GibburtThe spirits that Dawkins called
I occasionally check out Richard Dawkins’ website, since his blog often re-posts interesting articles and video clips from various sources. About a week ago, for example, they linked to a column that philosopher Julian Baggini had written for a Norwegian Freethought magazine. There are some parts of the article that I agree with, and some that I don’t. On the whole, however, I think it’s a well-written piece and a valuable contribution to the debate about the right future direction for Humanism/Freethought. Reading many of the comments on Dawkins’ blog, though, you’d think Baggini was the most heinous of traitors and the most feeble-minded of morons.
Now, I do believe that Dawkins and the other prominent “new atheists” are, in fact, more nuanced and self-critical than Baggini gives them credit for. The problem is that many of their most ardent followers seem not to be. Here, I’m not just referring to the unreflected scorn that some of Dawkins’ fans pour on everyone who dares to suggest he might have gotten the occasional thing wrong. A search on YouTube will yield any number of, often quite popular, videos in which religious beliefs, traditions and institutions are grossly misrepresented with an attitude so self-righteous that it makes me embarassed to be an atheist. Obviously, YouTube and the comment sections of successful blogs are some of the favoured stomping grounds of the internet troll, but the number of times I have observed this phenomenon is so large that I can only conclude that there really is a significant number of atheists who imagine themselves as the last frontier in an epic battle between good and evil.
I’m about as far from being an apologist for religion or a “believer in belief” as you can get. However, I hold a strong conviction that if you accuse others of being deluded or intellectually dishonest, you have an obligation to try and be as fair and accurate as possible in your own verbal and written output. I’m also, in princliple, all for “conversational intolerance”, but I think that diplomacy does not automatically imply dishonesty. There are times when holding back is the most sensible and constructive path, something that even Sam Harris, coiner of that wonderful term, acknowledges. In fact, Richard Dawkins himself has, on various occasions, admitted that, with his incisive rhetoric, he’s perhaps not the best public advocate for Humanism, and has since his redefined his campaign as a rallying cry for closet atheists.
Of course, sensationalist media reporting has also had a significant role to play in fostering the negative public image of Humanists as self-righteous and aggressive and in creating an artificial “us vs. them” dichotomy. It certainly doesn’t help, though, when some of “us” go around calling every religious believer a maniac and every rhetorically mild atheist a coward (both claims are also blatantly false). When things get to the point where any dissent within Humanism is discouraged, and where religious moderates and progressives, valuable allies on so many important issues, think that “one can’t have a civil conversation with them atheists”, then we have a big, big problem.
Thanks for bringing this Baggini article to my attention. I read it with great interest. I think he captures very well the continuing need for debate. As soon as we start to identify ourselves with a certain ideaological group to that extent that we become willing to overlook the assumptions that underlie the opinions of that group debate becomes extremely difficult. This applies to atheism just as much as to Islamic or Christian fundamentalism.
I should mention that the same magazine that published Baggini’s article has now also published a rebuttal of it by another philosopher, George Williamson: http://www.fritanke.no/ENGLISH/2009/A_Reply_to_Julian_Baggini/
Unsurprisingly, this reply has proved much more popular on richarddawkins.net. Williamson correctly points out some of the flaws in Baggini’s piece. Unfortunately, towards the end of his article, he commits one of the largest and most typical “new atheist” errors: he talks about religion as if it was one big homogenous phenomenon and attributes to it all the evils that have ever been committed in its name. In doing so, he conveniently ignores the fact that there have also been many religious figures and movements who have fought those very atrocities, and that the majority of religious believers in the Western world today have never killed, enslaved or oppressed anyone. He also states that he has “no idea as to how one makes rapprochment with religious moderates” – there’s no need to “make rapprochment” when you don’t create artificial divisions in the first place.