tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4464222071440015933.post987053808858849954..comments2024-01-23T17:14:04.067-05:00Comments on Jaltcoh: What is the atheist / secular humanist / freethought community missing?John Althouse Cohenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11703450281424023177noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4464222071440015933.post-74682009461421546012010-10-07T18:46:01.028-04:002010-10-07T18:46:01.028-04:00What can atheists rally around? A shared oppositio...What can atheists rally around? A shared opposition. But to what? To religious influence in the government? To religion in people's lives? To religion as a cultural phenomenon? To Islamic extremism? To the Christian Right? <br /><br />There are Democratic, Republican, and Libertarian atheists -- can they all unite? If I go an "atheist community group," it isn't like a Christian group, where they are assumed to share similar morals and all share a life goal: to trust Jesus and live according to his dictates. Come to an atheist group and you might have people who think like Sartre -- but also those who think like Rand. Or Nietzsche. Maybe Aristotle. Maybe Strauss.<br /><br />So: no common morals, no common linkage that can serve as a starting point. An atheist honestly need not even oppose religious influence in people's lives. You can't organize a group around something so narrow. "Those who don't believe in God, come here!" -- So we can do what? So we can...talk about how and why we don't believe? OK. But for people like me, who are so beyond that, then what? I'm willing to help others come to that conclusion, but am I willing to stick around when they want to go, say, crusade against school prayer? To me, that's a stupid waste of time.<br /><br />So our problem is: Now that we've established this negative, what next? Who knows? The very essence of freethinking is that it's hard to categorize and organize. I don't want to see atheists organize like that. It wouldn't do justice to such a heterogeneous group of people.Alex Knepperhttp://twitter.com/alexkneppernoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4464222071440015933.post-35909386422693777632010-10-05T19:33:58.008-04:002010-10-05T19:33:58.008-04:00Do you recommend any of the new atheists' book...<i>Do you recommend any of the new atheists' books? Like Baggini, I am hesitant to read them because I don't see them teaching me anything valuable.</i><br /><br />God Is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens is ... great. (I recommend the <a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2165033/entry/2165035/" rel="nofollow">excerpts here</a> if you're considering buying it.) Overall, I consider it a step up from Sam Harris's The End of Faith, though I'd recommend either of those books. Harris makes plenty of good arguments, but he has a blind spot (a very ironic one) for his own extremism and utopianism. (For instance, he calls on national leaders to start openly condemning religion on the world stage -- as if this would make the world a safer place.) Harris strikes me as someone who's studied a lot of philosophy and a passable amount of history; Hitchens writes as a world-class journalist who's witnessed history firsthand. Hitchens's book has more texture and character to it, while Harris is more interested in making the abstract case against dogma and for reasoned empiricism. Sometimes Hitchens sloppily leaves out some essential steps in an argument, in a way that Harris (who has a philosophy degree from Stanford) likely wouldn't have. <a href="http://www.samharris.org/site/full_text/chapter-one/" rel="nofollow">(Here are the first 10 pages of Harris's book.)</a><br /><br />I've read some of Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion, but not enough to have a firm opinion. Something about Dawkins's polemic irritates me in a way that Harris's and Hitchens's don't, so I'd say Dawkins is my least favorite of the three.<br /><br />All these books have their own strengths and weaknesses that I could go into much greater detail if I had the time and if I had the books in front of me. I wrote a seminar paper in law school about Harris's book. So, I thought it was interesting and serious enough to stake my grade on a paper about it -- but I also wouldn't have chosen to write that paper if I didn't think I could point out some holes in the book's arguments. (I'd be happy to email you that paper if you want.)<br /><br />I haven't seen Religulous, Bill Maher's movie; a friend of mine who has good taste in movies (and complex views on religion) said it's pretty good.John Althouse Cohenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11703450281424023177noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4464222071440015933.post-62349877071989778322010-10-05T18:18:46.061-04:002010-10-05T18:18:46.061-04:00I meant to soften my take on Epstein and his proje...I meant to soften my take on Epstein and his project with some "your mileage may vary"-type dithering. Forgot. Consider it dithered. I don't know the guy.