Tag Archives: P Z Myers

Is “Beyond Belief” Beyond Critique?

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I don’t know Tristan Vick, the blogmeister at Advocatus Atheist, but I think I like him.

Back in April, when I wrote a series of articles criticizing New Atheism for being loud and obnoxious, Tristan said I was being loud and obnoxious and to put a lid on it.  I was being so persistently obnoxious, in fact, that if I’d replied to the article then I would have been even louder.  So I’m glad I waited. Time’s a healer.

Tristan points out:

“Obviously Hoffmann doesn’t know anything about the education of the New Atheists. Sam Harris is a philosopher turned Neuroscientist, and holds a PhD in modern Neuroscience from UCLA. Richard Dawkins is a world renowned evolutionary biologist and he was the University of Oxford’s Professor for the Public Understanding of Science from 1995 until 2008. Christopher Hitchens is an infamous atheist intellectual, a savvy journalist, and graduated from Oxford University. Meanwhile, Hoffman groups other atheists into this ‘unlearned’ category when he adds the abbreviation for and company (i.e., et al.) to his list of passionately despised New Atheists. So I can only assume he means other “uneducated” men like Dan Dennett (Philosopher, PhD), Victor Stenger (Physicist, PhD), Richard Carrier (Historian, PhD), David Eller (Anthropologist, PhD) among plenty of others. For the life of me I cannot seem to figure out how these men reflect the unlearned and unreflective side of New Atheism.”

Well, obviously I know (have always known) all of this, and leaving to one side whether credentials insulate you from being a jerk on occasion (it hasn’t helped me) a couple of other things need correction rather than apology.

The last 18th century wit?

First, I don’t passionately despise anyone–least of all any of the people in the paragraph above.   I hugely admire what every single one of them has done in their academic discipline–from Richard Dawkins bringing science into public consciousness to Christopher Hitchens’s sometimes lone crusade for sanity in the world of politics.

I cannot think of a single person mentioned whose scholarship should be impugned or their credentials questioned in their speciality.  And I am very grateful that Tristan knows and likes some of what I have written in the field of biblical criticism–which he’s obviously into in an impressive way.

The question really is whether when they (or yours truly) speak as atheists they deserve immunity from criticism, since there is not (yet) a professional qualification in the field that would entitle anyone to speak with greater authority on the subject than anyone else–not someone whose field is evolutionary biology, not someone whose field is anthropology, not someone working as a journalist.   Naturally a good knowledge base, like a second Pinot Grigio at lunch, is nice to have, but when we speak about atheism, we’re all amateurs.  If some atheists admire certain people as spokesmen because they’re “raw and rude” (I think I’m quoting PZ on how young people like it), there are others who like it medium-well and slightly tenderized.  You can substitute Chinese-food metaphors here if you like.

That fundamental point is already implicit in the discussion.  I’m guessing that Dr Coyne and Dr Myers don’t bring the language of the blogosphere with them to professional meetings. I don’t either.  One of the joys of blogging about things we’re all equally amateurs in is that we can release the verbal energy diffusely that we can’t use on colleagues directly.  You might want to tell old Dr Jenkins that as contributions to science his papers might just as well have appeared in the Norton Anthology of Poetry, but you won’t say that to his despicable face.  That’s why it’s nice to have a cause you believe in–a mission– and a space to share it with people whose offices aren’t next door. Blogs make us prophets in small kingdoms.  But they still don’t make us experts. Popular atheists shouldn’t mind developing fan clubs and cohorts.  But fan clubs and cohorts should be careful about turning their enthusiasm for good ideas and sexy styles into appeals to authority.  I myself am working on a sexy style.

Without any backup for this, I’d guess that 80% of the best academics at the best colleges and universities embrace some form of unbelief and keep it to themselves.  And besides this, scholarship in most humanistic disciplines (including the study of religion) is implicitly atheistic–everything from history to philosophy to literature.  There’s no room for “supernaturalism”–and that includes God theories–in public or most good private universities. That battle has been won in methodology, if not in the classroom.  If you don’t believe me, try getting an article published in a peer-reviewed journal by arguing that Joan of Arc’s visions were real.

