We’ve encountered the journalist Oliver Burkeman before on this site, when he praised David Bentley Hart’s ponderous and nebulous lucubrations about Sophisticated Theology™, and when he wrote what I considered to be 2010’s worst piece of science journalism, arguing that the notion of epigenetics (environmental modification of the DNA sequence) could completely revise our notions of evolution. In that piece he said this:
What if Darwin’s theory of evolution – or, at least, Darwin’s theory of evolution as most of us learned it at school and believe we understand it – is, in crucial respects, not entirely accurate? Such talk, naturally, is liable to drive evolutionary biologists into a rage, or, in the case of Richard Dawkins, into even more of a rage than usual.
Both of these pieces were in the Guardian. Burkeman seems to have a thing about “rage,” because he’s now going after New Atheists, including me, for being a bunch of angry people, literally poisoning ourselves with rage. This, too, is in the Guardian, which seems to spend a lot of time going after atheists these days (I’ll post tomorrow on John Gray’s new atheist-bashing piece). Burkeman’s latest article,”Are all atheists simply angry, or just the ones to whom you’re listening?“, is a bit confused and, I think misleading.
He starts out by saying that atheists seem “angry” to a lot of people, but then cites recent research showing that, according to psychology tests, atheists show no more “disposition to anger” than do believers. Burkeman is then left with explaining why people are get the impression that atheists are angry. His solution is that because public atheists, people like Sam Harris, or Dawkins, or even me, are angry, and these are the atheists who get attention, people thus get the impression that all atheists are angry.
But the “angry atheist” cliché is also another reminder of just how far the celebrity New Atheists have shortchanged the rest of us who identify, more broadly, with the causes of secularism and rationalism. Because the New Atheists really do seem unusually angry.
Go back and read Sam Harris’s or Bill Maher’s denunciations of Islam as a whole in the wake of atrocities committed in its name. Or Dawkins’s insistence that being raised Catholic might be more damaging than child sex abuse. Or the frequent expostulations of the University of Chicago professor Jerry Coyne, who (commendably, I’d say) never tries to sugarcoat his fury at those who don’t share his blanket condemnation of religion. Then tell me these aren’t strikingly angry men.
“Commendably” my tuchus! As far as the first paragraph goes, yes, some New Atheists, including me, are anti-theists, but are we really “unusually” angry compared to the “old atheists”? I suggest that you read some of those old atheists and see if they’re really markedly different in tone from people like Dawkins and Harris. Read, for instance, Nietzsche (now there’s anger!), H. L. Mencken, R. G. Ingersoll, Bertrand Russell, and even Carl Sagan, who took more than few sarcastic potshots at faith in his time.
I don’t think Burkeman has had a look at Mencken or Ingersoll, because if he did he wouldn’t argue that New Atheists are unusually angry compared to the old ones. What’s new, I think, is not our level of passion, but the willingness to be public about it instead of shutting up, combined with the notion that religions make claims that can be tested through reason and empiricism: religious tenets are, by and large, hypotheses. What’s largely new in New Atheism, therefore, isn’t “anger,” but unwillingness to keep quiet combined with applying a scientific approach to religion.
And really, Burkeman is unfair to the atheists he cites, for among the angriest people around, according to his criterion, are religionists. Just read some David Bentley Hart, Terry Eagleton, or even John Haught if you want to see vociferous scorn of atheism. Why are religionists so angry? I’m not mentioning, of course, the many Muslim believers and theologians—the angriest people at all. Atheists, after all, don’t issue fatwas or kill people with whom they disagree. Burkeman is silent on the issue of religionist anger.
As for the second paragraph, I suggest you click on the links, including the three of mine at this site, and see if you see those as embodying pure anger rather than passionate arguments against the harms of religion—harms that Burkeman, according to his piece, doesn’t accept.
Burkeman’s biggest mistake is construing the writings of New Atheists as showing prima facie that they are angrier than other people, even the “quiet’ atheists. I, for one, have never in my life been described as an “angry person” (at least as far as I know), though of course I do get angry at times. Nor, from having known the other New Atheists, can I think of one that I think of as inherently an angry person. Dawkins, for example, is mild-mannered, though he can be passionate when he’s either discussing the harms of religion or fighting back in response to what he sees as unfounded criticism. I have never known either Sam Harris or Steve Pinker to even raise their voices. If you gave all of us the same psychological tests that those other atheists took, would we show abnormal “dispositions to anger”? I don’t think so. So why don’t you put a muzzle on it, Mr. Burkeman, until we’ve all had our psychological tests? In light of that, this statement of Burkeman is simply unfounded:
By contrast, merely not believing in God doesn’t entail believing that religion is the greatest evil the world has ever known, nor even necessarily that religion is any problem at all. It means what it means: not believing in God. And, as this research confirms, that’s something most atheists manage to do without any abnormal levels of anger.
