I finally read the September Scientific American which contains this shocking opinion piece by Michael Shermer. That a prominent skeptic, atheist and champion of critical thinking accuses atheist authors of unseemly “new militancy” – that’s not particularly shocking. It seems to be a fairly fashionable position among some subset of freethinkers, perhaps making them feel sophisticated at cocktail parties. What’s shocking is that Shermer makes no actual argument. He just lists five bullet-point assertions that he seems to think are self-evident, and instead of evidence to back them up he digs up quotes to show that some dead luminaries might have agreed with him. It’s at best an argument from authority.
Shermer should know he needs more than that. When he claims that “anti-something movements by themselves will fail,” for example, he needs to cite some evidence. Abolitionists were pretty much nothing more than an anti-slavery movement, and yet they succeeded. And how were the Allies anything but an anti-Hitler movement? One could no doubt reformulate these as being pro-something, but that’s just a word game. The fact is in these examples and in many others throughout history good people opposed an evil and defeated it, not by casting about for positive “frames” or trying to disguise their position with happy slogans but by standing up and expressing opposition directly and fearlessly.
Under “positive assertions are necessary,” Shermer lamely advises us to “champion science and reason.” Well, duh – what does he think we’ve been doing? Remember the Dover case, Michael? The religious attack on science education has been vicious and unrelenting, leading some schools to eschew teaching evolution just to avoid the legal hazards of dealing with religious parents. In the face of this kind of challenge, organized and disseminated by religious institutions, there must come a point when opposing creationism means opposing religious dogma directly. Or does Shermer honestly believe that the anti-evolution movement, being only “anti-something,” is doomed to die on its own?
Shermer really loses it when he tries to defend his third perplexing maxim “rational is as rational does:”
… we must apply science and reason to our own actions. It is irrational to take a hostile or condescending attitude toward religion because by doing so we virtually guarantee that religious people will respond in kind.
First of all, how does he define “hostile?” If we allow our opponents to define it then nearly any statement questioning religion, no matter how factual or emotionally neutral, would be classified as hostile. It sounds like maybe he’s just saying that being a smarty pants know-it-all can turn people off, which seems to be the subtext of the Sagan quote he uses. If so this is a gross mischaracterization of the thesis of the works of Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, et al. These “new atheists” raise substantive objections about the negative effects on all of us of religion as practiced in real life. How is that condescending?
Being rational isn’t about being Mr. Spock. We don’t have to reject our emotional reactions to think clearly – in fact as Greta Christina explains with great patience and passion, anger is sometimes the only rational response. When religion seeks to devalue and denigrate the morality of atheists, undermine and sabotage science education, ratchet back gender equality, and use the power of the state to compromise reproductive health – in the face of these abuses we should get angry. And to the extent that the perpetrators of this reactionary political agenda cloak their actions behind demands for tolerance and respect for their religious beliefs, we must question those beliefs themselves.
He’s also not demonstrated the main part of his premise, that perceived hostility will result, ipso facto, in hostility in kind. It seems to me at least equally likely (based on admittedly imperfect analogies to the civil rights and gay rights movements) that righteous anger can raise people’s consciousness. Provided the anger is justified, many people, when they realize that they have acted thoughtlessly in the past, try to redeem and improve themselves. Among those that react with anger many (if not all) were already hostile to non-believers but simply had no public outlet.
As for Shermer’s other points – that we shouldn’t be prejudiced against believers and we should respect religious freedom – I have previously dealt with those here. I am not completely unsympathetic to the idea that perhaps there are better ways for dealing with the problems of religion, specifically the intrusion of faith politics in the public sphere. But I reject suggestions that the godless should lay low and not make waves, and I really expected better from a respected skeptical publisher, columnist and author.
- jack*
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