Nothing More Than the Obvious
Quinnsong said:
What is it that you would have a discussion between a believer and a non believer look like, Tiassa? Should we just say, well that is your personal belief or that is your own personal journey and I wish you good fortune with your journey and leave it at that?
It should respect the virtues of atheism.
Among our evangelical atheistic cadre, there is no connection to other people. This can become a psychological dysfunction, and in some cases it already is.
I would ask you to please consider a Christian. Let's go with Mike Huckabee, since I've already used him as an example. He identifies as a Christian; part of his politic demands accommodation of his outlook according to that Christianity. There are any number of legitimate criticisms we could make about how his identity as a Christian is incongrous unto itself.
Okay, now change subjects for a moment; we will merge the two shortly.
I want you to imagine, please, that you are sitting around with a Christian whose faith is wavering. They're asking you about the world, about morality, about simple concepts like right and wrong.
Take a look at Spidergoat's point: "trying to convert the religious over to reason".
If you go back in the Religion archives, you'll find the depth of my loathing for institutional religion and gods of faith. Balerion's early response to this thread reminds that in order to morally satiate the atheistic portion of our membership, I should never have tried to move on to something more functional in my relationships with religious people in the world.
So here we come to the question. If Spidergoat's outlook on converting the religious to reason is fair—and I generally think it is—that sense of reason is pervasive, not selective.
We have Christians in this country advocating un-Christian behavior. One can say what they want about my focus on the
American Gay Fray, which history will show ended in Utah in December, 2013. But what about the Republicans who claim Christian faith means we
shouldn't feed the hungry?
Now here's where the whole thing gets sticky in the question of atheism.
Now, I am among the plenty who would criticize such an identification of Christian faith. Our atheists at Sciforums would, seemingly disagree; they have expressed that there is
no connection between the faith itself and the faith identity.
Furthermore, notice the juxtaposition; Huckabee's faith is open to criticism at all behavioral levels it applies to.
This is the reason our atheists want to reserve their atheism to the mere proposition. While irrational religion is open to criticism for hypocritical expressions in downticket considerations, the rational rejection of that theistic presumption ends right there; you'll note that in both principle and example, the rational atheist has no concomitant obligation to actually
be rational.
Functionally, this is problematic, much like a man masturbating furiously and wondering why his wife isn't getting pregnant. (Hint: He's doing it wrong if the question is knocking up his wife. If he leaves the question at simply getting off, he's doing just fine.)
Thus, we have a problem:
(1) Atheist rejects irrational belief in God, criticizes downticket decisions derived from that irrationality.
(2) Atheist supports other downticket irrationality, sees no obligation to be rational against his or her own emotions.
If the goal is, as we might derive from Spidergoat, converting religious people to reason, atheists evading the downticket obligations are only inhibiting that progress.
Still, though, no matter how many "atheists" might buy into that problematic process, the problem is not allowed to reflect on those who describe themselves as atheists. In other words, they demand of others what they refuse to give themselves.
And as to all this rational thinking? It would be nice to see some evidence of it. Take Balerion's
tinfoil rants as an example. If he tried some rational thinking instead of letting his emotions drag him along like the Griswolds' dog, he might actually come up with a post actually worth responding to. Nonetheless, any response I give him that has to do with logic and reason will find its brains dashed against the wall of his religion. Indeed—
"What bigotry? Support your bullshit accusations with citation, please."
—he makes an impossible request, since rational argument takes a back seat to emotionally-driven hissy-cows. We see it in his tit-for-tat defense of Pastafarian bigotry; we see it in his early response to this thread. And then he wants to fisk posts in order to bog down this discussion in reiterations of what has already been said, because it's easier than acutaly applying some rational context of reading comprehension?
No, really, try this one on:
"Your hypocrisy is astounding, T. Seriously, calling someone else a wannabe sociopath and criticizing their lack of sympathy while shit like that came out of your own mouth barely a week ago takes balls. Huge ones. Like, the kind rednecks hang from their pickups."
I certainly understand his outrage, but it is irrational.
The people of Seattle, just as the folks in Albequerque are about to experience, and Americans in cities and small towns across the nation have been through, find themselves in a difficult situation in which the police department is allowed to commit murder with impunity. The day that happened, every police officer in the state of Washington became a mortal threat to any given individual.
So it's sort of the same reason I reject SYG laws. If the people of Seattle threw down and mopped SPD off the face of the Earth, that would be horrifying. But the question of whether it is right or wrong? That's in the eye of the beholder. Does one believe that proactive self defense is legitimate? Then yes, wiping out the Seattle Police Department would be acceptable. Does one reject such violence? Then no, they cannot endorse such an outcome.
As much as he wants to lob some hissy-cows over my statement, his complaint is only valid
if we restrict our view of history to only the things he wants us to think about, instead of the actual established record.
Something about the question of reason and irrationality goes here.
My outlook is consistent with the logic I've expressed over the years; that our neighbor wishes to overlook this fact should be his problem, not the rest of ours.
Or we might consider:
No, your sin is that you're full of shit. This is just another vapid, half-assed "Look at me" moments, where you mete out judgment on everyone without getting your hands dirty with reasoned arguments or supporting citations. You have zero interest in actually having a discussion--otherwise you might have responded to what Grumpy actually said rather than pulling out Stock Response #2 by calling him a bigot, and why you won't even address Aqueous Id's post.
Should I
really have to point our neighbor back to the posts preceding the one he complains about? Or can we reasonably expect a rational consideration to respect the established context?
And as I noted in the
discussion about my sentiments regarding the police, "I don't want to live in that kind of society. But that's what I get if I accept certain arguments in that public policy debate." And what is our neighbor's obligation to consider that statement? None, apparently.