Burkeman’s second mistake is assuming that situational anger is a bad thing. Greta Christina’s book, Why are you Atheists So Angry?: 99 Things that Piss off the Godless, lists a lot of the bad things about religion that do inspire anger. What is our response suppose to be to child rape by priests? To the beheading of apostates by ISIS? To the murder of witches in Africa? To the demonization of gays by American Christians? To such things anger is the appropriate response, for it’s anger and a sense of injustice that motivates action. I wonder what Burkeman’s reponse would be to the “anger” of civil rights activists in the sixties.
But you can be angry about some things and still not be an “angry person.” If I were to list the atheists whom I so see as angry people, it would be those “ragebloggers” who seem to make a career of dissing other atheists, finding offense at everything, and, most important, in giving the impression that there is little in life that brings any joy.
So here’s Burkeman’s summing-up:
Ultimately, I suspect that the impression that atheists are angrier than other people stems from a more general problem, one that skews our assessment of all sorts of other phenomena, too: it’s always the loudest people who make the most noise. That might sound obvious, yet it’s alarmingly easy to forget – as you roam around Facebook or Twitter or the wider internet, or channel-hop through television shows – that you’re inevitably going to hear far more from people prone to anger and condemnation than from those whose beliefs are more quietly held.
It is regularly argued that the internet provides a glimpse into humanity’s collective id – that the fury and fear and bigotry revealed daily on Twitter, or in comment sections, represents the truth we otherwise hide behind polite offline facades. There’s probably something to that (and online abuse is a serious problem). But it’s still worth remembering that most people don’t spend their days picking fights, or screaming at people they hate – only the fight-pickers and the screamers and the haters do. Likewise, in debates about religion, it’s the angry participants on both sides who create the impression that such debates must always be fractious. It’s not atheists in general who are angry; it’s just the angry ones.
There’s not a scintilla of evidence here that the loudest people are also the angriest people. If Burkeman is going to let the “quiet” atheists off the hook because psychological tests show that they’re no angrier than anyone else, then he should keep quiet until he uses the same tests to show a correlation between the “anger” of atheists and their participation in public life. After all, there are plenty of public atheists who aren’t “angry” by even Burkeman’s lights, including Chris Stedman, Michael Ruse, Philip Kitcher, Massimo Pigliucci, and the physicist Sean Carroll. Clearly a public avowal of nonbelief doesn’t mean you’re angry. But I reject the whole notion that we’re angrier than others, since it’s based on Burkeman’s own biased impression of what “anger” is, his ignorance of historical atheism, and his failure to consider the “anger” of religionists and accommodationists.
h/t: Christopher, Heather
If you want to see anger, just look at Pat Robertson or any of the TV preachers. Of course, the epitome of anger is the g*d of the old testament.
+1
Freud had a word for it.
The whole thing is one giant tu quoque, as anger (or lack of it) has little to do with knowledge, justified belief, or ultimate truth. If Dawkins is angry, does that make his points any less cogent? No. If William Craig is happy, does that make divine command theory any less horrific? No. If the Pope is laid back, does that mean A&E existed? No.
Maybe a better question to Burkeman is: why are journalists so trivia-obsessed?
I think there’s also a bait-and-switch element in that if an atheist displays righteous indignation at some religious misdeed, say, anything from Greta’s book, then that atheist is an angry person generally, which isn’t necessarily true.
That writ, I also think there’s something to the saying “ignorance is bliss”. We atheists are more likely to see the ill effects of the status quo and challenge it because we never belonged to or we escaped from an insular religious community, or we’re just more perceptive for whatever reason. All bragging aside, at least in the US, becoming an atheist is usually a matter of being more perceptive.
Don’t forget, the Pope suggested violence is an acceptable response to mere words.
I wouldn’t classify him as laid back.
The Pope seems to have endorsed the murders of the Charley Hebdo cartoonists when he said of the murders, one should not criticize a persons religion.
