Atheists are not what they used to be

October 13, 2015 • 9:30 am

by Grania

Regular contributor and satirist Pliny the in Between has a new cartoon offering a rebuttal to an overused and rather tired criticism often “New Atheists” i.e. those that had the unforgivably bad manners to publicly mention that they were unbelievers in the 21st century.

 

Toon Background.001

“You haven’t read enough theology” is a constant refrain, and no amount of actual reading of theology is ever sufficient. You can be assured that if you ever do embark on a mission of reading Sophisticated Theology(™), you will read the wrong ones, or will miss the ones you really should have read, or just won’t understand what you are supposed to understand.

110 thoughts on “Atheists are not what they used to be”

  1. If there really is an omniscient god who wants to have a personal relationship with me, why will he only speak to be through Sophisticated Theologians? Why does he adamantly refuse to speak to me in terms that I can understand myself?

    1. Maybe because he doesn’t speak English???

      He does speak Klingon, Na’vi and Kriptonian though.

        1. I’ve always wondered: is there a planet Xenon where Not-quite-as-superman comes from? A planet Radon where Even-more-super-but-possibly-radioactiveman comes from?

          5. They’ve clearly been infiltrated by agents of the US government, which has a surreptitious and nefarious plan to force their version of English on the world.

            I’ve only got one thing to say to them: Aluminium!

          7. You’re arguing with someone who didn’t do science past year 10 here – I don’t even know what that is! 🙂

          10. I’ll take your word for it – I’m never likely to find out either way. But I’ll be putting the information in the “not to be used in conversation” part of my brain nevertheless. 🙂

          11. That last answer was to Bob. To Ant – I’m just relieved to know there are only two, and my bulls**t detector says your answer might make it into the “able to be repeated” part of the brain. I just hope that part of it is working at least!

          15. Scientist: “Would you like to hear a joke about nitrogen monoxide?”

            Theist: “Yes please.”

            NO !

          17. And, unfortunately, a gaseous one. Remind me to actually look at a periodic table next time.

          19. No. Princess Xena came from Xenon; Jason and the Argonauts come from Argon. Trust me, I saw it on TV.

    2. Probably because while our tiny little pea-brains are capable of sussing out things like The Standard Model, the TOE Modern Synthesis, etc., trying to suss out the meaning of something as complex and sophisticated as . . .

      “But those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me.”

      . . ., and what that indicates about the entity who commanded it, is obviously way beyond our capabilities.

    2. I used to be really good on air guitar. Unfortunately I haven’t played in years and probably suck now.

  4. I haven’t read every Superman comic either but I still question the aerodynamics of a cape.

  6. Science: Ruining Everything Since 1543 (*)

    Theologians need to look at Star Trek (the original series) and check out the technology. Incredibly poor predictive capabilities to forecast what computers and interfaces will look like even 40 years into the future, let alone several hundred.

    Story tellers can get somethings right, like Homer, Aeschylus, Euripides, but as far as what kind of smart phone my grandchildren will use…not a chance. Science delineates what is reality and what we make of that reality through technologies.

    Religion is being left behind. Today’s Hume is not yesterdays; he is more likely to be a science fiction writer or an economist than a traditional philosopher.

    Incidentally, we have a pretty good idea of what electrons are but we have yet to hear after thousands of years a meaningful explanation for what a god is.

    * – http://www.amazon.com/Science-Ruining-Everything-Collection-Science-Themed/dp/0982853734

    1. I dunno. They showed computer consoles, data tablets and culturally diverse technical societies. Although I am still waiting to be beamed up.

      1. Screw that. There’s no way I’m stepping into a matter transmitter even if the science says it’s safe. What if there’s a fly in there with me?

    2. Ummm, Star Trek TOS got the tablet with stylus right, voice contol for computer right, wireless connection between medical scanner and medical tricorder right, motion sensitive doors right, hard cased floppy disks right, computers with personality software right, translating software right, lie detecting software right, hand-held lasers right, end of Soviet Union right, wireless earphones right, access to library books on computer screen right, communicators right, hyposprays right, micro tractor beams right, videoconferencing right, and I could go on.

