When Atheists Attack… Each Other

“I’ve heard atheist “firebrands” say that they support having more diverse voices in the conversation only to throw those attempting an alternative approach under the bus.”

[citation needed]

I’ve never attended any sort of atheist conference or gathering (and probably never will). In face-to-face conversation, is this sort of “throwing people under the bus” behavior common? I ask because of the observation that on professional science forums, my colleagues can be quite abrasive… much more so than they generally are at conferences and workshops. There’s something about the online environment that makes it much easier for us to be uncivil… partly, I’m sure, because many nuances of communication are lost, but also because of its inherent anonymity. (As a strong believer in civility- online or not- that’s one reason that I always post under my real name, and make no effort to conceal my identity. It helps keep me both honest and civil.)

Don’t you know asking for evidence is often seen as throwing fellow atheist under the bus. 

I’m not sure it’s always simply a matter of ‘civility’. I think we can often have vehement disagreements and uncompromising arguments that might look bad to people more used to sweeping things under the rug, but I think that openness is good thing.

Hemant often prods religious folks to be more critical of their extremists, rather than just quietly ignoring them, but it’s not the done thing in a lot of mainstream society. That enables things like the Catholic Church’s anti-women campaigning, despite the fact they’re not supported by a lot of ordinary Catholics – ‘civility’ stops them speaking out and condemning what they know to be wrong.

That’s not a problem we have, and I think we should be glad of that.

I think it’s a fair generalization. I’ve never seen an outspoken atheist complain about other atheists being too polite. (And I’m aware that this could be falsified by even a single example.)

However, the accommodationist atheists, such as Chris Mooney, are well known for tut-tutting and finger-wagging at the more outspoken atheists, and claiming that being too outspoken and uncivil is hurting the cause.

They make this claim despite the overwhelming number of non-believers that attribute their deconversion to Dawkins, Hitchens, PZ, et al.

Here’s a good example of Mooney’s concern-trolling: http://www.pointofinquiry.org/chris_mooney_accommodationism_and_the_psychology_of_belief/

Hemant,

You are a hypocrite of the worst kind. You go and pen this article for The Humanist and try to present yourself as some moderate all-loving man. You are intolerant and choose to censor when you wish. You banned me when I went against the grain on a blog entry of yours that was about how you were angry the Michigan Senate banned a female senator for speaking up against the brian.

Your actions are one of the problems with the atheist/secular movement. You show direct actions of hypocrisy and then have the stones to write this article for The Humanist.

You show unflagging sycophantic behavior for the late Chris Hichens who had the guts and stones to stand up when needed, even against the atheists themselves, yet when you are presented with the same thing from a lesser known and famous person, you censor them.

You and PZ are singlehandedly becoming the “look at us in the pretty dress” crew. “Give me money on an inside joke and I will get a tattoo”…..

I challenge you to actually sit down and think about your actions, for real, no ad homs. Think about it. And I will happily meet in any studio, any radio station, any TV show to debate you on this. Facts are, you are hurting us and not helping us.

You know, I was just thinking that atheists challenge each other more. We’re not all friends, we’re not all right, or all wrong, we come from different backgrounds. We’re not hippies (even if some of us are, but not the same thing as being hippies). I think there’s more than one way to be an atheist and we need all of them. I don’t say some atheists make all the other atheists “look bad.” That’s the wrong way to think. Since we don’t really have the equivalent of sects or denominations, outsiders tend to think we are all like one thing and any one of us represents all the others. We are ourselves, representing ourselves, unless we belong to an organized association toward some cause. Even some atheists make assumptions or generalizations about all atheists, they always need to be challenged. We don’t have a “bible,” we’re not all scientists, we’re not all angry, or passionate, if you like. We have different experiences, different fields of study, different lifestyles, different areas of expertise or interest. Most of us, but not all of us, would like accomplishments to be made for secularity/humanism/science/politics/visibility, some or none of the above.

