First of all, I refrain from mentioning any names or organizations that can properly be called atheistically thick-headed. They know who they are. I’ve named them before, without salvific effect. They are proud of who they are. They like their atheism short, sweet, rude, and raw. If they get on people’s nerves, that’s okay because religion gets on their nerves.
Who can disagree? The standard cable network service, before they cut you off entirely when you haven’t paid the bill, leaves you with what for your viewing pleasure? At the mercy of 24-7 infomercial stations and Mother Angelica, in a loop with her Ninety Nasal Nuns, saying the rosary. You have a choice between a guy who wants to sell you a pulverizer for fruits and veg for $19.98 with six special blades not available in stores order now!, and Jimmy Swaggart (still here after all these years) offering his four-volume study series on the Cross of Christ usually $40 a volume but purchase today for only $60 for all four order now! Tell me the truth, if you can’t pay to see movies on HBO, are you really going to make yourself feel better by buying a pulverizer from an aging fitness freak or a set of books from a self-ordained, perpetually repentant Louisiana preacherman?
No, clearly, the Time Warners and Road Runners of this great nation keep these things on to punish us. They know that nothing will get you to fork over that extra $75 bucks or run your new low-limit credit card right up to the brink like having to listen to that 100th Hail Mary or hear the guy selling the snake oil for osteoarthritis mispronouncing the word osteoarthritis.
I don’t blame the atheist tribe for hating this stuff. I hate it. Everyone I know hates it. My European friends when they visit cannot believe that America is not a suburb of the Philippines, so pure is our devotion to crap products and crappy religion.
But therein lies the problem. Too many atheists assume two false things. First, that their sense of outrage is unique, a more refined version of contempt than a “religious” believer is likely to have when they look at the obnoxious underbelly of American religion. Second, they assume that the best way to deal with the problem is to harpoon all religion, because religion is a ROBOT: Really One Big Offensive Thing.
Stereotyping is a part of being human, of course. A Canadian friend of mine (who meant well) once said, over a third pint at a Cowley pub, “I really hate Americans, but you’re ok.” We were sitting among British friends, and they nodded in agreement. I was pleased, kind of, with the verdict on my amiability, but I was obliged to say, “Well, you might be surprised to know that I’m not really fond of Americans either–but there are one or two others besides me you might like.” An Australian law student sitting across the table, on his fourth said, “You’re all fuckin’ septics as far as I can tell.” (For any readers not familiar with this patois, it’s short for septic tank.) Short, sweet, rude, and raw.
I think the atheist dickhead phenomenon is about at this level of discussion right now. It’s no longer about God, it’s about “others.” It’s about the purity of your unbelief, measured not against any philosophical standard or line of argument but about finding religious believers septic and converting polite unbelievers to the more radical view that religion runs from noxious to poisonous, not from good to bad. It’s also about your solidarity with others who share your radical unbelief and how you measure the attitudes and intentions of other members of the tribe.
Religion (the custom of the group provides) is the first resort of dimwits and moral weaklings, helped along its mossy path by bad science, superstition, and useless doctrines, practices, and social customs.
I suggested a few months ago that this level of full-frontal atheism needs to be assessed by an empirical standard–by how many things you don’tbelieve about God. Jewish atheists and ex-Muslims would come out relatively badly, as not believing anything about only one God; ex-Catholics slightly better as not believing anything ever taught about the Trinity; and Hindus would be way out in front with their rejection of 330 million gods and avatars.
What some people, even me, occasionally, are calling “atheist fundamentalists” really ought to be called atheist tribalists. And just like people from small countries find it irresistible to think that all citizens of big countries are obnoxious, atheists being a small clutch of people sharing a common intellectual position, more or less, find the sheer size of the world’s religious population an argument against it. It springs from a natural sense (by the way, one I don’t entirely reject) that this many people can’t be right. –The flipside of a standard argument that would be persuasive if the world’s faiths used one number for all beliefs: that so many right-headed people can’t be wrong.
But it ignores the fact that many of the groups and subgroups that constitute this highly artificial category called religion don’t agree with each other, and are just as miserable as atheists when they see religions behaving badly.