      2. But note that a lot of things what were *not* predicted were more social advances, e.g., that “where no man has gone before” would be eventually regarded as sexist.

      3. Much as I love Star Trek in all its incarnations, I had to wonder about the original being broadcast in colour, but some of the early episodes having video conferencing/phones in black and white.

  7. As John says in comment 1 above, what is the point of a ‘god’-given book if it needs interpreting? surely these gods should have been clearer what they wanted humans to do -“But you are so strong and, well, just so super.”

    1. No God exists who wants us to know of His existence and can/will communicate a clear message about what He wants from us.

  8. Odd that g*d must have all these apologist to do the heavy lifting of promoting and justifying the religion. With all that power just one little public display could eliminate all these middlemen. Such a waste of manpower when they could be doing something worthwhile for a living.

  9. If I want to discuss anthropolgy meaningfully with an anthropologist I need to be well educated in anthropolgy.

    If I want to discuss history meaningfully with a historian I need to be well educated in history.

    If I want to discuss science meaningfully with a scientist I need to be well educated in science.

    If I want to discuss theology meaningfully with a theologian I need to be well educated in anthropolgy, history, and science.

    2. You may be right. On the other hand, it may be sufficient to ask the theologian, “On what basis do you say that?”

      I may not know a lot of theology (hey, wait a minute; actually, I *do* know a lot of theology–the sign of a misspent youth), but I can guarantee you that the answer is *not* “on the basis of the evidence.”

  10. Yeah, I’ve had that one about not reading enough theology or not being able to read the Koran properly because I don’t read squiglish. My retort is usually, “If you spent less time on reading nonsense and more on studying science and logic then perhaps this country would have advanced even more!” This, in the past has not won me many friends, nor has the observation that, “Cathedrals are monuments to superstition and total waste of disposable income.” I once got disinvited to dinner for that last!

    1. I know what you are talking about. You quote some interesting texts from the Koran, and your opponent says that you have read only them, not the entire book, and you are citing out of context. Which actually means: “Because I don’t like what you are saying, I order you out of the discussion until you read the entire 10-lb, font-size-5 book.”
      You assure him that you have read the entire book, and the reply is, “But can you read Arabic? Oh, you have read it in translation? Not the real thing. You must read it in Arabic, or it doesn’t count.”
      When your opponent is not a Muslim but a Western apologist of Islam, he will say instead that the quotes from the Koran tell more about the person quoting than about the Koran and Islam. That is, the worse things are there in the Koran, the worse bigot you are.

      I’d respectfully disagree with you about the cathedrals. Many of them are beautiful building that are nice to look at, and they attract so many tourists that eventually pay off. I recently saw the Cathedral of Milan, was impressed and said, “Wow!”. Then I went inside, saw some mummies and thought “Wow!” again, but on a different tune. Nobody had told me that the poor cardinals are kept inside, mummified. And because I haven’t yet had the opportunity to see Egyptian mummies, I can say that I got 2 in 1.

  12. The relevant subjects are history and sociology of religion, with perhaps a smattering of understanding the philosophical arguments for and against for God. Otherwise, I’m not convinced studying theology is that important.

    Nonetheless, I think when making moral as opposed to scientific arguments against religion, a bit of knowledge of theology can be helpful, or at least the history of formal Christian ethics (considered to be a branch of theology by some), not so much theology re supernatural metaphysical speculation.

    (The only red flag for me in any of the classic “four horseman” books is when Hitchens claimed that Martin Luther King and Dietrich Bonheoffer are really just secular humanists dressing up their ideas in Christian language. I regard that statement as false, and just a tad more investigation into their formal thought might have disabused CH of that notion. I am of course here making mainly a historical counterclaim, not defending supernaturalism.)

