Those Atheists You Hate Aren’t Really All That Bad

I think de Botton raises some interesting points (though I may not always agree with his own conclusions, provisionary or otherwise).  Atheism in and of itself doesn’t really mean anything more than living without any god concept.  And so you can have atheists as radically different as Dawkins, Camus, Stalin, Rand, Nietzsche, etc etc. (to mention both positive and negative examples of atheists).  Atheism BY ITSELF doesn’t mean much more than living without gods. 

But perhaps this is more of a personal issue…?  As for myself, I find great value in the writings of Seneca and stoic philosophy in terms of self-cultivation and ethics (ancient philosophy was less an abstract matter back then).  But I have no need to belong to a “stoic church” (if such a thing even existed).  I can sympathise with de Botton to a certain degree.

Humanism has its roots in Greco-Roman philosophy, which was not entirely destroyed by Christianity but in some aspects it absorbed it.  At times it has remained dormant and at other times that humanism rose again to the surface.  I would even venture to say that the better aspects of Christianity actually stem from those Greco-Roman roots.  If there is any common ground for Christianity and humanist-atheism, that is where it lies. 

Is religion, in general, wrong?  I think it’s like color preference.  I believe that a certain shade of blue is the most beautiful color in the world.  You prefer green.  I like the sound of Tchaikovsky but you prefer The Clash.  There is, obviously, no rational basis for a belief in a deity, but neither is there a rational basis for a preference for science fiction over mysteries.  And none of these things, I think, matter, if you can keep religion from infecting the rest of your life.  
If you can believe in the resurrection of Jesus, whether as history or as a metaphor, but still understand evolution and be unwilling to corrupt children’s science education with fairy tales, does it matter what you do on Sunday mornings?

You don’t have to believe  in a literal interpretation of the Bible to disbelieve science.  Andrew Wakefield was willing to do bad science for money.  They people who follow him are often not doing it from religious conviction, but from suspicion of government agencies.  

If you want to go to synagogue and listen to the Torah being sung because it inspires you to know that in synagogues all around the world the same words are being sung today just as your people have sung them for thousands of years, but you can put aside the parts of the Bible that oppose gay rights and promote slavery and the subjugation of women, does it matter?  If you strive to be kind and generous and give to charities that dig wells in impoverished villages in Africa, does it matter if you do it because God says that charity is a virtue, or because you recognize that being born in the West is incredibly good fortune, or because it’s a kind thing to do?  Heck, you can believe that the ketchup bottle in the cabinet talks to you, so long as it’s telling you to have wells dug in Uganda as opposed to going all Son-of-Sam on people.

I admit I feel a little bit of derision for people who actually believe that there is somewhere their dead relatives go, or that someone cares if they eat certain things with other things.  There’s so much else to worry about that spending energy worrying if your aluminum foil was rolled in machines greased with animal fats seems wasteful to me.  But I feel the same sort of derision for people who watch Jersey Shore or Real Housewives or read romance novels.  And they probably think I’m foolish to waste money on comic books.  In the long run, does it matter?

Honestly, I think by lumping all religionists together we do ourselves a deep disservice.  We help create an us-vs-them mentality.  Did or did not some Christians stand with us in opposing the Cranston West prayer banner?  Those people have *nothing* to do with the Pope asking the American priests not why so many of their numbers were molesting children, but why they weren’t taking better control of the media to bury the story, or with the people in Uganda who are seeking to make homosexual sex between consenting adults a capital crime.  If we deride all theists solely for their theism, we make it less likely that sensible theists will stand with us in opposition to the nutcases.  And ultimately, it’s about what people do, not what is in their hearts and minds while they are doing it.

My objection to de Botton is that it’s not that helpful to divorce ritual from the causes it serves.  He’s essentially just endorsing having strong social ties, common vernacular in a community, and ritual to help you live up to your expectations for yourself.  That shouldn’t be a controversial claim.  

But it doesn’t make sense to act as though the specific rituals and structures of religious are completely separable from the ideas they promote.  Style informs substance, language shapes thought and vice versa.  Better to promote the ideas you think atheist ritual should preserve and reinforce before you promote ritual qua ritual.

“We have grown frightened of the word morality.”

What’s this “we” stuff? Speak for yourself, de Botton; I don’t need you to speak for me, especially when you’re saying things about me that aren’t true.

“We bridle at the
thought of hearing a sermon.”

Okay, this one I agree with. Sermons are for people who can’t think for themselves, who need to be told what to think and how to act.

“We flee from the idea that art should be
uplifting or have an ethical mission.”

Again: speak for yourself. This seems an awful lot like the theists’ straw-man atheist who, not having a god to believe in, has no conception of things like beauty or love or morality.

“We don’t go on pilgrimages.”

Of course we don’t. Why would we? We don’t worship places, or need to travel to them for supernatural aid or to discharge religious obligations. That doesn’t mean we can’t travel to places that have personal significance to us – but that’s not a “pilgrimage”.

“We
can’t build temples.”

Well, we can, but again, why would we? We don’t build temples because we don’t need them.

We already have libraries. We have museums. We have planetariums. We have aquariums. We have places devoted to actual knowledge, and showing the wonders of the natural world and universe – as opposed to places to think, speak or sing magic words to nonexistent beings and to reinforce belief in those beings. Why would we want temples, when we have places which are so much more fulfilling, and are built around things that demonstrably exist?

“We have no mechanisms for expressing gratitude.”

We don’t? Gosh, I wonder how I’ve been expressing gratitude to people all these years, then. I guess I should stop doing it.

Or did he mean expressing gratitude to the universe for our very existence, as though it’s a sentient entity which listens and perhaps answers back? That’s pantheism, not atheism.

“Such hesitance was unmerited; he sat and listened as I updated
him on my life, smiling and nodding as I described how I’ve come into my
own as an atheist, an interfaith activist and a young man. Now, Matthew
and I have a better and more honest relationship than we ever did in my
youth.It’s been a more productive one, too: in less
than six months, we’ve mobilized hundreds of people to come together in
interfaith coalition and donate their time and money to package more
than 30,000 meals for food-insecure children in Boston. Most recently we
held an event (planned with Boston University’s Interfaith Council)
called HUNGERally, where more than a hundred student representatives
from eight Boston-area colleges and universities spent a Saturday night
learning about the problem of hunger and pledging to work together
across lines of religious difference to address it.”

So… I guess those Christians you hate aren’t really all that bad…

Can you imagine if we actually hated Christians as people? Life would be utterly unbearable for us in a nation that is somewhere between 75% and 90% Christian, depending on which survey you look at?

I mean really, does that make any sense? Allowing for the ecological fallacy, since numbers that large mostly swamp it here, that would mean I’d have to hate three quarters of my coworkers, three quarters of my family (actually, the number’s higher with my family), three quarters of the people I meet on a daily basis.

I don’t hate Christians at all. I’m surrounded by them on a daily basis and I like most of them.

My issue is that while it’s true that not everyone has certain needs that religion fufills and therefore has no need to get secular replacements, some people do.

You find it irritating to hear that we all require the various things religions provide in a supernatural context (community, ceremony, contemplation, outlet for charity etc.)? I totally get that. But many in the atheist community seem intent on insisting that we all don’t need those things, and anyone who does is just “mimicking religion” or somehow weak and needs to “get over it”. Guess what? Some atheists do have a wish for various aspects of life that have usually been covered by organized religion and that is also perfectly legitimate.

Though some people go too far on both sides within the atheist community, I’ve seen a lot more prescribing of what “we all” should do from the “no rituals, no oranization, no common cause” side than from those who wish to set up those things.

This is why I love your blog Hemant. ‘Nuff said…

I agree with I_Claudia. The responses to the Humanist Community Project, which is an attempt to provide community spaces for nonreligious people, was  extremely instructive: numerous posts and comments saying, essentially, “We don’t want this! We shouldn’t want this! Anyone who wants this is a closet theist and a religion-lover and a traitor!” And this from people who are constantly claiming they want a plurality of voices in the freethought community and recognize the values of various approaches! It was disheartening and, in the most extreme cases, dishonest.

I think Hemant’s point here is spot-on: we have to stop demonizing each other, stop trying to impose our desires on other people, and recognize that people will express themselves and their atheism in different ways.That shouldn’t preclude principled critique of each other when we go wrong – that’s very important – but it should certainly preclude the othering and shaming that people like Stedman regularly receive at the hands of some.

Please delete this comment

“Chris Stedman is an atheist. But because he’s more interested in forming alliances with religious people so they can work together”

The Uncle Tom strategy. I don’t think that’s a good model to follow.

You kind of have to read the book – he does address things like planetariums and museums at some length…

That’s why he doesn’t make that argument.

I agree that De Botton has some very valuable ideas. Look to 
http://harvardhumanist.org/ if you want to see many of his ideas in action!

And yet he keeps talking about how we don’t have these buildings. Is he  making a completely different argument in the book than he is in his public statements? He says we need awe inspiring buildings like churches. I say we have them. I say, in fact, that in terms of modern architecture most of the awe inspiring design work is in secular buildings, not churches. I say also that what he asks for in his public statements and his attempted clarification of them, is that architects should be learning from religious architecture. Does he actually think that every beginning architecture student in the world does not study religious architecture? That architects aren’t continually inspired by every kind of architecture that has come before? When I read his attempt to clarify his argument all I could think was that it sounded like he was asking everyone to…do exactly what they’ve always done. Not very revolutionary. 

If his public statements can’t be understood without reading the book, then they’re just marketing, not arguments, and one can’t really be very upset with others for taking issue with them. In fact, the more people publicly argue with him, the better, since I for one would otherwise never have known this book existed. Now I’m not going to buy it, but it seems like all this controversy ought to be good for sales. One might even think the things he’s written lately were expressly written to gin up this controversy to generate publicity for his book. But no one would be that cynical.

And here we go with the bullying, shaming, and othering! Bring it on, Rieux! When are you going to call hims a limp-wristed fag with the case of the vapors? We know you want to! Let it all out! Why hold back? We don’t want these spineless, boot-licking stooges in our movement anyway!

Bully.

Could you please direct us to an example of this “limp wristed” insult, or other homophobia, outside of your own words? Preferably from someone known and respected and not just some random comment in a long thread?

 Responding to such a detailed and well referenced critique with an attack on something that wasn’t actually said simply makes it look like you have no reasonable argument to rely on.

” I completely agree with de Botton that asking whether religion is true
is rather pointless. What I’ve been searching for for years is something
that really replaces that religious community with those strong bonds,
and I have yet to find anything that matches it.”

If you don’t care whether or not their claims are true you can just go back to the church then. Here in the reality based community people tend to think that the truth matters quite a bit.

 the Unitarians and Universalists are a mixture of theists and nontheists who get along very well together. They are much more concerned about making an impact in the world to produce a better society rather than arguing about theological differences.much of the Sunday talks are a great deal similar to your Ted talks rather than theological sermons of conventional churches. Check them out!

 Well, JFL, I disagree with you as a matter of fact. I very much doubt you have *actually* seen “a hell of a lot of othering, shaming and blog-bullying by prominent
“militant” figures, who stoop to vulgar personal attacks, stoke up
disgusting comment-threads which introduce homophobia and slurs, and
generally try to push interfaith voices out of the conversation.”

I very much doubt that indeed. In fact, I doubt you’ll be able to pull up any convincing examples of such. I read the New Statesman article and it was devoid of any.

In fact, I doubt you can actually link to or quote anyone who actually said, “You’re a spineless, tight-assed, limp-wristed, pearl-clutching Uncle
Mary with a bad case of the vapors and you should fuck off back into
your atheist closet.”

Anti-gnu-atheists generally have nothing but straw men to burn down.

I read Stedman’s whole article, and I’m not sure what’s so wrong about it. About the only thing I can see is that he didn’t note that getting offended at a stick figure is ridiculous, but you can say that and then also note that doing it when you know it will offend people (why else would the local AHA group have sent the letter to the Muslim Student Association if not to warn them that they might be offended?) is probably not a wise choice, at least not if you would like to find reasonable allies. Maybe you don’t care about that goal, and that’s okay, but there’s nothing inherently wrong with wanting that goal, and I am an atheist who wants that.

And let me note that (although this might just be me) I find “Uncle Tom” accusations to be absolutely repugnant, and you have not by any standard provided enough evidence for me to accept the accusation as anything other than groundless. Maybe there’s other history out there, but you haven’t provided good examples, even. If you want to say that “Stedman makes the world a less safe place for open atheists to live in,” you’d damn well better be able to back that up.

I really wish this guy would not act like he’s speaking for anyone but himself. Maybe he needs validation from theists, but I don’t, so leave me out of it.

I lost any respect I might of had for him after reading that pathetic defense of homophobia you linked to.

“You guys are hurting your own cause by not welcoming people who think you’re immoral and inferior to straight people! You’re a meanie if you don’t hug and thank people for stopping their bigotry just short of voting against your rights!”

Is an argument that makes me furious. The only way society is going to really change is if new generations grow up in an environment where anti-LBGT bigotry is condemned the way we condemn sexism and racism. No one pretends it’s okay to think women with jobs or interracial couples are sinners and I’m not gonna pretend the anti-gay bigots who think we’re sinners are any better. By defending and making excuses for bigotry he’s just slowing down progress.

Somewhere in America an LBGT teenager is considering suicide because they think they’re a ‘sinner’ and this ass is defending the people who call them sinners.

