Karl Giberson, a professor at Eastern Nazarene College and Vice-President of the organization BioLogos, has written some of the lamest critiques of New Atheism I’ve ever read. Perhaps the most embarrassing was an op-ed in USA Today called “Atheists, it’s time to play well with others,” in which he famously called criticizing religion a “profoundly un-American” activity.
Now, after an email exchange with Dan Dennett, Giberson has written an apologia of sorts on HuffPo: “The temptation of faith fibbing for Jesus.” Dennett accused Giberson of being a “faith” fibber, that is, someone who “[pollutes] the media with their misrepresentation of New Atheism.”
In his new piece, Giberson basically admits that he is indeed a faith fibber. First he notes something that accommodationists and faitheists always seem to miss: in their use of rhetoric and ad hominem arguments, religious people are no less strident or nasty than New Atheists. (Indeed, if you look at the extremes of both camps, I’d give the prize to the faithful.):
Dennett’s charge, and a subsequent civil email exchange with him, got me thinking about the discourse on religious belief that currently heats up the blogosphere. As I reflect on the various exchanges, I see no evidence that religious believers are standing on any higher moral ground. The vilification of the New Atheists is accompanied by caricature, hyperbole, misprepresentation and a distinct lack of charity.
On the Answers in Genesis site, to take one example, Ken Ham published a report about the atheist that Christians love to hate entitled “Dawkins Ranting in Oklahoma.” The audience was described as “mind-numbed robots,” and Dawkins’ ideas were sarcastically dismissed as communications from “an extraterrestrial.” Anti-evolutionary religion sites across the Internet make similar claims. But not all the charged-up rhetoric is on the lowbrow backwaters of the Internet. A passage from the 2007 book “Oracles of Science: Celebrity Scientists versus God and Religion,” compares Richard Dawkins to a “museum piece that becomes ever more interesting because, while everything else moves forward and changes, it remains the same.”
It would be really nice to hear, when accommodationists are excoriating the NA’s for stridency, a few shots fired at the faithful, too. But that happens all too rarely.
And, in a remarkable admission, Giberson says that he was one of the “faith fibbers for Jesus”:
Alas, I have to confess to having authored the museum metaphor. It was a cheap shot and, while hardly the cheapest of all possible shots, it was probably about as cheap as could reasonably sail past the staid editors at the venerable Oxford University Press. Certainly my co-author, the late Father Mariano Artigas, would have objected to anything less charitable.
I have to confess that the temptation to ridicule one’s debating opponents is all but unbearable, especially when playing street hockey on the Internet, where one must shout to be heard. In the past few months I have tried hard to come up with clever rhetorical attacks on Jerry Coyne, Sam Harris, PZ Myers and countless others whose ideas I was supposedly challenging. PZ once wrote the following about me, which I thought was pretty clever: “I will have no truck with the perpetuation of fallacious illusions, whether honeyed or bitter, and consider the Gibersons of this world to be corruptors of a better truth.” Of course, I responded to his evangelistic assault on me by calling him “Rev. Myers” in an essay on Salon.com. And so it goes. (I recommend against verbal swordfights with PZ Myers — you can’t win.)
But back to my point: Christians have rules, which presumably are still in force on the Internet: One of the best known is “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.” And yet the rule that many Christians seem to follow when they lay their hands on their keyboards is quite different: “Ridicule your enemies; misrepresent those who hate you; caricature and malign those that mistreat you.”
Or, as Daniel Dennett would put it, “Be a faith-fibber for Jesus.”
Confession, they say, is good for the soul. So Dan, I was a faith fibber. Sorry about that.
Sweet! In my own posts and articles about Giberson, I’ve tried to avoid personal insults and misrepresentation, and it’s nice that he’s decided to reciprocate.
“Faith Fibbing”…hmmm. Dennett is so polite…everyone I know would be more direct and call it “Lying for Jesus”.
But then you lose the lovely alliteration.
Also, I think that calling someone a ‘fibber’ is more insulting than calling them a ‘liar’ – fibs are not to be taken as seriously as lies, so fibbers are not to be taken as seriously as liars.
His ad hominems finally got burned in a flaming field of strawmen.
Maybe the term “apologist” can take on a new meaning…
That might be an apology, but it’s not an apologia.
Good for him.
Jerry, I have to disagree with this: “It would be really nice to hear, when accommodationists are excoriating the NA’s for stridency, to see some criticism leveled at the faithful, too. But that happens only rarely.”
I see it happen all the time, as long as the “faithful” in question are fundamentalists rather than the “nice moderate believers” that the author believes herself to be. These “reasonable” types are only too happy to criticize fundamentalists, because it gives them a chance to employ a combination of false equivalency with the fallacy of the golden mean. Something like “religious fundamentalists are mean and strident and dogmatic. So are the New Atheists. Religious fundamentalists think science must yield to faith; the New Atheists think faith must yield to science. The reasonable position must be in the middle of these two extremes. Therefore, science and faith are compatible.”