  13. Every time this happens to me, I ask for what I’ve missed, and for my opponent to please be specific. I have never gotten an answer that was specific enough to find a reference.

  14. This ‘sophisticated theology’ argument, it seems to me, requires a concise, sound-byte answer. I think that’s the only way to retire it. My retort would be that its reasonable to believe that the best arguments for God would be the first thing you came across when you studied theology. These arguments would be front and center, not buried in obscure tomes. There are enough theologians in the world, reading each others work, that any and all good arguments would be polished and brought forward and these are what atheists would need to grapple with.
    The common arguments made by theists for Gods existence range from poor to execrable- these must be the very best they have.

    1. “…these must be the very best they have.”

      They are. Only the semantic wrapping is changed for the sophisticated versions. In my experience, sophisticated theology comes in two flavors:

      – the same old claims and fallacies, trying to hide in intentionally impenetrable language, or

      – completely sensible statements that don’t really demonstrate anything – illuminated by Dennett’s phrase “belief in belief.” Kind of like if the Pope and WL Craig and Berlinski were having a public conversation at some ecumenical UN event. Imagine the sheer volume of words that would pass* without actual content.

      * – Yes, in that sense of the word too.

    2. Inspired by our recent threads and (still ongoing) conversation with dguller, I rewatched the Carroll/Craig debate today. The main point Sean Carroll drove home was that theism is ill-defined so one can take literally any scientific discovery and make it comport with some type of theism.

      Ironically, in his opening statement, William Lane Craig talked about how you can make anything fit any worldview if you bend the data enough. If you’re looking for sound-bytes, it all really comes down to, “What would convince you that your worldview is wrong?” Sean Carroll said he could imagine evidence convincing him that their are deities (or a single deity). Craig has said on multiple occasions that no such evidence could possibly exist. And so it goes with most theists…

  15. Wow, that cartoon nails it! Perfect. Now, whenever I come across a clown on Twitter who insists that the Old Atheists are smarter, I’ll throw this at them.

    1. Yes. I hate to interrupt a discussion which appears to be about science fiction, but as for the content of the cartoon, it is spot-on. I recall reading Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. One of the arguments submitted in support of divine creation is that no species was known to have gone extinct. Wowza, is that argument out of date! Large portions of the discussion would have needed to be very different if it was written post-Darwin.

      1. And it would seem that from what we know, Hume would have welcomed the developments in our knowledge that way. (The conventional understanding is that Hume is at best a deist anyway, after all.)

  16. The work has already been done, and there’s no sense reinventing the wheel. I have to admit that I have read little of the New Atheist literature or its rebuttals because excerpts and reviews have convinced me that the general state of the argument hasn’t advanced, on either side, in my lifetime and probably in the last century. Theology, sophisticated or otherwise, is an exploration — often fascinating and learned — of what a religion says or what its scriptures mean. It has no purchase on what is true about the world.

  17. I just had someone recommend Karen Armstrong’s ‘Fields of Blood’ to me on my website. I already know I don’t want to read it, but that’s not an answer I’m going to get away with. I actually do have lots of valid excuses for not reading it, but I’m not sure they’ll be understood either. Maybe Templeton could buy me an audio version.

    1. Yes, I saw that comment on your site. I’m familiar with the contents, which is why I didn’t want to discuss it! As far as I can tell, what Armstrong has done is define religion as “not at all nasty” and then demonstrated through meticulous scholarship that throughout the ages, religion has not been at all nasty.

      For an audio version, I’d suggest you demand at least $15,000 from Templeton!

      1. Yeah, that’s pretty much what I heard. It’s a bit of a rewriting of history. Like getting people is such a religious fervour at campaign events for the Crusades that they immediately go out and massacre all the Jews in the city, then saying the Crusades were all about greed.

  18. ‘”You haven’t read enough theology” is a constant refrain . . . .’

    Yeah, well, they won’t say that – and will give a free pass – to someone who has read and taken to heart and made a profession of faith based merely on hearing/reading The Number One Verse, John 3:16.