 Wow! Have I missed out on some latest-and-greatest terminology or what! What, exactly, is Gnu Atheism?

I read Stedman’s whole article, and I’m not sure what’s so wrong about it.

Then, in turn, I’m not sure what more I can do. I can’t force you to notice the injustice and support for religious tyranny that I put right in front of you.Stedman’s article constitutes direct advocacy that atheists silence our own expression on the grounds that it violates religious rules and religious privilege. That’s an outrage, a direct assault on any attempt to establish that atheists’ human rights are more important than religious people’s self-centered privilege. But again, I can’t force you to care about such things.

About the only thing I can see is that he didn’t note that getting offended at a stick figure is ridiculous….

In fact, “he didn’t note” a single goddamned thing about the chalkers’ explicitly detailed reasons for doing what they did, preferring instead to slime them (and Hemant, and plenty of other atheists) with all kinds of atheophobic and religiously-privileged tropes instead. He gave theocrats—such as the ones trying to shut the chalkers down—the club they need to beat innocent atheists senseless. Apparently you don’t see a problem with that, but some of us do.

…but you can say that and then also note that doing it when you know it will offend people … is probably not a wise choice, at least not if you would like to find reasonable allies.

But in fact there is no reason at all why chalking Muhammad would prevent “find[ing] reasonable allies,” in light of the fact that anyone who would disdain atheists for failing to follow religious rules is by definition not interested in dealing with us reasonably to begin with.It is not reasonable to demand or expect that atheists limit our expression to the speech that is permitted by one religious sect’s rules (or by the fragile and absurdly privileged sensitivities of members of said sect, sensitivities that are based on said rules). Instead, that is theocratic and religiously privileged, and I rather wonder what in the hell the point of finding “allies” of those varieties is.

And let me note that (although this might just be me) I find “Uncle Tom” accusations to be absolutely repugnant….

Meanwhile, I find (1) heavily Uncle Tom-ist behavior like Stedman’s and (2) willful blindness toward the nature of such behavior to be what’s absolutely repugnant. So there we are.

[A]nd you have not by any standard provided enough evidence for me to accept the accusation as anything other than groundless.

Again, I can make no claim on your subjectivity. If we were living in 1957, and I showed you the first nine African-American students being escorted by National Guardsmen into Little Rock High School past throngs of shrieking racists, I could not force you to see anything wrong with those throngs’ behavior. Likewise, given that you can look straight at Stedman advocating that his fellow atheists silence ourselves in deference to religious dictates and the absurd, unjust, and privileged sensitivities of believers (while he blows a whole chorus of atheophobia and religious-privilege dogwhistles), I am helpless to open your eyes.Uncle Toms are Uncle Toms notwithstanding any particular person’s refusal to take their destructive behavior seriously.

Maybe there’s other history out there, but you haven’t provided good examples, even.

I provided several more, of course—but again, I can only provide the evidence. Recognizing the blatant support for religious privilege and atheophobia is up to you.

If you want to say that “Stedman makes the world a less safe place for open atheists to live in,” you’d damn well better be able to back that up.

I did. It appears you simply don’t care.

It’s making fun of the term “New Atheists”. Since the term New Atheist was invented to basically refer to anyone who makes a full throated defense of atheism, or to deride religion, who was born after Bertrand Russel, and since there’s really nothing new about the “New Atheism”, and since “New Atheist” is often used as a pejorative (along with the equally ill-conceived “militant atheist”), when one wants to refer to someone who is likely to be considered a “New Atheist” by others, while making the point that you reject the label, and hopefully applying a bit of humor, one can use gnu atheist.

PZ does all those things all the time. He made a whole thread part of the purpose of which was spreading a false rumor about Chris Stedman. He consistently attacks those who disagree with derogatory slurs and demeaning language. He regularly prods his favorite commenters to new heights of demagoguery, and fails to moderate extremely aggressive attacks. He foments an atmosphere on his blog that is more than unpleasant – it is unwelcoming to differing voices, hegemonic in its effect on comments, and anti-Freethought. He attacks people on Twitter for praying for their loved ones. He declares his contempt for all Christians. He repeatedly shows that he cannot abide criticism of his own views, while attacking others with wild and aggressive mischaracterizations.

Have you ever READ Pharyngula?

I agree. I thought his respons was ridiculous. He apologized profusely for it and accepted how embarrassing it was, but I agree he was wrong to say that. But that doesn’t excuse New Atheist voices who use similarly aggressive attacks to silence their critics. I note you don’t respond to that point.

Honestly I think Ian over at crommunist sums up my feelings on this post quite well. 
http://freethoughtblogs.com/crommunist/2012/02/29/the-unfriendly-atheist/

But I also think you use language in a way that is unnecessarily demeaning and aggressive….

Meanwhile, I think Stedman’s misconduct is absolutely outrageous and beyond the pale—and such behavior requires strong, not lukewarm, opprobrium. Responding to hateful garbage like Stedman’s with rhetoric that would not strike Stedman’s fans as “demeaning and aggressive” seems to me simply inadequate to the task of denouncing his deep complicity in promoting atheophobia and religious privilege.

In short, I think Stedman’s behavior has been deeply and destructively wrong. “Aggressive” language is an entirely proportionate response to such behavior.

(like the whole “pearl clutching” and “vapors” meme, which is consistently used as a mode of attack against gay men like Chris and I, references to us as “ladies”, which hasn’t been uncommon, etc.)

I have never taken part in any such thing. (Nor have I seen it directed at Stedman or you—though unquestionably I could have missed it.) I have more than once objected to gendered insults directed at an opponent of mine on the atheist blogosphere; I have no truck with it whatsoever.

Stedman’s sexual orientation is only relevant to this discussion insofar as we’re discussing his demonstrable willingness to sell out and backstab his fellow GLBTs in the same way as he does his fellow atheists—in both cases, in favor of the religious power and privilege he demands fealty to. All of that is outrageous, and nonetheless I would never dream of attacking him (or anyone) with gendered insults for any of it.

In this post you have called Chris “an enemy”, accused him of bigotry, of being a “hegemon-stooge”

Yes. For reasons I have provided in some detail.

A[n]d you have used the highly-charged and extremely derogatory phrases “Uncle Tom” and “Uncle Mary”….

What? That last is simply false; I have never called anyone an “Uncle Mary.” I barely have the foggiest memory of hearing that term, much less using it, before today’s thread.

As for “Uncle Tom,” I’m afraid the shoe simply fits. Advocating theocracy and religious privilege at the expense of atheists’ and queers’ basic freedoms, indeed our humanity, is Uncle Tomistry.

…phrases which are frequently used to describe literally anyone who disagrees on principle with New Atheist orthodoxy.

That is not my experience of any use of those phrases. Stedman gets attacked for actual mistreatment of innocent people, not “disagree[ment] on principle with New Atheist orthodoxy.” (The fact that he clearly has no interest in actually engaging with gnu atheist arguments, preferring instead to continually post bigoted and privileged misrepresentations of us, is somewhat of a stumbling block here.)

And you do this in an environment in which people like Chris and I are frequently and excessively attacked….

I have seen Stedman frequently attacked. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him excessively attacked. And I haven’t seen it done “in the most derogatory way.”

…for holding a different view and expressing it.

No. Stedman is being harshly criticized here—as in many other places—for his severely unethical behavior. That is not in fact objectionable.

When you fling an epithet like “Uncle Mary”….

I have done no such thing. WTF, James?

….at a gay rights activist who has been gay-bashed, ostracized by family, and has consistently stood up for gay people….

“Consistently stood up”? What do you call that Wallis-defending garbage, then? I am very sorry that Stedman has been the victim of gay-bashing, but that’s a rather poor excuse for his promotion and defense of gay-bashing in a major Internet periodical. Or, for that matter, his constant atheist-bashing in that and other fora.

I can have sympathy for the man’s past. It is not an excuse for his misconduct in the present.

I find it despicable, frankly. Ugly and callous. Inhumane.

And I find it proportionate and warranted by the (severe) circumstances. So there we are.

the next time someone wants to call me “spineless”, I’d ask you to consider….

I didn’t do that, either! Jesus, James—I may sometimes use harsh rhetoric, but I think you could at least confine your protest to things I have actually said.

I AGREE with you on the Wallis issue….

Well, then—though I recognize the difficulty you mention of disagreeing strongly with a friend, maybe things would have turned out better, maybe there’d be a better chance of showing Stedman the error of his ways, if you were more “aggressive” in your criticism. Then or now.

A criticism that contains harsh rhetoric conveys something meaningful, James: it communicates that the behavior being criticized is serious, consequential, and flatly unacceptable. In recent years Stedman has engaged in behavior that brutally undermines atheists’ (and, in at least that one case, GLBTs’) claims to freedom from unjust privilege. That is no minor matter, and it cannot pass without complaint.

A lukewarm objection to such destructive conduct is simply not sufficient. Stedman’s behavior is not merely regrettable, it’s outrageous. And the difference matters.

 Thank you. So, if I just call myself atheist and forgo all that other stuff, does that make me a bad person or a bad atheist? 🙂

Well that clarifies things a bit. So no one has called anyone a “limp-wristed fag”, those are your words. Your issue is with “pearl clutching” and “vapors”. I don’t think those were meant to be homophobic in any way, but I’ll be the first to say that what was intended doesn’t always excuse what was said. There’s no doubt those words carry a gender connotation that could easily be problematic. I think you’d have a better case if you specifically said which words you had a problem with and explaining why they’re a problem, rather than adding words that are much worse and pretending someone said them and waiting several indentations into a comment thread to say what you actually mean.

Not at all.  Most of us do.

Gnu atheist is just for when you have no choice but to draw a distinction with a label, and you don’t like doing it.

First, I owe you an apology – I completely misread one of your “Uncle Tom’s” as an “Uncle Mary” and I retract completely my accusation on that front. It is such a commonly-used attack (it’s the equivalent phrase to Uncle Tom in the queer community) from new atheists that I saw it in your post when it wasn’t there. I’m sorry for that – I’m glad you didn’t use it. I think that’s the worst.

As for the rest, I think I need to make it clear that I am responding to the issue as a whole as much as I’m responding to you. I am pointing, as you frequently point in your writing, to a broader context of demeaning, derogatory, hurtful and abusive attacks against people like Chris Stedman and others. I am not saying that shit hasn’t been flung the other way – someone below gives a good example of Alain De Botton losing his shit over criticism thrown his way, which in my mind was unacceptable to. And I think we SHOULD call out more “faitheist” types when they legitimately demean new atheists.

But how does calling someone a “hegemon stooge” advance an argument? I don’t think it adds anything at all. I think it drains your authority by showing a lack of balance, a lack of concern for other views. I agree with you in Wallace, and I STILL disagree with how you express your disagreement.

Perhaps, in your case, it comes down to a disagreement on the boundaries of reasonable criticism, and I have overreacted. Perhaps you can tell me if you think my response to Stedman’s article about Wallis, and we can go from there. But again, I do apologize for my error, which is inexcusable.

I’m with Rieux on this one – some of us have had run-ins with Stedman in the past, and you can check Butterflies & Wheels for a more comprehensive set of examples. He’s very fond of tooting his own horn in the bridges he builds to the religious community, though very vocal about the ones he burns to the atheistic community, and exemplifies the accommodationist viewpoint that saying anything offensive to the religious is counterproductive – but apparently okay when directed towards outspoken atheists and secularists.

Moreover, those of us who actually attempted to open a dialogue with him, as he’s so fond of promoting, were rarely capable of doing so – somehow he’s always too busy to get to our points. When my comment went missing on his own blog and I reposted it to Weird Things, I got the promise that he’d get back to it. Still waiting, and I think it’s over two years now. That, by the way, was when dealing with Stedman’s straw man arguments (like some of the replies to Rieux here.)

He has his approach, and he’s happy with it. I’m quite happy with mine, which includes not respecting anything I do not find respectful, even when someone expects it. I find enough bridges towards the religious community not to think any more need to be built, and won’t fall for the whining martyr complexes of those who form a majority and wield imaginary authority, yet feel picked on when someone suggest abandoning their special status in favor of rational approaches to morality.

As for “interfaith” activities, someone’s going to need to explain to me why faith needs to be any part of it. Just do something good. What’s so hard about that? If you need to bring your faith (or lack thereof) into it, you’re posturing, trying to score points.

Bruce, can you not see the difference between “stating an opinion” and being obnoxious, rude and unwelcoming? I find the inability to distinguish between those two very troubling.

The peculiar thing is that you praise the UU’s for having TED-style discussions about things other than religion, but how about discussions about religion?  The thing that annoys religious folks about the New Atheists is that we talk a lot about theology and religion, but in a way that highlights the fact that there is NO EVIDENCE for any of those claims.  We don’t want to talk about whether god is three-in-one or not, but about whether there is any evidence whatsoever for any supernatural beings, period.

For too long, getting along well together has meant that no challenge of the evidentiary basis of religious claims was allowed.  From what I’ve heard from many atheists who have left UU, they were made to feel like second-class citizens and told that discussion of the evidentiary basis of religious claims was not allowed because of concerns for “getting along very well together.”

If people really want weekly TED talks, organize a TED society where people get pop-cultural lectures every week.  But such an organization would be an educational one, not a religious one.  

James – not as troubling as I find the intellectual dishonesty inherent in the idea “that asking whether religion is true of not is rather pointless”

Once you have abandoned the value of basic honesty – the value of valuing truth – then all reason is out the window. 