Mr. Deity, Brian Keith Dalton, went after him in a rant that I thought was plenty angry, and, in my view, justifiable.
Anger can be the only appropriate response to some things.
The anger argument is an ad hominem argument:
I am too lazy or too ignorant to respond to the substance of your argument. So let me find fault with your girth, your smile, the inflection of your speech, etc.
Pathetic.
Indeed.
There is anger in both camps. I suspect anger and atheism or theism are probably mutually exclusive.
Non-overlapping mutual anger?
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Interesting question. If I understand you point I believe they are independent rather than mutual.
Well, it has to be an “M” → “NOMA”!
And I think it is mutual; we’re angered by Greta’s 99 things and more; and they’re angered by our criticism – and audacity!
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DEFINITION of ‘Mutually Exclusive’ A statistical term used to describe a situation where the occurrence of one event is not influenced or caused by another event. In addition, it is impossible for mutually exclusive events to occur at the same time.
The anger may be mutual, but the event — anger with another — is independent, meaning it takes one anger to evoke another.
Why bring statistics or exclusivity into this? “Mutual” has a perfectly good idiomatic meaning: (of a feeling or action) experienced or done by each of two or more parties toward the other or others
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The point is that one event does not cause the other. There is no reason for atheists to be angry with theists and vice versa. It’s a choice, unless you are a strict determinist, then it doesn’t matter.
Where’s causality in the definition above?
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You are correct in questioning my statement. They are not mutually exclusive. They are independent events. My point is that if ideas are all that’s involved, anger is a choice. To say someone or something makes me angry is a cop out. It’s a question of whether we are responsible for our behavior and accountable for our actions.
I think you’re straying further from the point and you’re all making too much of what was (intended to be) a throwaway “NOMA” joke! 😁
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That would be true if I had not realized my error.
That would be true if you hadn’t gone beyond simply acknowledging your error! 😉
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And the truth won’t make me flee… 😉
Ha. Good one!
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Theist, atheist or other… that’s what life’s about… 🙂
I’m sorry, but I don’t think your definition of mutually exclusive is correct (or else I should stop teaching statistics :-)).
What you describe as “mutually exclusive” is actually “independent”.
“Independent” events do not affect each other.
“Mutually exclusive” events can’t both happen: one occurring excludes the possibility of the other happening. (So your “in addition” sentence is actually correct). Mutually exclusive events are dependent, since knowing information about one events occurrence affects our knowledge of the other (given that they can’t both occur).
Formally: mutually exclusive events A and B have P(A and B) = 0, and independent events have P(A and B) = P(A)P(B).
Agreed. “Anger and atheism or theism are mutually exclusive” ?
That’s just worng. Atheism / theism does not require anger, but it certainly doesn’t prohibit it.
Its amazing how often people get “mutually exclusive” and “independent” mixed up.
My introductory slides now always explicitly include a line stating that mutually exclusive events are, for that very reason, definitely not independent.
My error. They are independent events. Anger is a choice.
Given that I see this sort of accusation as something of a tu quoque distraction, maybe the best thing to do rather than try and answer it is to try to come up with some flip ways to move past it, to reorient the discussion back on to which side has the weight of evidence behind it.
So, maybe the best answer to the question is:
“Because I haven’t had a snickers lately. Now, can we get back to that evidence for God you said you had….”
“Whether you think this anger toward religion is justified will depend, of course, on whether you share the New Atheists’ firm conviction that religiosity per se is to blame for outrages such as the Charlie Hebdo attack, or the murders committed by Isis. (This is a huge, incredibly complex question that New Atheists bafflingly treat as straightforward on the grounds that the killers themselves claim to be motivated by faith. Terrorists, apparently, are to be treated as entirely trustworthy sources of information on this point.) But either way, it’s crucial to see that this conviction doesn’t follow from atheism itself. Instead, it’s part of the New Atheists’ very specific brand of anti-theism – their commitment to challenging faith in the most strident terms at every opportunity.”
Please excuse the long quote, but I think it’s necessary to give context to the sentence I’ve italicized (which contains internal links to Karen Armstrong and to Prof. CC – you can guess where)
It’s nonsense like this – suggesting that atheists are somehow naive to hear a terrorist shout “Allahu akbar” before killing himself or someone else and believe that the act is religiously motivated – that makes me angry, and at Burkeman.
Good catch!