The larger, discussable, popular atheism that seeps out of the academy in the form of books, lecture tours, debates and blogs (no, I’m not saying it all originates there; but Tristan’s list suggests that it is a major pipeline for discussion and feeds into a thousand internet channels) isn’t subject to the same kind  of “peer review” that scholars expect when they are speaking or writing as professionals and experts in their field. That’s what makes the “raw and rude” atheism of the blogosphere different from the assumed and methodological atheism of the academy–even though the two forms aren’t opposed and not really in conflict–except as to tenor and style.

Unfortunately, the people-part of popular atheism won’t always cotton to the sometimes elitist-feeling, genteel-seeming atheism of the marble halls.  Ask anybody in the list above who has been in full-time academic employment and climbed the tenure ladder about the process: the answer will be roughly the same. No professor would last very long if she mimicked or abused the religious sentiments of a religious devotee during a classroom discussion–no matter how strongly she’s convinced that education means, among other things, getting over it.  When I see atheist comrades being a little too–how you say in your language–robust in this matter once freed from the shackles of classroom teaching, I have to admit my discomfort.  Easy enough at this point to let sparks fly: I seem deficient in my commitment to the truth. (As in Hoffmann coddles believers).  And my plainspoken colleague seems deficient in kindness and generosity.  But can’t we have, or try to have, both?

Within the last five years I was asked directly by a [here nameless] department chair (and I quote) “How does your atheism affect your teaching of history.”  I responded somewhat pointedly that if he had asked that question of a Catholic or a gay I would report it to the dean, but as it was about atheism I would let it ride.  He was curious, so I said, “Because even though there is no God,  he has played an enormous role in human history.” (He found it amusing.)

Toynbee

Does the fact that in popular atheism ideas are thrown onto the battlefield and caught in a crossfire mean that there should be no review or critique of what atheists say at all?  That doesn’t seem likely, does it? There has to be review, there will always be criticism.

But that doesn’t mean that atheists should leep quiet about each other when they find members of the home-side bending the rules of healthy discourse. That includes me. It needs to be said that not all outrageous statements, even if they’re funny, benefit atheism. And I think name-calling and petulance hurts all of us.  In saying this, I hope for agreement, not a dozen replies that begin “See, Hoffmann is learning.  There is still hope.”

Once upon a time, a guy could get excommunicated from the Church for calling a preist a bastard, even if the priest was one.  In some states (believe it or not) it is still a tort (libel per se, or something equally preposterous) to speak ill of (cough) a lawyer.  Academics have never enjoyed such privilege.  That’s a good thing, as long as we keep the discussion at the level of ideas.  Unlike priests and  lawyers, there is nothing sacred about being an academic, despite the fact some academics would like there to be.

So here’s the deal.  As long as we’re clear that academic credentials confer no privilege or special dignity in a discussion–a conversation that has to be democratic, no matter how close to the earth we walk–I completely agree that calling people “superjerks” is out of bounds.  We need to develop language that shows the big old largely religious world that atheism isn’t coming apart at the seams.  Again.  Tristan says,

“Criticizing atheism, mind you, is a good thing. It helps us persistent, loud mouthed, fundamental atheist types check our arguments and hone, refine, and improve them. Criticism only seeks to make us stronger critical thinkers. We can learn from positive as well as negative criticism, and criticism allows us the opportunity to learn from our mistakes, perchance to grow better and learn to reason better. But Hoffmann isn’t offering advice; he’s being a dick.”

Can’t say I love being a dick, but I do love what he says about criticism. The worst thing unbelievers can do is split up into grumbling factions of science-atheists, humanities-atheists, and social science-atheists (talk about dicks: just kidding) to see whose atheism is the purest form of the product.  I think keeping the discussion going, even if it occasionally roils into disagreement and criticism, is better than sulking or going it alone. There’s a lot we have to talk about to each other in a world that winks at the grief caused by religious devotion but scorns the wisdom that unbelief represents.

So Tristan: while I can apologize for being a dick,  I can’t apologize for being critical, and don’t think you’d want me to.  When I am all grumbly and obnoxious, I really don’t mind your telling me.

