In recent months there have been signs of clear disagreement within the atheist movement about what its proper attitude to religion should be. One of the leading lights of the older generation, Paul Kurtz, has complained about the recent celebrations of “blasphemy day”, enthusiastically embraced byPZ Myers. Others, derided by Daniel Dennett as “atheists but” have also complained. Is this a real division in the movement?
Posted: November 8th 2009
Eric_PK
I think they are complementary approaches.
Paul Kurtz has done a ton of really important stuff – starting CSICOP (now CSI), working with important Humanists, etc. I don’t want to discount that.
But if you evaluate the success of the reasoned (ie “take the high road”) approach, it’s clear that it hasn’t done much to improve the acceptability of atheism or reduce the influence of religion on society and government.
The advent of the more evangelical atheists – Hitchens, Dawkins, Myers, etc. – have essentially made enough noise that it’s interesting to be covered by the media, and that change in tactics has made atheism a much more common topic.
If you look at the history of the gay rights movement, you’ll see that it was only after a more outspoken approach was adopted that real gains started to be made. Not that I think the imposition on most atheists is even a fraction of the imposition on homosexuals, but there are useful parallels there.
The real question is how do you best influence the moderates. The hard-core theists already have an established attitude that isn’t going to change.
You may offend a few moderates if you take a harder line, but if you continue with a soft line you aren’t going to reach them at all.
The things that I have a problem with aren’t the ones that go too far, but the ones that seem designed just to provoke a very negative reaction.
I don’t know how you decide where the line is, however. I initially thought that Hitchen’s book title “God is not Great – how religion poisons everything” was way over the line, but after seeing the interviews that the book title got him and reading the book, I’m not so sure.
You can see lots of good comments on Kurtz’ column
The one comment that I strongly agree with is that CSI should hire some good professional marketing/PR people to decide how to do things effectively.
Posted: November 9th 2009
Dave Hitt www
If you look at any movement you’ll see lots of different approaches toward accomplishing the same goal.
For instance the skeptic movement, (which is not the same as the atheist movement, but is closely related) is full of different personalities using different approaches to getting their message across. Penn Jillette is bold and brash and makes fun of people promoting nonsense. Neil Degrasse Tyson promotes science with a persona that’s half rock star, half teddy bear. Tim Minchin does it with humor. James Randi says “prove it” with a twinkle in his eye and a playful attitude. Michael Schumer uses a more academic approach. They’re all working toward the same goal in very different ways.
The atheist movement also consists of many different approaches. This is a good thing. Someone who is offended by one approach may find a different one appealing.
The rift is not huge and the disagreements are mostly friendly. As the movement gains momentum you can expect godders to exaggerate these disagreements, insisting that it proves, well, something.
Posted: November 9th 2009
logicel
I consider most of the atheists butters as possessing an intriguing mix of traits. They bring to the table independent thinking (after all, they have no god belief and are challenging other independent thinkers, that is to say, the vocal atheists, which is admirable in my book) along with an narrow emotional focus—they are smug enough to think that their placating the holders of non-evidential beliefs which has never shown any efficacy in the past should be the only way to go forward. They are pushy in this regard and very vocal (which always gets a chuckle out me).
On the other hand, many vocal atheists recognize that each atheist needs to choose their way of coping/relating with the religious who can be so vocal expressing their non-evidential beliefs that they make the vocal atheists seem mute.
The only times that I have witnessed the vocal camp objecting to the faithiests is when they tell the vocal ones to shut up (the vocal ones don’t even tell the religious to shut up, heck, we want the religious to spout their nonsense as loudly as they can) and when they insist on going out of the way to show that religion is compatible with science. It is not. Religious believers can certainly embrace evolution, but that does not mean that the field of religion which is based on non-evidential faith is compatible with science, which demands and flourishes on evidence.
Until they give hard evidence that in this case, the Overton window has snapped closed, I will keep on ignoring the faithiests’ core argument that religious beliefs are to be respected because, well, because they should, don’t you know?
Unlike many of the atheist butters, I don’t consider religion to be a boon for good, instead I do consider the positive and valuable emotions which religion hijacks to form a basis for a good society.
In addition, many of the atheist butters just get so many aspects of the vocal atheists stance wrong that at times, it is very difficult to take them seriously. But, I still try to.
Posted: November 8th 2009
SmartLX www
The accommodationists, those atheists who criticise the most outspoken atheists for not throwing religion a bone now and then, would never have been considered a part of the “new atheist” movement anyway.
The accommodationist position isn’t new either. Ever since the big four books came out (_The God Delusion_, God is Not Great, The End of Faith and Breaking the Spell) there has been a constant stream of reviews and newspaper editorials by “atheists but” chastising the big names for being strident, shrill, fundamentalist, militant, etc.
The only difference now is that some accommodationists are either volunteering their viewpoints without responding directly to the work of Richard Dawkins et al, or writing their own complete books on the subject in which they tackle the big books at length. For the first time, they’re getting interviewed themselves instead of just tossing out comments.
There is no centralised atheist authority. There are organisations like American Atheists, but even within these they don’t abide by anything like the sort of hierarchy you see in any given Christian denomination. There will always be disagreements, and they’re more likely to be public ones. And there’s really no all-encompassing entity to which the word “schism” could even be applied if there’s a division.
One more important thing is that the accommodationists and “atheists but” are still atheists. They don’t advocate changes to the meaning of the word “atheist”; their actual position on the existence of gods is the same as the loudest “new atheists”. If you insist on applying religious terminology then that really irritates me but here goes: there is no dispute over doctrine, merely over the methods of and emphasis on evangelism.
Posted: November 8th 2009