afterlife that feature so prominently into most varieties of Christianity, we tend to focus on the notion of eternal life and heaven. We recognize that a fear of death is common, and it is rather easy for us to comprehend a desire to live on. Those of us who have lost people close to us also understand the appeal of a heaven where we are reunited with our loved ones. It is obvious why these ideas would appeal to many people, and we can see the role that wish fulfillment plays in faith when we consider them. In short, many people believe in souls, an afterlife, and heaven because they desperately want these things to be real. This pull, combined with early indoctrination and/or cultural pressures go a long way toward explaining their popularity.

Of course, atheists are also fond of discussing Christian conceptions of hell and highlighting their disturbing implications for morality. We like to note how doing good works or believing certain things to avoid punishment is not a terribly sophisticated form of moral behavior, certainly not one to which one should aspire. We also like to point out the cruelty inherent in eternal torture, especially for a "crime" as trivial as not accepting a fictional entity as one's "savior." We ask what this says about the character of this particular god. And we love to comment on how some Christians seem to delight in the prospect of people they don't like burning for all eternity. It is almost as if their god has the same prejudices they do and is every bit as vengeful and petty!

2.04.2015

Disclosing One's Identity: Atheist or Christian

Dancing after Masters of Lindy Hop and Tap 2009 07
Photo by Joe Mabel, via Wikimedia Commons

At a party, you meet someone for the first time. You know nothing about her except her name and what little you can infer from her appearance and attire. She appears to be a woman of approximately your age. She looks fit, is dressed appropriately for the setting, and you find her at least somewhat attractive. But aside from her name (which she has just told you), these few observations about her appearance, and the fact that her presence at this party suggests that she probably knows someone here, you don't know anything about her. Right after she tells you her name, she informs you that she is a Christian.

If we assume that you live in the United States or another country where the overwhelming majority of the population is Christian, I'd suggest that you still don't know much more about this woman than you did before she told you she was a Christian. You don't know whether she is more or less intelligent than you did before she told you she was Christian. You don't know whether she is a morally better or worse person than you did before she told you she was Christian. She might as well have said, "I'm just like everyone else." Aside from whatever you want to make of how early in the conversation she disclosed her Christianity, you still know next to nothing about her. I suspect that most atheists would agree with this and that most Christians would not. Many Christians would be inclined to say that learning that the woman was Christian made it more likely that she was a good person.

2.02.2015

Taking the Lead on Defending Freedom of Speech

English: Free Speech. Luis Ricardo cartoon Esp...
Free Speech. Luis Ricardo cartoon (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I wrote in a previous post that I thought those of us who are secularists, freethinkers, skeptics, and/or atheists need to take the lead on defending free speech from those who attack it, regardless of where along the political spectrum they may be found. I noted that we have been good in doing this when the threats come from the political right and poor when they come from the political left. In this post, I'll try to unpack what I meant a bit and offer some speculation about what it might look like to take the lead on defending the freedom of speech.

Before doing so, it is necessary to address a minor error in this previous post. I realize it may not strike some readers as worth addressing, but I think it has some important implications, and I'd like to be as accurate as I can. In the previous post, I wrote:

I believe that we secularists, freethinkers, skeptics, and atheists need to take the lead on defending free speech from those who attack it from both the right and left ends of the political spectrum.
That last "and" really should have been an "or" or "and/or." Otherwise, I would have been talking about a very small group of people. There are plenty of atheists who are not skeptics or freethinkers, plenty of secularists who are not atheists, and so on. I think that any of us who truly value secularism, freethought, skepticism, and/or atheism should be interested in defending the many threats to free speech. This is so important that we need all hands on deck.