Here’s another take on the Chapel Hill murders, from one of the atheists who has been deemed complicit.
Physicist Lawrence Krauss, who has himself been accused by atheists as bearing responsibility for the murder of three young Muslims in North Carolina, has written a piece for PuffHo giving his take on the murders. Here’s an excerpt from his piece, “UNC isn’t Charlie Hebdo, and Thomas Paine isn’t Osama bin Laden”
What is more surprising is the connection being suggested, even in various relatively liberal papers and magazines including the Washington Post and the New Republic, between atheism’s most vocal advocates and this violence. It may be impossible to ever know what was going through the mind of Mr. Hicks when he committed his crime, although he never appeared in advance to advocate violence against any religious group. But either way, to compare the crime in North Carolina with the crimes against Charlie Hebdo’s cartoonists and others in Paris under the general rubric of “hate crime” is to seriously misrepresent both heinous events.
Let’s be clear about one thing. Hate speech is directed at people, not ideas. To argue that individuals like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, or any of the other outspoken atheists, including myself, who criticize the doctrines of Islam, or Christianity, are inciting violence against individuals on the scale of the terrorists who espouse Islamic fundamentalism is akin to suggesting that the Enlightenment was fundamentally no different than the theocracies it eventually undermined.
Consider the words of one writer in the New Republic when labeling Hicks as a potential hate criminal, saying he “expressed his admiration for Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion and Thomas Paine’s The Age of Reason, and condemned “radical” Christianity and Islam alike for their alleged ideological similarities,” as if somehow praising reason over ideology is the first step toward violent action.
As Dawkins himself said when he appeared with at the Rally for Reason, held in the Mall in Washington DC several years ago: “I don’t despise religious people, I despise what they stand for.” Or as another vocal atheist Ricky Gervais said, perhaps more gently, in our film The Unbelievers, which captured Dawkins’ remarks as well: “Everyone has a right to believe anything. But I have the right to find that belief ridiculous.”
There’s more, but I’ll let you read it at PuffHo. Feel free to discuss this or the whole thing below, but I’d appreciate it if people, at least at this time, would refrain from flat declarations of what caused these murders. Nobody knows, and if you’re honest you’ll admit that.
“I don’t despise religious people, I despise what they stand for.”
That sounds frighteningly similar to “Love the sinner, hate the sin”.
So?
Yeah, I don’t have a problem with that statement. There is nothing wrong with “Hate the addiction, not the addict”. You can also phrase it many other ways. What is a problem is when people use statements like that but show themselves to be hypocrites with there actions.
The “so” is that it sounds disingenuous. It’s (normally) pretty hard to believe that I despise what you stand for but that I still think you’re a really swell guy. If nothing else, it could have been phrased better.
Why does it sound disingenuous? Especially considering that we’re dealing with ideas, not personalities, it strikes me as perfectly plausible. I hate the far-right ideology of today’s Republican Party, but it doesn’t follow that I despise every last person who’s registered Republican. The only reason to assume disinguousness is if you’ve imbibed the notion that every philosophical dispute is a fight to the death with your bitterest foe, which is the attitude being attributed to the gnus by people like Watson, Myers, Aslan, C. J. Whifflebat and others. But if you don’t start out with that assumption, there’s no difficulty at all.
Ah but, to my mind, you changed it a bit there. The way it’s written, it’s completely analogous to the sinner/sin example; it’s on a much more personal level than you’re suggesting. I mean, let’s face it, we don’t really love the rapist, now do we and we don’t love the Christian who’s in our face with some homophobic or misogynistic hate! We all know where we’ve been hearing the sinner/sin one lately and it’s in regard to being gay. If the latter part had said something closer to your Republican example – an ideology that people subscribe to, to one degree or another – then fine. Someone below reworded that part such that’s it’s closer to your example and I think it’s fine that way. BTW, do I despise the senator/congressman who said rape victims shouldn’t receive preemptive birth control because their bodies can recognize and reject rapists’ sperm (or some such thing) – you’re damned right I do.
But that’s precisely the kind of thing that Dawkins did say. Let’s examine the quote again: “I don’t despise religious people, I despise what they stand for.” Religious people amount to an even broader cross-section of humanity than Republicans. Can you tell me that you hate Dorothy Day or Daniel Berrigan or Mohandas Gandhi on a personal level merely because they’re religious? You are forced to add behaviors that you find repellent to your analogy and your thought experiment. We hate the rapist because he rapes and we hate the in-your-face religious homophobe or sexist for being homophobic, sexist, and getting in our faces. But these are not necessarily inherent to the practice of religion (though religion can be used to buttress and rationalize this for the people who do act like this), so there’s no rational warrant for hating all religious people. Not only is a secular version of “love the sinner, hate the sin” appropriate here, it’s the way I’d argue that we should think if we’re to combat hateful modes of thought. Look at it i the other direction: if we don’t focus on sexism itself or homophobia itself, but only as it manifests itself in religious thought, then it might make us slow to condemn it, or worse tempt us to excuse and minimize it, when we encounter it among fellow atheists.
Feel free to criticize religion for sanctifying and perpetuating bigotry, but we should never forget to appreciate the diversity inherent in religious people. And since the majority of the world is religious, we will either have to appreciate that religious people as individuals can have many good points or to remain consistent we’re going to have to subscribe to near-universal misanthropy. (BTW, this is not the royal “we”, because I too struggle with the temptation on occasion to paint with a broad brush. 🙂 When that happens, I remember all my religious family members, those I’ve worked with in charities and in activist groups, all the ones whose writings and works I admire even when I disagree with them personally, etc.)
Every self-respecting christian, jew or muslim should feel offended by the ridiculing or denial of their god. I can’t imagine a serious christian who wouldn’t be offended by it. It’s just too bad. As a humanist I’m often offended by the statements of religious leaders.
Secondly, “love the sinner, hate the sin” has become ridiculous because it was used by christians to condemn LGBT people while still trying to look like loving people (ending up looking like bigots AND hypocrites). The obvious difference is that the LGBT ‘sin’ is a biological trait, religion is not.
But I don’t mind that it’s said of me that I hate the sinner. I think religious people are not just being fooled, they are fools. Shame on them for believing ridiculous stuff. Fortunately, unlike sexuality, people can change their beliefs.
Sure, but hate them? I don’t get it.
I admit, hate is too strong a word. I used it for rethorical reasons, because the slogan is “love the sinner, hate the sin”. Sorry for that.
