The Guradian’s published a Comment is free article by Christian author Charlotte Allen. It’s called “Atheists: No God, just whining“, with jovial abstract: “Atheists are a tiresome, self-pitying bunch whose primary motivation isn’t rationalism but anger”. Oh yes, this is already looking like a good one. Well, I read it. And the only thing that struck me was the bizarre irony of someone complaining about whining taking the place of valid argument, by whining in place of valid argument. There are fifteen paragraphs in Charlotte’s essay, and I think only one valid point is made throughout. I’m going to reproduce and deconstruct it briefly because, well, because I can. And I think it’s interesting that an essay of such meagre calibre has been published in not one but two major newspapers. Let me begin:
I can’t stand atheists – but it’s not because they don’t believe in God. It’s because they’re crashing bores.
Well we’re off to a good start. Allen opens with a short paragraph which really serves as an excellent preview for the rest of the essay — it’s a sweeping generalisation, offensively bigoted (try rehashing with “jew” in place of “atheist” and submitting this to The Guardian), contains no argument, and displays a startling lack of self-awareness.
Other people, most recently the British cultural critic Terry Eagleton in his new book, Faith, Reason and Revolution, take to task such superstar nonbelievers as Oxford biologist Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion) and political journalist Christopher Hitchens (God Is Not Great) for indulging in a philosophically primitive opposition of faith and reason that assumes that if science can’t prove something, it doesn’t exist.
Allen seems to be attempting to be reasonable here, with what looks like a rational critique of the fundaments of atheism; but unfortunately this is nothing more than a grotesque and painfully overused strawman. If we read this — just the second paragraph in the essay — it tells us perhaps all we need to know about Allen to be able to stop reading and save ourselves some time. Look at that last phrase: “opposition of faith and reason that assumes that if science can’t prove something, it doesn’t exist”. Well, one thing we can be sure of is that Charlotte Allen has probably never spoken to an atheist in person, or read any of the books that she rails against. Never have I heard a self-respecting scientist or atheist claim that science can “prove” anything. As a professional scientist himself, Dawkins talks about this all the time; leading me to believe that either Allen has never read his books, or didn’t understand what she read. Even allowing for this, I’ve never heard any atheist try to claim that if something isn’t suggested by science, it doesn’t exist — that doesn’t even make sense. Allen has either displayed up-front that she doesn’t understand what she’s talking about, or she’s deliberately constructing a transparent strawman argument in the hopes of appearing superior to people who actually haven’t read or understood what the popular atheist authors are saying.
My problem with atheists is their tiresome – and way old – insistence that they are being oppressed and their fixation with the fine points of Christianity. What – did their Sunday school teachers flog their behinds with a Bible when they were kids?
Unlike many commenters in The Guardian’s threads, I don’t think this can be construed as a deeply offensive slight against people who have suffered abuse as children at the hands of religious authority figures. I do, however, think that at the very least this is a completely content-free paragraph — Allen not citing or referencing or even suggesting any instance of such things. Atheists do frequently discuss the minuteae of Christian doctrine, as this is a philosophically sound method to show incoherence and inconsistency. Allen doesn’t say at any point why such a thing is to be frowned upon. The only “victim-mentality” that I see displayed by atheists is in direct response to some specific and clearly-referenced instance of discrimination. Or, for example, mindless ranting polemics against “athsists” in general published internationally in mainstream news media. Yes, for shame, atheists everywhere! This is somehow your fault.
Ironically, the “way old” claim has frequently been shown valid. A fact somewhat weakening Allen’s facile “argument”, rather than strengthening it.
Read Dawkins, or Hitchens, or the works of fellow atheists Sam Harris (The End of Faith) and Daniel Dennett (Breaking the Spell), or visit an atheist website or blog (there are zillions of them, bearing such titles as God Is for Suckers, God Is Imaginary and God Is Pretend), and your eyes will glaze over as you peruse – again and again – the obsessively tiny range of topics around which atheists circle like water in a drain.
Yep, yet another content-free statement — no examples or references, just groundless name-dropping. What is “obsessively tiny” supposed to mean? Allen gives no hints. Not only is this essay offensive in content, it’s offensive in style, too.
First off, there’s atheist victimology: Boohoo, everybody hates us ‘cuz we don’t believe in God. Although a recent Pew Forum survey on religion found that 16% of Americans describe themselves as religiously unaffiliated, only 1.6% call themselves atheists, with another 2.4% weighing in as agnostics (a group despised as wishy-washy by atheists). You or I might attribute the low numbers to atheists’ failure to win converts to their unbelief, but atheists say the problem is persecution so relentless that it drives tens of millions of God-deniers into a closet of feigned faith, like gays before Stonewall.