We just don’t believe there’s a god. I don’t think this is a battle, but those of us online and invested in issues tend to challenge one another, especially because it’s more interesting to discuss something than be in total agreement, and sometimes there are no religious people to challenge.

Guilty as charged. Not always my proudest moments.

I will posit that there are most certainly occasions when scathing sarcasm is useful (fuck you, bishop comes to mind, wink wink), and when a knee-jerk reponse turns out to be quite the accurate assessment of a situation, but imsho it’s also important to try to see the people on the other side of the internets as just that. People. I catch myself sometimes responding in a way that I would not respond were someone sitting across a table from me. Some of that stems from it being difficult to gauge whether or not someone is poe-ing or trolling, or if they are expressing a genuinely held opinion that they are open to change given a solid argument. Some of that stems from not always having a firm grasp of effective counter arguments, but being very frustrated, and thus the snarky default is easier, particularly when it comes to already loaded subjects that one is plain tired of having to explain over and over again, like the nature of elevators, or the right of LGBT people to live unharassed, equal lives. Sometimes my overly snarky reactions embarrass me, and I have to take a step back rather than reflexively doubling down, regardless of the response from others, because I understand that the internet is part of real life, not separate from it. That is supremely difficult to do though.  

This reminds me of this comic:

I love that comment. Thank you for putting my thoughts into words. I’m not against effective sarcasm. I’m certainly not opposed to arguing with people who you think are wrong. But there’s a way to argue that can make the other side think and a way to just scorch the earth as you do it. I’m advocating for the former, not the latter.

From the article
 “All that before she ever took any significant actions in her new role.” -talking about Rogers if that isn’t clear from this quote.

The first thing out of her mouth was that the Republican Party doesn’t hate women, the LGBT or atheist community. That was her introduction, arguably the most significant moment for any new leader, and she LIED to us. Either through ignorance or arrogance it doesn’t much matter, since when called on it she doubled down.  A community that prides itself on basing our views on evidence is right to be concerned and angry that our representative is at best living in a fantasy land about what Republicans say.
 
 
“Why are some atheists resorting to the very tactics we abhor in our cultural enemies”

The tactics that I abhor in my cultural enemies do not include sarcasm and mockery. I am not disgusted at Limbugh because he was sarcastic about women’s health issues, I’m disgusted because he just straight out lies about the arguments.  I don’t think Rick Warren is a failure as a human being because he mocks gays, it’s because he provides fuel for kill the gay bill in Ugandan.  The Catholic Church didn’t just critique Galileo nor is it just critiquing the effectiveness of condom or sex-ed. 
These are the tactics that our (or maybe just my) cultural enemies use, and I am deeply disappointed that you would ascribe these to us.
 
“But, as you can imagine, many atheists immediately filed Harris under their mental list of bigots without actually disputing any of his claims.”
 “Claims made without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. “ –Hitch

 
“… we could (in many cases) just write the other person an e-mail or call them to hash out disagreements. But part of being in an Internet-based community is that we air our dirty laundry for the world to see even when it hurts us all in the long run.”

Two things, first why would we respond in private to public statements?  Second CITATION REQUIRED in regards to hurting us in the long run.  Just this week, on this blog, there is a post about how the SSA is rapidly growing despite its’ lack of funding compared to religious organizations.  Almost every pole comes back with more and more people identifying as non-religious.  After a bitter year of battling on the blog about harassment, almost every new convention now has a policy in place.  When are we going to see all this damage to the atheist community that accommodationists keep talking about?

Hemant, thank you, couldn’t agree with you more. As an
atheist blog junkie I have been following the issues closely for years. The “eat
your own kind” death match gives some credence to the term “militant
atheist” with all the negative connotations. 

Militant:
aggressively active (as in a
cause): combative

I sat on the fence for years. As an agnostic with cultural
affinity towards the religion I was brought up in, my initial reaction to
devastating criticism was to cover my years. It took many years to completely
wash away my prejudices and accept the fact. This is not an isolated
experience. Anyone when confronted with ideas opposing to their closely
held beliefs does this. Ask anyone from different sides of the political spectrum in
any country.