<br /><br />I take your point about the fuzzies (somewhat dimly, as a person with one foot in the "warm fuzzies are bullshit" camp). <br /><br />Atheism is in substance just a position on the existence of god. But it clusters (I suspect) with a general skepticism about authority and the feelings associated with group membership. This is why atheists sometimes call themselves "freethinkers," why organizing atheists is compared to herding cats, why alienated liberals are more likely to be atheists, and so on. <br /><br />(Some other paragraphs on this subject that I don't have time to write just now but which can hopefully be suggested by thesis statements; apologies for this form:)<br /><br />1. This tendency probably has its roots in how atheists come to their beliefs. <br /><br />2. There is some circularity: outsiders become atheists; atheist institutions don't cater to non-outsider-types.<br /><br />3. This story supports the idea of building warm, fuzzy institutions.<br /><br />4. But warm fuzzies really are bullshit to some extent: "Love and Completeness are Your Spiritual Right" is probably a weak position. <br /><br />5. False or meaningless beliefs (like in religions) are a comparatively efficient way to generate warm fuzzies. <br /><br />6. At some margin we face a trade-off between fuzzies and the truth. (Like the vegetarian chef's trade-off.)<br /><br />Do you recommend any of the new atheists' books? Like Baggini, I am hesitant to read them because I don't see them teaching me anything valuable.Grobsteinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05964699430818239961noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4464222071440015933.post-54194970996554206972010-10-05T17:51:08.418-04:002010-10-05T17:51:08.418-04:00Well, I'll defer to your impression of Epstein...Well, I'll defer to your impression of Epstein.<br /><br />I actually think it's a serious problem if atheism and/or secular humanism are defined by "people who think warm fuzzies are bullshit." It reminds me of how some of the best chefs who specialize in vegetarian cooking -- Deborah Madison and Mark Bittman -- aren't vegetarians. They help people do a better job of being vegetarian, but they "get" meat -- they know what it is about meat that's important to people. This probably makes them more effective at creating (or helping people create) vegetarian meals <i>with a mass appeal</i> than the lifelong vegetarian who hasn't experienced a satisfying meat dinner. Even if the lifelong vegetarian gets higher marks for pure ethical rationalism, this may come at the cost of being out of touch with what most people crave.<br /><br />Notice that the next comment after your comment in the Metafilter thread is by me -- making the same complaint I made in this post about how people criticize the "new atheists" with an egregiously broad brush. As you know, the Metafilter thread was about an article by Julian Baggini, which I could have linked to in this post as an example. People like Baggini (who wrote <a href="http://jaltcoh.blogspot.com/2010/03/12-books-that-have-influenced-me-most.html" rel="nofollow">one of my favorite books</a>) aren't substantively engaging with the actual content of the new atheist books; they're positioning themselves to their own advantage.John Althouse Cohenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11703450281424023177noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4464222071440015933.post-50791218755464912102010-10-05T15:04:23.875-04:002010-10-05T15:04:23.875-04:00You are probably interested in this guy (there are...You are probably interested in <a href="http://harvardhumanist.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1&Itemid=30" rel="nofollow">this guy</a> (there are numerous press clippings on the site as well; he may also have been discussed on Mefi). I've met him and he seemed soft-headed, and I didn't feel particularly at home the once or twice I joined his "congregation." (Part of the reason atheism looks the way it does now, and is so lacking in warm fuzzies like "Love and Completeness are Your Spiritual Right," is because it is a refuge for people who think warm fuzzies are bullshit.)<br /><br />PS I did the Mefi search and there aren't a lot of mentions of Greg Epstein. <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/80529/The-New-Atheism-is-Destructive#2511540" rel="nofollow">One</a> is me (tangential subject). <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/81413/Wait-No-Pirate-Vs-Ninja#2553788" rel="nofollow">Another</a> is klangklangston invoking him on a completely different topic: "That bald host [in some unrelated video] acts just like an asshole I knew in college (perhaps not his fault, but seriously, Greg Epstein was an egomaniacal douche in a shitty band, and he looked and talked exactly like this guy)."<br /><br />PPS I'm very disappointed in Mr. Lindsay for perpetuating negative stereotypes about corporate lawyers.Grobsteinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05964699430818239961noreply@blogger.com