Again, a question of reason and irrationality.
After all, only
he knows what other people think. This is his version of rational discourse.
And he wants me to respond to Aqueous Id? Very well:
Sorry, AI, but after your fuckup in the police discussion—
"At the same time you have recently surprised me with a few blanket statements (atheists are morons, cops are corrupt) which to me are incongruent with that sense of justice, in that it's unjust in these cases to generalize to a stereotype." (Boldface accent added)
—
I am unsure what part of the post Balerion refers to deserves rational consideration, given its apparent basis in histrionic misinterpretation.
So, what is
my rational obligation to honor other people's
irrational projections?
As I see it, if this is a coincidence of identity labels in rational people, it is hard to understand why they need such remedial instruction in logic.
Or we might consider—
"I'm stunned that I'm going to the bother of writing this, honestly. Even if you do reply, it won't be anything more than the baseless accusations of bigotry and ignorance you're famous for. More likely, you won't respond at all, because as I said, for you, this isn't about the discussion. It's about taking weak-ass pot shots at an idea that frightens you. You're not even really upset about the alleged bigotry--it's just an empty insult, after all, one you refuse to substantiate with citation or argument--and no one in their right mind would call others a bigot, or talk of banging their fists on the table while having themselves regularly made statements such as this:"
—whether or not our neighbor accounts for history, or just desperately wants something to fight about.
The thing is that Mississippi, as a state, keeps doing this sort of thing. There is an historical
reason the Christian betrayal of Christ in Mississippi, that pursues a hateful and supremacist outcome, is not surprising. One of the more recent examples is when the Bryant administration signed TRAP laws, and instead of giving the usual platitudes about women's health, actually bragged that they were trying to end abortion in Mississippi. To the one, when you do that, you're
definitely going to lose in court. To the other, that outcome also just feeds the sense of oppression; how dare those courts hate Christians so much!
Nothing new here, compared to history. But apparently our neighbor has some problem with that assessment, even if he can't express himself coherently on that count.
So let us come back to your question: What do I want the conversation to look like?
Well, hey, someone asks me the basis of my moral outlook, I talk about the myth of Sisyphus; indeed, it is
canonical to me that, "One must imagine Sisyphus happy". Or, how many times do I raise the question of a
"dialectic of neurosis"? Furthermore, it is well-established that I believe that
"nothing ever begins", a seemingly irrational argument until one acknowledges the presence of metaphor and explores the context. Indeed, this one could be of functional value to any number of my atheistic neighbors at Sciforums, except that it would mitigate a certain portion of culpability among current generations of religious people, a prospect that seems unacceptable to our community's evangelical atheistic bloc.
You ask me what I want from the conversation? I want it to actually be functionally useful, something more than a whine and cheese session for people who consider themselves too dignified to actually be supremacists. Yes, we know there is a shit-ton of problems in our religious communities. And, yes, we know these problems affect other people's lives.
So what do we, as people in general, want?
What does an atheist want?
Consider that oddball thread about
"What will we replace religion with?"
Consider some of the answers:
•
Aqueous Id:
The goal then is to stamp out misery and bring literacy. Once that's in place I would expect all religions to be replaced by charitable organizations. There wouldn't need to be any cosmic philosophy since that's all covered in science class, which all people would receive as part of their basic education."
•
(Q):
"How about reality? At the very least, it's a start."
•
Cris:
"There is no need to replace religion with anything. It fullfils no purpose and has no value. Simply ignore it and let it die and we can continue quite happily without its irrelevance."
Given that the actual answer is that we won't be "replacing religion", but, rather, "replacing current religions", all of these answers are more about personal desire than any rational consideration of the issue.
No, really:
Consider the proposition of human society without metaphor.
It's not going to happen.
The functional need is to objectively identify the purposes of religion, objectively identify what can be identified of abstract morality, and combine the two. The idea that there is an objective moral propriety? It's a valid proposition that presently transcends human capability to settle; at the moment, we literally are incapable of translating enough influencing factors to a mathematical or logical model—there are simply too many variables and not enough data to resolve them.
Yet pursuit of that abstraction would, at the very least, be constructive.
Furthermore, the answers from our neighbors about replacing religion demonstrate the lack of pathos I have accused. They apparently have no idea what such a proposition means compared to the human psyche, and as near as anyone can tell, they don't actually care.
In the end, it looks like the old job-security argument. That is, there is a reason one is compelled to speak out, but one has no desire to settle that question, because then they would have to ... what? ... think? ... stop speaking out on this particular issue because it's settled? As I once noted
in response to Lindy West, regarding "feminism": "You make an excellent role model for my daughter:
That, dear, is an example of how to make things worse."
It's not that I disdain feminism in the slightest. Rather, I would prefer Ms. West stop making it harder for my daughter to recognize her full potential in our human endeavor. That is to say, she's become part of the problem. And as I noted then, "I suppose that’s nice job security, if you can get it."
It's one thing to complain about the problems in the world. But, really, if those complaints actually
disdain solutions, they become part of the problem.
So what do I want from the conversation? Nothing more than the rational potential to reasonably and responsibly address the problems facing the human endeavor as a result of obsolete and ignorant religious beliefs.
And this is enough to make me an enemy in the eyes of some of our community's atheists.
Life goes on. And it will be
harder on victims of religious injustice for the sake of our neighbors' unproductive attitudes. The longer these problems persist, the more people will be hurt.
So it's my turn to ask: What does any atheist want from the conversation?
If Spidergoat's outlook, for instance, has any propriety among his atheist neighbors, one really does start to wonder where those rational arguments are hiding.