Inherent to most religious beliefs — and often put forth quite vociferously by adherents — is that it is wrong, sinful, and evil to reject their god (especially when such rejection comes on the part of one who has had the benefit of exposure to the one true religion and who thereby runs the risk of eternal damnation). As a nonbeliever, I don’t find such proclamations dehumanizing or hurtful; I simply take it that we are coming at these matters from vastly different frames of reference.
There are as many frames of reference of such matters as there are people on planet Earth. Each is entitled to their own set of beliefs, but nobody is entitled to enforce those beliefs on anyone other than themselves.
Problems arise from the fact that organised religious systems tend to teach that theirs is the only correct way to believe. Adherents can, and do, then take and distort small elements of their own particular canon of belief to justify enforcing those beliefs on others, which, all too often turns what should be a force for good into enforced harm or conversion.
I don’t hate anything other than marzipan, but I do feel sorry for religious folk, for the time that they have wasted on something that amounts to nothing more than a massive collective rumour about the possible existence of some omnipotent entity who runs a perpetual competition to see who believes best and who has invented the best rituals.
The constant holier-than-thou pageant will always lead to blame games and cries of “blasphemy” when fault is found in their ‘perfect’ system. No blame shall sit at their feet.
As Krauss said, we may never know what was going through the mind of Mr. Hicks when he committed his crime, but, from what I have read, his crimes may well have more to do with parking spaces than with religious intolerance.
So, who should we blame, if, indeed, blame needs to be apportioned at all? General Motors and Ford for making cars that occupy too much space?
Yesterday while driving I turned left at an intersection, into the right lane of a four-lane street, and came upon a late 30’s/early 40’s gentleman who was walking (without any handicap whatsoever) in the right lane toward traffic, hugging the curb but nonetheless walking in the lane, with a quality sidewalk approximately six feet away.
Of course I adopted a precautionary principle and slowed down to a creep, with traffic behind me passing me in the left lane, observing to see if and when it would occur to him to actually step up on the curb out of the road. It did not so occur.
The look on his face was what I would describe,inescapably subjectively, as a mixture of serenity and defiance.
I transiently considered inquiring of him whether he was aware that he was putting himself in harm’s way and whether he knew of the existence of the sidewalk and the reasonableness of walking on it, but I had miles to go and promises to keep, and considering The Bigger Picture, I also thought that my reasonable inquiry could more than a little miff him to the point of antagonism/assault, especially were he pocketing a handgun. Conversely, I wondered if he himself considered whether he might provoke a similarly-predisposed and -armed driver, and, were a police officer to civilly inquire, would he cuss out the officer, which is not unheard of.
Whether it involves walking, driving, parking or firearms, or most anything else, The Land of the Free and The Home of The Brave is also apparently The Land of The Sense of Entitlement.
The impulse to “Love the sinner, Hate the sin” has never been a problem in itself. Understanding complexities and causes and not rushing to demonize and condemn people wholesale is consistent not just with humanism, but with being a decent person in general.
People make mistakes. They are human. You can love your brother-in-law and yet deplore the dependence on alcohol which lead to a DUI. Instead of kicking him out of the family, you get him into a substance abuse program.
That’s love the sinner, hate the sin, in action.
We only sneer at it when Christians have turned something INTO a sin and then made a big show about “loving you anyway.” Nobody wants to be forgiven for their virtues.
I would put it like this:
There are no bad people, only people with bad ideas in their head.
When you only criticize bad ideas you can’t dehumanize anyone.
“There are no bad people, only people with bad ideas in their head.”
Yeah, that doesn’t really work for me, there are totally bad people in this world. Sociopaths who torture for fun aren’t just people with “bad ideas in their head,” they are people with no human empathy or sense of remorse.
I kind of agree with peepuk – I think it could be framed as ‘they have bad ideas about whether people feel pain and fear, and they have bad ideas about the kind of society we should live in’. Sociopaths are(sometimes) dangerous because of the beliefs they hold about other people(though not all those beliefs are consciously held), not because sociopath=evil. Sociopathy implies something about the ideas in the person’s head, and that’s where this stuff plays out.
My quibble is that sociopaths aren’t really people with bad ideas; they may have the same ideas we all have, it’s just they have no governor on how to carry out those bad ideas. So-called high functioning sociopaths tend to draw personal lines at doing certain things because they have learned doing them is frowned upon and gets them into trouble which means they cannot reach their goal/win the game.
Sociopaths are dangerous because they lack empathy, have a high capacity for danger (due to their small amygdalas) and can have a rather fluid sense of self. They therefore tend to enjoy manipulating people or ruining them and they are virtuosos at doing so.
‘A lack of empathy’ is essentially a statement about how the person in question sees other people. He has certain ideas about other people, that their pain is unimportant for example, that add up to mean ‘a lack of empathy’. But of course the set of ideas that can set up shop in someone’s mind is often constrained by neurological factors, as you say. I don’t think it’s entirely ‘memetic’ or genetic.
I think the difference is a sociopath has theory of mind so they are perfectly capable of understanding that what they do will hurt someone. Their ideas are actually sound at this point. It goes badly when they don’t feel anything when it comes to hurting that person. They intellectually understand what they are doing is hurtful – they just don’t care. That is, it isn’t so much an idea as a feeling. This is why sociopaths are so good at what they do – because they really can understand another person’s point of view.
That’s my point – they do understand that people suffer but they don’t believe that other peoples’ suffering is particularly important. In that sense it’s their beliefs that are bad. But those beliefs at an ultimate level are often constrained by physical factors.
I don’t know why I’m replying really as I don’t actually disagree with you. It’s a lot more complicated than just ‘they have bad ideas’. I have a habit of arguing about things with people when I basically agree with them. My dad always did it too – I remember having a screaming, crying argument with my dad when I was ten or eleven and halfway through he said something like ‘but surely you’re enjoying this?’. Says a lot.
LOL! I think we’re just arguing about the word “belief”. I think we agree on principle.
I disagree.
😉
Queue Monty Python skit about an argument vs a contradiction.
Phew. Being argumentative is exhausting.
Anyway I never liked Monty Python…
😉
Yes you did.
Did not
Good example.
And indeed people can have some bad wiring. Psychopaths show no fear due to amygdala dysfunction. But why would we think that it was their choice to be this way. I would call them unlucky, not bad.
Torturing and killing for fun isn’t very common behavior under psychopaths, it’s probably a Hollywood-myth.