We all need to get to know each other’s ideas a little better.

Bloody Fools

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UPDATE:

It has been amazing and distressing to me that responses to this blog from a cadre of readers have focused only on the twin lunacies of Islamic extremism and Christian triumphalism.  Some of them want to vindicate Terry Jones as a kind of litmus test for their belief that a butterfly is enough to ignite the Muslim world–so why worry about an ox?  If there is logic there, it must be part of the initiation ritual.

Some have even taken the “What would you expect?” line, as though Mr Jones’s actions necessarily excited the “Muslim animals” and renders him, therefore, innocent.  From what tank is that slimy conclusion fished?  The further logic is that Islam is all about violence anyway, so a a little more (what’s the difference) can hardly be laid at the door of a Florida fundagelical.

Some respondents think that there is a moral equivalence, such that Terry Jones and the Afghan and Pakistani responders are cut from the same cloth. How that renders Jones innocent or raises the dead I am not sure. I find that kind of response both uninformed and worrying. Very worrying coming from nonbelievers, and maybe because it raises in my mind questions about whether a certain level of atheism isn’t also an impediment to moral reasoning–specifically that kind that finds all religions “naturally” guilty of atrocity and hence no one at fault and no one innocent of crimes.

Yet one wonders if Mr Myers–who also figures in this story–had been approached by NSS agents and told that his act of “desecration” would lead to the loss of life,  would have gone through with it.  Something tells me that the redoubtable Dr Myers would have relented. Because he knew his was a stunt.

Terry Jones’s acts were not a stunt: they were intended to light fires and kill innocent people.  Indeed they were done to prove that innocent people would be killed.  “For some of them,” he said, “it [the torching of the Qur’an] could be an awakening.”

…The world was reminded of the 30-person Christian congregation at Dove World Outreach Center on Friday, when a mob incited by the burning of the Koran attacked a U.N. compound in Mazar-e Sharif, killing seven U.N. employees. On Saturday, related protests in Kandahar left nine dead and more than 90 injured.

Jones, 59, had considered the possibility that burning the text might elicit a violent response and that innocent people might be killed. In his characteristic drawl — a slow-motion delivery that seems incongruous with the church’s fiery rhetoric — the pastor said the church also debated whether to shred the book, shoot it or dunk it in water instead of burning it. But in the end, his desire to shed light on what he calls a “dangerous book” won out. The Koran was burned in a spectacle streamed live on the Internet. To reach out to Muslims overseas, Jones included Arabic subtitles….”

As if we needed evidence. That, thankfully is the difference between an atheist Koran hater and a fundamentalist Koran hater: and if ever there were a clear bisection of the “rules” for blasphemy, this should be it–because people are dead as part of the definition.  Jones now plans to move house so to speak and put Muhammad on trial next month.

To my atheist colleagues, I say: please, before you snipe, try to understand.  We are not yet at the point where atheism is the “cure” for anything, least of all for the kinds of violence these acts have made manifest.  I know that it’s tempting to think that unbelief is the silver bullet cure for all the atrocities of religion [Imagine], and that a world free of it would be world in which neither Terry Jones nor Afghan extremists would hold sway.  Arguably that would be a more peaceful, reasonable, less violent world.

That is not the world we live in, so the question of what to do does not only involve the meager 1.6% of the population of America willing to identify as atheists, who have their answer and are sure it’s the right one, but the 1.66 billion Muslims in the world who want to differ.  The choice, frankly isn’t about No God or Your God; it’s about moving beyond the short-sighted religion-bashing of some atheists to a realistic position where criticism of religion can be effective.  That is the only business plan worth discussing.

Ultimately, the way forward is going to be a matter of tone and technique, not the outcome of the work of a few commando God-bashers writing from the safe haven of first world democracies telling the majority how foolish they are.

_______________________

What do Professor P.Z. Myers and the Revd Terry Jones have in common?  Not very much, except both have desecrated the Koran.  Is it important that they did what they did for different reasons, and with different results? Do such distinctions matter when we’re talking about a book that neither man finds particularly–attractive?  Yes.