The book that really opened my eyes was “The
Demon-Haunted World”. It never openly criticizes religion. I am sure he
could have done a great job, with irrefutable arguments, if he wanted to. But
his “gentlemanly” approach with it’s firm but soothing tones nudging
you to open your eyes and understand critical thinking did the job in my case (then I entered the slippery
slope and ended up as an True Atheist™).

I don’t think I would be here if I had started my journey by
reading some of the popular blogs which does a devastating job of ridiculing
opponents (yes, PZ, I am looking at you).

Should we ridicule religion & religious? Of course,
there are different ways of doing it without turning people away. Making fun
and insulting are not the same. Just watch how different stand up comedians do
it. No, this is not an unfair comparison. Communication is one of the most
important factors of success everywhere. If you are satisfied with your captive
audience who are already *converted*, you risk alienating a large number of
potential atheists. We end up being the exact stereotypes our opponents blame
us to be.

Is it wrong to offend people who disagree with you? No, it
is subjective (side note: Ophelia Benson, who has no qualm offending religious, is complaining about someone offending with an “in your face” t-shirt). . But one should be careful to avoid ad hominem attacks on a
person’s self worth If your want some success in effectively communicating your
ideas to change their long-held beliefs & opinions. Destructive arguments never work in a real life situation,
only helps escalating it. Think about the last time you ended up in agreement with
someone after they berated you, even though you know they had facts on their
side. Would you treat people disagree with you the same way at your workplace
or home?

With no offence to Jerry Coyne, there are many ways to skin
a cat. But at least we can try not to gruesomely butcher the cat in the
process.   

 Second CITATION REQUIRED in regards to hurting us in the long run.  Just this week, on this blog, there is a post about how the SSA is rapidly growing despite its’ lack of funding compared to religious organizations.

Well that “long run” part makes it a bit tricky. You can point to student association growth as “proof” that no harm whatsoever is being done, but what happens when people leave school? How involved are they beyond self-identification ten years later? Behavior, and opinions of behavior change rather radically between 22 and 32. I don’t know many people out of college doing keg stands, for example. 

 Almost every pole comes back with more and more people identifying as non-religious. 

That doesn’t mean they’re participating in the community. I know a lot of people who identify as lots of things, but that’s self-identification. Doesn’t mean they go to meetings, give money, read blogs, or particularly care either way about anyone else with a similar identification. 

  After a bitter year of battling on the blog about harassment, almost every new convention now has a policy in place.  When are we going to see all this damage to the atheist community that accommodationists keep talking about?

About ten seconds after the use of convenient dismissive ad-homs like “accommodationists” to ensure you don’t have to listen or even take as possibly valid the opinions of any who disagree with you end.

 Hemant talks about several specific cases in the full article:

1. People criticizing the Mid Ohio Atheists billboard design
2. PZ’s insults against Alain de Botton
3. The whole Edwina Rogers thing
4. People calling Sam Harris a bigot for his articles on profiling

I can think of many reasons to disagree with these examples, but you can’t say he didn’t cite them!

please. generalize much? i’m pretty radical and one of the things i pride myself on is tolerating and accepting anyone’s views so long as they are held consistently and with intellectual and ethical honesty. i love my BIL and we couldn’t be more different in our views. most of my friends are the same way, and if we’re mostly alike it’s not like we’re intolerant of those who don’t share our views. it’s completely possible to be a firebrand and respect your opponents, the ones who deserve respect, at least. 