This part of Burkemann, “that New Atheists bafflingly treat as straightforward on the grounds that the killers themselves claim to be motivated by faith. Terrorists, apparently, are to be treated as entirely trustworthy sources of information”, means he has to hide behind a conspiracy theory in order to defend his case.
Why would anyone listen to him after that?
Yes, those killers in Paris died for a cause.
Bafflingly, they refused to say what it was, and went to their graves letting people think they died because they wanted to kill cartoonists.
People are generally considered to be fairly authoritative about their own personal motivations.
Is this hard to understand Mr. Burkeman?
Please provide some counter-examples.
If the KKK claims to be motivated by a hatred of Blacks, is it “baffling” that we would take them at their word?
I don’t think you’re angry and neither is/was Dawkins, Harris or Hitchens. Well, actually, Hitchens could be really nasty, but only when he was face to face with stupidity. But the other day, I saw a “discussion” of Dawkins and some creationist concrete-head, who, having been presented with clear arguments and evidence that the old “the eye is irreducible” crap was in fact exactly that, responded: “I can’t accept that because it would contradict the bible”, and I was amazed how calm and friendly Dawkins remained! Now anyone would have understood it if he had exploded with anger at that point.
Anyway, what’s the difference between the New Atheists and Ye Olde Atheists is – in my opinion – that the new ones simply won’t duck and say “I’m sorry, I don’t believe in God but don’t mind me, I’m not here at all” as the old ones did. That’s not anger, it’s just having and clearly voicing an opinion. And the new ones have the nerve to ask theists for proof of their hence far unchallenged claims. That’s a pain in the butt (for theists) but also no anger.
When Falwell died, Hitchens said on Fox News to Sean Hannity that “If you gave Falwell an enema, he could be buried in a matchbox.” That was gold.
You should always say something good about the dead. Falwell is dead. Good.
ROTFL! I’m going to steal that!
“the new ones simply won’t duck and say ‘I’m sorry, I don’t believe in God but don’t mind me, I’m not here at all’ as the old ones did”
Yes, that Ingersoll; well known for ducking. Russell, too; a real wallflower.
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Or, like professor Coyne pointed to, H.L. Mencken: “Shave a gorilla and it would be almost impossible, at twenty paces, to distinguish him from a heavyweight champion of the world. Skin a chimpanzee, and it would take an autopsy to prove he was not a theologian.” That one always makes me laugh. I guess that makes me an angry atheist.
I just think theists don’t like it that atheists are so often right when they are wrong, and that there are a lot more of us who call out the bull crap these days.
Many of the prejudices and practices that seem to be part of religion need to go, and I think the world would be a better place if a lot more people stood up against racism, sexism, homophobia, FGM, capital and corporal punishment, apostasy and blasphemy laws etc. Those things and more horrors are actively promoted by some religions – some would be non-existent without religion.
I am not an angry person – anyone who knows me will tell you that, but I won’t shut up about the damage done by religion either.
The only difference between new atheists and old atheists is that the old atheists aren’t strident or in your face, but that’s because they’re dead.
And also because, apparently, a large percentage of the population don’t read much. Or maybe stridency just doesn’t come across very well in a book? No, I don’t buy that. I think the more likely causes are lack of reading, poor reading comprehension, championing arguments you haven’t spent any effort verifying because they support your views and, last but not least, lying because it supports your views and your primary target audience is the large number of people who are ignorant about the thing you are lying about and won’t bother looking into it themselves.
Burkeman is blatantly abusing words.
Yep. Equivocation on “angry” was my first reaction.
I suspect the reason people associate Dawkins with anger is that he actually makes them angry.
Exactly. When someone counters your argument by questioning why you’re so angry, it’s because they are placing their own deep emotional feelings onto you, and aren’t self-aware enough to realize what they’re doing.
Excellent point!
I suspect you are right.
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I have always heard the “STFU!”, from those parading the ‘angry atheist’ strawman meme around, as shouted in the angriest voice possible. Pot, kettle.
He should watch Sam Harris’ discussion with Cenk Uygur (all three hours). Harris is cool as a cucumber.
My thought, exactly. Then there was Sam’s equanimity in the face of Ben Affleck’s obtuseness (and Bill Maher’s constant interruptions of Sam’s attempts to address Affleck). Just as with his discussion with Uyger, Sam was a model of patience.