When I was being educated to be a good Lutheran, before I became an Athiest, they spent a good amount of time differentiating our church from Catholicism, and then a little dismissal of the Baptists and Mormons and others. All the faiths are pretty critical of one another, and I find it hilarious when they speak about how important it is to have “faith”, when they really mean “my faith”. Cause, if just having faith is really important, why exactly should any one go to your particular church anyways?
I feel like when religious people try to claim that science is just another religion, they are trying to put it into the context they’re used to, so they could effectively compete against it. Of course both ultimately fail.
My theory is that theists are all secretly angry at atheists because they understand that the atheist feels the same way towards their religion that the theist feels toward all “other” religions –and for the SAME reasons.
We goof on the Catholics the same way the Catholics goof on the Mormons. We goof on the Mormons the same way the Mormons goof on the Scientologists… etc.
All theists are well aware that people have been making up religions and supernatural explanations for eons… but they have the hubris to think that their own particularly story is not made up– it’s divine truth!
The atheists says “there’s no such thing as divine truths.”
Oh gosh, it is so rare to see one of them “get it”.
But I really liked this bit:
“I recommend against verbal swordfights with PZ Myers — you can’t win.” Good thing too! I love PZ.
Never get in a verbal sword fight with PZ Myers, you will get Cthulhu.
You will get Cthulhu deserve.
In Pharyngula, Cthulhu gets YOU!
Love your enemies indeed. Some christian around town still has the paint on his key all because I had a bumper sticker that said “Evolve”
Wo! That’s quite an admission!
I’m impressed.
So does this mean that apologists like Giberson will produce evidence that god(s) exist? Otherwise, I could not care less that they admit that they can be as rude (and worse since they lie and distort reality) as atheists.
I think that the only reason that Giberson is apologizing is because he is a Christian, and that is what Christians automatically do, not because they are sincere about it, or that they learn anything when they do, that is just the Christian thing to do, as brain-dead as all their other beliefs. It is their old honey is better than vinegar. No matter if their honey is still concealing merde.
Or perhaps things have started biting him in the backside. Confessions almost always seem to occur only after they’re caught with their pants down.
Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way…
Dear Professor Giberson:
If you would be so kind as to provide evidence for your assertion that any god exists, I would be grateful. If you would follow that up with the evidence that YOUR god exists, it would be quite helpful.
Evidence, let us agree, is information that is objectively factual, verifiable by a disinterested third party or even an interested critic, and potentially falsifiable. Evidence is not an attribution in any books of mythologies, whether currently believed to be accurate (or partially or completely metaphorical) or not.
BTW: I do not subscribe to the notion that believers have something called “faith”. My assertion is that they have something called “gullibility”. In other words, they accept as true “evidence” the rational people in this world dismiss out of hand.
The so-called “miracles” of the New Testament, for example, have all the credibility of a third grader telling the teacher “the dog ate my homework.”
* Where’s the wine? We drank it.
* Loaves and fishes? Eaten.
* The healed sick? Dead.
* Lazarus? Dead again.
* The “risen” Jesus? Invisible in heaven.
Please try bringing something a bit more compelling, and, importantly, verifiable.
Kindest regards.
I love this:
I see others commented on this before I do.
Add my applause.
I think it’s big of Giberson… of course, it’s hard to imagine oneself on the moral high-ground when one is being a dick. I hope other theists are inspired to do the same.
That’s an astonishing admission, and it’s all well and good, but I’m afraid someone needs to rain on this parade a little. Giberson wrote:
“Ridicule your enemies; misrepresent those who hate you; caricature and malign those that **mistreat you.**”
No, sir, this is not a “tit for tat” where the mean New Atheists are mistreating the religious and only get in-kind treatment in return. Sure, there are examples of mockery and ridicule from the NA camp, but it’s much, much more one-sided, and your side doesn’t come out looking well at all.
Apologists claim “mistreatment” merely for having their evidence-free, unverifiable beliefs questioned. That’s not mistreatment, it’s ordinary grown-up discourse.
In response, the apologists actively lie, distort, and misrepresent the most reasonable objections from atheists. They libel them (yes, I mean that literally, not as rhetorical hyperbole) and do their level best to make sure atheists remain so reviled they’re the least trusted minority in the US. And then, the apologists turn around and accuse us, the atheists, of being intolerant persecutors. Cute.
And please, don’t start about “tone.” Even the most moderately phrased critique of a religious claim is considered provocative beyond the pale by many in your camp, unless it’s couched in sufficiently deferential and affected self-doubt (“Oh, I know I could be wrong, and I sooooo respect your faith.”).
