Atheist-bashing roundup

‘Tis the Christmas season, which means that it’s time for atheists to lecture other atheists on how we should be softer on religion. One might call it “The War on Atheism.” The sad thing is that both sides in this fracas are atheists, with one telling the other that They’re Doing it Rong.

Over at the Guardian, columnist Suzanne Moore joins the trend with her piece “Why non-believers need rituals too” (subtitle: “To move many away from religion, atheism has to weave itself into the social fabric and shed its image of dour grumpiness”). The article was apparently written for New Humanist and then republished.

Needless to say, Moore is an atheist. And she makes the remarkably obtuse claim that atheists must adopt religious-like rituals to shed our public image as joyless automatons.

One of the problems I have with the New Atheism is that it fixates on ethics, ignoring aesthetics at its peril. It tends also towards atomisation, relying on abstracts such as “civic law” to conjure a collective experience. But I love ritual, because it is through ritual that we remake and strengthen our social bonds.

. . . When it came to making a ceremony, I really did not want the austerity of some humanist events I have attended, where I feel the sensual world is rejected. This is what I mean about aesthetics. Do we cede them to the religious and just look like a bunch of Calvinists? I found myself turning to flowers, flames and incense. Is there anything more beautiful than the offerings made all over the world, of tiny flames and blossom on leaves floating on water?

How many of you have participated in humanistic funerals or weddings? I know from readers’ comments that they are many.  The ceremonies I’ve attended include recitations, poems, songs, sundry celebration, and, of course, noms.  So much for austerity!

I agree with Moore that ceremonies and formal celebrations are inherent in humanity, for they help us mark the big transitions in our lives: marriage, birth, death, and special birthdays (the latter are not really transitions, but arbitrary points in time). Atheists do all these things in a secular way. On my 60th birthday, there was a lovely party, with tons of food, friends, and good wine, and I was given a lovely a book containing letters and comments from absent friends. Those absentees included Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and Steve Pinker—atheists who supposedly ignore “aesthetics.” Some Calvinists!

What we don’t need are weekly supplications to a divine being. And I, personally, don’t need no stinking incense. Further, something within me quails at the trend toward weekly secular services, including songs and recitations of Darwin. Do we really need those? Do any readers participate in atheist churches and actually think they’re useful? I suspect most of us would avoid them like the plague. To each their own, but Moore doesn’t speak for me.

And in her drive to decry the so-called “coldness” of atheism, Moore compares us to—wait for it—the faithful (my emphasis):

Already, I am revealing a kind of neo-paganism that hardcore rationalist will find unacceptable. But they find most human things unacceptable. For me, not believing in God does not mean one has to forgo poetry, magic, the chaos of ritual, the remaking of shared bonds. I fear ultra-orthodox atheism has come to resemble a rigid and patriarchal faith itself.

This is what the Germans call Wahnsinn. For those rigid and patriarchal faiths are precisely the ones that most rely on poetry, incense, wafers, candles, wine, and group prayer.  (You won’t find that stuff at a Quaker meeting.) What is more ritualistic than Eastern Orthodox ceremonies?

Once again we see an atheist decrying other atheists for being too much like believers, but in this case the accusation is ludicrous. And really, we forgo poetry and magic and bonding? What about Dawkins’s The Magic of Reality? I would bet that most of us know more poetry than the average believer. What we don’t do is believe poetry that peddles delusions.

. . . What, then, makes ceremony powerful? It is the recognition of common humanity; and it is very hard to do this without borrowing from traditional symbols. We need to create a space outside of everyday life to do this.

. . . In saying this I realise I am not a good atheist. Rather like mothering, perhaps I can only be a good enough one. But to move many away from religion, a viable atheism has to weave itself into the social fabric and shed this image of dour grumpiness. What can be richer than the celebration of our common humanity?

Frankly, I’m tired of people like Moore extrapolating from her own personal needs as an atheist to instruct the rest of us to be more like her.  I am happy to attend a secular wedding, and I don’t need candles or incense. Being with friends who are joining in matrimony is sufficient. Yes, humans need ceremonies, but do we really need to borrow their elements from religion?