Terry Jones

As readers of this blog will know, I think the use of blasphemy to draw crowds and win followers is probably on a moral par with Jesus’exorcisms in the New Testament: you find something or someone that will grab people’s attention–a man possessed by 6000 demons will do– then you let fly, do the hocus pocus,  and hope the nasties will go into the pigs (like the trick requires) and not into the audience. When the pigs go shrieking in agony over the cliff and the “demoniac” is still in one piece, the crowd applauds wildly and proclaims you the messiah.  That is sort of what happened for both Myers and Jones.  But with different results.

Myers, simply an atheist showman, wrote a pretty nifty article about blasphemy on his site in 2008.  In it he documented the insidious reverence in which Catholics held to the doctrine of the “real presence of Jesus” in the eucharist in the Middle Ages and the violence shown to disbelievers, especially Jews, who were always getting on the wrong side of Catholics and always being accused of desecrating the communion host, or “cracker” as Myers snarkily likes to call the matzah used at Mass.

“That is the true power of the cracker, this silly symbol of superstition. Fortunately, Catholicism has mellowed with age — the last time a Catholic nation rose up to slaughter its non-Christian citizenry was a whole 70 years ago, after all — but the sentiment still lingers.”

Had he performed his oblation a couple of years later after the results of the 2010 Pew Forum Poll on Religious Knowledge in America, he could also have added that 45% of Catholics do not know their Church’s teaching on the Eucharist, though they like the Spaghetti suppers on Friday night.

Never was there a “mellower” target then than Catholics, who in the main seemed not to care very much when Myers drove a rusty spike through the cracker, some garbage (a banana peel and coffee grounds) and–importantly–pages of the Koran.  Of course, as soon as he did this, the eyes of the superstitious religious blind were opened, and the lame man leapt as an hart.

Crackers and Korans and peels, O My.

Myers’ antics made him the dark darling of full frontal atheists, those who hold to the curious view that the angrier you make people who believe in sacred books and objects, the likelier you are to win over people who hold a weak or no opinion on the subject.

Desecration, confrontation, Yo-mama style insult and blasphemy are tangible blows for reason, the commandos believe.

Though their training manual is being revised.  The Center for Inquiry, in its regular confusion over what fund-raising gimmick to try on next, made 2009 its first international Blasphemy Day and invited people to send in cartoons, jokes, slogans, and anything else to show just how lucky we all are to live in a country that cherishes free expression and where Nothing and No-one is sacred. The small difference between an inside joke that like-minded people think is funny and real blasphemy, which can only occur among people who take religion pretty seriously, and which might get your head blown off, escaped the organizers who soon enough put Blasphemy Day in the bottom drawer and rolled out Blasphemy Rights Day.

But, predictably, no one died as a consequence of Mr Myers’ brainstormium.  And an unclimaxed Myers was reduced to pasting letters from a few lost souls who wrote almost pathetically of their upset:  “As a Christian it is an insult for anyone to call my beliefs stupid shit. I have respected every religion and every idea for years.” To which Myers felt obliged to respond in derisive detail, defending himself against a volley of feathers by saying: “They [the pages of the Koran and the Bible] are just paper. Nothing must be held sacred. Question everything. God is not great, Jesus is not your lord, you are not disciples of any charismatic prophet.”

He observed that in addition to pages of the Koran he also used a few pages of Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion, which as far as I know is not yet considered sacred scripture by any group, and whose spiking would not likely ignite a revolt–especially since it was well known that the sympathies of the spiker were pro-Dawkins anyway.  The point was half-clever, but the whole incident was tasteless, and (as I’ve said before)  cowardly: to be effective, try it again, only this time in downtown Lahore after you send the memo.

Tried, convicted, soaked in kerosense, ignited

Which brings us roundabout to Pakistan and the Reverend Jones.  Jones is the intellectual Omega and pastor of the sixty member Dove World Outreach Center in Lake City, Florida, who threatened to burn the Qur’an in August 2010.