When we read this paragraph, what do we find yet again? That’s right, Charlotte Allen has nothing to say! She quickly dismisses “atheists’” alleged claims that “low numbers” are misrepresentative because of stigma. Why does she disagree this? None can tell, as she doesn’t even get as far as claiming that they’re wrong, so much as essentially repeating what they say in a silly voice and hoping that this will convince her audience.
In his online Atheist Manifesto, Harris writes that “no person, whatever his or her qualifications, can seek public office in the United States without pretending to be certain that … God exists.” The evidence? Antique clauses in the constitutions of six – count ‘em – states barring atheists from office.
Or perhaps, as Harris actually says, this is a regrettable truth contingent on the polling data collected on American voters. But hey, why bother to do your research when you can twist quotes to say whatever you want?
The US supreme court ruled such provisions unenforceable nearly 50 years ago, but that doesn’t stop atheists from bewailing that they have to hide their Godlessness from friends, relatives, employers and potential dates. One representative of the pity-poor-me school of atheism, Kathleen Goodman, writing in January for the Chronicle of Higher Education, went so far as to promote affirmative action for atheists on college campuses: specially designated, college-subsidised “safe spaces” for them to express their views.
Well, Allen has completely missed the point Harris was trying to make. Even if it’s slightly ambiguous in the quotation’s source, it’s reinforced in almost everything else he’s written. Not only has she essentially misquoted him, she’s now arbitrarily conflating voting trends with social conventions. I especially love that last sentence — she’s moved from one point (“there’s an out-dated and irrelevant law I’ve just been talking about”) to one wholly unconnected (“it seems some people want to encourage freedom of expression on college campuses”) in the same breath, followed by a tacit “can you believe their audacity?!”; as if she’s been piling on the evidence.
Maybe atheists wouldn’t be so unpopular if they stopped beating the drum until the hide splits on their second-favourite topic: How stupid people are who believe in God. This is a favourite Dawkins theme. In a recent interview with Trina Hoaks, the atheist blogger for the Examiner.com website, Dawkins described religious believers as follows: “They feel uneducated, which they are; often rather stupid, which they are; inferior, which they are; and paranoid about pointy-headed intellectuals from the East Coast looking down on them, which, with some justification, they do.” Thanks, Richard!
In reality, Allen has quoted Richard Dawkins out of context. He was replying to a question specifically about why “certain” (a word conveniently omitted in Allen’s introducing of the quote, but present in the original transcript) religious people who specifically criticise evolutionary theory as opposed to paleontology or archeology. So unless she’s a creationist (which wouldn’t surprise me, given her understanding of anything displayed thus far), that “Thanks, Richard” does nothing but further decontextualise the quote. Thanks, Charlotte!
Dennett likes to call atheists “the brights”, in contrast to everybody else, who obviously aren’t so bright. In a 2006 essay describing his brush with death after a heart operation, Dennett wrote these thoughts about his religious friends who told him they were praying for his recovery: “Thanks, I appreciate it, but did you also sacrifice a goat?” With friends like Daniel Dennett, you don’t need enemies.
Allow me to also quote Dennet: “Don’t confuse the noun with the adjective: ‘I’m a bright’ is not a boast but a proud avowal of an inquisitive world view.” That’s from the same source she’s quoting from, it’s linked to right form the Guardian article. So I guess she — yet again — either didn’t understand the words she was reading, or deliberately misrepresented them.
Then there’s PZ Myers, biology professor at the University of Minnesota’s Morris campus, whose blog, Pharyngula, is supposedly about Myers’s field, evolutionary biology, but is actually about his fanatical propensity to label religious believers as “idiots”, “morons”, “loony” or “imbecilic” in nearly every post. The university deactivated its link to Myers’ blog in July after he posted a photo of a consecrated host from a Mass that he had pierced with a rusty nail and thrown into the garbage (“I hope Jesus’s tetanus shots are up to date”) in an effort to prove that Catholicism is bunk – or something.
BAM! Right when we let our guard down, another entirely point-free paragraph wastes seconds of our lives. Seriously, talk about “whining”!