Is this the new “militant atheist” trope? Why is it wrong to be angry, anyway? Lot of precedent for it in the Old Testament. Writing seems a mild and healthy way to express it, much more so than killing almost every person and animal on the planet. The point is that — to the extent we are angry — our atheism isn’t a result of anger. Our anger is a result of understanding the negative impact fables continue to have on people every day.
Yeah, you lot are really angry … compared to, oh, Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Antonin Scalia, Glen Beck, Scott Walker, the people that burned alive the Jordanian pilot Moath al-Kasasbeh, the people that beheaded the Egyptian Christians in Libya, the Kouachi brothers, Omar Abdel Hamid El-Hussein, etc.
Yeah, those atheists really have an anger problem.
Ann Coulter.
A sane and rational human being compared to Alex Jones.
Burkeman is a tone-troll. And he’s engaging in the sort of divide-and-conquer tactics that have become popular among anti-atheists.
Those tactics involve demonizing the most prominent atheists in an attempt to make other atheists turn against them. Burkeman says “you ordinary atheists are fine folk, but Dawkins and company are rage-filled monsters.” That’s presumably meant to turn most atheists against outspoken atheists. Meanwhile, Burkeman is happy to give a patronizing pat on the head to quiet atheists who don’t speak up against religious bullshit.
Reza Aslan tried a similar trick by demonizing prominent atheists as “anti-theists” (thus tying them to Hicks the Chapel Hill murderer) while saying there was nothing wrong with being a mere atheist.
Burkeman and Aslan are trying to curry favor with the atheist community, which demonstrates atheists are too large a part of the intelligentsia to be ignored. But I hope most atheists will realize that Burkeman and Aslan are offering them a crooked deal, which involves receiving acceptance and praise at the price of being quiet on religion and denouncing the most prominent atheists.
What angers me (and I assume most others) is the staggering level of intellectual dishonesty integral in the theist camp. The also staggering level of credulity and ignorance is maddening enough, but the WILLFUL ignorance – that’s enough to make one angry; for we simply want better for humanity than primitive superstition.
And the endless goalpost shifting.
Of course there is the view that we should be angry… see Greta Christina “Why are atheists so angry” either in book form or her wonderful speech on Youtube..
If science denial, prevention of critical thinking, genital mutilation, denial of gay rights, denial of women’s rights, denial of contraception, denial of safe abortion options, denial of safe HIV prevention in the form of condoms, prevention of reporting of child abuse to safeguard the image of a religious organisation and obstruction to all legal reforms that benefit humans (divorce, gay marriage, trying to enact blasphemy laws) doesn’t make you angry… well maybe it should…
I think it was Marx who said (to paraphrase): “You have to be someone big indeed so that they can’t defeat you by simply ignoring.”
In this respect, the constant Dawkins bashing might actually be a good sign.
I am sure this Burkeman is either delusional or ignorant. I sure hope that does not sound too angry to him.
If he wants to actually experience anger, so he has some idea what it is, he should read some of Richard Dawkins email and I am sure Sam Harris has a few buckets of that garbage as well.
I thought we were all supposed to be strident!
When you confront someone’s dearly held beliefs they get angry at you, it is a common response. Very often the angry person will project their anger at the one who made them so, I think this is what often happens here with the religious.
Anyway I am yet to see any athiest angry enough to blow people up or kill children…
In my experience many well reasoned arguments put towards theists are labelled “angry”, even though there is not a jot or tittle of anger in them.
It appears to be some sort of passive aggression, or they are projecting anger they themselves are hiding or keeping submerged. The Christian often doesn’t appear angry, but they accuse people who give well reasoned arguments of being angry, and refuse to back down from the accusation, even when asked to provide a quote to show evidence.
I find continued exploration of the topic with these people often do turn angry, by myself and by the person, when they invariably ignore any and all logical arguments, and insist that fuzzy warm feelings, dreams, and the Bible are all perfectly acceptable evidence for an omniscient all powerful all seeing God.
I’ve found one way that invariably creates anger in theists is to point out how many Christians cherry pick from the scriptures, my own favourite source is the Sermon on the Mount. They ignore Christ’s own words
“Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.18For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.”,
or they interpret it exactly opposite to what he says, yet the rest of the Sermon on the Mount is a very important part of Christianity.
Getting Christians to admit that the religion is based on interpretations that are changing, opposite of what the scripture says, different from sect to sect or Christian to Christian is frustrating and can challenge even the most patient person.