Anyone who has ever lived in a “foreign” country and tried to seem a “little less foreign” will know what I mean about the semiotics of embarrassment: Nothing embarrasses a British-educated Pakistani more than his cousin who wasn’t. Nothing embarrassed the third generation of acculturated Americans more than their first-generation Slovak grandparents. Nothing embarrasses a clever, well-spoken, moderately-religious woman more than the excesses of her own faith. Atheists have the luxury of using hasty generalization as a mode of analysis rather than calling it out as a fallacy. Smart religious people are forced to be discriminate in their approach to religion. Perhaps that’s why atheists can afford to be irresponsible and so rude to believers: they don’t have to pick up after themselves.
Having God is really like having a lot of money and a grating accent. When American soldiers first arrived in great numbers in England in 1942, the famous quip about them was that they were “Over-paid, oversexed and over here.” They could “afford” things, had better teeth, but talked too loud and laughed too easily. The idea that there were millions and millions more just like them across the wide sea was not cheering to sober people in villages like Upper Heyford and Mildenhall, who had never seen an example of the species before.
In fact, most of the atheist tribalists are reacting to religion at the same, village level, as something that is “foreign,” unacceptable, and so big that it has to be bad. The beliefs they know about (and reject) are not derived from studying anything about the history and doctrine of particular religions, but from a whole range of indirect encounters: with their tv set, with news stories about creation science and prayer in school, with tales of disorderly Mormon elders and their six wives and thirty children, violent Muslims declaring jihad against members of their own faith as well as on the “West,” with reports of (yet another) pedophile priest being arrested or another bishop covering up priestly crimes, or with another know-nothing politician who thinks America was founded as a Christian nation. Who can disagree that these encounters are typical of what more and more people are beginning to see as what “being religious” means–as the whole of religion? Is there a difference between Big and Big and Ugly
But prevalence is not totality. Religion doesn’t only consist of externalization, and there are plenty of believing critics out there who would consider every one of these externals unacceptable, or ignorant, or attributable to causes that aren’t necessarily religious at all. It strikes me as curious that their criticism might need to be discounted because it comes from the wrong quarter. If radical unbelief becomes the license for informed critique, does simple belief disqualify someone as a critic?
To be an atheist tribalist means that you answered Yes to that question: But to be honest, if the laundry list above is what the atheist sees as the entirety of religious experience or religious ideology, he is really no better off than my friend in the pub who, out of pious ignorance I came to realize, sees America as a great cesspool where annoying, nasal, uncynical nabobs swim around in the muck of mental gloom. Of course, anyone who knows a little history, a little geography, a little anything about anything, knows that this is a caricature designed to make Europeans feel less bad about the eighteenth century cesspools from which American immigrants escaped and evolved, and that we have no monopoly on loud, nasal, or annoying. Atheists in rejecting religion–most anyhow–have a similar evolution to recount.
The philosophy that the tribe is better than the nation persisted in human civilization for a long time, and then reemerged as paternalism and petty nationalism in the colonial period. Colonies, in turn, began to feel better than their masters. It’s especially troubling to see atheists, who claim the intellectual upper hand in debates about God and his people, behaving in a way that simply mimics the self-protective instincts of threatened minorities through insult, provocation, and belligerence. It’s all part of the dance, the same old story.
The New Oxonian 
Thats awesome post i like that.
http://toolplace.wordpress.com/
I added one, perhaps the final, comment to Lets Talk About It. Christianity and New Testament are off the table – its only about outside of the “Cave” thoughts on Ultimate Reality by some of our best scientific minds -at any level of consciousness it should be of interest.
I must add a crucial conditional statement to the Oct. 12 comment which is also in the character of a quote I elsewhere made of Paul Davies: “Science offers a surer path to God than reilgion”. This is said in the light of Christianity’s problematic – the term religion has been crrupted by this association.
What I rant to say is, for many science is their most certain quide to knowledge, the fact that for most of the world’s greatest scientists the failure of phusics to reveal reality has turned them away from science to embrace the mystical as the path to Reality – God.
however, beyond recoginitiion of the fact, they find no scientific basis for this knowledge – this is in the realm of meta-physics – true religion – mysticism.