Dehumanizing other people (blacks in US+South Africa, Jews in Nazi-Germany) is in my opinion a bigger problem and mostly done by people who wouldn’t qualify for psychopath. If you want to avoid that you should only attack bad ideas, not people.
Yes, the sociopaths have no choice but of course their environment plays a big part – they are doomed through their genetics and their upbringing.
However, there is an upside to be a sociopath, and I suspect this is what attracts many people to them, they are not only fearless but also fierce defenders of you if they are on your side. They will do all the dirty work your empathy stops you from doing.
I find that somewhat problematic as well. What are people other than what they stand for. Unless you recognize that people stand for things for reasons that are beyond their conscious control you might well be justified in killing people based on what they stand for.
I would word it as follows “I don’t despise religious people, I despite what religion causes people to believe”
EDIT: “I don’t despise religious people, I despise that religion can cause otherwise good people to stand for terrible things”
Which sounds, frighteningly, to be among the most rational things religious believers are likely to say (when it is meant sincerely; when it is insincere, it is just more pious BS, s close kin to doublespeak),
Yes. The problem isn’t with the internal logic of the statement. The problem is with the hypocrisy and intent of the religious people who say it, who, if they were being honest, would addend it with ‘…and therefore try and criminalise the sin.’
sub
Speaking of gunplay, “this is happening now.
Oops I’ll try to do better HTML.
This is happening now.
This is awful. Those threatened by free speech do not have any ideas worth listening to.
There’s no risk for me, and I will continue to speak up for freedom of speech and the abolition of all blasphemy laws. They can’t shut up everybody, and the more who speak out, the more who will recognize the importance of this international movement.
Hear, hear!
/@
3 kilometer east of my apartment.
I hope you’re safe?
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I’m only somewhat amazed by how the A+ crowd seems to think that it’s the fault of Gnu Atheists that we didn’t replace Hick’s gods with a non-godly “Thou shalt not kill.”
Apparently, they seem to think that people will only do good if the right people tell them to…and, of course, they’re superbly positioned to be the arbiters of good and bad. And it also doesn’t seem to matter that the Guns themselves do little else but speak out against the horrors of religion…they’re still bereft of a moral compass and unable to influence people to not do nasty shit.
b&
Interesting typo – I assume you meant Gnus.
Gnahk! Yes, of course.
Tpyos are bad enough…but when the result is a valid word that the spellcheker doesn’t highlight…and when the new word has the opposite meaning of what you wanted….
Damn.
b&
I can imagine a psychoanalytical anti-atheist having fun with that typo…
Freud has to be one of the most overrated thinkers of the last few centuries.
I think the real debate here is over how “Islamophobic” Harris, Hitchens, and Dawkins are. A lot of atheists have concluded that they have what I’ll call a hateful and elitist disposition, a tendency to shoot from the hip, and an irrational and racially-driven focus on Islam. All their popular rhetoric about freedom and reason must therefore be judged in light of their personal flaws and perspective.
There are several things to argue about here. One way is to delve into character analysis and another way is to weigh one value against another. Is it more important to look at the big intellectual picture or are the social issues the big intellectual picture?
I sit in on both sides. My sympathies haven’t focused yet on one and only one and never may. Everyone makes a fair point. I haven’t personally delved into the topic enough to be positive there’s a side of the angels and I’ve got to be on it.
That’s a fair summary of the opposition to the Gnus, I think…and I just don’t get it.
In the case of Sam particularly…he and I part ways significantly on many of the critical aspects of the matter, especially the use of nuclear weapons, torture, racial profiling, and the like. Hell, he even seems to have missed the fact that, for every verse in the Q’ran where Muhammad says to kill the infidels or to spread Islam at the point of the sword, there’s a comparable verse in the Bible where Jesus says to kill all non-Christians and that he came to bring not peace but a sword.
But.
I’ve never gotten even the slightest hint of anything even vaguely resembling racism or privilege from him on anything, let alone the question of Islam. I could maybe see attributing part of the reason he reaches some of the conclusions he does to his background of privilege, but, if so, only in the sense that he might not have as visceral an appreciation of what lies on the other side of the balance scales — not because he actually buys into any of the racist, etc., nonsense.
Sam is as colorblind as they come. His antipathy towards Islam has everything to do with the ideology and absolutely nothing else.
The other factor, of course, is that, though, yes, there are Christians running amok here and there killing doctors and bombing Federal office buildings and what-not, we’re faced with a triple whammy from Islam: disproportionate numbers of violent wackos are acting in the name of and according to the explicit literal commands of Islam’s holy texts; the most oppressive regimes use those texts as the foundation of their legal codes; and even the most liberal of Islamic authorities universally refuse to condemn Sharia in all circumstances, especially including the prayed-for global Caliphate.
It’s trivial to find Christians who’ll find any excuse they can think of to disown the really nasty shit constantly coming from Jesus in the Bible. It’s impossible to find a Muslim who’ll admit that Muhammad might have had even the slightest imperfection or that the text isn’t to be taken literally in some circumstance or other.
That all adds up to Christianity being a problem, yes…but Islam being a crisis.
That’s the distinction I see Sam and the other Gnus make, and it’s that same conclusion that I see their declared foes citing as evidence of racism and what-not. But it’s no more racist to call Islam evil than it is to call any other ideology evil. Is it racist to denounce Nazism or Maoism as evil? Does it matter that Nazis were predominantly Aryan, and Maoists predominantly Chinese? No? Then why should it matter that Islamists are predominantly Semitic (with big asterisks for African and Indonesian)?
…and that’s probably more rant than is called for here….
Cheers,
b&
An accurate rant, and on point. There are always people who will vilify others for speaking accurately. If it weren’t so typical I’d say it was insane.
Verses in which Jesus directs people to kill non-Christians? That’s news to me. Could you give me the specific citations?
…aaaaaand, before anybody tries to escape by playing the, “Parable!” card…that’s Jesus quoting the character in the parable who himself is a stand-in for Jesus, and the parable is about Armageddon, when Jesus himself will return on the white horse and swing his flaming sword of death and slay all who would not that he should reign over them.
I’m constantly amused and bemused by people who think Jesus is a love god, when he’s the exact opposite of a love god. He’s a death god and the bastard rape child of a brutal and merciless and jealous war god.
I mean, what kind of love god would condemn to infinite torture all men who’ve ever looked at a pretty woman in admiration and failed to immediately gouge out his own eyes and chop off his own hands?
There’s no escaping that one, either; it’s right there in the introduction to his most famous speech. Granted, it is Jesus at his mildest…but that just makes my point all the more emphatic….
b&
But, but, but… Metaphor???
