Atheism and tolerance

A recent post on Slacktivist accusing Greta Christina of “purest evil” for arguing in favour of atheist evangelism has highlighted several major issues with the tolerance community.

There is not a single line I agree with on Froborr’s post. Not one. But it does raise several issues that have been plaguing the secularist left in increasing intensity, issues which deal with pluralism, the role of public debate, and whether it is okay to proselytise one’s beliefs.

This is going to be a long column because it deals with a lot of issues, so without much further ado, here is my take on why the principles behind that post aren’t workable.

Live and let live – why neither side of the religious debate can

A lot of religions teach that non-believers will end up in hell, where God will torture them for all eternity. For these believers it is thus a moral duty to win converts to their beliefs because a few minutes of irritation on a Sunday morning is pretty small potatoes compared to an eternity in hell.

Other religions teach that they have hit upon objective moral truth, and that not spreading such moral truth will lead to the decay of society as a whole. These too can reasonably say that a few minutes annoying the neighbours is hardly a big deal when one considers the alternative.

And I could go on, but I think you get my point, that to call these people’s actions purest evil is juvenile stupidity that betrays a distinctly selfish awareness.

Now on the other side of the argument you have us new atheists. We identify religion as being harmful, in part because of its claims of hell and moral truth. We also list the tribalism it engenders, the culture of offence, the fact that it has no reality check, how it opens people up to affinity fraud etc… as major problems.

We do not go door to door, our activities are mostly relegated to responding to people who bring their arguments to us, and nor do we call for legal sanction against religion unless it is engaged in something fairly extreme (Such as with Michael and Debbie Pearl’s child rearing tactics.)

But we do see religion as being on balance a harmful influence, and the taboo against actively criticising religion as being just as bad. This means that while we may annoy people, we see causing such annoyance as being a lesser harm than the alternative.

I fail to see how this could be considered evil, which brings me to my next point

Pluralism is not necessarily good

In South Africa, when apartheid was first being debated the central excuse for the Bantustan system was that ‘native cultures’ were being polluted with Western ideas, and thus needed to be shielded in order to develop independently.

Nowadays we recognise the logical problem with this in that we note that cultures develop with the free exchange of ideas, and all apartheid ended up doing was turning culture into an engine of oppression.

Yet we still see much the same arguments used, except instead of having physical Bantustans we develop cultural ones. Much like the Bantustans of apartheid what represents each given culture in multi-culturalism isn’t picked by the members of that culture; it is simply the loudest and most aggressive force that the state is willing to tolerate.

The most obvious example of this is in how the West treats Islam. Islam is no more monolithic than Christianity is, and often what is presented as being Islamic culture, or offensive to the Islamic community, is in fact a debate within the community. The left unfortunately only takes one side in this – the side that says “that is offensive” or proclaims something as being cultural.

What is worse the left treats culture as being valuable, more valuable in fact than the individuals who dare not fit the stereotypes the left sets out for them. This means if they are too conservative they are “extremists” – if they are too liberal they are proclaimed inauthentic and westernised.

If they become apostates the left will make excuses for any death threats as being based upon how offensive the apostate’s arguments were.

I say this after reading such figures as Maryam Namazie making the same point.

Islam has become a mental Bantustan where those who are culturally Muslim are shunted off and largely ignored except for the occasional photo-op argument where some leftwinger makes a big deal about how culturally enlightened he or she is.

Just say no to white knighthood

In feminist circles there is the concept of the white knight, which can be summarised thusly:

You think you defend me
Meanwhile you offend me
For my safety you have shackled me
You think you have helped me
In this cage you’ve imprisoned me
Your privilege you assert over me
I speak for myself, stop doing it for me

In the pluralists’ eagerness to defend ideas they do not hold, there is a tendency to forget that such beliefs are not necessarily the beliefs of the one you are defending, and that there are others who disagree with those beliefs for very good reasons that are not tied up in cultural supremacy.

Thus you end up with arguments such issues as Islamophobia being used as a slur to silence Islamic apostates and liberals, and the non-Islamic liberals and apostates joining in as a brainless chorus. There is no consideration of the individuals within the culture who may disagree with the direction their culture is taking, only for cultural offense.

And the same mechanic plays into other religions too – it is only that Islam is the highest profile case right now that I focus on it.

Stupid, insane and wrong

One of the themes in Froborr’s argument that struck me and a few others in the New Atheist side of the debate is the idea that ideas which cause massive harm are indicative of insanity.

For much of Western history the dominant medical paradigm was the four humours theory. It was massively wrong and caused a whole lot of harm as I am sure most are aware. In fact, the first man to suggest doctors wash their hands between working in the mortuary and working on pregnant woman was roundly lambasted by his colleagues.

This wasn’t just harmful for their patients; just imagine what not washing their hands must have done to those doctors when they sat down to eat.

Yet most of these doctors throughout history were perfectly good, sane and intelligent people who were doing their best. And of course, on the other side of this, there have been plenty of people who have suffered one mental illness or another who have moved humanity forward, whose reasoning has made us greater than we otherwise would be.

Being wrong is not the same as being insane or stupid, and an argument over who is correct does not resolve on who is the more sane or intelligent person in the argument.

It resolves on the quality of the arguments.  

Are we our identities?

We are not. We are so much more than the sum of our labels, and we have so much more to offer than as being statistics on who belongs to what label.

And that saying so is offensive does not over-rule the fact that something may well be wrong. People have grown to think of themselves not as people but identities, and attacks on their identities to be reprehensible.

Yet it is only through such attacks that progress can be made. When people see each other not as people, but identities it is the first step towards dehumanisation – so what does it say that we have so many who view themselves as identities?

Of course some elements of identity cannot be changed completely, but many can particularly when we are talking about ideology.

There are all sorts of things all of us get wrong. A lot of those things are things we consider important to us. We are all deluded in our ideologies to an extent, though we don’t much like to admit it.

And to point out those delusions is not a bad thing to do. When pointing out our errors will cause us pain, it is often because it would cause us greater pain to continue in error. It is the rose we clutch to hardest, that digs its thorns deepest.

We are people first and foremost, and we need to remember that as we clash and jostle with each other. We are people, and we have the right to our opinions, but we do not have the right to never have our opinions contradicted by the opinions or facts of others.