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.