So…metaphorically ‘bring them hither and slay them’? What does that even mean?
Even if he hadn’t said anything else, the simple fact that Jesus introduced hell, the single most hysterically overblown punishment it is possible to imagine, is enough to cross him off any hypothetical ‘list of great moral teachers’. Hell is punishment pushed to its literal exreme – you will feel the most pain it’s possible for a person/soul to feel, and you will feel it forever. The disproportionality of the punishment versus the crime is enough to show that it’s just a desperate, made-up attempt to deter people from thinking. If hell actually existed the idea of being tortured for a couple of days would be more than enough to stop me ‘sinning’. I think.
If Hell actually existed, the only thing for any moral individual to do would be to fight, even futilely, to overthrow the entire establishment that created and maintains it — most especially YHWH and his sons Jesus and Satan.
…but that’s like writing that, if Darth Vader actually existed, we’d all be morally compelled to join the Rebel Alliance and fly spaceship fighters into the Death Star….
b&
Isn’t that what is supposed to happen in the rapture?
I’m enjoying reading Good Omens where the demons describe the humans as much more nasty than any demon and talk about how demons are more like auditors – just doing their job where humans think up much more sadistic things than any demon would be capable of thinking up.
Christians just get so dosh-garned cute when they’re convinced not only that their imaginary friends are the good guys, but that they’re automatically the bestest superheroes ever whose daddies can kick the butts of everybody else’s daddies.
Never even occurs to them that, not only might somebody actually not like Jesus, but that maybe said somebody could and would actually do something for realz about it, were it not for the fact that Jesus is as real as Tinkerbell and nowhere near as cuddly.
b&
“tendency to shoot from the hip”
I think they do. I read Sam Harris’ debate with Bruce Schneier regarding profiling and I thought Harris came off looking rather foolish compared to this world-renown expert. A case of Dunning-Kruger.
Some of the same thing happens with the views on terrorism. I just finished one of Scott Atran’s books and he has a great hostility towards the New Atheists, who he feels don’t know what they’re talking about when they talk about the roots of Islamic terrorism.
In fact, there seems to be a positive correlation between knowledge of the subject matter and disagreement with the views of the prominent atheists on the topic.
I disagree with Sam Harris on so many things I no longer really read him. He’s the only one who seems to make statements on what should be public policy based on some extremely…dodgy arguments. He’s the only ‘new atheist'(I’m so sick of writing that fucking phrase) whose views actually worry me, sometimes repel me. If it takes an event like this for a bit of internal reflection on some of what he says then that’s something.
Dawkins says things in tweets that I disagree with, but they’re generally just clumsily phrased, and tend to be clarified afterwards. The litmus test for me has been whether someone supports the banning of the burqa, which Dawkins doesn’t. The burqa is symbolically a repulsive garment. It has absolutely no positive connotations whatsoever. But in a free society, as long as they’re not in various exceptional public situations, people should be allowed to wear what they want. And I don’t think there are enough data to determine how many Islamic women are coerced into wearing it, which would be crucial information in any ban.
I don’t think there is so much disagreement between Atran and (mainly) Harris, a lot is a matter of opinion. Atran highlights that not only religion but also other ideologies can lead to terrorism, and that having the wrong friends (group dynamics) is a major factor. Harris thinks that belief is the main driver for terrorism.
Rebecca Watson is such a brilliant advocate for science and reason that it is confusing (disturbing?) to read her post that claims Dawkins, Harris and Krauss promote “dehumanization” of muslims, women and other marginalized groups. On what basis is she making such an outrageous claim?
Rebecca Watson is such a brilliant advocate for science and reason
You must be thinking of someone else.
I’m pretty sure it’s the same Rebecca Watson who co-hosted the Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe podcast with Steve Novella: http://www.theskepticsguide.org/podcast/sgu
If you think Watson is a “brilliant advocate for science and reason” you might want to look up Ed Clint’s article “Science denialism at a skeptic conference”.
Here’s the article in question:
http://www.skepticink.com/incredulous/2014/12/12/science-denialism-skeptic-conference-redux/
It’s really quite damning. The short version is that Rebecca started by condemning media representation of the sciences, and then condemned the entire field of evolutionary psychology…based solely on media reports of it that typified her own complaints of media misrepresentation. And, in her attack on evolutionary psychology, she pulled out all the common tactics of science deniers everywhere. What she did to psychology is indistinguishable from what Creationists do to biology or the Koch Brothers do to climatology.
Cheers,
b&
Re Rebecca Watson – there’s an entire section of the humanities that thinks and works in a way that is utterly at odds with scientific ideals like falsifiability and the minimisation of internal bias. Long, complex theories on the motivations and effects of pacticular writers and historical figures are spun out on the basis of nothing more than a mild hunch the writer had one day – ‘isn’t it telling that both Stalin and Edgar Allen Poe had imaginary friends when they were younger…’. As a result, seductive and entirely unfalsifiable theories about Poe’s work are written without the slightest input from real world data along the way.
This is a caricature of the way a small number of people in the humanities work, but I do think that the two cultures have such different ways of approaching their work and as a result animosity often builds up, particularly when science seems to threaten the relevance of your work. If you’ve written an exquisite Freudian dissection of the works of Ezra Pound, and you discover that scientifically speaking your work has no more claim to the truth than any other similarly unfalsifiable dissection of Ezra Pound’s works, it’s unsurprising that you’d feel irritated. In the humanities truth is often not central(that is not meant to be a criticism. I literally wouldn’t want to live in a world without philosophy, art, music, fiction, etc.). It’s an assumption on the writer’s part that their writing reflects reality but often what’s important in the humanities is how interesting or beautiful or funny a piece of work is. The simple existence of a scientific method that seems to say ‘unless you carry out these checks and balances your claims to truth are weak at best, meaningless at worst’ is irritating to a lot of people, from philosophers, to artists, to theologians. A whole subsection of philosophy, in the shape of post-modernism/deconstructionism, has sprung up, arguably in response to the growing epistemic dominance of science.
So you have apparently reasonable people who simply don’t think that ‘things are true regardless of their implications’, or if they do think it they only think it outside of work. The fact that an evolutionary psychology view of the world implies some politically unwelcome truths is thus enough of a reason to reject it. A perfect distillation of this attitude is the work of Adam Curtis, a documentary-maker who creates striking, lysergic video-collages on subjects like terrorism and the government, Afghanistan, etc. They’re dream-like, jarring and brilliantly soundtracked. They’re also unfalsifiable, grandiose and utterly unconcerned with justifying their overall arguments with evidence.