Getting them to admit the scriptures themselves are unreliable, some are forgeries, poor translations and it’s unknown how close they are to the original verses that were passed on by spoken word, well, last time I was called a “frothing at the mouth socialist communist mouth breathing window fogging hate filled brain damaged atheist.”
I believe I was called a socialist communist because I brought up Christ’s admonition to sell all their possessions, give them to the poor and follow Jesus. I’m guessing she was a Republican Christian. Those Republican Christians would crucify Christ all over again if he turned up in Alabama spouting absurd notions of feeding the poor.
When people are confronted by others with arguments they can’t reasonably rebut it is not uncommon for them to switch from counter-argument to attacking the moral standing of the other person / people. Politics is repleat with examples of this. You can back a liberal despising, terrified of socialism, US conservative into a corner with the straight data on how the economy, and other societal indicators typically used to assess the state of countries, has faired under modern R administrations vs modern D administrations, and suddenly it is no longer about actual results. It’s simply that, somehow that can’t really be explained, the slightest taint of socialism is immoral, disgusting and not to be tolerated.
It seems to be a common human thing not unique to religious believers, though especially strongly displayed by them in response to criticism of their religion because their religion is so central to their self image.
All of this ‘New Atheists are angry’ talk reminds me of something…
Ah yes, substitute the word ‘Negro’ for Atheist and the word ‘uppity’ for angry.
As long as atheists keep quiet and don’t make a fuss, smile and nod, make no remarks about religion or anything else, for that matter, they are tolerated. Say anything, and you are branded as ‘angry’. I’d say the anger is merely a stand-in for ‘You make me feel uncomfortable simply by drawing any attention to your point of view, so please keep quiet.’
Spot on. I think you hit the nail on the head.
+1
Copernican Angst. That is what I have.
The religious people want to live forever and they will pit their metaphysical might against the tyranny of what they call a secular universe. The loquacious posturing and epistemological misbehavior makes me feel like I live among quesadillas made of mush brain.
It reminds me of a charge I hear from the right about the left. We lefties (they say) always get shrill or hysterical when engaged in a debate with a rightie. The game goes like this:
Rightie: I think we should relax government regulations so that the energy industry can develop oil drilling and coal mining on federal lands. It would mean more jobs, and cheaper energy. ‘Merica should be more energy independent.
Leftie: But those lands harbor X number of protected and endangered species. Many of them are in a fragile state as it is, and any more habitat loss will cause some to go extinct. That is forever, you know. And your idea only adds more CO2 to our atmosphere, accelerating the course of global warming. Species extinction is a serious matter, and so are the looming problems due to rising sea levels and changing weather patterns that effect our agricultural regions.
So the rightie is talking about jobs and cheaper energy costs. The leftie is talking about species extinction, and irreversible hardships for future generations. Guess who sounds more shrill.
There the anger is perceived because you are being the parent. You are a party-pooper. “No, you can’t rape the earth just because you want to make a quick buck, you have to think about how your actions have larger repercussions.” That kind of message, no matter how gentle the tone, is heard as a shout.
Here in Canada, all environmentalists are considered ‘Environmental Extremists’ by the Harper government (Canada’s version of ‘Mericans’). Never mind that one of the leaders of the movement is David Suzuki, a prominent scientist and educator. Nope, in their eyes, anyone who is against a pipeline or mine, or getting rid of environmental regulations is unreasonable and against everything (oh, and also hypocrites because we use electrical power, buy things packaged in plastic or take public transport that is fueled by diesel fuel, but that’s another matter).
The anger here is because the stakes are high. In the case of atheism, the stakes are high as well, but there is an extra element of being insecure about their own beliefs not being supported. That’s what makes it sound _really_ angry.
Oh yeah you caught that too, eh with the “environmental extremists” stuff. I recall Aglukkaq saying it when the RCMP wanted to discontinue the use of fur for their hats.
Yes, and of course the leftie will be raising their voice a little. They are pointing out how regulation of unfettered capitalism tends to, oh, you know, save lives and all that.
LOL – Sam Harris is so angry! Please, it was Sam Harris who had to tell Deepak Chopra to dial it back a bit at his debate with Michael Shermer.
I think this person thinks “angry” means something other than what I think “angry” means.
Sam Harris may be the least angry person I’ve ever seen anywhere and there’s no doubt about it when it comes to debates over religion that are often steeped in emotion.
Anger is the word your opponents use to denigrate your passionate derision of their ludicrous ideas and beliefs.