His reason for doing so was to bring the book to justice  for the violence and murder “it [sic] had perpetrated.” Unlike Myers, who began with the view that no book is sacred, Jones is of the opinion that Islam’s holy book and Islam itself is “of the devil.”

A jittery National Association of Evangelicals disowned him, local Florida fundagelical groups (some of them militia) distanced themselves from him, and condemned his statements.  In the War Zone, General David Petraeus explained that soldiers “will be killed if this event happens.”  Jones demured, hedged, tried to stretch out his fifteen minutes to thirty six hours of fame (longer than a news cycle), then “postponed ” the trial and burning of the book while he “negotiated with the planners of the Ground Zero Mosque.”

The media being a fickle lover, lost interest in the story and almost missed more recent developments when Jones announced that the trial and sentencing would take place on March 20, 2011.  Funnily enough, the Interior Ministry in Pakistan was watching developments closely after a spate of incidents involving charges that Christians (about 3,000,000 in a country of 170,000,000) were secretly desecrating Korans and a spate of church-burnings and murders.

The trial was held, the sentence rendered by a Jury of 12 church elders, and a Dallas imam, according to reports, acted as a defense attorney. The book was soaked in kerosene for two hours,and was then ignited by Jones’s assistant pastor Wayne Sapp.  Further events are planned for Good Friday (April 22, 2011) in Michigan.  One thing that comes through clearly is that religious zealots know a thing or two about lighting fires. The Catholics Jones also despises are satisfied to light a Paschal candle on the night before Easter.

Reaction has been slow, because media attention has been erratic, but  in Afghanistan, thousands of outraged protesters stormed a U.N. compound killing at least 20 people, including eight foreigners–this at a critical moment in the Afghan war when America is trying to “win hearts and minds.” The demonstration in Mazar-i-Sharif turned violent when some protesters grabbed weapons from the U.N. guards and opened fire, then mobbed buildings and set fires on the compound. Demonstrators were also massed in Kabul and the western city of Herat.

So far, three attempts to burn churches have been thwarted by Pakistani security forces, but it is just a matter of time before death and destruction, related to the imbecility of a small-time Christian publicity whore, rears its snake-maned head.  Predictable but terrifying right-wing approval for Jones’s action is also beginning its viral crawl across the internet.

As to Myers, despite the development of a blasphemy fan club and admiration for the cowardly use of free expression rights in the safe haven of Morris, Minnesota, the only serious “threat” came from Catholic League president Bill Donahue.  The League (like B’nai B’rith) was founded as an anti-defamation society at a time when discrimination against Catholic immigrants was on a par with discrimination against Jews.  Donahue filed a complaint with the University of Minnesota Board of Regents, offering that Myers’ actions violated the University’s anti-discrimination policy: ‘Expressions of disrespectful bias, hate, harassment or hostility against an individual, group or their property because of the individual or group’s actual or perceived race, color, creed, religion…can be forms of discrimination. Expressions vary, and can be in the form of language, words, signs, symbols, threats, or actions that could potentially cause alarm, anger, fear, or resentment against others.”

It was a far-fetched complaint both in terms of accusation and in terms of consequences; Myers’ action only succeeded in cementing his hard-crafted persona as a jerk.  And even as a one-off expression of jerkiness, the actions of 2008 did not rise to the standard of blasphemy, which is usually understood as an interreligious act designed to malign or humiliate a religious opposite.  Secular “blasphemy” against religion is more problematical, and Myers’ showpiece proved it. That is because there was no real conviction behind the act.  “Religion is sooooooo stupid” is not an impressive bumper sticker.  The defense of free speech is only relevant and brave when free speech is actually abridged, not when threats to its exercise are manufactured.

Jones is a different story.  A more dangerous one.  He is the ugly Id unchained from the soul of an America I’d hoped had died.  It is moronic, armed, and dangerous.  It does not question the ontological correctness of its religious and political views.  It burns a book in Lake City, Florida, and Muslims (and others) die in Afghanistan and soon Pakistan and elsewhere.  Jones does this knowing they will die, praying to his defective God that they will die, in order to prove his belief that the devil is with us.  He is with us, and he needs to be charged with and convicted of murder.  His name is Terry Jones.