I stress that it’s only some people in the humanities who think like this. I’ve crossed over from one side to the other, although I’m still in love with both, and the approach to truth is very different, not because of dishonesty, but simply because other things are sometimes more important. Beauty is not truth, and truth is not beauty.
I swear I had a point when I started writing.
I agree that there are people out there that do Humanities wrong, just as there are scientists out there that do science wrong.
When it comes to truth, I’d say the error bars can be larger with truth depending on the Humanities discipline and most likely larger comparing the Humanities to the Sciences but that does not mean that truth cannot be found for either of them.
For example, I can argue, based on text and documented history that William Blake struggled with organized religion by citing his various poems, letters and studying how he interacted with the church and even the cultural attitudes in Romantic England toward the Church. Others are welcome to challenge me but their evidence would be less strong if they could not cite sources outside the text. Where things can be murky is if people argue that the text suggests certain things and base their argument on word choice, reader bias, culture, etc. Not so much wrong in proving something but not as definitively true as a scientific proof.
I could also argue that the emperor Augustus used propaganda to suggest that he had a direct link to Venus and therefore the mythical founder of Rome, Aeneas. I could show this using archaeological artifacts (the Augustus of Prima Porta statue with its little cherub at his leg) and I could prove this was Augustus by his hair style that linked all the Julio Claudians. I could also use texts from his in-group that pushed this link – the commissioning of Virgil to write the Aeneid for example and fill it with references Augustus liked. All of my work in showing this evidence would never have the exactness of science but it would be good enough if I had to prove something legally.
So, while there may not be truth in beauty, there still is beauty in truth in the Humanities.
Yes, history kind of straddles the two disciplines. I don’t think it applies so much to history.
There’s definitely beauty in truth and vice-versa – they’re just not the same thing. They’re a contradiction when it comes to me for example, as I’m outrageously good-looking but a shameless liar. Make of that statement what you will.
I think Keith was being sarcastic in calling Ms Watson “such a brilliant advocate for science and reason”.
No, it wasn’t sarcasm. I really do admire the work she did for the SGU podcast. She’s funny, personable and seems like a great advocate for critical thinking. After reading about some of her other activities, there’s clearly a lot more nuance (and drama–definitely a lot of drama) that I wasn’t aware of.
Sorry for misinterpreting you, I honestly thought you were sarcastic (why is it so easy to think so?). Note, I did have some sympathy with her, as told on another thread.
But after her ‘dehumanising’ comments I do not take her seriously anymore, worse, I think she is deeply reprehensible. And I probably should have thought so earlier.
I also admire Rebecca Watson and absolutely consider her a brilliant advocate for science and reason. But there has been an enormous amount of drama on several issues which I’ve only tangentially followed.
As I understand it, Lawrence Krauss had a rich and famous friend accused of rape, something I think about hiring underage hookers which he may or may not have known or should have known were underage. Krauss loyally came out and supported his friend — iirc a “I know him he’s not a bad guy if he said he didn’t know then he didn’t” kind of support. There may also have been minimizing the crime. This was seen, rightly or wrongly, as promoting rape culture.
My best guess is this has something to do with it, but it’s not the whole picture by a long shot.
Because I hadn’t heard of her I did some googling.
She claims that after she started to talk about feminism she got rape threats from the atheist community.
http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2012/10/sexism_in_the_skeptic_community_i_spoke_out_then_came_the_rape_threats.single.html
And there was an elevator incident described in a book called:
“The non-religious patriarchy: why losing religion HAS NOT meant losing white male dominance” Miller, Ashley F. (June 2013)
A man asked her in the elevator for a cup of coffee in his hotel room. Richard Dawkins ridiculed her for making a big deal out of this. (Wikipedia)
These rape threats are of course terrible, and certainly men don’t always think with their brains and aren’t always nice. Together with your post this puts it a bit in perspective.
No, I’d say that’s a very misleading summary. Without getting into it, Richard was wrong and Rebecca hadn’t done anything untoward. He later apologized … and then suddenly it was on again for reasons I don’t quite understand.
” I’d say that’s a very misleading summary”
Sorry for that. My point was that there seems to be some quarrel.
I’m on no side here, but have sympathy for her regarding the threats she received on reddit.
But her piece on skepchick.org seems to me to be more influenced by this quarrel than based on facts.
I don’t agree with anyone 100 percent, including Watson.
The abuse that Watson gets in comments are often way over the top and I stopped reading them because they were so filthy, disgusting and inappropriate.
Nothing she’s ever said has been deserving of the hatred and vitriol many spew at her.
I am not a particularly engaged online atheist so seeing how self-appoined pinpricks like Thunderfoot and The Amazing Atheist(?) suddenly became foaming, deranged misogynists simply because there was some internal criticism from female atheists was incredibly depressing and embarrassing. I cringe thinking that these guys are popular(apparently).
I thought that Dawkins was basically on the wrong side in the debate about feminism, but it certainly didn’t make me think he was anti-feminism. It would take a lot more than that to undo everything else he’s said on the issue.
Depends on the definition of ‘feminism’. Women’s legal rights is obviously a no-brainer. However feminism encompasses a wide range of ideological nonesense, anti science and anti-freedom wing-nuttery.
I support women’s rights. I don’t support feminism.
That word means very different things to different people.
To me, it means the Equal Rights Amendment and Title IX and the Suffragettes.
To the A+ crowd, it seems to mean you’re a misogynist if you open doors for women (even if you open them for men, too) and if you include the “…and rare” in, “keep abortion safe, legal, and rare.”
And to Rush Limbaugh, it seems to conjure up insufficiently-repressed fantasies of leather-clad whip-cracking dominatrices with swastika armbands.
All in all, I’m not too terribly surprised when somebody states things that, to me, seem oxymoronic, like, “I support women’s rights. I don’t support feminism.” Just tells me that there’s a different definition being used.
b&
Steven Pinker’s discussion of the distinctions between equity feminism and gender feminism in The Blank Slate is well worth reading.
Do you think that “masculinism” exists and, if so, how do you define it? Ought one similarly not support masculinism?
(I note that Spellcheck recognizes feminism but not masculinism.)
I support feminism, but not the branch that you talk about. I fervently hope po mo feminism, along with po mo everything else, will eventually fall by the wayside and we can save the term itself.