That aside we atheists have every right to be bloody angry about the theist dominated world we live in, from attempts to impose their petty moral views all the way to denying us our civil and human rights, and at the extreme even our lives.
To think that their are literally millions of theists who think it’s OK for us to be killed because we don’t share their belief that a deluded, genocidal pedophile received secret telepathic messages from god delivered by an angel called Gabe. FFS !!!
Oh, I’m freakin’ livid now.
Ok, everybody. I think we need a bunch of
cute kitten gifs right now.
Yess…. yessss… that’s better.
If this mild mannered pleb has a problem with anger maybe he should go to a anger management course to learn how it’s done.
If the likes of ISIS thuggery doesn’t make his blood boil he doesn’t have a pulse worth talking about. Anger is motivating in the right context, it has it’s place as long as your prefrontal cortex recognizes it and does some channeling. I draw the line at physical and psychological violence like most, so a non verbal diatribe even as it is confined to my own head is acceptable. At least to me.
I’m normally pretty placid. Lots of little things annoy me but on the whole I don’t get really angry until I read insulting crap like this idiot Burkeman is spewing.
Adam Gopnik, James Wood and Sasha Weiss discuss atheism in the Feb 10th podcast of Out Loud. Sasha poses this question: “Why is there a cranky, er, rather intolerant tone in the New Atheists. Why is there this acid, do you think?” The other two never challenge or dispute the premise of the question. Yes,such feelings are common place. But that even someone like Adam Gopnik, a polished and ferociously intelligent critic and raconteur and clearly a friend of secularism, would let this jab stand goes to show how dreadful the state of PR is around atheists.
There is a mountain of evidence that atheists’ tomes have not budged views on a national scale. To say so is not to diminish their work. Given the counter-intuitive and relatively abstruse case to be presented, it’s laudable when one holds your hand and walks you up Mount Improbable, or has you contemplate orbiting teapots. Amongst these R G Ingersoll stands above the rest in being truly incisive. He may have been an atheist proper. His focus, however, was to simply knock religion off its pedestal. It was a more broader and more encompassing strategy that deployed the vibrato of language, narrative and metaphor to bear on the raw impulses of life’s anxieties and aspirations. R G Ingersoll, to put it simply, was devastatingly effective. He has no equal today.
If you have a link to that Out Loud podcast, could you send it to me. I’m very curious to hear it.
Thanks!-
==PCC
I am one of the authors of the empirical work cited in this article. We were careful to specifically NOT make these conclusions. In fact, one shouldn’t make these conclusions from the evidence. We did not test whether any of our samples consisted of “quiet” or “loud” atheists. In fact, I would agree with Jerry that neither the loud nor quiet atheists are angry (though, of course, some are) and that in all cases it is a stereotype (this is what the evidence suggests!). We only suggested that loud voices can, falsely, appear angry and that, perhaps, people are projecting their own anger onto these atheists (though, we also have no evidence for this). That said, I think Oliver is a good guy, even if I disagree with his conclusions.
Picking pieces about atrocious acts committed by religionists and citing them as evidence of unusually angry people is ridiculously stupid. It’s as bad as admitting you can’t tell the difference between a passionate campaigner and an irritable loudmouth who lashes out at anything and anyone.
Patronizing tone-trolling is exactly what this amateur psychoanalysis is. It’s a lazy and dishonest way to discredit atheists without actually engaging with the arguments. It’s just playing the victim via demonizing, because you can’t play the victim unless you make your opponent look vicious and nasty.
That is why there’s an angry atheist stereotype. The audacity to call a spade a spade is turned into the audacity of a bully with a bad temper.
If Burkeman is typical of journalists, then the profession needs some serious shaking up.
In addition to H. L. Mencken, R. G. Ingersoll, Bertrand Russell, and even Carl Sagan I think you could have included Mark Twain who wrote some very pointed but not well known anti-religion pieces.
I’d frankly like to hear why Oliver Burkeman isn’t more angry about a world wracked by religious violence. Why isn’t he angry about priestly child rape and religiously-motivated persecution of women and gay people.
These things don’t make you angry, Oliver?
The joy of faith is an absence of any requirement for facts. This article demonstrates that beautifully.
Of course we’re angry, as Jerry mentioned – there’s lots to be (justifiably) angry about.
And one of them (in a mild way) is silly tone-trolling.
So far as I can tell, the primary difference between Old Atheists and New Atheists is the existence of the Internet.