“there is a season, turn, turn turn…”

you’re the FA. i’m not. sometimes i want to scorch some earth. i’m not here to make friends. i have plenty of my own in real life. there are just some internet mofos who need an ass whupping. do i care if i ‘hurt the cause?’ no, because i’m not part of any ’cause.’ i’m an atheist. so are you. that’s all we have in common (which is to say we may have more, but none of that matters in this debate). i can be an outspoken atheist others consider an asshole. this is still a free country. disown me at your meetings and suchlike; my feelings won’t be hurt. but i enjoy taking down the occasional hater, with a chainsaw, as it were. these are just pixels on a screen, and if video games “don’t cause violence” then nothing i type does either. and don’t underestimate emotion. reason is great, everyone should employ it. but history itself is often little more than a series of emotional moments in which some reason was overcome against long odds. we are human, after all. 

My impression is this is due to low-RWA, high-SDO personality types being relatively common among western atheists and especially relatively activist atheists.  (Dr. Bob Altemeyer has a good overview of the work on RWA/SDO up to a couple years ago here.) Skipping other citations until requested…Overall, it seems atheists in general tend to be relatively low-RWA. This makes sense, in that those who tend to follow conventions tend not to leave Christianity in the first place. SDO isn’t particularly correlated to religiosity, so there’s probably a similar fraction among the irreligious as among the religious. It seems plausible (though unproven conjecture) that the low-RWA attitude would make one unlikely to blindly submit to the conventions of their upbringing, while a high-SDO attitude would give one the sense of trust in one’s own judgement (warranted or not) to find and accept different conclusions. It also seems it might fit with the groups from David Kinnaman’s book “You Lost Me”. The not-lost “Sheep” (which Kinnaman doesn’t discuss) would appear to be the double-highs; the “Exiles”, who stay within the church though unhappy would seem to be low-SDO, high-RWAs; the Nomads, who drop the church but not their faith seem plausibly double-lows; and the Prodigals who abandon both natal Church and Faith to blaze their own trail are low-RWA, high-SDO.To the particular issue raised here…. High-RWA tend to worry about threats to social order; thus, the low-RWA atheists aren’t worried about the disruption of new ideas, nor prejudiced against traditionally feared groups. But, high-SDO tend to worry about dominance, with hostility/prejudice to the derogated. That might possibly explain some of the atheist movement’s troubles with racism and sexism; but it might contribute to their attitudes on intelligence versus stupidity, responding to perception of the latter with hostility. Though high-RWA do so more than high-SDO, both have prejudices against dissident groups. Since new ideas present a challenge and a dissent, new voices with new ideas are greeted with argument. The high-SDO fraction would also explain the complaints by the religious about “smug atheist”, “thinking atheism makes them intellectually superior”, uncivil, prideful, arrogant, selfish, et cetera. The religious are almost certainly ignoring the beam in their own collective eyes of the high-RWA high-SDO crowd; however, these stereotypes may have basis in real tendencies.Experimental testing of this high-SDO/low-RWA conjecture would be difficult, however. Hard to get a representative sample big enough to have statistically useful Activist Atheist sub-samples… even with the slightly disproportionate fraction you’d get if you took the usual psychology tactic of sampling college students.

and there’s your out. It’s the one most people use:

 it’s completely possible to be a firebrand and respect your opponents, the ones who deserve respect, at least. 

And who falls into that category? Well, depending on whose blog you read, a remarkably small amount of people who disagree with you. Funny that.

Also, a single data point doesn’t make the problem go away, or not be a problem. *YOU* may not be a part of the problem, but *YOU* are not everyone. The problem is an actual problem. Maybe instead of looking for reasons to dismiss it and pretend it doesn’t exist, you should think about how to actually solve it.

So you’re not a part of the community you say nothing is hurting. 

Okay then.

Alain de Botton wasn’t criticized for “trying a different approach.” Alain said, on CNN:

“Probably the most boring question you can ask about religion is whether or not the whole thing is “true.” Unfortunately, recent public discussions on religion have focused obsessively on precisely this issue, with a hardcore group of fanatical believers pitting themselves against an equally small band of fanatical atheists.”