After all, it’s getting easier to call oneself “liberal,” now, a term that had been essentially banished by “old school” libs for a while.
“Do you think that “masculinism” exists and, if so, how do you define it? Ought one similarly not support masculinism?”
No, no more than I think “racism” can be used to characterize blacks, even if the shoe would occasionally fit.
It would be like the way the 1% always whines about class-warfare, even though they’re the ones waging economic war on all the rest of us.
I agree with you, Saul.
After reading a bit more about Ms. Watson’s experiences, I’m in solidarity with her about abusive comments and behavior directed toward her and other women who post videos and essays. Such behavior is unacceptable and she is right to call it out.
As far as I can see the trolling she’s received is no better or worse than that received in certain forums by anyone who says anything people find controversial. The only difference is she revels in in it and has managed to turn it into a cottage industry, and used it to unjustly indict the atheist community of sexism, and misogyny. If she had initially ignored it, which feminists never do because the behavior fits their narrative, the trolls would have realized they weren’t getting a rise out of her, and gone away.
And the fact that it’s common is supposed to excuse it? The fact rape threats are the usual mode for attacking people who are women (or at least appear to be female identified from their handles) points up the fact that misogyny is a persistent problem over the internet. The fact that it happens in atheist spaces shows that we are not automatically immune. It’s like saying that nobody should condemn the calls to lynch Obama at Sarah Palin rallies because you could find equivalently egregious exampls of racialized hatred in all sorts of other places.
Well said, Null.
Answer to your question:
This dehumanization-claim has no basis at all. The new atheist have never denied “humanness” to religious people.
My analysis:
I think she has trouble linking “young angry atheist on Reddit” with Islamic terrorism.
So she tries to partially blame Dawkins, Harris and Krauss for a tragic crime about a parking spot.
Conclusion:
I wouldn’t call that brilliant.
She is not an advocate of science, when compared to people who are advocates of science, like WIET or Sean Carroll. I am not sure what her background is, but I do not see her ever espouse some scientific principles like Bad Astronomy or Brian Cox. You can tell she is just not into science.
I haven’t followed Watson much, but what read initially has made me stay away for good. I can’t remember her saying something lucid and nice about other people.
I’m not at all surprised by her attacking Dawkins and the other for no good reason, as here.
A lot of science programmes have some kind of stooge to represent the point of view of an idiot so the others can explain things to them.
“WIET” – No, while that might be the question, WEIT is the answer.😃
I find it telling that she doesn’t bring, say, Ayaan Hirsi Ali into it.
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I never said that, nor do I believe it’s common. In my opinion, contrary to her narrative, sexism, which she claims this is symptomatic of, is far less common in the “atheist community” than the general public.
Well, depends on which general public.
On what do you base this opinion, Mike?
As soon as I heard the story I knew that both the right-wing media and the liberal press would unite to blame ‘militant atheists’.
I even knew exactly who would exploit this story within the atheist movement itself; after all they have pretty much weaponised every accusation imaginable in the recent past.
I have been heartened by the intelligent and measured responses by people like Jerry, Michael Nugent and Lawrence Krauss though.
Prof. Krauss does well to highlight the misunderstanding and false ideas that many seem to have about Atheist. I think the inability to get it by most religious people is why Sam Harris was in favor of dropping the term at one time. What was that phrase – to call Atheist a religion is like calling bald a hair color.
I think atheists should stop feeling either guilty or complicit in Chapel Hill murder case just because the murderer was an atheist. Even if it were a hate crime, which it wasn’t, it was not done in the name of Atheism as an ideology nor did that so-called atheist idiot shout before killing, “Atheist is Great! OR De-convert from Islam or else I’m gonna shoot you all!” Imagining he said and did that, still there will be thousands of agnostics and atheists whose blood has tainted almost all religions of the world throughout history. More than 300,000 Muslims killed by Muslim extremists in the last couple of years in the name of Islam. More than 20 Shias killed in their place of worship in Pakistan yesterday–No protests anywhere in the Islamic world. Three Muslims killed by a mad atheist, the whole Islamic world goes topsy-turvy! Shame on the ignorance and lack of any sense of justification among Muslims about this isolated event! NO ATHEST HAS ANY MORAL LIABILITY TO ANY SUCH ACTION DONE EVEN IN THE NAME OF ATHEISM BECAUSE, UNLIKE RELIGION, IT IS NOT A BELIEF SYSTEM WITH HOLY SCRIPTURES AND DOCTRINES TO FOLLOW.
Thanks!
Well taken. It seems the fault right now is that the media reported the shooting, and mentioned the killer was an atheist (I guess.. b/c atheism was novel and a possible motive??) I don’t know but it was very ignorant & premature of them to make that connection at all.
But now the demons are stirring.
Yes, possible novel motive: it’s a man bites dog story.
I don’t think atheists are responsible for this. But I think outspoken atheists should spend more time talking about doing the right thing and why religious freedom, nonviolence, etc. are important instead of simply criticizing these trends in religious communities. It’s not a duty, but I assume outspoken atheists want to change the world for the better, and I think this is an important part of that, maybe more important than criticizing religion.
Abrahamic Religions and non-violence are almost two opposite poles of the earth. “Religion is an insult to Humanity!”–Steven Weingberg. Talking about religious freedom to atheists will be like talking about freedom to ‘insult to humanity’ kinda thing. As there are One thousand One ‘insults to humanity’ in the world talking about peace between them is like fighting 1001 forest fires with sprinklers!
I have done just that whenever I write about the subject, including in relation to Chapel Hill.
Heather, you should make your name here a hotlink to your website. It would save some of us a little time. 🙂
Well, I see it’s available from your gravatar page, but even there it’s not prominent…
Your “simply criticizing” assertion is false. Those you criticize spend considerable time doing just that.
You must be listening to different outspoken atheists than I do. Most of their criticism is directed in exactly that direction, especially focussing on how it it religion itself that is consistently the biggest offender when it comes to committing those sins.
b&
I have to agree with Golkarian here. I have no doubt Dawkins, Hitch, etc., are not only right on on an intellectual level, but have their hearts in the right place as well. But I focus on and agree with your statement “… should spend more time talking about doing the right thing and why religious freedom, nonviolence, etc. are important instead of simply criticizing these trends in religious communities.” Similarly I appreciate Sean Carroll’s sentiment: “More importantly, I have no real interest in giving religion-bashing talks; I care a lot more about doing the hard and constructive work of exploring the consequences of naturalism.” If this community (not WEIT, but the larger atheist community) wants to gain ground, it’s going to embody more of this. Too much tone deafness to this point, IMHO.