Brilliantly analysed state of affairs. Purely hilarious, angelic springs to mind…
I had to google Mother Angelica to see if she was real and to my horror she was, quoted as ‘fun quote of the day’ on a catholic blog, saying “If you’re not a thorn in somebody’s side, you aren’t doing Christianity right.” Sometimes I think I can’t blame that homogenous lot of atheist tribalists for treating all religions as a ROBOT. Living in the Bible Belt, or just surrounded by all that vile fundamentalism, one would be included to go a little ‘fungusmentalist’ about it all. And woe betide the atheist who betrays the tribalist code. Atheist tribes are basically becoming another ROBOT.
It is a bit tempting, and difficult not to call all Americans obnoxious (and too rich) when the ones that make their presence felt among us, mere islanders, are. Like the couple who came and bought a beautiful hunk of coastal paradise, effectively kidnapped Cape Kidnappers, restricted all public access to the beach and built a blinking golf course, sticking an ugly great hotel on it. Or the ill prepared ‘trampers’ trampling the sacred ground at Lake Waikaremoana. Or the couple that hijacked the conversation with booming volume, in a peaceful local country orchard store, proudly and loudly wearing blazing american flag T shirts, topped off with Texan cowboy hats, the week following the Bush reelection… But I had access to a television then, and Frasier, to remind me that not all Americans are like that and that there were rather alot of Americans I had never met. And as God willed I’ve met more now.
x
Steph,
This is off topic – I simply note that I have added a comment to Letting go of Jesus to your comment about “Beginning From Jerusalem” on the chance there is yet interest.
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I hope no one thinks I quoted this particular excerpt in an attempt to brand all atheists with a broad ‘tribalist’ brush. I picked the paragraph I did because it was my personal favorite. 🙂
As a fellow godless wanderer (albeit one with a religious past), I’m weary of other atheists accusing me of having a less than “pure” pedigree of unbelief.
Thanks for your post, Dr. Hoffmann.
“The beliefs they know about (and reject) are not derived from studying anything about the history and doctrine of particular religions, but from a whole range of indirect encounters”
If you really believe this, then you’re guilty of something similar, regarding the atheist “tribalists”. Most such people I know got that way because they left a religion after growing up being deeply involved in it, knowing it inside and out. And many of them went on to independently learn about other religions, and not from the TV, but the library, or actually trying it out. They made their conclusions based on evidence, and decided to speak out loudly. I see nothing wrong with that. The sheer shock value of being plain, quick, and direct is educational in this case, because in order to access people’s minds, you have to first grab their attention, countering the authority and charisma that religious leaders and even plain believers get almost automatically. In a real sense, that IS the message, in shorthand: The emperor has no clothes. Religious leaders and believers know no more about things than anybody else, and yet they wield great power over everyone, based on their claims. This is therefore an unfair situation at best, a dangerous situation at worst, and must be addressed.
If you’re going to throw around the word “dickhead”, do make sure you’re not being one yourself. (But notice that it worked… I read your article).
Thanks Randy, but I think the process you are describing describes a lot of thoughtful atheists. This isn’t about that breed.
It’s a shame to see extracts of this post taken out of context. They misrepresent the point of the post which is to highlight a small fringe of atheism, as represented by particular previously mentioned groups, as the post points out. The post does not accuse all atheists of tribalism – only those who, for example, answer ‘yes’ to the question: ‘If radical unbelief becomes the license for informed critique, does simple belief disqualify someone as a critic?’ … as above.
England does not possess a Bible Belt, notwithstanding the ongoing missionary efforts to bring to us the Danvers Statement on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, and the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, but we certainly have our fair share of atheist tribalists; it seems an almost inevitable consequence now that reasoned argument has been deemed otiose by Richard Dawkins et al.
Unfortunately the rise of this breed has all but destroyed the humanist project when we have, arguably, never needed it more. The end of the antibiotic era, brought about largely by the overuse of antibiotics, coupled with anthropogenic global warming, inevitably means vastly increased human death rates; a fact which has failed to penetrate the skulls of the atheist tribalists over here currently endeavouring to ban homeopathic medicine. Homeopaths do not use antibiotics; any rational person would be striving to encourage them. Instead they are regarded as heretics who must be extirpated at all costs, even if that cost is mortality on a scale last seen in Europe in the fourteenth century.
Of course atheist dickheads do not accept that bad things are going to happen to them; they have absolute faith that Science will find an answer, even when the scientists – microbiologists, infectious disease specialists, pharmacologists etc.- who actually have expertise in the area are telling them that not only do they not have an answer, but that there is no answer due to an unfortunate fact of life called evolution.