Myers’s blog exemplifies atheists’ frenzied fascination with Christianity and the Bible. Atheist website after atheist website insists that Jesus either didn’t exist or “was a jerk” (in the words of one blogger) because he didn’t eliminate smallpox or world poverty. At the American Atheists website, a writer complains that God “set up” Adam and Eve, knowing in advance that they would eat the forbidden fruit. A blogger on A Is for Atheist has been going through the Bible chapter by chapter and verse by verse in order to prove its “insanity” (he or she had gotten up to the Book of Joshua when I last looked).
I don’t know on what basis Myers’ Pharyngula could be considered as “exemplifying” a “frenzied” (?) fascination with the Bible. But not to worry, that last paragraph is just a list of things that some disparate atheists might have done on the internet at one time or another. Characteristically content-free.
Another topic that atheists beat like the hammer on the anvil in the old Anacin commercials is Darwinism versus creationism. Maybe Darwin-o-mania stems from the fact that this year marks the bicentennial of Charles Darwin’s birth in 1809, but haven’t atheists heard that many religious people (including the late Pope John Paul II) don’t have a problem with evolution but, rather, regard it as God’s way of letting his living creation unfold? Furthermore, even if human nature as we know it is a matter of lucky adaptations, how exactly does that disprove the existence of God?
Yes. Many religious people do accept science, and we atheists (according to Allen one atheist can speak for them all, so why don’t I?) have head about it. Unfortunately, Charlotte Allen apparently isn’t one of those people, though, as her idea that “lucky adaptions” leading to “human nature as we know it” is numbingly inaccurate and superficial. “Lucky”? “Human Nature”? Yes, these are terms of statistical evolutionary biology nomenclature, right out of the literature.
And then there’s the question of why atheists are so intent on trying to prove that God not only doesn’t exist but is evil to boot. Dawkins, writing in The God Delusion, accuses the deity of being a “petty, unjust, unforgiving control freak” as well as a “misogynistic, homophobic, racist … bully.” If there is no God – and you’d be way beyond stupid to think differently – why does it matter whether he’s good or evil?
Again, Allen behaves like either a dullard or a liar. In context, the point Dawkins makes is about obtaining morals from God, not about whether he exists or not. Strawman combined with misquoting? Is this a new low?
The problem with atheists – and what makes them such excruciating snoozes – is that few of them are interested in making serious metaphysical or epistemological arguments against God’s existence, or in taking on the serious arguments that theologians have made attempting to reconcile, say, God’s omniscience with free will or God’s goodness with human suffering.
I just want to break into this paragraph to say that finally Charlotte Allen has made a good point! Those are good arguments against God’s existence. And I rarely hear atheists talk about those!!!
Atheists seem to assume that the whole idea of God is a ridiculous absurdity, the “flying spaghetti monster” of atheists’ typically lame jokes. They think that lobbing a few Gaza-style rockets accusing God of failing to create a world more to their liking (“If there’s a God, why aren’t I rich?” “If there’s a God, why didn’t he give me two heads so I could sleep with one head while I get some work done with the other?”) will suffice to knock down the entire edifice of belief.
Contrary to unpopular belief, the Flying Spaghetti Monster is not a “typically lame joke”, it was originally an agent of protest against the Kansas School Board hearing on the teaching of Intelligent Design in schools. But it’s OK that Allen got another fact utterly wrong through lack of research or willful ignorance — how could she have been expected to know it? It’s only the #2 result on fucking Google!
What primarily seems to motivate atheists isn’t rationalism but anger – anger that the world isn’t perfect, that someone forced them to go to church as children, that the Bible contains apparent contradictions, that human beings can be hypocrites and commit crimes in the name of faith. The vitriol is extraordinary. Hitchens thinks that “religion spoils everything”. Dawkins contends that raising one’s offspring in one’s religion constitutes child abuse. Harris argues that it “may be ethical to kill people” on the basis of their beliefs. The perennial atheist litigant Michael Newdow sued (unsuccessfully) to bar President Obama from uttering the words “so help me God” when he took his oath of office.
Why yes, Charlotte, those are some things which some atheists have done before. Thanks for bringing them to our attention! Now, what was your point?
What atheists don’t seem to realise is that even for believers, faith is never easy in this world of injustice, pain and delusion. Even for believers, God exists just beyond the scrim of the senses. So, atheists, how about losing the tired sarcasm and boring self-pity and engaging believers seriously?
Well. The tired sarcasm I’m afraid I can’t loose, because when I’m confronted with pages of bullshit in my newspaper I need to express myself somehow. And now, Charlotte, why don’t you loose the vapid rhetoric and laughable hypocrisy, and engage atheists seriously?