And right after Carroll said that, he bashed religion by showing that you don’t need God to explain the Cosmos. Them’s just fancy words for “I’m better than them.” Sorry, but Dawkins, Hitchens, and Harris do exactly the same thing: show how you don’t need God to explain scientific/neurological phenomena. The “hard and constructive” work of exploring the consequences of naturalism, as Carroll said (and I’m sorry, but that’s really a way to say “I’m better than those other guys”), was also done by many others, including Grayling with the aforementioned.
Carroll’s talk in fact WAS a religion bashing talk, as was his article, “Does the Universe need God.” It’s not any different from what atheist scientists or even Hitchens did. And it’s no harder than the philosophical explorations of Hitchens and Grayling.
It is irritating that many atheists feel a need to pre-empt accusations of stri-den-cy and mi-li-tancy. We’re not waggling our genitals(at least the 50% whose genitals do waggle) around at a funeral – we’re criticising religion. We’re still tip-toeing around. If I ever vocalise my criticism the atmosphere suddenly changes and it feels like I’m talking about some dying old-lady whilst the family look on(possibly an apt comparison) – no criticism I make will ever be sufficiently respectful because it’s religion and you Just Don’t Do That.
At the root of most intellectual objections to the criticism of religion is the belief that its votaries are essentially delicately precarious flowers whose faith is the solitary bulwark against the misery and pain of a naturalistic worldview. It’s precisely because most intellectuals regard religion as so evidentially unjustified, so obviously ridiculous, that they treat it like a porcelain doll, and treat believers like sleepwalkers – ‘don’t wake them up, the shock could kill them.’.
I should point out that I was trying to criticize stridency or criticism of religion, I just thought it’s important to focus on issues like religious freedom as well.
There are two reasons for this, I see a lot of internet comments (and I realize this is a biased sample, but even a small proportion is scary) go beyond stridency to promote violence.
Secondly, and I’m not blaming atheists here but saying they can do something about it, is that Christians like Timothy Keller can claim that Dawkins is only against religious persecution because it doesn’t work*. These statements are ridiculous, sure, but again our side can mitigate them by being more stridently for religious freedom.
*In my opinion one great reason for religious freedom is that persecution (even when only against non-atheists) creates all the problems inherent in religion plus more. Also many of us in the atheist movement would have spent a lot of time in jail since many of us were believers (and wouldn’t have deconverted to get out of jail). Plus religious people are people with rights (or moral agency/worth) etc. etc.
EDIT: I should point out that I was NOT trying to criticize stridency or criticism of religion
Outspoken atheists are doing precisely that. Dawkins is a ceaseless advocate for science, Harris writes books on ethics and spirituality, Hitchens promoted progressive causes, etc.
Here is the difference: we have calls for violence coming from mainstream clerics and theocratic governments.
This incident, while horrific, was the action of an isolated crackpot.
Now had some outspoken public intellectual been issuing atheist fatwas, it would be a different story.
I will admit I have not kept up with the news about this crime, but the last news I did see, it sounded like it about a guy who couldn’t control his temper, angry about a parking spot. Have the police since found otherwise? Or are people who have too little to occupy their minds just trying to make something else out of it?
I think part of the problem is that one of the victims’ fathers has said that his daughter once told him she was afraid Hicks was Islamophobic.
I can see how she might easily assume that, especially since Hicks had shown up on their doorstep with a gun previously. But from other information that has come out about him, it would appear that assumption is probably wrong.
The real problem is the gigantic, sucking vacuum that’s been at the heart of our opponents’ arguments – the fact that atheists just don’t do things like this in the name of atheism. There’s been a simmering, resentful desperation for something, anything like this to happen, not because anybody wants three people dead, but because they can’t stand the fact that something as loathesome as atheism is actually perfectly harmless.
Bingo!
/@
I don’t think there is any way that this won’t be remembered as “atheist kills believers” by most of the general public. The news makers are not likely to spend much effort, if any, at setting the record straight even if it is clearly shown that this murderer’s atheism was not a motivation.
It is also very unlikely, going by past history, that any significant number of the bloggers blaming Gnu Atheists will ever detract their specious accusations either, no matter how obvious it may become that they were wrong. No, most of them will just get nastier it that case. The orgy of indignation is just too attractive, and people get addicted to it.
No matter what new information may come to light, even if it were to exonerate atheism beyond any reasonable doubt, the likes of Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss have gained a large number of new haters that will be loyal for years to come. The damage has already been done.
Kind of a declared self-full filling prophecy I think. Best to follow the advice – nobody knows, and if you’re honest you will admit it.
Are you addressing me or the general population?
Your comments appear to be pre-determined conclusion statements
“no matter what new information comes to light”
If I click on your reply, that would be addressing you, would it not?
Due to respect for our hosts wishes I’ll leave it at piss off.
You know, here’s a strange thing. When the news stories on “Chapel Hill atheist” started coming out on the Yahoo home page I clicked on the links — and then followed more links to more stories from different sources across the country. And I did something I almost never do. I read the comments.
Not all of them, there were thousands. But I deliberately scrolled my eyes down for a hundred or so, each story, to get a feel for what the ordinary online reader who comments on news stories was thinking. Was it indeed going to be an unrelenting stream of “atheist kills believers” cries of outrage, coupled with “this is exactly what you’d expect from the godless” preening? Atheist-bashing time?
No. That was hardly there at all. Leaving out the expected “what a horrible tragedy our hearts bleed for the families” expressions of human decency, the main fury from the Outraged Commenters section seemed to be directed at Islam. Or at the victims. That is, major themes included:
1.) This is just a crime, the Muslims are only claiming “hate” crime to draw sympathy and attention to themselves.
2.) Muslims have done a lot worse why is Obama and everybody making such a big deal of this?
3.) Those assholes had it coming for not using their own parking space; I hate when people do that and/or typical Muslims think they’re so special they don’t have to follow rules in America.
4.) This guy went too far but there is a real problem with the parking situation in a lot of areas.
5.) If this had been a black or brown guy shooting white people you can be damn sure it would never get reported.
I’m not saying I didn’t see anyone using the murders to make a point against atheism or anti-theism — and this list certainly doesn’t exhaust or include all types of comments — but I think I’d boil down the bulk of the angry reactions to these 5 categories.
By the way, those comment sections are painfully bad. As you can probably tell.