Do you really live in such an impoverished community that there aren’t organizations organized around something other than religion?  Get involved in a political movement.  Join an artistic or musical society.  Join a sports team.  Volunteer with a secular charity.   You don’t think those people can be your “brothers and sisters”?  If not, then you’ve never been on a sports team.  I really get irritated when people say that they are missing out on community because they aren’t in a church anymore.  Church is easy.  Parents indoctrinate children in to them and there are a million proselytizers eager to find you and suck you in if they don’t.  Atheism is hard because you need to decide who you are and find your own path and build that community around your own interests.  If you are willing to explore and get out there and get over this idea that community comes from religion, then you will do it.  

Not nearly so ugly as the actual selling out and backstabbing Chris does. For the life of me I cannot wrap my mind around it, how people who believe in the same liberal values as I do (such as Hemant and James) are *more* upset when someone is starkly called out for awful behavior than they are about the awful behavior itself. Is there really no hope that even reasonable people cannot take off their emotional allegiance blinders even a little when it’s their friends?

Gus, see my comment above. James is severely conflating several issues and seeing tigers in the woods that aren’t there. 

Thanks, Al.

[Stedman i]s very fond of tooting his own horn in the bridges he builds to the religious community, though very vocal about the ones he burns to the atheistic community, and exemplifies the accommodationist viewpoint that saying anything offensive to the religious is counterproductive – but apparently okay when directed towards outspoken atheists and secularists.

Yes—and moreover, there’s a causal connection between the two sides of that. Stedman has the credibility with the religious majority he does in large part because of his prominent resort to gnubashing. The “bridges he builds to the religious community” are substantially built on the backs of the atheists he debases and marginalizes. He establishes connections with privileged believers by assuring them that he, too, can’t stand atheists who dare to disrespect religion; as a result, believers don’t have to be scared of him the way they are of the Dawkinses and Myerses of the world. No, no, his support for religious privilege and denunciations of gnu atheism show he’s “one of the good ones,” unlike that other scum.

And that’s the main reason why Stedman’s behavior is so damaging: he teaches the atheophobic religious majority that they are right to despise us uppity atheists who don’t know our proper place. Believers see Stedman and the few other “good” atheists loudly agree that those horrible “militant” “fundamentalist” miscreants are detestably wrong when we dare to (horrors!) say critical things about religious belief. And that reassures the believing majority that it’s perfectly reasonable for them to hate outspoken atheists for refusing to shut up and defer to their privileged demand to never, ever be told that they might be wrong—or, indeed, be told that we exist.

Thus does Stedman’s own atheism, not to mention the prominent soapboxes (such as HuffPo) he has been provided to do his gnubashing from, make him one of the most powerful promoters of atheophobia on offer.

He has his approach, and he’s happy with it.

And for the record, I’d like to say that in any but the most extreme circumstances I have no objection to “conciliatory atheism”—an open atheism that scrupulously avoids offending religious sensibilities—whatsoever. There are a million ways to be an atheist, and no one is obligated to be a firebrand or an advocate.

But Chris Stedman and “his approach” aren’t wrong because they are conciliatory toward religion. They’re wrong because they are directly and severely destructive toward atheists’ standing in society and social discourse. Stedman doesn’t need to start chalking stick figures of Muhammad; he just needs to stop stabbing his fellow atheists in the back. If he just cut out the atheist-bashing and concomitant promotion of religious privilege, I for one wouldn’t complain about “his approach” at all.

As to the OP – you open up with the claim that Stedman is attacked for seeking religious alliances. Care to show us any examples? So far as I can see criticisms of him have more to do with his methods than his aims, and as Ophelia puts it, he isn’t being targeted he is being responded to. 

I don’t think my conflation is unfair. Abuse which is not intended to be phobic can still be phobic. I don’t think you or other commenters have an anti-gay bone in your body. That doesn’t mean the remarks I’m calling out don’t reinforce privilege.

Weak. You won’t engage, I get it. But I wasn’t making an “intent is not magic” argument. And just because it’s convenient for you to create a distracting argument does not mean, in fact, that anything in the context around this debate could reasonably be construed as being interpreted or received as homophobic by anyone but you . 

You’re being evasive. No one’s lobbing gay bashing at Chris, James. We’re criticizing him for substance. 

 Funny you should say that. Since Jesus basically said that the Old Law was still in effect and would be forever and ever, and since the Old Law stipulated death as punishment for homosexuality, then the only Christians who are being un-Christ-like are the ones tolerant of homosexuality. Which, by definition, makes them better people than Jesus.

It’s not exactly rare in the United States, either.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O74hxLjy1L8

Or, you might like doing it. I don’t really mind drawing distinctions with labels. Often, I find it very useful.

If it bothers him then he should respond to his critics and consider not behaving that way. Jonathan, he never has to my knowledge. Reasonable people don’t give the benefit of the doubt to others who consistently refuse to respond to legitimate concerns and who continue to slander them. 

I have to believe you’d agree with that if it were anyone other than someone you know and like in real life! *You* wouldn’t be expected to give the benefit of the doubt to someone who continually mischaracterized your humanist work and gave fodder to an already powerful majority against you, and who wouldn’t stop it or even acknowledge your complaint. Surely you can see that, yes? You clearly are aware that Chris doesn’t walk on water (none of us do), but can you get a little farther and acknowledge that it’s not equivalent bad behavior? That he really is obligated to *earn* the benefit of the doubt at this point? 

I think that if you really question Chris’s work and motives, you should email him and ask him about why he’s doing what he’s doing. I had a conversation like this with him a few years ago and I feel like I better understand his brand of atheist activism as a result. I don’t want to speak for Chris, so I won’t – but his HCH email address is posted on our website (and mine as well).

And Rieux, I fear my time at the Humanist Chaplaincy at Harvard is drawing short. I’m actually about to launch a Humanist Chaplaincy on the west coast!

So first, let’s dispense with the imputing of motive. What I am expressing here is my honest outrage at the way our community treats some of its members. That you disagree with my analysis is no good reason to accuse me of peddling deliberate nonsense. I am honestly disgusted by some of the insults some members of the Freethought community fling at each other, and by some of the ways in which they seek to control the discourse. I have felt very discomfited by this for a long time, and this thread has given me an opportunity to express that discomfort. I would appreciate you engaging with my critique in the spirit in which it was intended – as a forthright expression of outrage and disgust at some of our community’s worst practices. I cannot any longer stay silent while a movement I love tears itself apart in gruesome displays of other-bashing.

I stand for reasoned, principled criticism and an honest, open exchange of ideas. That is not abetted by personal, degrading, extreme language and insults. It pushes people away from airing contrary views out of fear of the backlash. And that does not aid open discussion.

My request is quite simple and quite limited: let’s criticize each other, but let’s do so without using derogatory and personal language. I don’t think that’s unreasonable or even particularly objectionable.

There is absolutely nothing in any of their writing to suggest that in the least.

If you’re going to provide your opinion, at least provide it some grounding in fact rather than simple speculation. Judging without reading any of their work is exactly what Hemant is criticizing in this post.

Why would I read an entire book by him when he gets so much wrong in a single paragraph, as John has so amply pointed out.

Wow, That Stedman quote is particularly offensive because a drawing Mohammed is more like drawing a swastika with a red circle and slash through it. It is a protest against a totalitarian belief system, that calls for the genocide of others.

Ha it must be very annoying to come across an out spoken moderate athiest.If he were a moslem he would be living in america ,working in Manhatten,middle class. While most of atheism is living in afganastan ,working in Kabul,taliban elite.Like the taliban, he should be slain[verbally],hes corrupted.No i see him as enlightened,less ignorant an individual…. a more evolved man if you like

You think you can find reasonable allies in the set of people who find offense at a stick figure in a manner that is completely inconsistent with the religious rationale behind the rule against Muslims using images of humans and animals? The rule is to prevent them from turning into idolators.

There is zero danger that atheists will start worshiping these graven images on sidewalks. The drawing of the figures is specifically a protest against Muslims imposing their religious taboos on us non-muslims.

Islam was specifically designed to take offense in the behavior of others. It’s like if the founder of KKK had banned eating watermelon and chicken because in their bigoted minds that’s what black people do. Then getting in a huff when others don’t “respect” their bans.

Mohammad was one of the most evil individuals ever to have crawled the face of the earth and frankly I don’t care if that fact offends Muslims, so why should I care if drawing a stick figure incites them? I only exposes their intolerant nature which was planted and cultivated by their religion.

Myers is well known for this kind of behavior. Do a google search.

Sorry, I’m going to continue to attack Marxist, Objectivist, Scientologist, Buddhists, or any other atheist on subjects which they get wrong. I’ll only be supportive when they are right. I don’t see any side I agree with 100%.

The only thing I find that is annoying is he claims to speak for me. Check out John Small Berries comment at the top. You analogy sucks and is the Islamic equivalent of a Godwin. The worst the most vitriolic atheist has done is little worse that what you just did with your comment. I don’t see any atheist blowing up schoolgirls over this unlike the Taliban.

For the rituals? What listening to nonsense in Latin?

Religious beliefs are clearly false. I have no problem telling people that their beliefs are false. What I have a problem with is the belief that because religious beliefs are false, all aspects of religion are useless and harmful. Religion evolved for a reason, it is imprinted in our Paleolithic brains. Many people seek meaningful happy lives; people ignore such an important part of themselves at their own peril.

In reply to James Croft, above. Avoiding comment nesting.

“I cannot any longer stay silent while a movement I love tears itself apart in gruesome displays of other-bashing.”

It appears to me you are suffering from foot-in-mouth disease.

And: “My request is quite simple and quite limited: let’s criticize each
other, but let’s do so without using derogatory and personal language. I
don’t think that’s unreasonable or even particularly objectionable.”

Indeed that would be quite reasonable, if that’s all you were saying. But you’re not. Compare:

 “PZ does all those things all the time. He made a whole thread part of
the purpose of which was spreading a false rumor about Chris Stedman. … He attacks people on Twitter for praying for their loved ones. He
declares his contempt for all Christians. He repeatedly shows that he
cannot abide criticism of his own views, while attacking others with
wild and aggressive mischaracterizations. etc. etc.”

When asked for links to specifics, you provided *none*. Talk about spreading false rumours.

James, if you are going to plead for “reasoned, principled criticism”, you would do well to practice what you preach. Your criticism of gnus is neither reasoned (lack of substantiation) nor principled (directed indiscriminately at basically all of us gnus).

One of my pet peeves is hypocrisy: literally, insufficient application of criticism. Namely, you criticize others for things you yourself do without hesitation. I have no sympathy for hypocrisy.

If you would like the conversation to ‘cool down’, I suggest you start the process yourself. A reality check is in order, IMNSHO.

There’s been a lot of talk on here about “derisive language” and “bullying.” Help me out: why does it matter if someone says a mean thing to you? What’s so hard about brushing that aside? What’s the big deal?

It’s one thing if you’re being misrepresented by someone or falsely accused of something, but indignation over tone and hurt feelings is a waste of time and energy.

Again I don’t trust Disqus with links, but the “thread part of the purpose of which was spreading a false rumor about Chris Stedman” is titled “Dr. Dan Golaszewski is a quack!”

PZ made a retraction, and James acknowledged and thanked him for the retraction.

He has supported Jessica Ahlquist and Damon Fowler by putting up a guest post in defense of them, by Andrew Tripp. As much as Stedman has been criticized for publishing guest posts by Karla McLaren, he should be credited for publishing Tripp.

To be sure, I disagree with some of Tripp’s conclusion on what to do about cases like the harassment of Ahlquist (I think we should attempt to convert people to atheism, by any means necessary), but the post is calling attention to their marginalization and condemning it.

As I’ve noted above, the thread is titled “Dr. Dan Golaszewski is a quack!”

And if it did, so what?

Amend that to “legitimacy of any disagreement about 2010.” The “even” doesn’t make sense.

we are not amused

OK so I deserve Joshuaslocum1 a reply here because he has very kindly added some clarification to this whole thing. The comment I made directed at Rieux, where I squished together a bunch of anti-gay phrases in order to make a rhetorical point, has been misunderstood. I was not saying (nor do I say in that comment) that those are words that people actually have used to attack others. I was attempting to make clear that I see the sort of extreme and intemperate language Rieux used as a form of bullying – an illegitimate use of power to silence another and prevent the expression of their viewpoint or drive them out of the community.

I also wanted to call attention to what I consider to be a very troubling use of extremely derogatory phrases like “Uncle Tom” (which I think is objectionable because it is so extreme – the situation in which atheists find themselves today just isn’t comparable remotely to the situation African Americans were in when that phrase was coined, making the use of it just outrageous) and “Uncle Mary” which, at the time, I thought Rieux had used (my mistake).

Also, I think the use of “pearl-clutcher” and that meme has a tinge of homophobia and sexism to it, in the sense that it has been repeatedly used in response to gay male commenters to feminize them for the purpose of  dismissing their criticism. The fact that it is a well-used meme does not mean that it isn’t a sexist and demeaning one, and since feminizing language has been used historically, and continues to be used today, to dismiss and delegitimize gay people, particularly when it comes to their ability to engage in assertive pursuits like debate, I think it bears mentioning. I must admit the first time I saw it used, having not heard the meme, I thought it was precisely an anti-gay slur designed for that purpose.