One possible explanation for the unwillingness of ADs to accept the reality of evolution is that they are not atheists at all, but people who have replaced one omnipotent and infallible entity with another one going by a different name; they have adapted the bit about God moving in mysterious ways so that Science can mysteriously provide an answer which scientists can’t.
The belief that, whilst nasty things will happen to other people, principally poor people in poor countries, they won’t happen to enlightened acolytes of Science, is remarkably similar to the conviction of RDs [Religious Dickheads] that, come the day of Armageddon, they will be ensconced on a comfortable cloud watching the exploding eyeballs and unravelling intestines from a safe distance; the two events have roughly the same probability of occurring.
Humanism should be about humans, surely; over at the American Humanist Association website a search on antibiotics pulls up 4 references, none of which even begins to acknowledge scientific reality, and the website for the Center for Inquiry appears not to have a search function at all, which seems oxymoronic for an organisation seeking to promote ‘freedom of inquiry’.
And the band played on…
I wasn’t aware of this, thank you chenier. I just had a quick google, as you do, and your accusations were quickly confirmed. Dawkins the dickhead takes a massive swipe at homeopathy, as well as the so called ‘friendly’ atheist, and the rest of the flock / tribe have a go as well. These atheists are promoting false myths that homeopathy never works, that it is all about ‘faith’ and that it is only made of water. Makes me sick – but nothing a liquorice tea or whiskey won’t fix.
Heaven knows what their faith perspective is (most likely skeptic as the majority of us are), but general practitioners of medicine back home (New Zealand) are pretty clued up about homeopathy these days. It is even an aspect included in medical training. Far from over prescribing for the profit of (notoriously unreliable, profit driven, not completely honest and frankly quite dishonest) pharmaceutical companies, more than the benefit and health of patients, they will sometimes suggest more natural homeopathic remedies as an alternative. And these inevitably work. Water, they are not that so far. Faith? I’m always a skeptic especially where health is concerned. Demonising homeopathy as something fundamentally flawed, is fungusmentally evil. Even a naturopath will recommend antibiotics when bacterial infections are severe or antibiotics as the last resort. Most sicknesses and diseases can be safely and effectively treated through prevention (nutrition, lifestyle) and natural remedies (sleep, beneficial herbs) rather than through the nuclear option of over-perscribed anti-bacterial medications.
Doctors here in England whom I have visited are very efficient, and are ameniable to homeopathy generally – or perhaps I have just been lucky so far. I do happen to know that my English GP, an “atheist” in inverted commas, doesn’t like Dawkins so that might be the vital clue.
And as for your comment that there is no Bible Belt in England, that’s dead right, and therefore there is no excuse for Dawkinian tribalists. I feel slightly sorry for American atheist tribalists though – their life experience is so much different. But then I stop feeling sorry when they whine, sniffle and bicker so incessantly. So a toast to trampling grapes and making wine and ignoring them. And long live homeopathy.
Steph,
I’m glad to hear that New Zealand has adopted a rational drug policy; as for the ADs at Richard Dawkins’ website I think you need to bear in mind that they are quite remarkably ignorant about medicine.
They genuinely believe that proper doctors acting properly have available to them a range of effective remedies, developed and tested scientifically under gold standard conditions; this being the case all other therapies must therefore be crap peddled by charlatans.
That belief cannot survive if the individual who holds it does even the most minimal of background reading; unfortunately, ADs don’t do background reading.
Many of them don’t do reading at all, since they already know the answer to life, the universe and everything, and it’s not 42.
I’m rather fond of directing ADs to John P. A. Ioannidis’ papers:
‘Contradicted and Initially Stronger Effects in Highly Cited Clinical Research’
and
‘Why Most Published Research Findings Are False’.
I don’t delude myself that they will actually read them- see above- but it’s fun watching them trying to convince the world that JAMA and PLOS are hotbeds of anti-science prejudice, and probably staffed by pink unicorn believers to boot…
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‘If radical unbelief becomes the license for informed critique, does simple belief disqualify someone as a critic?’
What is radical unbelief? Being an atheist means disregarding the supernatural as an explanation for anything. The only radical thing about this position is the fact that so many hold the opposing view. The holding of the majority view is the opposing view to that of the atheist and that means you must be critical of atheists. Who’s going to disqualify you from that position? It’s a fact of the position you hold. Some atheists might decry that you hold such a position in a loud and blunt manner, but that doesn’t disqualify you and doesn’t make them radical in any way.