On the whole, religious apologists are not being mistreated. They’re only just beginning to face the sort of straightforward, adult discourse their nonsense claims would have been subjected to if the topic were politics or public policy.
It’s not a case of two opponents treating each other equally badly, Mr. Giberson.
Many theists find the existence of atheists to be mistreatment of theists’ beliefs. Look at the accusations of “stridency” and “aggressiveness” due to the “you can be good without god” bus advertisements.
I think it’s also a mischaracterization of Mr. Giberson to suggest that atheists “hate” theists–his word. Again, disagreement, bewilderment, and a little good-natured contempt is described as hatred. Not believing in Santa Claus with you is called hatred. Telling an adult that you don’t see any convincing evidence for their Sky Fairy is not hatred. Again, he feels “mistreated” when he’s simply disagreed with. I would ask him to rise to the level of adult discourse without wilting.
Good point, Monado, and one I should have thought to include in my post above. The same thing goes for Giberson’s characterization of atheists and theists as “enemies.”
I don’t consider theists my enemies, necessarily (unless they’re negatively affecting public policy). I consider them conversational and intellectual opponents, or adversaries. That’s a big difference – it’s much less melodramatic.
I don’t hate them, either (again, excepting those who cause egregious harm). Many of us simply find their arguments silly, ridiculous, immature, and petulant. Again, a very big difference.
Giberson doesn’t like that. That’s why he needs to characterize the debate in unnecessarily contentious terms, derived from Christian tropes about persecution, lions, etc.
It’s an awful lot harder to swallow the idea that your adversaries find you silly; that cuts deeper than believing they “hate” you, because you can’t write it off to mere irrational emoting.
Well, sorry snookums. We think you’re silly. Deeply silly.
*giggles*
Yep!
I wonder if Giberson “hates” reincarnationists, or Moonies or Scientologists. I suspect he uses the word “hate” to keep himself from realizing that we feel the same way towards his beliefs as he feels towards those other “silly” beliefs. And for a good reason.
Goofing on goofy beliefs is not hate speech. Theists do it all the time when it comes to magical beliefs they don’t share. They just get offended when the tables are turned.
I can’t shake the feeling that rather than a sincere apology, this is an attempt to appear magnanimous. He’s able to apologise for his rudeness, after all, while we atheists persist in ours. The difference is that his rudeness was personal while ours is only a refusal to bend over backwards to afford ‘respect’ to crazy beliefs, as per the accomodationist’s demands.
The supposed conflict was manufactured on the assumption that it’s automatically wrong to be rude about religion. If Giberson is genuinely apologising, then perhaps he’s apologising for the wrong thing.
Groan, forgive the misplaced apostrophe.
“He’s able to apologise for his rudeness, after all, while we atheists persist in ours.”
wrong.
It was never the tone that was at issue, but the honesty of the arguments presented. Ours are honest, his was not.
I find dishonesty rude in and of itself, frankly, but I’m less concerned about that than about the constant lying and misrepresentation being undertaken by the faitheists.
If Gibbering decides to recant his gibberish entirely, that’s one thing. All he has done here is blatantly admit that’s what he does.
I predict it will be business as usual the next time he feels motivated to write an article about atheists.
Giberson’s piece is a remarkable admission, and yours is a remarkably uncharitable take on it.
Possibly so, as Giberson himself has pointed out. I’m not too comfortable about my interpreting what he said very literally. In fact, as Giberson again pointed out, the bit about hate and enemies and so on is a quote from the bible. Stupidly, I had not realised this. I should have known better. Perhaps what he was doing was describing what he thought of as the Christian way of looking at things and contrasting it with his behaviour. Which means I’ve been taking it all way too literally. All fair enough.
But I still can’t shake the idea that the conflict itself is something that wasn’t created by atheists, new or otherwise, so what is he really apologising for? That’s the point I was trying to make, as clumsy as I was in doing so.
But why do I need to be charitable, exactly?
Because it is the Christian thing to do! Instead of being honest and upright about your thoughts, you have to be sneaky and gently obfuscating.
Since the West is considered a Christian culture by the brain-dead Christians who live there, get with the program! Conceal your true feelings so you can be nice. Rot inside, but be sweet smelling on the outside with your Christian behavior.
That’s all very well, but having apologized–er, admitted it, anyway, does that mean he’s going to stop doing it?
Or is he merely acknowledging that he does it?
just so.
I found this apology rather weak tea, myself. Let’s see him actually RETRACT his lies first. Then I might be willing to extend an olive branch. But given he’s behind the Biologos site, which itself is little more than lies, I rather doubt I will find myself ever thinking him an honest man.
Very good point. To get ABsolution, one must offer a Solution, which may be retraction or reparation but must be better than a “notpology.”