As for the limp-wristed thing, I wasn’t consciously trying to reignite that issue from ages ago. I accepted and still accept your explanation and appreciate it. It was just one of many things that added together in my mind to make my early encounters with places like B&W and Pharyngula extremely unpleasant. So I didn’t mean to single you out for criticism here – it just appeared in my memory as one of many things.

The question of whether I would use the term “Uncle Mary” against someone who was not my friend in similar circumstances is an interesting one. Generally, though not always, I am quite careful how I use language. I am very aware of the power of language to harm. I have chosen to try to never use language to harm people. That decision was part of a late coming-out process in which I spent a long time excavating my own prejudice, my own rhetorical strategies (I can be exceedingly blunt sometimes, to the point of harshness), and my own way of conducting discourse. So, with respect, I don’t think I would use that term to describe a person, except perhaps in rage.

Now, I do actually understand your criticism of Chris Stedman. I do actually get it. I have written at length on ideas of religious privilege and how it is enforced or damaged. I give a lot of thought to that question. So I do get the criticism. But I don’t accept that the legitimacy of your criticism translates to legitimacy of personal attacks. And I see the sort of writing that has been posted here, and elsewhere, as more a personal attack than legitimate criticism.

I’m very happy to engage in a discussion of what constitutes reasonable critique and what doesn’t – but I’d only do so in an environment where I felt I was being respected and heard. I wouldn’t ask anything different of anyone else.

Awwww, shucks =D

Many thanks. You’ll see in the comment thread there how difficult it was even to get PZ to change the accusation even well after JT had clarified that it was baseless, and that when he first changed it, he first omitted to note the change. The change ultimately is itself derogatory and snide, of course.

Thaumas – I do appreciate that it is entirely reasonable of you to ask for specifics. But to provide them I would have to go through tens of Pharyngula comment threads and articles and read some seriously disturbing shit which is flung at my friends and at me. So I think you can understand why I might be disinclined to do that. Furthermore, were I to write a full post on this (which I am considering doing) it would engulf my life in a flame war with a much more powerful and ruthless foe (I exaggerate a little to keep this light). So, I hesitate.

I’ll see if I can give you a few choice examples, though, because I do respect the call for evidence.

To be fair, I never “pretended someone said them”. I was using hyperbole to surface a point which I think is important. However, it was quite significantly based on a misreading of Rieux’s post, so clearly I messed up.

Support for religious tyranny? Seriously?

Yes, of course “seriously.” The fact that you have no interest in protecting atheists and our right to be free from religious aggression does not make the problems you refuse to care about less than “serious.”

We’re talking about not going of one’s way to do something offensive when it could be reasonably avoided.

No, that synopsis of the situation is, in and of itself, both (1) an offensive dismissal of the legitimate interests (e.g., atheist autonomy) involved in the Everybody Draw Muhammad Day episode and (2) an outrageous ratification of religious tyranny.

• You have couched the notion that important atheist expression (viz., an atheist protest on a pressing free-expression issue) should be silenced as “not going [out] of one’s way.” That’s an offensive atheophobic attack.

• You have declared that the activity in question—drawing stick figures labeled “Muhammad”—is “something offensive.” That is religious privilege of the most hateful and destructive kind. There is nothing the slightest bit legitimately “offensive” about those chalkings. The only way anyone can possibly get to that conclusion is by swallowing religious tyranny whole.

Your attacks on the event—within your frame-tastic preconceptions about its basic content!—are flatly disgusting. Stedman’s were worse, but only because (1) his article was longer than this comment of yours and (2) he had a bigger podium.

I could give a fuck less about whether or not this is due to religious rules….

Yes, that’s obvious. You have made it clear that you “could give a fuck less about” theocratic tyranny and the damage it does to atheists. That is of course your right—but why in the world do you think any nonbeliever should be anything but nauseated by your callous disregard for the destruction of our autonomy, our rights, or indeed our lives?

Be a happy theocrat if you’d like; you just should probably not be surprised when nonbelievers are repulsed by your brutal atheophobia.

…there are people involved, people with actual feelings and (often irrational) reactions to various stimuli.

Yes, exactly. Which, by your logic, justifies absolutely any act of theocratic aggression against atheists imaginable, up to and including the extermination of every one of us who has ever blasphemed the Lord. As you note, “there are people involved,” very real people “with actual feelings and (often irrational) reactions to various stimuli”—stimuli such as (1) atheists exist and (2) atheists aren’t silent. “There are people with actual feelings,” millions of them, who want atheists utterly silenced and marginalized—and if they had the power, they’d want us dead. And here you are, arguing that those “often irrational” (wow! what blinding insight!) feelings are legitimate grounds to make moral claims on atheists—specifically, that we shut the fuck up.

Your argument fundamentally requires an utter surrender to religious privilege and tyranny. It is flatly disgusting, whether it’s coming from Stedman or from you.

Should Muslims be offended by depictions of Mohammed? Clearly not, in my estimation….

Oh? Well, then, in that case nearly every word you have written to this point in your comment is wrong, ugly wrong. If, as you concede (a day, several paragraphs, and numerous atheophobic preconceptions too late), Muslims should not “be offended by depictions of Mohammed,” then there is no legitimate reason at all for atheists’ political expression to be silenced—which renders both Stedman’s anti-atheist advocacy and your echo of it offensive assaults on basic human rights. 

….and there’s virtually no chance of having them as allies if their feelings are callously disregarded.

First, “callously” is an atheophobic attack. Atheists refusing to allow religious law to silence their vital political expression is not “callous.” You should be ashamed of yourself for that shot.

Second, you have no idea what “chance” there is “of having [Muslims] as allies” in the wake of a Muhammad-chalking event. You have no evidence, indeed no clue, about how that can work in the real world.

There are more than a billion Muslims on this planet. For example, one Muslim is an extremely liberal Congressman from Minneapolis; he and a large number of other Muslims are staunch secularists. The notion that “there’s virtually no chance of having” such people “as allies” because an atheist group violated an archaic religious law that plenty of Muslims themselves find absurd, irrelevant to their particular flavor of Islam, and/or incompatible with human rights is laughably false.

Third, there’s the actual evidence on the ground: the University of Illinois atheist group—the one Hemant wrote about in the Friendly Atheist post that Stedman coated with sarcastic snot—did then and does now maintain strong and positive ties to the Muslim student group on their campus. Your notion that “there’s virtually no chance of having them as allies” after EDMD happens to have problems with demonstrable reality.

Fourth, we go back to your (and Stedman’s) fundamental moral fallacy: it is not the responsibility of victims of bigotry, privilege, and tyranny when perpetrators of same have their feelings hurt, or refuse to be “allies,” on the grounds that the former have challenged the latter’s privilege. If religious believers refuse “alliances” with—or anything else to—atheists on the grounds that the atheists have defied illegitimate religious power, it is the believers who are morally responsible for that problem, not the atheists. Stedman’s and your statements on this matter are detestable attacks on atheists because you both get that precisely backwards.

And finally, though you clearly “could give a fuck less” about why EDMD actually happened (both Stedman’s attacks and yours are notable for their blithering disregard for the stated purposes of the event), a major part of the point of EDMD, and indeed of outspoken atheist advocacy in general, is to change religious believers’ reactions to impiety, blasphemy, and other challenges to religious belief. EDMD, like gnu atheism more broadly, is devoted to shifting the Overton Window—to helping believers and apatheists alike become accustomed to outspoken expression that defies religious edicts. The idea (supported by plenty of social science) is that, in the future, similar “blasphemies” will pass with much less pain and protest from the faithful and their defenders, because all of them will be used to such things, inured to the shocking fact that atheists have the human right to state what we believe and act upon it.

The approach you and Stedman advocate—responding to religious aggression with the Kevin Bacon/Animal House “Thank you Sir! May I have another?”—cuts this entire effort off at the knees. Rather than placing the focus on bruised religious sensibilities and prompting everyone to examine how baseless, privileged, and unjust those are, the cowardly surrender you demand teaches everyone the opposite lesson: that theocrats crying crocodile tears (“O woe! Atheists aren’t obeying my precious religious edicts!”) have, and deserve, the power to force atheists to toe God’s line. The poor unfortunate believers you wail about are trying to exercise theocratic power, and you are arguing that we are obligated to appease them. That is wrong—deadly wrong.

I’d be curious as to what these “atheophobic and religiously-privileged tropes” are.

No need for curiosity; by all appearances you swallowed them all, and you’re regurgitating them right here.

And the “giving theocrats a club” thing is just nonsense.

No, it’s just an element of your argument (the most noticeable one to people who care about atheists’ human rights) that you are working hard to blind yourself to.

The notion that theocrats’ hurt feelings place moral responsibility on atheists is a club. You are using it to brutalize atheists right here. Said theocrats will be quite happy to pick it up and use it on us (and on other minorities) even more. Doubt they’ll thank you for it, though.

Saying “atheists should avoid doing things to piss off potential allies” is not at all the same thing as saying “atheists should acquiesce to any and all religious demands.”

On the actual grounds that you and Stedman have provided, actually, those are precisely equivalent. The only basis for those precious “potential allies” to be “pissed off” by EDMD is the fact that EDMD violates religious law. By ratifying that as a legitimate basis to make moral claims, you are indeed arguing that “atheists should acquiesce to any and all religious demands.” No matter how thick your denial of that fact.

Again, I can make no claim on your subjectivity. If we were living in 1957….

…you’re fucking joking, right?

No; you’re just grandstanding, in an attempt to distract attention from the point being made. That point is that there is no way for me or anyone else to force obvious moral issues into your subjective consciousness. Human beings are capable, and always have been, of blinding themselves to brutality and injustice and pretending there’s nothing wrong with it. That happens to be what you’re doing here, and the analogy with Little Rock 1957—or any other case of widespread bigotry and hate—is direct. Your mindless “Omigod are you compareing EDMD to segregation how awwwwful retch retch” nonsense may help you pretend you don’t see the point, but it’s there nonetheless.

A meaningful difference between how I see the world and you apparently do: When people disagree with me, I don’t assume that they’re callous bastards.

Yes, well, despite your impressive ability to blind yourself to the existence of absolutely any point or idea that you can’t handle, I haven’t criticized anyone for merely “disagree[ing] with me.” I have offered profuse evidence and reasoning for the points I have made, and they amply support the critical conclusions I have stated.

In short, I haven’t “assume[d]” that you or Stedman is a “callous bastard.” I’ve just pointed out the elements of your reasoning (such as it is) that demonstrate how destructive and unconscionable your argument is. I wouldn’t call either one of you a “callous bastard” for that, but admittedly it’s not far from the mark.

TCC is right – you have simply taken the worst possible reading of Stedman’s piece here and are conveying it in extreme and inflammatory language.

No. In my latest response to TCC, I have explained at great length how his/her account, like yours, simply ignores the bigoted and theocratic bases of Stedman’s (and TCC’s) argument. Both of you are welcome to whatever willful blindness you prefer, but that fails to remove the atheophobia, hostility, or destructiveness from Stedman’s attacks.

What Stedman is saying – and this is quite clear to me – is that we should consider how our actions affect others.

That flatly disregards what he is saying, and more importantly what he is presupposing, about the moral status of religious privilege and aggression on the one hand and atheists’ human rights on the other. Those problems don’t go away just because you choose to ignore them.

It is not an “attack” on Metha [sic] ….

Oh, bullshit.

…he receives some very light criticism, way less agitated and enraged than many Gnu figures use against their ideological opponents.

Well, we’re back to your hobbyhorse of the past twenty-four hours: “agitation” and “rage” and harsh rhetoric. Sorry, but regardless of your obsession with Big Bad Words, language that is “agitated and enraged” is not the only method by which one can attack people in print—or do so harshly and/or inappropriately.

As I’ve noted repeatedly, Stedman’s treatment of Mehta and other atheists in that article is “snot“—it’s sneering sarcasm delivered with a superior smile: “Did I miss the fear and intimidation buried in there somewhere?” “Because that’s an effective approach, right?” “Oh, right — because then you couldn’t draw pictures of Muhammad in chalk and create controversy on your campus.”

Notwithstanding your obsession with Bad Words, that kind of contemptuous mockery is every bit as effective a method of expressing hostility as the more direct routes that I, among some other gnu atheists, tend to favor.

Sarcastic snot is no more inherently evil than the direct approach is, but the latter has the notable advantage of being considerably more honest: there may be downsides to telling someone they’re full of shit, but such a direct comment (or slightly more eloquent versions of it) makes no attempt to hide or misrepresent the idea that’s inevitably being conveyed.

On the other side of the coin, “Mehta and the atheists who agree with him are full of shit” is indisputably what Stedman was saying—but the political advantage of the sarcastic-sneer route he chose is its disingenuousness, the plausible deniability it creates. By coating Mehta with snot rather than straightforward bile, Stedman (or, in our present context, his buddy) can straight-facedly claim that he wasn’t attacking Mehta at all. That’s obvious nonsense to anyone paying honest attention to the conversation, but it’s an out that the snot strategy creates.

Amplifying the nastiness of Stedman’s treatment of Mehta (and of EDMD more generally) is Stedman’s total disregard of the stated rationale behind the event. In his hatchet-job response, Stedman quoted seven whole words out of Mehta’s lengthy post… entirely ignoring several basic and overwhelmingly vital moral matters at issue, such as the standing Muslims have to make demands on atheists based on the rules of the former’s religion.