I saw quite a bit of #1, but what I also saw was a lot of “If this had been a Muslim who killed 3 Christians everyone would be screaming Muslim terrorism”.
I disagree that would be the case since the police stated it was a dispute over a parking spot at the same time they announced the arrest. Anyone who had even suggested his motivations had anything to do with the incidental fact he was a Muslim, would understandably have been branded an islamophobic bigot. Anyone who is suggesting his atheism had anything to do with his actions, before we have any good reason to believe that to be the case, should be labeled an atheophobic bigot.
That’s basically because most people are completely uniterested in, and divorced from, the debates about new atheism.
Possibly. What I got from the general zeitgeist of responses was that in general, given a choice between atheism and Islam, the wingnuts would rather go after the latter even if the victims are incredibly sympathetic and the perp wasn’t.
That, or that a surprising number of people are really, really focused on fairness in territorial parking disputes.
There are a lot more racists than new-atheism-opponents I guess.
I can imagine a lot of gun-nuts are instinctively leaping to the defence of this guy too.
This killing was truly tragic. It breaks my heart, but the reality is that it has become as big a story as it has not because it is an example of, yet another atheist rampage, but because it is so incredibly rare that an avowed atheist kills someone who is so demonstrably religious.
Krauss alludes to the role ‘liberal’ gun laws could be blamed more easily.
I think that the simple fact of wanting to own (a) gun(s) -unless, say, professionally required- should disqualify anybody from being allowed to own one. A perfect catch 22.
That first sentence: ‘could be blamed’ or ‘played a role’ sorry for mixing the 2.
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Michael Nugent has looked at this guy’s Facebook page and summarised the contents.
http://www.michaelnugent.com/2015/02/13/chapel-hill-killer-craig-hicks-facebook-page-beliefs/#more-11202
On the evidence of that alone, it seems very unlikely that this was a atheist killing three Muslims for being Muslims. He supported freedom of religion and suported the building of a mosque at ground zero.
It looks more like a person with a gun and a short temper losing it on a his neighbours, who happened to be Muslim, as a result of them continually using a parking spot he felt was his alone to use.
It’s starting to look like a Gun Ownership issue, but let’s wait and see.
Although I do not pretend to now for sure, it indeed looks like that (as Krauss suggests at the beginning of his post). Hicks Facebook does not look ‘islamophobic’ at all, on the contrary.
I mean, if he’d had no gun it might gave been a simple brawl, with a bloody nose and black eye at worst.
At least people like Reza Aslan have suddenly accepted the possibility that ideas can alter people’s behavior in a bad way. He can now be held to this.
In the linked Skepchick post, that blogger simply avails herself of yet another opportunity to take a shot at Krauss and Dawkins and other “capital-A-Atheis[ts].” She accuses them of engaging in “dehumanizing” and “violent” rhetoric without citing a single instance of their rhetoric being violent, and without explaining how the rhetoric they actually used in any way “dehumanizes” Muslims.
(Why is it that everyone but Dawkins seems to recognize that Twitter is not the Dawkins’ métier?
One-hundred forty-one characters does not a conducive forum make for someone who, like Dawkins, thinks and writes in dependent clauses. Leave the Twitter-verse to the sound-bite specialists — those who wouldn’t say a subordinate conjunction like “if” if they had a mouthful of it.)
I really couldn’t agree more with you about Dawkins and twitter.
Seems we have the germinating nub of an enlightened consensus.:)
A germinating nub! I’ve never had one of those before.
I shall treasure it and keep it in the sunlight…
This is indeed a terrible end to 3 young lives and awful for their families: it is the kind of thing that perhaps you will never get over.
The question of whether you can lay the blame at the door of, say, a new atheist world-view, (whatever that is) is in principle measureable. What is omitted from Werleman and other critiques of the idea of isolating Islamic texts for the actions of jihadis and Islamists? They do not recognize that people like, say, Harris, Ali and Hitchens identify other economic, social, historical, cultural reasons for the Islamist struggle. The variable, say H, A and H, that explains the action and reaction of Islamists and jihadis to the historical position they find themselves in is their Islamic theology.
And you can examine this ‘belief have consequences’ idea. The Pew Research Centre, NOP and Gallup have done that across the world, where they are allowed to conduct surveys, into the attitudes of ordinary Muslims – interpretations of jihad, attitudes to apostasy, democracy, blasphemy, women, gays etc. In the context of this outrage in Chapel Hill, perhaps we need some question which indicates how much latitude a believer in a set of ideas believes that s/he has in interpreting the idea as an individual rather than as an element in a community or umma. The wriggle-room issue.
Say if the Chapel Hill murders really were the start of a world-wide spate of self-identifying atheists randomly killing ordinary and decent Muslim neighbours. This would become a phenomenon worth investigating in the social sciences: and in principle in a survey, through asking the right questions could identify, just as we attempt to do with, say, I.S. violence, the link, whether is one, between the ‘idea’ of new atheism and murders of individual Muslims down their street.
The statement could be ‘Murder of individual civilian Muslims can be justified in order to defend reason from its enemies. Often, sometimes, rarely, never, don’t know.’ You can then correlate the answers to beliefs. Thereby measuring which beliefs have or are more likely to have certain consequences
Werleman, if he is being consistent, in his criticism of new atheism, could approach Pew with this suggestion. I wonder what answer he might get. x
I wouldn’t trust him to write down his name correctly, never mind get involved in a social survey, even if it was independent.
Quite an interesting idea though.
One thing that is troubling about this is the tendency for people (and particularly liberals) to jump on the ‘words cause crime’ bandwagon, the ideology behind most attempts at censorship.
Unfortunately, liberals are no more reliable defenders of civil liberties than conservatives are. This has been brought home to me many times before. For example, the decision in Fourtin v. Connecticut was attacked by liberals–admittedly on the basis of wildly and recklessly inaccurate news reports–who naturally sympathized with the mentally disabled victim and couldn’t see past their emotional response to the due process principle that it’s important to only be convicted for something you’ve actually done. I can forgive their being initially misled about the substance of the decision, which was as I said grievously misrepresented in the media, but what is unforgivable is that many liberal bloggers deleted and banned those of us who were trying to correct their misapprehensions. It was more important to stoke their 15 minutes’ worth of snorting anger and prevent having egg on their faces than it was to support civil rights.
Semi-irrelevant aside: Paine was not atheist; in fact one of the reasons he condemns Christianity is because it is appalling that a good god could be as evil and blood-drenched as the one in the bible. A deist, as far as I can tell.