As for the “dour grumpiness” of atheists, that is a fiction concocted by the religious and perpetuated by faitheists like Moore. In fact, some atheists go out of our way to assure others that we’re really a happy and well-adjusted group (think “The Friendly Atheist”). I find that a bit unseemly. Let others learn on their own that we are generally a well-adjusted and amiable group, attuned even more keenly to the pleasures of life because we know that this life is all we have. Do we really have to add, “Look, I’m a normal person”?

So, Ms. Moore, by all means enjoy your floating flowers and incense, but don’t try to tell the rest of us what we need. As for trying to convince the faithful that we’re not a bunch of miserable nihilists, I find such activity beneath us. Let us first convince the faithful that they’re wasting their lives in pursuit of a delusion, and perhaps then they will accept us as fully human.

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Over at The Daily Beast, writer Michael Schulson—apparently a nonbeliever—condemns Peter Boghossian’s new book, A Manual for Creating Atheists, for being just as dogmatic as fundamentalist Christianity (is this refrain becoming familiar?). A few snippets:

The loose ensemble known as the “New Atheists” have always had a weirdly evangelical streak, with their emphasis on faith as the essence of religious practice, and with their implication that the entire world would be better off if everyone would start thinking exactly as they do.

What a boring place the world would be if everyone thought alike! Without arguments, there would be no way to approach the truth. But the arguments must be rational ones. Still, I think the entire world would be better if nobody based their opinions on unevidenced and transcendent beings. Evangelicals, on the other hand, believe precisely the opposite.

. . . But Boghossian is hardly an isolated voice. His book has endorsements from a number of prominent atheists, including Shermer, Richard Dawkins, and the University of Chicago biology professor Jerry Coyne. “Since atheism is truly Good News, it should not be hidden under a bushel,” writes Dan Barker, co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, in his endorsement of Boghossian’s book. For this small but high-profile representatives of activist atheism, the word of no God is a new gospel—one that’s eager to condemn those who don’t embrace its message.

I am glad to find myself in good company!  Once again we have an invidious comparison between New Atheism and religious gospel.  Thick-headed writers like Schulson, however, simply can’t fathom that being passionate about reason is different from being dogmatic about delusion. They think that using the word “gospel” is sufficient to dismiss atheism. Deeply subtle questions like “what are they trying to say?” and “what is the evidence?” escape people like Schulson. For him, and other lazy atheist-bashers, it’s always about tone.

. . .As a result, we can see in the writing of Dawkins and Sam Harris, and certainly in A Manual for Creating Atheists, a disdain for the whole idea of a pluralistic society—a disdain, tellingly, that they share with conservative evangelicals.

Yes, I happen to think, along with other atheists, that the world would be better off if religion were gone, or at least those theistic religions that can’t keep their beliefs to themselves, but want to impose them on the rest of us through law and morality. As for pluralism of culture, food, politics, and so on—bring it on!. But I have no respect for pluralism of beliefs if that includes irrational belief.

. . . Movements don’t radicalize when they start having crazy ideas. Movements radicalize when their members become unable to have ordinary interactions with people different from themselves. We need strong, persuasive secular voices, who can explain the power and advantages of non-belief, and draw intelligent comparisons between their own ways of seeing the world and the ways of faith.

As far as I know, Dawkins and others have plenty of ordinary interactions with people different from themselves. Didn’t Richard have regular discourse with the Archbishop of Canterbury, for crying out loud? And New Atheists regularly reach others—not only the choir but the faithful and the doubters—through their writings.  In fact, unlike Schulson, the New Atheists are strong secular voices, and have been enormously successful. That’s why they’re so often attacked by either believers or jealous unbelievers like R. Joseph Hoffmann.

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In another festive pieces of atheist-bashing (read this one only if your digestion is quite sound), the website Catholic Stand is asking “Is atheist Richard Dawkins being sufficiently responsible in his statements?” (The answer, of course, is “no.”) He calls Richard “Dawk,” which should tell you all you need to know.