In the specific context of that article, Stedman’s sneers are nasty attacks in large part because he simply disregards every word of Mehta’s and the University of Wisconsin chalkers’ reasoning, replacing them with Stedman’s personal (and horrendously dubious) investment in “alliances” and religious privilege. For example, there is an obvious, indeed dispositive, response to Stedman’s blithe declaration that stick-figures-labeled-“Muhammad” are “offensive images” analogous to swastikas (!)—but Stedman simply pretends no such reason could possibly exist, choosing instead to launch the “Because that’s an effective approach, right?” slime.

Faced with an atheist-expression event that had been explained and justified at length by Mehta, the Wisconsin students, and numerous other atheists, Stedman chose to ignore everything but his personal fixation on religious privilege and poor unfortunate theocrats—and then to coat the aforementioned explainers with sneering snot.

Now,  many months later, you show up here with a song and dance about how that behavior is not an attack, and is so much more acceptable than honestly and forthrightly hostile criticism.

Well, bullshit, James. Bullshit.

 He is not speaking out against atheist visibility or expression, but rather advocating finding a different way to express the same idea….

Oh, please: that’s a direct contradiction in terms. Anyone who demands that a human being exercising her right to free expression “find[] a different way to express the same idea” is “speaking out against” her freedom of expression. The “way” in which political and religious notions are expressed is—especially in a case like this one—part and parcel of the “notions” at issue themselves. Any demand that speakers express themselves only in “way[s]” that are approved by arrogant authority figures is itself an attack on the freedom of speech.

More fundamentally, of course, Stedman’s assertion that, as you put it, he “supports the goal of the [EDMD] campaign” is a blatant bullshit lie. Again, the problem is his ugly cherry-picking exercise of figuring out what he’s required to pay attention to and what he’s not: sure, he’s all for supporting the South Park guys in the abstract—but as he ignores, and so do you (calling into question whether any atheist can count on either one of you to take our fundamental human-rights concerns seriously), there are numerous other reasons why atheists created EDMD; the Parker-and-Stone angle merely happens to be the single rationale that Stedman deigns to cast his regal gaze upon from On High.

For example, as I just pointed out to TCC, EDMD is overtly intended to change societal responses—from believers and apatheists, and for that matter atheists like you—to violations of the Muhammad-depiction edict specifically and religious laws more generally. EDMD is aimed at moving the Overton Window regarding open defiance of religious privilege. EDMD is intended to combat violence against those (such as Salman Rushdie, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Ibn Warraq, and certain Danish cartoonists) who offend Islamic sensibilities by giving theocratic thugs thousands and thousands more targets than they could possibly hit.

You and Stedman simply pretend that those bases—all of which necessarily require defying the no-depiction law by doing something like chalking, rather than mounting some vaguely gestured-at wan effort that protects Stedman’s ugly religious-privilege sensibilities—don’t exist. You and Stedman pretend that supporting Parker and Stone is the only basis for EDMD that matters. You and Stedman pretend that you’re not obligated to pay the slightest bit of attention to the atheists whose vital political expression you disdain and advocate silencing.

You and Stedman are wrong.

[Stedman] simply is saying, as PZ Myers himself said on a recent podcast, that EDMD is ““on the borderline”” between attacking beliefs and attacking people, and therefore should be handled with care.

Again: bullshit. Neither the word “borderline” nor any similar concept appears anywhere in Stedman’s attack on chalking atheists. And said attack never advocates anything about “handl[ing EDMD] with care”; he directly wants it shut down:

We secularists need to think long and hard about what lines we’re drawing — and who we’re boxing out in the process. We say we want “free speech;” now let’s recognize that with freedom comes responsibility and the need for respectful dialogue despite differences. In other words, as my mom might say: “just because you can doesn’t mean you should.” Chalk may wash away but the divides we build often don’t.

Let’s talk the talk, not chalk for shock.

“NOT chalk for shock.”

Please stop misrepresenting what your friend is saying.

I wonder, would it be possible for anyone to voice principled objections to something like EDMD and remain, in your view, an honest, principled actor?

Principled objections? Certainly. Legitimate concerns with EDMD or any other area of atheist endeavor are perfectly worthwhile.

But where have you ever seen principled objections to EDMD? The only principles being upheld in attacks like Stedman’s are religious privilege, dishonesty-by-omission, and the importance of prioritizing theocratic power over the visibility and autonomy of atheist human beings. Those are detestable “principles.” Like any other form of potent inhumanity, they deserve to be denounced.

Or is your view the only acceptable view?

Standing up for human rights is “acceptable.” Attacks on them are not. I’m not going to apologize for refusing to soft-pedal that message.

You are attempting, through shaming tactics (as you yourself admit in this thread) to silence differing opinions.

No, just to discredit them. An “opinion” (or, more precisely, advocacy) like Stedman’s is directly destructive to the standing of atheists in our society. Both you and he have every right to promote religious privilege at the expense of atheist human beings. I would never dream of trying to prevent you from making your case, to that end or any other. But I will, to the best of my ability, openly denounce the inhumanity and injustice of the arguments you two are making.

As for “shaming”—indeed, I recognize that there is considerable value in attaching shame to the kinds of destructively atheophobic notions that Stedman is, in this context and several others, promoting. I am trying to “shame” those ideas because those ideas are shameful. That you think there is something blameworthy about such an effort—how, pray tell, are we supposed to treat open advocacy for unjust privilege, hatred, and discrimination?—is just bizarre.

You therefore achieve the opposite of what you claim you want: a less open, less reasonable, less intelligent movement with less internal discussion.

Once again: bullshit. An atheist movement without bigotry, including the bigotry that Chris Stedman promotes and furthers, would be a better movement—for precisely the same reasons that we’d be better off without racism, misogyny, homophobia, ableism, classism, and all of the forms of privilege that are attached to them. One could bemoan the loss of “internal discussion” we’d suffer if we rid ourselves of virulent misogyny (oh, the humanity!), but somehow that doesn’t strike me as terribly troubling. Hoping to discredit and expel the kinds of injustice Stedman traffics in is no different.

If you were able to express your disagreement with Stedman without the extreme, misleading, inflammatory language we might be able to have a better discussion about this issue, to the benefit of us all.

And we return to this. Look: you’ve made it very clear that you think that harsh rhetoric is unwarranted when criticizing Chris Stedman’s treatment of his fellow atheists. In turn, I have made it very clear that I think such rhetoric is amply justified in response to the severe misconduct Stedman has performed. Very obviously we are at an impasse on that point, and I’m not sure what you think you’re going to achieve by pretending otherwise.

What you’ve done here is taken a reasonable, controlled piece of criticism and portrayed it as a cowardly attack on “nasty atheists”, which it is manifestly not.

For the last time in this comment: bullshit. As I have explained in detail up and down this thread, Stedman’s attacks on atheists are not the slightest bit “reasonable,” and I’m afraid that the “manifest” nature of his advocacy is something it appears you cannot bring yourself to recognize.

TCC and Keith Collyer see this quite clearly.

Wow. You want to play the ad populum card against me in this community? You think that’s going to be a winner?

How’s that been going for you in the past day or so, James? Think the consensus on the atheist fora you’ve been posting on supports your perspective?

Well, if so: please, Brer Fox, please don’t throw me in that there briar patch. I can’t imagine how I could possibly survive if we started tallying votes for you against votes for me in these parts. I’m sure I’d be just destroyed….

So help me out – how would you state Stedman’s criticism in a way which would be acceptable to you? What sort of language should we use to make it clear we are taking a different view without engaging in the practices you object to?

I should say that I think this is a very effective response – it’s making me reconsider what you call “snot”, for instance. I do appreciate a lot your willingness to engage with these topics in such great detail.

You can oppose things done in the name of and by people of your own side. That’s called being a “critical friend”.

Goodness.

Well, I guess I might be able to convince you of some things, James, but I’m never going to be able to make a bull-in-the-china-shop-style gnu out of you.

I guess [sigh!] that that’ll have to do. I suppose gnus need our Russell Blackfords and Eric MacDonalds as much as our PZ Myerses and JT Eberhards.

Not so. The effectiveness of the contrast on which both Overton and good-cop bad-cop approaches rely depends upon the good-cop openly disavowing the tactics of the bad-cop and stepping in as a protector. The target is thus drawn toward the good-cop (a position a ways from where they started) because they see her as the more reasonable actor in comparison to the bad-cop. Whether this counts as “stabbing bad-cop in the back” is open to discussion, but I wouldn’t characterize what Chris does that way either, so it might be a long discussion.

This is psychology 101 – you need to draw the starkest possible contrast. 

But a further distinction is important here. In the cop scenario there is some legitimate threat that the good-cop is staving off. We want to have a very principled discussion about what threat precisely we might think is legitimate to levy. Some things might be too outrageous to countenance. But that’s a discussion for another time.

Further, there’s the whole question of, wherever you are on the rope, we want all of us to have the strongest muscles we can possibly have. That brings in a set of questions regarding effective strategy which also, to my mind, rule out demeaning approaches as ineffective as well as unethical.

All this has been the focus of my series The Freethinker’s Political Textbook. I kind of want you to write a piece on Overton etc – I think it would be great!

It’s true! I have far too much appreciation for some pieces of china to be a bull (and far too dainty a figure) ;). Just one note, though – even though I’m speaking against certain sorts of intra-community attack here, don’t forget my own work. I speak for myself as well as on behalf of others, and Chris and I sound quite different. I break a good few plates myself…

No, I’d say “It’s been taken over by racists” is a pretty good contender for the “principled disagreement with EDMD” that James (elsewhere on this thread) asked, and I agreed, that I’d accept.

Distancing tolerant atheists from racist assholes is a perfectly legitimate and principled aim. Rewarding religious privilege and the attempts to enforce religious law it underwrites is very much not. The Stedman critique at issue is 100% the latter.

Ugh I hate Disqus so much.

There, we are in complete agreement.

Then it wouldn’t be a museum which is at odds with the comment I was responding to. I don’t need a separate atheist version of the various kinds of museums anyway. It makes more sense to have a separate atheist temple if you feel you need to go to temple, if only so you don’t have to listen to theists praying. I don’t think meditating requires an impressive building and I don’t meditate in the first place. So I don’t see the point of atheists building pretentious buildings. Should we be building atheist pyramids too?

 Well maybe that does result in a significant difference in attitude. I don’t live around people like that but around liberal religious and non religious, none of whom is terribly excited about it one way or another. So I do find the sheer aggression from the freethoughtsblog atheists frankly obnoxious. Maybe I wouldn’t if I were stuck in Noname, Missisippi all my life.

I also wonder if in the same way the brain can effect sexual orientation, cis/trans etc could it be that there is a ‘religious’ brain especially given how widespread it is. So it may be asking too much to try to wipe out religion anymore than one could or should wipe out gay orientation for example. I prefer to concentrate on the elimination of the fundie forms of religion. Discourage extremism and the nastiness that we see as part and parcel of ‘faith’ tends to gradually fade away. And I also believe that people who are ‘questioning’ will be more attracted to the atheist side with carrots rather than sticks.

I seem to recall it being established shortly afterward that his death absolved us of our sins and there would be no need of human judgment for divine law, nor would there be any divine judgment inflicted upon those on Earth. But yeah. I won’t debate Biblical morality for the same reason that I wouldn’t use the Bible to teach astronomy or genetics, although it bravely tries to explain both of those subjects, too.

People whose job is to sit about and puzzle out morality are still isolating the tip of the iceberg, much less recognizing that it is a tip, much less how much of it is still below the surface. People thousands of years ago were too busy debating whether or not the metaphorical iceberg existed and whether it would get them struck by lightning if they sacrificed animals to it. ^_^

I see no real mea culpa for anything on Myers part. His last comment is a fuck off.

We are getting rather far from the original topic, but I think this is a great discussion. I’d love you to write these ideas up somewhere more formally so others can benefit from them.

I have one question regarding your read of good-cop/bad-cop: where are you getting your data from? The psychological manuals on interrogation provided to the CIA, the Army, and testimony from professionals I’ve encountered do not support your analysis.

Each of these sources directly recommend that the good cop should restrain the bad cop or disavow her tactics: 

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB122/CIA%20Human%20Res%20Exploit%20H0-L17.pdf 

“The second “questioner”…explains that the actions of the first “questioner” were largely the result of his lack of knowledge in dealing with people and lack of human sensitivity. If brutes like that would keep quiet and give a man a fair chance to tell his side of the story, etc., etc.” 

http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/library/policy/army/fm/fm34-52/app-h.htm 

“At the time the source acts hopeless and alone, the second interrogator appears (having received his cue by a hidden signal or by listening and observing out of view of the source), scolds the first interrogator for his harsh behavior, and orders him from the room. He then apologizes to soothe the source, perhaps offering him coffee and a cigarette. He explains that the actions of the first interrogator were largely the result of an inferior intellect and lack of human sensitivity. The inference is created that the second interrogator and the source have, in common, a high degree of intelligence and an awareness of human sensitivity above and beyond that of the first interrogator.”

http://changingminds.org/techniques/interrogation/good_bad_cop.htm 

“The other interrogator is reasonable and holds back the nasty interrogator, preventing the suspect from being harmed. They may fight or argue amongst themselves.