The only thing each atheist has in common with other atheists is their atheism. It’s not a movement. I might and do disagree with other atheists on their economic and social views.
I also understand that theology and religions have formulated some very sophisticated apologetics over the centuries, but a large number if not a majority of the politically active religious folk do not. They espouse their beliefs in an all-knowing manner and they push politicians to set these beliefs as untouchable. They also want to ensure that the rest of us live by the tenets of their faith and try and sneak them into government at every opportunity. They do this with the help of huge amounts of resources and influence. While I would love the discussion to be about the more ethereal arguments of the apologists, I’m afraid that the life changing demands come from the more viscerally committed religious types. They are a threat to life and liberty and the bold, brash and direct atheists responding to them, belittling their ignorance and double standards at every turn; are probably the best ones to do it.
Homeopathy
Evidence based medicine is the standard by which all treatments should be measured. Repeated testing of homeopathic remedies have found them wanting. At best they have the same effect as the placebo effect.
Insisting that public money be made available for remedies that have not been shown to work is chucking that money literally down the drain.
Well said!
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Homeopathy doesn’t work. At least it isn’t shown to have a better than placebo effect when administered in a double blind test. Of course atheists are going to be against what appears to be a new form of woo.
The world is full of charlatans and how are we supposed to eliminate them if we don’t hold our medicine to a high standard. As for antibiotics, talk to your doctor, those are the people putting the most effort into figuring out what works. You can’t stand outside the community and take shots beyond rallying the political.
The world needs right answers. Those answers should stand up to tests. If you have better tests by all means bring them. I would care to know one way or the other if antibiotics are good or if homeopathy ever worked. But I need to be more certain and it’s got to pass tests.
Of course there are many charlatans. I have never been to a homeopath – they’re expensive. But I have been prescribed homeopathic solutions by qualified doctors, ie natural alternatives and advice, and these have never been unsuccessful. I could refer you do my general practitioner here in the UK (including other doctors in the same practice) as well as several GPs I have been a patient with in New Zealand. I’m grateful not to be dependent entirely on untrustworthy pharmaceuticals, test ‘results’ of which are often ‘doctored’. I think the “new agers'” adoption of homeopathy which is based on ancient methods, and the illusion of ‘faith’, frightens some atheists, who effectively however, treat pharmaceuticals as a bit godlike… 😀 Antibiotics are running into trouble because they are over prescribed and things are becoming immune to them.
Have you heard we live in a postmodern worldview were there is no absolute truth, not even science, that by no means is a panacea for everything, I worked for the pharmaceutical industry for a few years, to know better, it is just a business to make money, not an idealistic search for solutions to health problems, true, it may prolong and enhance your life if well used, but you will have to pay a price for it, that not all can afford, either in money, or in health, contraindications, secondary effects etc. In fact it may end your life! Look at the astronomical malpractice lawsuits. In the end we are mortals, and one day will die, regardless, you may be a happy, and macho type of guy who is capable of facing the end as nonexistence, some people don’t look forward to it, and therefore look for consolation on Religion, and an afterlife, you may think of that as Homeopathy, but still is a personal choice, just like others look at their personal belief as a way of life, that enrich the individual subjective experience in a mystical way, you can discard that as well, but is their choice, and their experience, is for them to choose, and live, just like alternative medicines, it is known many people would use any methodology to regain health when given no hope by our scientific Allopathic methodology (mainstream medicine), even Shamanism, as a last resort, there is a lot to say for Cosmological different views, look at the Chinese with a three thousand year old system, they embrace science, but they are not going to discard their ancient Cosmology, on the contrary, they are exporting it all over the world very successfully, despite the scientific naysayers! Rationalism for us in the West it is our Cosmology, and we want to export it all over, despite the triumphs of science, the future of the World is kind of bleak, mainly by the disaster brought by the unwise use of technology a byproduct of science. I hold no hope for a scientific Utopia. Maybe they should come with a drug to make people wise…I doubt it, wisdom is entirely a subjective experience, but with clear results in the empirical realm.
