Godless is the new queer!
October 11th, 2007 by Vicki Baker
This post on Ebonmuse’s site “Daylight Atheism” and a caption contest sponsored by Hemant the Friendly Atheist, combined with a lull at work and a low-grade fever, inspired me to create the above Hitchens macro. (Sorry to subject you all to this type of thing again, folks!)
Ebonmuse describes the “kerfuffle” caused by Sam Harris’ recent advice to atheists to stop calling themselves atheists:
Harris’ main point, as best as I can summarize it, is that the term “atheism” already comes with negative stereotypes attached to it, and by using it to describe ourselves we are playing into the hands of our opponents. He says that we are “consenting to be viewed as a cranky sub-culture” and that we have “walked into a trap” by so doing. When we call ourselves atheists, religious people who already think they know what atheism is and how to refute it will assume they know all about us already and can dismiss our arguments without further notice.
Atheism is a perfectly good word that means “without a belief in god or gods”. Yes there are some negative stereotypes attached to it, many of which have to do with the people who harbor the stereotypes rather than with the people who call themselves atheists. There are others, such as the belief held by some religious people that atheists want to pry the Bibles from their tightly clenched sweaty little hands and force-march them into evolutionary biology re-education camp, that might (just possibly, perhaps, I dunno, going out on a limb here) have been encouraged by sound bites like “science must destroy religion” and “moderate believers give cover to religious fanatics — and are every bit as delusional.”
Be that as it may, Sam is totally missing the point here. The fact is, people are rallying around the word “atheism” already. This is the basic building block of social and political change - the affinity group. People - young, highly educated, articulate people who could potentially play a big role in pulling our country out of its rightward slide into the abyss - are organizing themselves into more or less formal networks around this principle. Sam you have their attention, and in these days of information overload, that is the sociopolitical motherlode.
His response to the criticism he received was completely ham-fisted. He tries to make a point by sprinkling the words “as an atheist” through a reasoned defense of stem-cell research and asking if adding the words made the statement any stronger. (This is about on the par with his brilliant rhetorical strategy of substituting the word “witchcraft” for “religion” in some quotes from reviewers critical of his writing.)
The “as an atheist” thing just makes no sense to me, as an ignostic. Surely the idea is that arguments based on logic and reason stand on their own merits, without reference to one’s “metaphysical commitments” (as Mike C. would put it.) The point is not that everyone who becomes a formal member of an atheist group or just signs up to receive email action alerts needs to drink the koolaid and wear the t-shirt (or the backwards baseball cap.) The point is, you have an infrastructure for organizing.
Despite Sam Harris’s swipes at liberals, and the “barbarians at the gates” mentality of some neo-atheist ditto-heads, I think the political initiation of non-believers can only be welcomed as a good thing by anyone on the leftward side of the political spectrum.
October 11th, 2007 at 8:42 pm
Check out the linked post at Daylight Atheism. Ebonmuse is a gifted and thoughtful writer who presents this issue with precision. He always attracts a lively crew of commenters too. I agree with his point that we need to pick a word (might as well stick with “atheist”) and stick up for it. If we scurry off to pick a new word, it will soon be targeted by the bigots in the same way they’ve smeared “atheist.”
I agree with Vicki’s criticism of Harris, though I do understand the frustration driving Harris’ suggestion because I’ve often felt it myself.
October 11th, 2007 at 9:09 pm
How about a new word for “theist,” one that is a bit derogatory. I think Harris describes the word I’m after in this phrase at the end of the above-cited article: Those who “praise one another for pretending to know things they do not know.” If we could invent such a word, “X”, we could say “Oh, so you’re a X . . . ”
BTW, I think Harris’ idea of giving up the word atheist is a mild stumble on the way to some terrific ideas. I’d highly recommend reading his article all the way through, to include the discussion of meditation and the ineradicable existence of mysteries throughout the universe. I found it to be powerful and elegant writing.
October 12th, 2007 at 8:13 am
“Oh, so you’re chosen?”
“Oh, so you’re a dreamer?”
“Oh, you must be an ancient.”
“Oh, so you’re a one-booker.”
“Oh, another anatural.”
Sorry those sucked
October 12th, 2007 at 8:45 am
Keep at it, Ben. There’s got to be a word or short phrase out there . . .
October 12th, 2007 at 5:13 pm
I want you pose to you this idea. Man in the most primitive form wants to name things and put things in neat little cubbyholes. I will borrow from the Dungeons and Dragons genera, if you know evil’s name and you can control it. What does this have to do with the post? Well, for bigotry to exist there has to be a dichotomy of good and bad. Get a bunch of people and give them a name, not as a descriptive, but as a label. Then give the name a bad connotation and Voila! A new barrier to enlightenment and death to what is right. So, changing your name will not change the bigot.
Now the choice is if one is working for the good of the world is, does one work at the level of the bigot or does one do what is right by continuing prove through deeds and actions that we have the better way of life?
If someone gets in your face for being an atheist is he working for the good or a racist? That person cannot fight the truth and does not want to know who you are as a person. He has gone down to the level of the bestial nature and is in fact a bigot. And in fact a Christian, especially if calls himself a Christian, has shown that he is really “The Beast”.
In closing, if one is an atheist then that is fine. If one creates a negative label to this than they are bigots plain and simple. Just do not ruin this by doing things that confirm to the bigot that he is right. Nor, should we stoop down to their level and start labeling them either.
October 13th, 2007 at 4:52 pm
Thanks for the kind mention, Vicki.
I see what Sam Harris was driving at, I just think his proposed fix was off-base. In particular, the suggestion that we can simply divest ourselves of the word “atheist”, and thereby escape all the negative stereotypes that have historically been attached to that word, was surprisingly naive.
As evidence of the persistence of these stereotypes, Harris noted that he addressed the “atheism = communism” smear in his book, only to have it thrown right back at him as though he’d never mentioned it:
And yet, Harris himself says that he explicitly never used the word “atheist” in The End of Faith for this very reason. But this does not seem to have been even a slight impediment for those who wanted to use it against him. His own point negates itself.
As long as there are people who don’t believe, we’ll be tarred with the same stereotypes by overzealous apologists, no matter what we call ourselves. We might as well pick a word that accurately describes what we are, and then stand up and defend it. The stereotypes will always come from the terminally prejudiced, but by giving ourselves a name to associate under, we can more easily organize to resist them.