“http://www.videojug.com/expertanswer/interview-and-interrogation-2/what-is-the-friend-and-foe-approach 

“If one guy is pushing hard and the other guy comes to their rescue they feel that that guy is helping them out…What usually works is the bad guy…leaves the room for a minute, and the other guy will apologize for his colleague’s harsh demeanor, and say “It’s tough to deal with. I have to work with him all the time”

You say “There is absolutely no need (and, in fact, it can be seriously antagonistic to the entire point of the strategy) for the “good cop” to “openly disavow[] the tactics of the bad-cop.” 

The professionals disagree.

Call me when an American gets upset because someone drew a flag on a sidewalk with a smiley face and the words “I am the US flag”.

What is the point of your comment anyway? Is it to make me understand how they feel, or to justify their anger? I understand how they feel. I understand who a traditional Afgani Muslim feels just before the gun down a little girl for learning to read. I also understand how the white slave holder feels when some uppity black talks back. I just don’ t think such feelings are justified, and in fact that they indicate a twisted morality.

You failed to gain my empathy with the flag burning also. I think getting upset about burning a flag is unjustified also in most cases. Exceptions being if you burn someone else’s property, or do so in a manner that signals a defamation, or incitement to crime. It has to be a actual defamation though in that it communicates an actual falsehood.

My dad was fired from his job as a teacher at the Adirondack Community College because he supported two students who refused to salute the flag. That was a case of people getting mad when others didn’t follow their rules and would be a better analogy than flag burning. Yes, I am quite aware of such emotions in either case and the are unjustified.

I can think of an even better analogy for you. Suppose Americans emigrated overseas and e expected Muslims to salute the US flag. Thats what these campus Muslim groups are doing.
Drawing a smiling Mohammed communicates nothing other than that we are not bound by your rules. It’s the equivalent to back talking the slave master.

Drawing a picture of Mohammed raping a little girl, chopping innocent people’s heads off, torturing a captive with fire to extract information on property he wishes to steal, etc. would certainly tend to offend even more. However it would NOT be defamation since these communicate facts not falsehoods. Thus any such outrage is unjustified.

If you don’t want yourself to be upset when confronted with the truth then don’t remain in a religion that idolizes a vicious tyrant, criminal, and cult leader.

It’s just rich that their intolerance comes to the boiling point over a stick figure drawing when their religion is based on the defamation of others. The quickest way to get them even more pissed is to take what the Qur’an says about other groups and replace the group with Muslims. Take all the nasty claims about Jews, Polytheists, and Christians in the Qur’an and make it about Muslims instead and the become inflamed, but it seems never to dawn on them that the very practice of their religion is vastly more rightfully offensive to others than any stick figure.

The Muslim wants to be able not only to openly claim I am only worthy as an inmate in an eternal torture center, but also to be offended when my filthy paws dare to capture in chalk even the most mild of characatures of the guy who fabricated their obscenity of a religion.

That it’s been taken over by racists is a criticism you allow for DMD 2011. This allowance does nothing to suggest that you’ll accept any criticism of DMD 2010, which is what I originally asked about.

(BTW, Stedman did not endorse any attempt to enforce religious law. The
MSA at that school said they believed the AHA’s actions would violate
school policy. They may be right or wrong about that; I haven’t read the policy. But Madison’s policy, whatever it is, was already
on the books and they’re within their rights to lobby the administration
to interpret policy in their favor.)

 “Life would be utterly unbearable for us”

Isn’t it?  From all the complaints here and on other atheist blogs, you’d think so.

“I don’t hate Christians at all.”

And we don’t hate atheists, contrary to this post’s title.

 “as it holds theists in a positive light. ”

Yeah, except for that part where it says that we hate atheists…

This is not a Christian blog, it’s an atheist blog, therefore the title (and accusation)is actually directed to the primary readership; atheists. Specifically, to the ‘hardline’ Atheists who appear intolerant of other Atheists who suggest religion is not inherently evil or without purpose.

This is all pointless and irrelevant. Stedman has earned the justified bile of atheists by valuing religious privilege over atheist identity and autonomy. That is my rebuttal to Mehta’s defense of Stedman.

Meh. I haven’t suggested you aren’t justified in being angry at Stedman, though I object to certain inaccurate characterizations of him. If you thought I was discussing whether you should be angry at Stedman, then you imputed the wrong motivation to me. Rather, SIWOTI. You can hate his guts for all I care. Google will confirm I’ve said as much before: “I have preferences about which arguments are used if we fight, but whether we fight is not a big deal to me either way.”

You can wave your arms around and gesticulate at Andrew Tripp all you’d like; regardless, all the “Ooh! Ooh! Look at this other thing somebody else wrote on his blog”ing you’re capable of does not change the facts that (1) Stedman himself has never, TMK, written anything of the kind, and (2) that is a relevant data point to use in drawing conclusions about the man’s priorities and outlook.

Oh, it’s a data point of some kind, just like my silence on NEPA is a data point; it just isn’t sufficient to draw the conclusion you’re trying to arrive at. It may as well be considered evidence that he figured other people had it well covered, or perhaps, like me, he is rarely strongly motivated to chime in on topics which are wholly uncontroversial among the atheist community. If the latter, then that may be a personal failing of some kind — and if you fall back to this lesser charge, I won’t dispute it — but it still doesn’t add up to what you want.

You proposed that Stedman is a theocrat. That is the claim I’m disputing. You suggested his silence on Ahlquist is evidence that he’s a theocrat. Quite a leap, but it’s not wholly absurd to say that a theocrat would never give any support to Ahlquist.

So here we have evidence of Stedman giving indirect support to Ahlquist, by giving direct support to Tripp. This is evidence against your proposition. It is, as you say, a data point which does not line up with your desired conclusion.

Now, if you think that you get to define the rules of evidence, such that only direct support of Ahlquist counts, while indirect support counts not at all, you’re wrong. You just don’t understand how evidence works. What you can coherently say is that indirect support is not as strong of evidence as direct support. But it is evidence, and thus it is what you asked for, whether or not you understood the implications of your own request: it is “any reason to believe that the man is not just a drooling theocrat who happens not to believe in gods.”

If you’re unable to accept that it is evidence against your proposition, then that just demonstrates the extent of your bias. If you are able to accept it as evidence against, then great, and it’s just unfortunate that it took you this long to acknowledge. I have some hope for the latter, because:

(And on the other side of the coin, I did just give him the credit he’s due—which is to say a minuscule but nonzero amount—for printing Tripp’s article.)

Well, you didn’t acknowledge that he was due any credit until now, but it’s good that you did now.

Again, that’s simply bullshit. Chris Stedman is a writer. He demonstrates which matters he cares about most by writing about them.

But that’s not all he is. He is also a blog editor, who solicits posts from numerous guest bloggers who write things that interest him. He demonstrates also some matters he cares about via who he publishes. It did indicate something about his priorities that he published McLaren’s piece, after all. And it does indicate something about his priorities that he published Tripp.

He probably does care most about those things he writes about. That’s a reasonable inference. But it’s not reasonable to infer that he doesn’t care at all about the topics of those guest posts he publishes. They’re not random; they average a certain tone, after all.

If he cares less about Ahlquist than his ex-pastor, you may find that immoral of him, but it doesn’t indicate that he’s a theocrat. Your claim does not hold up. And your notions of evidence appear to be quite muddled.

Examples of such asymmetrical treatment abound in ordinary society: if you commit an unlawful homicide and are caught and convicted, you can expect to go to prison for a very long time. But if you save a life, the rewards you can expect to receive are vastly less significant than the killer’s long prison sentence is.

This doesn’t support your understanding at all. Such prosocial behavior as saving a life doesn’t need to be strongly externally incentivized because we’re already prone to prosocial behavior in ordinary everyday life. So this particular difference in incentives isn’t prima facie a value judgment; it’s simply a function of the fact that strong incentives for prosociality are already factored in and paid for: cf. the experiments where dropping an item in front of a toddler results in the kid picking it up and handing it to you, without any reinforcement necessary. It’s not unfounded to say that virtue is often its own reward.

Or, in a context somewhat closer to the Stedman example we are discussing, if I’m a newspaper publisher and I green-light an article chock-full of actionable libel, I and the paper am exposed to civil (possibly even criminal) liability for defamation. But if I approve an article that wins a Pulitzer Prize for reporting, the writer gets the prize (including the money), not me.

Ha. I would have crumpled this one up. Your first example was a much more respectable attempt. The publisher of a libelous piece is generally subject to tort because it’s the publisher who’s collecting the profits. It’s also perfectly possible to sue the writer — just google “sues journalist” — but you don’t hear about it as often because it’s hard to get blood from a stone. The fact that writers win Pulitzers is simply a recognition of who did the bulk of the creative work.

The same approach can be found all over human history: as further e.g.s, take the Hippocratic principle of primum non nocere (“first, do no harm”); the Wiccan Rede (“An it harm none, do as thou wilt”); and, y’know, the Talmud (“That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. That is the whole Torah; the rest is the explanation”).

This attempt is better than the second, but still inferior to the first. You seem unaware of any controversy about whether negative or positive formulations are preferable.

You’ve picked out Hillel’s version of the golden rule, which was a negative expression of it. But you forget that when the writers of Matthew and Luke expressed it, they chose positive expressions: “in everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets” and “do to others as you would have them do to you.”

You’ve selectively remembered the Hippocratic oath, which in fact includes a positive and negative formulation side by side: “I will prescribe regimens for the good of my patients according to my ability and my judgment and never do harm to anyone.” There is no explicit guide included as to which should take precedence when they conflict; that is apparently left up to the individual.

And the Wiccan Rede is but a response to Crowley, who took the second clause to be the whole of the law.

Sagan called the negative form the silver rule, regarding it to be inferior to the positive. I’m conflicted on the matter of preference — rather, I have a more fundamental disagreement with the whole distinction — but my point is there’s a longstanding controversy over this which you pretend is settled.

All of these represent a recognition of the rather obvious fact that individual human beings have far more power to do harm to one another than we do to help one another.

So you assert. Alas, all your examples fail to make that case. Again the reason you think this is obvious is because of negativity bias. You gave it one and a half good tries, but in the end it was all petitio principii.

Muslims most certainly want to be able to profess their religion.   That’s what the structure of the sentence you yanked that quote out of context was referring to.   Islam professes that I deserve everlasting hell.   Please provide a counterexample of a Muslim who doesn’t which to be able to “openly claim” what the religion teaches, that I am only worthy for hell.

Chris Stedman is my kind of atheist.  I hadn’t heard a word of him before this article, so I thank you for introducing me to him.  I have been attacked by internet atheists for failing to attack the religious simply because they’re religious.  I will expose fundamentalists for the harm they do to society and their flocks, but there are many more who simply want to get along in this world without hurting anyone else.  Which aligns with my own values.  I want us to get along in this world without acrimony, distrust, judgment (“because they are wrong” sounds just like “you’ll burn in hell”) and condescension.  We’re not going to bring truth to the dark corners of the world when so many favor the darkness.  And doesn’t that sound an awful lot like what the evangelicals do?  

Brian, I’m not an expert on Islam, but I do know that there are muslims working to understand and respect other faiths in America including, presumably, our own.

http://sun.cair.com/AmericanMuslims/Interfaith.aspx 

So yes, a good muslim will seek to profess their faith (though they are forbidden from attempting to convert anyone). But it’s hard to see how understanding and respecting you equates to believing that you are only worthy of hell.

Like any other religion, their book is inconsistent and interpreted in different ways, of course. So depending on which muslim you speak to, YMMV. 

John’s post, which I was responding to, was about positions which are fully detailed in the book. It contains numerous misunderstandings of De Botton’s actual positions which would be cleared up if he read the book. That is why I recommend he reads the book if he wishes to understand the positions.

I’m not talking about tone. What on earth does that word mean to you, actually?

That is your view. It is not mine. I think he’s done more for us than many leaders in this movement, and I think that will be borne out in the long run.

So, the religious person says that  they should be able to impose their disapproval of same sex marriage on the whole of society by banning it, rather than on themselves by not marrying someone of the same sex. The gay folks say they should be allowed to do marry whoever they want as a basic human right.

What do you do? Suggest that they should just ‘get along’?

On a good day, at least. On a bad day, everyone enabling the sheer inanity of the most recent miniature crusade deserves at least to feel their ears burning.

Go back up and respond to John Small Berries then. If deBotton doesn’t believe these things then why is he saying them? Why isn’t he more carful and precise in his words?

I personally have no problem with any atheist doing whatever they please. I in fact have been toying with creating an atheist religion for years. If you want to build a big temple that has great acoustics so you can sing with strangers then go ahead. I personally don’t like choir that much because I suck at singing. I also understand the purposes of these rituals in church. Which are in part conducive to cult like behavior.

I could write an article outlining the value of religion which deBotton has strayed far away from with these negative stereotypical statements about atheists. I wouldn’t need to do any of that.

Would you stop referring to religious convention or norms as privilege? It is only privilege if and when it is enacted into law or vigilantes enforce it and the law does not actively protect your rights.

It is not at all principled. It is the height of intellectual dishonesty. It’s using guilt by association without any actual association. Racists will always like valid arguments against groups they hate. That does not make those arguments invalid. Next you guys will be shunning ice cream because white supremacists like vanilla.

Well anonomous sg.  I have determined that you are one ignorant person.  I am aware of all of your claims.   I don’t think they are the least bit important.   

“But I know, there is no point in explaining facts to a right-winger.”

It’s rich that an anonymus bigot like yourself is going around calling others xenophobes.  Look up the definiton. You have no clue what it means.