If you’re GP is prescribing it, generally speaking you’re doing the right thing assuming as I am that you aren’t in the medical field yourself. I’m not opposed to finding new ways to cure ailments and also it would be pretty easy to expose my ignorance of various things related to health.
My core argument is that in the U.S. we get a lot of advertisements one way and the other without any real idea what the people with the relevant expertise think. It’s very frustrating and I think it motivates people like me to come across as more stubborn types of skeptics.
You’ve seen Christie O’Donnell, Palin, and you may have heard of the Louisiana Science Education Act. That’s the kind of stuff I’m afraid of. You tell me how to play a part to build a better informed tomorrow and I’m totally willing to adjust my gameplan to meet those objectives. Know what I mean?
Seth said:
‘You tell me how to play a part to build a better informed tomorrow and I’m totally willing to adjust my gameplan to meet those objectives. Know what I mean?’
Well, you could start by reading the papers I cited above; it is difficult to see how you can play a part in creating a better informed tomorrow if you are not prepared to inform yourself today.
And having read those papers you could then take a look at an excellent article by Hans-Joachim Schmoll and Dirk Arnold:
‘When Wishful Thinking Leads to a Misty-Eyed Appraisal: The Story of the Adjuvant Colon Cancer Trials With Edrecolomab’
All three papers are available on the net, in full, and free; all you have to do is run a google search on the the titles and then read them. I haven’t provided the URLs because I don’t know our host’s view on hotlinking, and WordPress has been known to throw its toys out of the pram if there are too many links in a post.
Having read those papers you will be in a somewhat better position to understand why your comments about homeopathy and ‘a double blind test’ are met with derision by anyone who has bothered to inform themselves about clinical trials, and you will also have learned that the word plausible is not a synonym for the word true, just as the word implausible is not a synonym for the word false…
Sorry, having read the articles I’m simply left thinking Edrecolomab is something useful, what is the intervention referred to in “Contradicted and initially stronger effects in highly cited clinical research”, and what is the link between that to homeopathy.
What I understand homeopathy to be is the process of highly diluting active agents to the point that too little of the active agent actually remains. If homeopathy is something else to you or in general, then it is possible it exists in a functional way.
Secondly, I know there’s a lot of misinformation out there, I’m beginning to think there’s room for more specialized kinds of reporters to help the average person sort through facts and fictions that get published. The fact that fiction gets published in journals is a problem and it’s a problem that we need to fix. But that’s no data to suggest leaving medical advice to the medical experts is the wrong way to go. It just means finding the experts is more challenging.
Seth, I don’t know what medical treatment and trips to the doctor is like in the US. I have never studied medicine – I made a bit of a scene at high school when my science teacher cut up a pregnant rabbit and vowed never to take science further … However I do read journals and articles, including those helpful ones Chenier has pointed out, to help stay informed and always my doctors and those of my family and friends, take a good deal of time to discuss and describe options with benefits and disadvantages. I value the degree that our medical profession go to in order to keep patients informed and I have generally tried to keep up with informed opinion and reviews. Homeopathy is regulated and controlled at home and most ‘homeopaths’ I know of at home have medical degrees. If I can ignore the dorky Dawkins, you can ignore your illiterate politicians, and I haven’t heard of the Louisianna Science thing – do they do science in the Bible Belt?
Shoot, somehow the bible belt stretches to Alaska now. 😦
All I want is good, testable, repeatable data given honestly AND an effort by the medical experts to weed out erroneous information. Fortunately, I haven’t had need of much medicine one way or the other.
I thought Louisiana was in the belt. Doesn’t that Palin creature live in Alaska? Perhaps you’re right and that silly old belt wraps round that as well. I am sorry I don’t know where you live… Alaska? Can you see Russia from your house too?
I have found various studies from medical journals down under which rate the benefits and disadvantages of homeopathic treatments on line.
Louisiana is in the Belt. I was joking about Alaska because of Palin.
I might be taking a closer look at homeopathy soon because it’s probably a fun subject to blog about and that would encourage me to research. But first, I’ve committed to a series on evolution.
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Quackwatch.org might be worth browsing if “alternative” treatments are of interest.
I personally have a very difficult time with accepting that water molecules have specific memory for substances they have come in contact with, or that a memory of such interactions can be re-activated by agitation.
Just have to nip down to the healer and get these rocks out of my head again!
Cheers