Just like every other wannabe-centrist, he couldn’t make his case without shitting on the methods and hard work of many other atheists. He basically called anyone that’s spent time and effort on counter-apologetics or scientifically testing the claims made by religion as “obsessive” and “fanatical.” PZ properly called him out for being a douchebag.

As I mentioned in another comment, Dawkins, PZ, and other famous atheists each have a fat stack of letters from people that credit them with their deconversions. This is a direct refutation of Alain’s claim of a “small band of fanatical atheists” that care about the truth claims of religion.

To summarize, Alain wasn’t criticized for his approach. He was criticized for being wrong and being a dick.

But asking whether religion is true *is* boring. It’s boring because we already know it’s not true. The more interesting questions lie in what to do with that knowledge — how to raise kids, handle important parts of your life, etc. without god. We don’t have all those answers yet. That’s what he was trying to say. And I say this as someone who does everything I can to get people to stop believing in god.

Because I didn’t think PZ even allowed for the possibility that there might be something to the things religious people do that might have some value for us. It was wrong because de Botton said it, and that was that.

“Well that
“long run” part makes it a bit tricky. You can point to student
association growth as “proof” that no harm whatsoever is being done,
but what happens when people leave school?”

So
regarding the long term effects of mean atheists we don’t have any data… I
guess people should stop making the assertion that it’s all doom and gloom
unless we all play nice.  If only we had
stacks of emails claiming shrill and strident Dawkins was a major reason people
decided to identify as atheists. If only there was some blogging network that
posts almost daily stories about people converting away from religion. We would
at least some clues as to what people credit for their turning away from
religion.

“That
doesn’t mean they’re participating in the community. I know a lot of people who
identify as lots of things, but that’s self-identification.”

Sigh…. I
guess I have to agree that just because people are leaving organized religion doesn’t
mean they are part of the atheist community.

“About ten
seconds after the use of convenient dismissive ad-homs like
“accommodationists” to ensure you don’t have to listen or even take
as possibly valid the opinions of any who disagree with you end.”

It’s not an
ad-hom to describe De Button, Mooney, etc as accommodationist seeing as they
have a history of accommodating religion in part by tossing atheists under the bus. I’ll
cop to using the term as a pejorative but I will defend its accuracy.

So regarding the long term effects of mean atheists we don’t have any data… I guess people should stop making the assertion that it’s all doom and gloom
unless we all play nice.  If only we had stacks of emails claiming shrill and strident Dawkins was a major reason people decided to identify as atheists. If only there was some blogging network that posts almost daily stories about people converting away from religion. We would
at least some clues as to what people credit for their turning away from religion.

Oh where to begin, the sky, it’s full of silly.

So if we don’t have any data on long term effects, it is equally correct to say the assumption that being raging asshole cockmonkeys causes zero harm is unsupported as well. Oddly, you don’t seem to want to consider that implication. Funny, isn’t it. in addition, as even vague experience with large groups will show, and decades of customer input attests, the people who send emails and participate in forums are a small, small percentage of any group. For example, one group I’m intimately familiar with, Mac OS sysadmins. If we were to believe that all, or even most mac sysadmins participate in mailing lists and forums, then we’d have to say there are about 100 Mac OS sysadmins worldwide. 200 if we’re being generous.

Clearly, that’s idiotic on any level. So the other option is that the number of people who actively participate in forums, comment threads, emailing people are a minority, and a bloody small one. out of all the atheists I personally know, about 10% are active on any form of atheist forum, website, etc. Most of them have zero fucks to give about the “community”. That’s a very small number, and statistically insignificant, but other forms of studies about this kind of thing back me up. So the “stacks” of emails are already biased, because they’re people who actually want to talk about that sort of thing in public.

In addition, you’re making an assumption: that because someone was moved to be an atheist by someone like Dawkins or PZ, that they therefore agree with everything those folks say, and are going to actively participate in the atheist “community”. There’s little evidence of that.