I’ve got no problem with the Jains.   If I were a xenophobe you’d think I’d have issues with them, along with the many other people who are not of my culture.  Whatever the hell you imagine my culture to be.

Great so you’d be supporting Nazis who don’t actually believe that Jews control the media.   Hitler was right, except …

All Muslims use the Qur’an as their holy book, every one, and they all respect Muhammad and his teachings.    Well those teachings are vile, intolerant, and genocidal and they cannot avoid the inherent problems that that engenders.

You have no clue what my actual position is.  You are interjecting your bigotry into my short comments and attributing all sorts of beliefs to me that you have zero evidence that I believe in.

In short your ability to think and make judgements is impaired to the point of making you look like a fool.

“And I personally know others who believe in hell but don’t believe that non-Muslims necessarily go there, hell being for murderers and unrepentant thieves.”

So what?   Doesn’t sound like you have much of a gift for actually getting to the bottom of anyones actual beliefs.  You’ve got mine all wrong.

I’ve had more extensive talks with Muslims than you.   One of my closest muslim friends would make statments just like the above.   Hell is just for criminals.    When pressed however it turns out that I’m a criminal in the eyes of Muhammad.

You are just a ignorant and gullible.  Not only did I know that there are Muslims who are not offended by drawing Mohammad but that there is a long history of Muslims doing it.   

You are not a mind reader and are very bad at making deductions, and are pretty much clueless.

Oh me, oh my, I must be a xenophobe because the teachings of Mohammad are genocidal.

You sir are a fool.   Next you’ll be supporting people who recommend the Protocols of the Elder of Zion.   You’d do so on the basis that there is a broad spectrum of opinion among those who like the book.

Oh, and I am not saying you can’t make friends with, marry or otherwise interact with Muslims.  Does that surprise you?  I betcha it does.

That’s because you are entirely ignorant of my philosophy, my beliefs, etc.   Bigot.
 

To both my responders.  I am very careful in what I write. 

Islam DOES profess that I deserve everlasting hell.  That is a fact.   There are many different aspects to religion three of which are the founders opinions, the religious documents, and the living religion.

All muslims wish to be able to openly claim that which their religion teaches.   The problem with these irrational religions is that they are self contradictory.   This allows followers to be open hipocrites.     Another problem is that often the living religion encourages active ignorance of the full scope of the texts, and also trains the mind to disfunction (like any cult).   They encourage ignorance even of their own religion, and train themselves to accept contradiction.  

So none of your supposed evidence counts, up and until you interrogate these people as to what they actually mean.    You haven’t done your homework, and I have.

Every single school of Islam has me going to hell.    The Qur’an has me going to hell.   Mohammad was quite clear that hell existed and used that claimed fact to justify all sorts of things.   Without belief in hell then Mohammad is just some crackpot criminal liar.   So it is obvious that when they claim not to believe in hell that they are just following the same practice of accepting contradiction.

The problem is that even if you do not believe in hell, when you advocate Islam you are still advocating that I should go to hell, unless you also go to lengths that such Muslims never go to.

Now it would be possible to create a version of Islam that would not entail me going to hell but then why call it Islam?   It would require the admission that Mohammad was a liar who duped his followers.   It would require the admission that the Qur’an is false.    They want it both ways.   It can’t be that way, sorry.

The fact that they foster respect for Muhammad means they have to live with all his claims.  His claim that everything he recited in the Qur’an as infallible for one thing.  

It is implicit in their claims that I’m deserving of hell, even if they fail to recognize that fact.    It only takes a few minutes of discussion with them for them to admit it.  I know, I’ve done it over and over.

You don’t get to be a Nazi and at the same time claim Hilter wasn’t acting as a good Nazi, or that he was lying about certain things.

Furthermore it is implicit in claiming that you are a Nazi that you wish to be able to “openly claim” what it asserts.

I’m seeing a very big blind spot in these accomodationists.    These various religions are defamatory of non-believers.     Sure many of their members are ignorant of or disavow some (not all) of these teachings.   That however is not an excuse.  It’s as if there were members of the KKK who say they are tolerant of black people, and are ignorant of the organizations founding claims, and actions.     Sorry, it is the responsiblity of the members of an organization to educate yourself about it, and leave if you don’t agree.    You can’t remain a member of the KKK and deal with it.   Dealing with it would require all sorts of measures.   The most obvious would be to disband, or reject the religion.     Another route is to actively teach about the errors that the organization has made, pay reparations, disavow past leaders, disavow documents, etc.

Instead of asking for these actions of the defamers the accomdationists instead turn on the victims.    They tell us not to challenge these defamers but instead to roll on our backs and pee ourselves like some submissive dog.

Hell no.   Hilter was a vile bastard.   Mohammad was worse than Hitler, and had he the military advantage Hitler had over his neighbors he would have committed even further genocide than he personally accomplished (before one of his female victims poisoned him).     Mohammads teachings resulted in far more murders of innocents than Nazism ever did.   That is a fact.   His genocidal instructions towards polytheists (idolators as he like to call them) resulted in tens of millions of deaths in the invasion and force conversions in India alone.

Incitement to violence is a crime.   The Qur’an has entire chapters doing exactly that.  Incitement to theft is a crime.   The Qur’an has entire chapters justifying thieft and outlining how to divide the spoils of such briganny (see “The Spoils” in the Qur’an).    Defamation is a crime.   The Qur’an spents and inordinate time defaming idolators, christians, and jews.    Islam any objective measure Islam is a criminal conspiracy, not something to be respected by it’s many victims.

I’m not allowed to be offended by a millenial old criminal conspiracy (in the legal sense of the word), the vile criminal acts of Mohammad and his original followers, the endless acts of violence of Muslims against non-Muslims as justified by their religion, and yet they are somehow justified in getting upset over a smily faced stick figure?   WTF!!!!

I strongly disagree with this notion that he is “fantastically dishonest.”

I have seen him be careless about fact-checking but I have never seen him deliberately lie.

How can direct quotes of a man be a “misunderstanding”.

Jews are both an ethnicity and a religion.   There can be Jews who are not in fact believers in Judaism.    The same doesn’t happen with Islam.  It is a solely a belief system, and nothing more.   Thus when you state “I am Muslim” you either believe in the tenants of the religion or you are mistaken about your identity.   You aren’t Muslim if you are an atheist.   You can be atheist as a Jew.   So of course I can’t make claims about the religious beliefs of the ethnic Jews.

The mere fact that one identifies as a Muslim indicates that one does not solely want to be understood as an individual.   Excluding those who self identifiy as Muslims to prevent persecution the act of declaring one Muslim is to accept certain claims.

I understand that there are disagreements in Islam.   It is still a fact that those professing to be Muslims are accepting Islam, not the Amish faith, not Jainism, not pacifism, and not tolerance.    Once they accept it they have to live with the consequences of that acceptance.  One cannot volunteer in labeling oneself as a Nazi and then whine about being misunderstood as an individual.

I am perfectly willing to say that “The Amish wants pacificism…”    Am I a “Xenophobe” for saying that?   I actually think pure pacifism in the sense the Amish practice it is a negative attribute.     That there might be someone was born Amish who likes to pick fights, and beats people up doesn’t make the statement wrong either.    He’ll soon find himself disavowed by the other Amish, in exactly the same way those Muslms who would openly state that there is no hell (aka Mohammad is a fucking liar), will find that they are shunned.

The problem with Islam is that they won’t just find themselves shunned but beaten to a pulp or killed.    Examples:  Daughters of Muslims that want to pick and choose about what to believe in Islam.   They end up dead.  

There are groups that are identified as “Muslims” but in fact aren’t Muslim in the sense of actually believing in the religion.   This kind of muslim can as a local phenomenon be considered ethnically Muslim, but only in a local sense.   I was not referring to cultural Muslims, and that should be obvious from the structure of the sentence.

If I said, “Jews wish to believe in God” would you think that was xenophobic, because in fact there are cultural Jews who don’t even believe in god?   How about taking the sentence in context and understand that it is referring to Jews who believe in God, and not atheist Jews.  

Hypocritical for a a guy who thinks that every right winger is immune to learning to be making such distinctions.   I don’t even self identify as a “Right Winger”, yet not only do you have me pegged as one you are applying your own personal prejudices to draw false conclusion about what I know and believe.

You owe me a big apology, and you need to make a mea culpa on your misintepretation of what I write.

Why on earth would I have a problem with a cultural Muslim who doesn’t go to Mosque, doesn’t read the Qur’an, thinks Muhammad was a liar, drinks booze, eats bacon, has gay sex, commits adultery, etc.  

You have to understand however that the religious Muslims aren’t going to agree with calling an atheist who is culturally Muslim by the term Muslim.

My problem is with those who actually are religious Muslims in that they actually believe in what Mohammad said, which includes offensive nonsense, then getting offended when their religion is questioned in any way.

What don’t you understand about the fact that if I was in a Muslim country and paid to have a billboard put up that said “Atheism.” (or as a non-muslim drew Mohammed) that I would soon find myself afoul of all sorts of trouble.    Meanwhile, they openly denigrate non-Muslims on a regular basis, and their entire religion is a pyramid of genocidal intolerance.

You don’t see the enormity of this hypocracy, which was the point of my original comment?

Why do they get to denigrate me from the pulpit while being able to choke the shit out of me at a parade if they don’t like me mocking the guy who advocated my denigration?

Why the hell do you think this way?   WHY????
 

Calling someone out on their bullshit is not bullying. Stedman deserves to be shamed for exactly the reasons Rieux presented.

I Get my information on Islam from: a) Several translations of the Qur’an. I have several Quran’s and there are compilations of translations online. b) My copy of one of the Hadith and others are available online. c) Talking with Muslims I know personally, all university educated and from several countries. d) Talking with Muslims online. e) Reading books by Muslim apostates. f) Legal systems enacted in various countries. g) Voting records in those countries. h) news coming out of those various countries. i) Historical documents.

The fact that Islam grotesque isn’t my fault.

Where on earth did you get the idea that fundamentalists make up only ten percent of the Muslim population, which population, and how do you define the term?

In answer to your final statement. Yes he’s talking to me and applying a double standard for both himself and Muslims. He can assume I’m “right wing” and gets to not only dismiss me on the basis of stereotypes but also mind read his way into giving me some straw man position. He allows the Muslim his religion, Islam, which in fact denigrates me to the point of saying any right thinking Muslim is not only justified in killing me, but that Allah commands it.

I on the other hand only have the belief that I have the right to defend myself from such attacks in a proportion fashion and always with the assumption that the individual may be ignorant of or uncooperative with what the religion says. I am in fact defending myself first by using my right to speak the truth.

My personal beliefs are extremely liberal with regards to custom, and I’m just fine with celebrating not only the holidays and traditions common here like Christmas and Hanukkah, but also Hindu ones. I have not been asked to participate in other rituals but I’ve got no proplem with it. I also don’t care how you dress, eat, etc. Just so long as you aren’t forcing conformity on others. Yet, I’m to be vilified with slanderous claims that I’m the one who xenophobic for disagreeing with a guy who invented a criminal religion and was in fact a rapist, slaver, thief, vandal, tortured, assassin, liar, and genocidal murderer? A religion that is so Xenophobic that it requires social conformity to the tastes of one vile man who lived in a barbaric tribal society, and demeans nonconformists for failing to eat, dress, entertain, play, or like animals in the way that Mohammed did.

I’d be curious as to what these “atheophobic and religiously-privileged tropes” are.

No need for curiosity; by all appearances you swallowed them all, and you’re regurgitating them right here.

That doesn’t seem fair.   How does he respond if he hasn’t a clue as to what you are talking about.   Especially when you are using newly coined words or newly coined meanings for words.

What exactly do you mean by “religiously-privileged”.    Do you mean a double standard, and if so why not use the phrase everyone understands instead of some ideologicial specialized language that some Marxist coined?   Even if you are a Marxist it makes no sense to use specialized means for words other than to introduce equivocations.   Besides under privilege theory the anagonists seeking a double standard in their favor, Muslims, are immune to charges of privilege because they are in the minority.   Privilege theory is not based on any rational view of the world and your assumption of its language sumuggles a worldview into the discussion in the exact same way you are objecting to these smuggled in religious double standards.

Marxists and leftist are no less immune to double standards than the religious, and in fact their ideologies are pretty much religions without a god.    Privilege theory sets up a double standard where on can dismiss the rational arguments of ones opponents based on who they are and not what their arguments are.   You are not doing this but if I were your opponent I could quickly turn tables on you using your “privilege”.    I would first point out that Muslims in this country have a “non-privileged” status and move from there.

The whole purpose of privilege theory is to set up a double standard where certain groups and their defenders can institutionalize discrimination against their opponents.   You seem like a sharp person and I find it a shame that you have not seen through this intellectually dishonest invention of a new meaning for a word only to be used for equivocation and ad hominem.

Please, now you are going to switch over into oh-so-wise concern troll mode.   I will spare telling you that this comment is in contradiction to your other comment.   You weren’t claiming concern how others my see me, you were talking about how it appeared to you.  However you have an admittedly ignorant viewpoint.   I am concerned in how others view me and it especially irks me when someone reads what I write, and then puts and straw man spin to it, and then responds as if I said something I in fact did not.   Cherry picking his way to his conclusion since you think you understand that concept.

I never claimed not to be concerned about what people think about me, nor gave any indication I don’t, and so I don’t need moralistic quotes from you on the subject.