Sigh…. I guess I have to agree that just because people are leaving organized religion doesn’t
mean they are part of the atheist community.

that’s one of the very few intelligent replies you’ve made, and exactly right. Someone leaving organize religion does not mean they are part of the atheist community or even an atheist. There are rather a lot of christians who left religion a long time ago, but still maintain their faith in the tenants of that religion. Same thing for judaism, islam, and probably every other religion. I left all forms of organized religion decades ago. Doesn’t mean I’m an atheist or anything else. Just means I’m not part of organized religion.

It’s not an ad-hom to describe De Button, Mooney, etc as accommodationist seeing as they
have a history of accommodating religion in part by tossing atheists under the bus. I’ll cop to using the term as a pejorative but I will defend its accuracy.

Thanks for playing the “don’t have a friggin’ clue as to what ad-hominem is”. I’m not saying you calling them names, pejorative or supportive is an ad-hom, because it’s not. The reason I call “accommodationist” an ad-hominem as used by you and others is that you use it as a justification to ignore, belittle, and dismiss everything they say. It’s the “because they’re accommodationists, they’re wrong” that’s the ad-hominem. You should really learn what a term means before you use it. Just saying.

I’ve been watching this with exasperation for the last year starting with a certain incident.

I think all of us should be more careful of generalities.  Lumping 
together all religious folk as deluded fundamentalists etc. isn’t helpful and so-called ‘accomodationists’ are right to criticize this, though of course constructively.  That very term ‘accomodationist’ bothers me, it smacks of ‘collaborationist’ and foments divisiveness among us, in my opinion it’s the main reason organizing us is famously like herding cats.  Lumping together all nonreligious folk more outspoken than we are as strident fanatics similarly isn’t helpful and also deserves constructive criticism.  I’ve been guilty of all three of these multiple times, but I do try to tailor the message to the immediate audience while not throwing any group under the bus, and agree with Hemant that all of us on the side of reason should strive for such balance.  

Problem with your pop psych is that atheists get called militant and smug for merely stating things like they are atheists and like puppies.

There’s a middle ground between not saying anything in public and blurting out every little thing that comes into your head.

The latter is what happens when a Hollywood movie character is supernaturally forced to tell the truth. I used to think that this was unrealistic and broke the suspension of disbelief, but actually, Internet forums and comment threads appear to be pretty close to it.

Hemant,  why does this come across as one of those “do as I say and not as I do” scenarios?  Maybe because you just threw Ernest Perce and Tom Flynn under the bus?

I didn’t call them names. I pointed out why I didn’t like what they said/did. So what’s the problem?

It’s AA’s call if he keeps his voluntary position. But as an AA supporter, I dont approve of desecrating holy books for the sole purpose of angering people and I don’t think AA does either. If you have a nicer way of saying that, let’s hear it.

It just doesn’t seem like an effective way to prove his point. I doubt any media will focus on the problems with the Religious Diversity legislation. They’ll just talk about how this atheist hates Muslims. It’s not true, but that’s the storyline.

but that doesn’t mean those people are a majority, or even significant minority of atheists/skeptics. How many is “letters all the time”? Also, of those, how many remain active in the atheist/skeptic community for a year? Two years? five?

I have no doubt that prominent atheists/skeptics get those emails. But without a context for those numbers, or even numbers at all, there’s no way of putting those emails in perspective.

 PZ has also written that he gets a lot of hate mail, and about one death threat a week, on average. Usually it’s about the “frackin’ cracker”.

 chicago dyke, orphan: “please. generalize much? i’m pretty radical and one of the things i
pride myself on is tolerating and accepting anyone’s views so long as
they are held consistently and with intellectual and ethical honesty”

chicago dyke, orphan “sometimes i want to scorch some earth. i’m not here to make friends. i
have plenty of my own in real life. there are just some internet mofos
who need an ass whupping. do i care if i ‘hurt the cause?’ no, because
i’m not part of any ’cause.’ i’m an atheist”

Consistency. Not for radicals.

doesn’t say atheists  *shouldn’t criticise