You pretend to be concerned about my reputation and yet here you are in the prior comment and in this one insinuating that I am practising various forms of trickery such as cherry picking, and that I have little knowledge of Islam.    I have spent years looking at Islam and I started well before 9/11/2001.     My first encounter with a form of Islam was when I had let a black man borrow money from me (which I could not afford to lose being a poor college student) because of a sob story he told me about his family.    He eventually indicated he had no moral duty to pay me back the money because his religion, Nation of Islam, teaches that Muslims do not have to honor agreements with non-Muslims.

One doesn’t need to resort to cherry picking to show the vile nature of Islam, and in fact I can do the opposite.   What few morally valid sounding quotes that there are in the Qur’an I can put back into context and show how they have little to nothing to do with any moral restraint.   Peaceful cherry picked quotes are always followed by exceptions and incitements to violence that would make Hitler blush.

Sure to someone ignorant of the facts it may appear xenophobic, but then again the mere statement that I’m an atheist may make an ignoramus think I eat babies.

” I do find it hard to believe that a billion reasonable people would interpret passages written for a savage world as directly and literally applying to our more civilised times. “

What makes you think them “reasonable”?   You think it reasonable to believe all the superstition in the Qur’an?  There is overwhelming evidence they are mostly ignorant and unreasonable, and from all the sources I listed above.

I’ve had the most “reasonable” and polite Muslims tell me that given my beliefs that I would be rightfully killed in any Islamic country.  I wasn’t talking to any terrorists either.   So it is quite apparent that the issue of reasonability all depents upon ones world view.   The Islamic world view is not reasonable, and so they do not take reasonable actions.   Not only is it not reasonable it has many inherent double standards.

If these billions are so reasonable then why are their legal systems so barbaric even in the most supposedly enlightened of Muslim countries?   Why are they, for example, criminalizing the use of the word Allah by Christians when some of their arguments for Islam is that Allam merely means god?   Does that sound “reasonable” to you?  Polls taken in Islamic countries on various issues have shown that you are way off the mark on their reasonableness.    Do you think the fact that most Islamic countries have either expelled, or relentlessly persecute their Jewish populations to be reasonable?

Why do you find hard to believe that all the evidence points to?   Not only do they interpret those ancient passages as applying today they would quickly arrest or act as vigilantes (with no police protection) against any such claims.  That’s blaspheme you are talking about right there.   

You are confused because you make the enormous mistake of thinking that Islam is structured anything like Christianity.   It isn’t.    Christ was pacifistic.  Christ did not found any church.  Christ commited nor participated in any large scale crimes nor wars.    Christ actually makes many anti-old testament claims and of course this came after the old testament, so Christians are more inclined to discount the earlier passages in favor of the new revalation.  There quite consistent message from Christ that is contradictory to much of the rest of the dead part of the religion.   Of course, and dead part of a religion is always in danger of being reinstituted, as we can see with Westboro Baptist Church.  However with Christianity the old stories of atrocities are just that, old stories, and ones about Jews killing the ancient long dead enemies of the Jews.

Everything is different in Islam.   None of these Christian traditions exist.   Mohammad used a false pacifism to get himself out of trouble he instigated in his early period, and became more and more militant as time passed.    He advocated every form of treachery, double standard, and crime you can imagine, well against the outsider, not the Muslim.    The atrocities he committed were not sanctioned by their diety on limited grounds such land claims, or ancient feuds.    They were grounded in bigoted claims about existing groups today and listed specifically such as Jews, Christians, Idolators, and non-believers.    This covers all living individuals in the world today that are non-Muslim.    The instructions  on treatment are different for the different groups but one thing is always a constant, you don’t treat them the way you would a Muslim.     Jews and Christians are to be persecuted in various ways and made to pay a tax called the Jizya.   Polytheists (Idolators) and other non-believers are to be forced to convert or killed.

So there is not only the issue of what the few handfuls of moderates (who are in the vast minority) believe.   Even if they don’t believe specifically in those passages they still endanger others whenever they claim that the Qur’an is infallible.  Why?  Because like any instruction manual someone might actually take your word for it and start following the instructions.     If any hair dryer manufacturer sent out manuals that explicitly instructed users that they were shower safe, even if elsewhere in the manual it gave vague and hard to interpret warnings to the contrary, would you accept the excuse that no one actually reads the manual, and most customers are ignorant of it?

I think another problem you are having is with estimating the number of “fundamentalists”.      You seem to be doing this by counting only actual terrorists, and supporters of terrorism.  That is NOT the definition of fundamentalist.    Plus the actual support for terrorism swings wildly depending on who the Muslims think are suffering from the activities.  It isn’t any principled opposition against terrorism in general.    The popularity was high when it was percieved that innocent foreigners and muslim collaborators were getting the brunt of the violence.   

Fundamentalism is vastly more common than with Christianity and for various structural reasons within the religion.  It is not merely suicide bombings I am concerned with.  It is all the various atrocities and persecutions that are common and widespread throughout the Islamic world that show that fundamentalism is no exception but in fact the rule.    Christians being beaten to death for drinking from Muslim only drinking cup in Pakistan (the fact that there are such cups), child marriage, Sharia law, second class citizenship for women, and non-Muslims, persecutions, church burnings, forced conversions, blaspheme charges, murder of apostates, honor killings, and so on and so forth.   The grinding poverty that is the expected fruit of the fatalism, restrictions on economic activity,  and Islamic  sectarian violence.   It’s hard to accumulate capital when your co-religionists from different sects don’t get along with you (because of Qur’anic intolerance of muslim “hipocrites”).  Hard to get ahead when you view other muslims with suspect and different interpretations lead to charges of false belief.

There is nothing fundamentally oppositional in Islam to terrorism so there is nothing to reform back to as in Christianty.   In fact, Mohammad explicitly in the Qur’an mentions terror as something that must be used even though not strictly needed, (after question by his followers as to the need for such barbarity).   Despite their high level of barbarity the polytheists were actually more tolerant and less ruthless than Mohammad.   Polytheism as practiced was actually a tolerance for the gods of other tribes.   Mohammad broke that understanding, along with many other understandings, such as breaking truces and attacking during recognized periods of religious truce such as Ramadan.

Sure Christianity went through similar periods but it was more for a lack of copies of the bible, and reading skills, that the fundamental Christian message of peace was not well known.   It was also in part historical accident.   An accident that is less likely with Islam, if not inherently inhibited.   As literacy rises the exact opposite happens with Islam.   Educated peoples, doctors, architects, and computer engineers, read the Qur’an and are more likely to end up following the old ways than ignorant peasants who operate less on Islam and more on ignorance of Islam and gut instinct about what is right.

“Shouldn’t we be supporting the moderates against the fundamentalists? If we attack the underlying tenets of the religion itself, this has the practical effect of supporting the fundamentalists against the moderates. I can think of no plausible scenario where this would be a good thing.”

The old, you are supporting the terrorist, trope.   Oh please.   The moderates are few, and do not speak up because they are in fear themselves.   Moderate intepretations are actually seen as foreign intepretations.    You side with the moderates against the vast majority of fundamentalists and they will view you as trying to weaken the religion.  They are not the least bit embarrassed by the violent nature of the religion, and Muhammads past.    It’s all justified.

I’m questioning the entire artific, and I am being honest, and truthful.    That is the correct path for me.  You can live in a fantasy world if you like.  I also do not think it is my responsibilty to support one set of fantisists against another, and especially when the supposed moderates turn out to be wolves in sheeps clothing.   Moderate after supposed moderate helping our government has been exposed to be anything but moderate.

So explain what this means, “your comments look xenophobic to me” if not an accusation of Xenophobia?   Especially in support of another commmenter who was more explicit.

You might also want to provide historical precident for this idea that supporting Islamic moderates has ever worked for anyone.   Muslims have been attacking the US since it’s inception, and so far what has worked has been to defeat them an to let them lick their own wounds.    The new policy being to try to rebuild them (and cultivate moderates) after defeating them doesn’t seem to work so well and is extremely expensive.   Bush from the outset lied about the nature of Islam, and acted as an appeaser in this regard.   So your experiment is being run.    Leftist critics seem to think things were going badly until a democrat got in office and escalated things.   Supporting supposed moderate uprisings in the middle east in addition to the increases in predator drone attacks.

The Qur’an says that true Muslims can defeat something like a hundred fold their numbers.    The exact opposite has been occuring.   We have single women soldiers beating off superior numbers of Muslim attackers.   We should be rubbing their noses in it with statements from the president bringing this up and saying “Either the Quran is wrong, Muhammad is lying, or these people who have brought us down on you are not true Muslims.   You decide.”   They need to also have the true nature of their religion rubbed in their noses at every opportunity so they can make true reforms.    Those reforms must include taking Mohammad much less seriously or they just aren’t going to work.   He was after all a genocidal maniac.

No problem, Brian. The language you used was, to me, very emotional and judgemental. 

It was only when we dug a little deeper and you shared your evidence that we can see that you do have evidence which shows that your distrust of the “other” is not just whipped up by some feeding frenzy in the press or some other form of groupthink. But the statements on their own did not carry the evidence and could contribute to such a feeding frenzy. And, to someone less open minded than me, might give the impression that the author was xenophobic. (To be honest the reply confusing xenophobia with racism didn’t help.)

Historical precedents? Islamic Spain was the most tolerant place in Medieval Europe: is that historical enough?

I’m not convinced that the benefits we gain from drone attacks is worth the collateral damage (and resulting motive for terrorism).  I don’t see how you can look at the Middle East now and say that our policy has been working.

If the moderates have managed to construct a coherent moderate view of Islam, why would that not “work”?

“Islamic Spain was the most tolerant place in Medieval Europe: is that historical enough?”

If it were a true statement.  It is not.  Look up the Cordoba massacres.   Then look up the history of ALL european countries of the time.    Sure there were some European countries that were less tolerant of Jews, but there were those that were more tolerant.   The history consisted of Jews fleeing from various Muslim countries to various Christian, and vice versa.     Jews did flee Islamic Spain btw.   In the end which countries ended up with the largest populations of Jews?   They were European.

Some of the historical documents used to prove the supposed superiorior of Muslims to Christians have to be taken in the light of where the Jews doing the complaining lived.     The grass is always greener on the other side and even if it isn’t when you want reform it’s useful for politicians to portray it otherwise.    Haven’t we been hearing all during the past decade or more how peaceful and tolerant Muslims are compared to us?  

There was a large scale persecution of Jews in Spain after the Muslims were kicked out but you have to realize that they were invaders, as were the Jews that came with them.   Any local cooperation of Jews with the Muslims was also reason to eject them.    Sorta like how the Haitian slave revolt was intolerant of all whites and had a flag that consisted of a white baby on a pike.

The history is complex and I think the competition is with who was more tolerant but who was more intolerant of the two religions on a country by country basis.     The muslims never showed true tolerance anywhere, period. 

Many of my muslim friends are shocked when they first got here how tolerant we are of each other, and unfortunately and ridiculously argue that it is a Muhammad wanted it.  No silly Muslim, it’s due to having governmental secularism and a limited republic.

“I’m not convinced that the benefits we gain from drone attacks is worth the collateral damage (and resulting motive for terrorism).  I don’t see how you can look at the Middle East now and say that our policy has been working.”

I’m not sure how you got that out of what I wrote.  Our invasion of Tripoli ended Islamic attacks on American shipping (and it is even in one of our patriotic songs, “… to the shores of Tripoli. “).   That was successful.  Our dealings with Islamic nuts in the Philipines worked (buried them in pig guts).  

Our current approach isn’t working, and I thought I made that clear.  Acting as the private army for the Saudi’s, or Shite Iraqi’s, and then setting up Islamic governments which we then subsidize as socialist economies is incredibly stupid.  Likewise our constant aid to enemy countries like Pakistan and Egypt.    Yes they are our enemies, as has been clear for a very long time.

Ewan, this is stupid. There is no meaningful distinction between the “language someone uses” in a post on a website and the “content” of their post. The language is the only content I have to work with.

No. Your refusal to recognize the overwhelming societal power that hegemonic majorities of numerous kinds—men, white people, heterosexuals, cis-gendered people, wealthy people, and numerous other such demographics—hold does not make that power cease to exist. Nor does it do anything to redress the destructive and often severe consequences of that power.

Both “men” and “wealthy people” are minorities….

No. Wrong. Majority/minority binaries are built on power, not number. Whites in apartheid South Africa were a majority, notwithstanding that there were fewer of them than blacks. Women are a minority in the United States, even though they outnumber men.

These are basic terminological issues, and there’s not much hope in your keeping up if you’re confused about them.

I recognize the reality of truly unjust use of actual political power to cause actual harm….

Oh, right—because the power held by men, heterosexuals, wealthy people, and religious believers is not “actual,” and the harm they inflict by misuse of their power is not “actual.”

Kindly take your bullshit willful blindness elsewhere.

I think Brian was using the more common meaning of the word “majority”, rather than the one used by academic sociologists.
According to my impeccable ;0) source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majority_(sociology) (And by the way, worldwide, men outnumber women.)

So, if we cut through the technical jargon, you seem to be arguing that power should not go to particular religious groups. That seems to be the case for secularism, not atheism.  

In the US, I thought that was guaranteed by the Constitution? 

Worldwide whites are a minority, so if I wanted to use that qualifier I could still undermine his (or her) claims. His/her ideology is a mess of equivocations on many standard words. Of course this leads to total nonsense, and warped thinking.