  19. [Philistine mode ON]
    I refuse to read the Bible since there’s no evidence I’m likely to find anything useful in it (other than a source of pompous quotations and overworked cultural references). EXACTLY the same consideration goes for Tolkien, Star Trek, and Star Wars. I know what the ‘road to Damascus’ is, also the One Ring and Jar Jar Binks, and I ‘get’ the tagline “Prime Directive my a**, set phasers to ‘incinerate’ ” ; so I don’t need to wade through tons of turgid prose or, as it may be, screenplay in order to appreciate all the cultural references in fiction of my choice.
    [Philistine mode off]

    I think I’m just being more comprehensively atheistic than usual 😉

    cr

    1. I saw the Lord of the Rings trilogy movies, and then I read the books and was blown away by them still. I do recommend them. I wish I could read them again for the 1st time.

      1. It may well be that the books (which I haven’t read) are far better than the movies (which I’ve seen once each). Reputedly, the movies followed the books fairly closely – probably too closely. Too many characters, too many plotlines to follow. What makes a good book does not automatically translate to a good movie. Also, some of the characters (in the movie) were quaint and annoying.

        Actually, being a perverse bastard, the more popular / legendary / hyped a book is, the less likely I am to read it. It was a decade before I read Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, or The Selfish Gene, or any of Terry Pratchett’s books – all of which converted me into an instant fan. I comprehend your ‘first time’ comment. On the other hand, when I eventually got around to reading a book by Arthur Hailey, or one of Robert Ludlum’s ‘Bourne’ books (the movies of which were gripping), I got through the first dozen pages then just gave up.

        cr

      2. [Pious, holier-than-thou mode on]
        What you, silly unbeliever, don’t realize is that the Lord of the Rings is a deeply Christian piece of literature. Tolkien took the true mythology of Christianity and converted it into the fictional mythology of Middle Earth. You see, you can’t help but stand upon the shoulders of the Christian giants who established the framework upon which Enlightenment Values could flourish and then arrogantly dismiss their origins.
        [Pious, holier-than-thou mode off]

        I actually haven’t watched the films, but I do mean to one day. Yet, the ubiquity of their cultural references makes me think that it probably won’t add much to my ability to hold a conversation about the films.

    2. And if you saw The Hobbit movie(s) I recommend again to read the book and see how much better it is to the damn movies.

    3. Maybe I should clarify (before I get ceremonially impaled on a stake). Tolkien, Star Wars and Star Trek have precisely as much factual accuracy and validity as anything in the Bible. They have followers (just like the Bible), who celebrate their beliefs in gatherings (‘cons’), and some of the nuttier ones may even think their sacred texts are literally true (just like Bible-followers). They engage in holy wars with unbelievers or those of other faiths, or (and this is especially significant and symptomatic), splinter groups of their own movement, who are the target of their most furious animosity (just like… I think you get the picture).

      The more a cultural icon is lauded and worshipped, the less likely I am to go near it, hence my previous comment.

      (Not that I don’t have my own household gods, but they mostly tend to be obscure and I don’t dress up in funny costumes to worship them)

      cr

      1. Sorry, all, but I’m from the all-sci-fi-is-shit-except-1984 school. As a 17 year-old I ploughed through the turgid and soggy field of ‘Lord of the Rings’ before giving up after 900 pages of sorry juggernaut Christian analogy after realising that I had wasted half my summer holidays. I was a slow learner and still am.

        My Oxford uncle lives opposite C.S. Lewis’ old pad at which loads of Yankee pilgrims arrive in outsize Christian charabancs: which brings up Lewis’ comment on Tolkein’s draft of the preposterously tedious Lord of the Rings as J.R.R. was writing it; “Not another f**king elf!”

        I can almost forgive all Lewis’ goddism for that entirely accurate review. x

        1. Well, you’re completely wrong about The Lord of the Rings – which is not at all turgid and soggy, and is notable for how little overt Christian theology or allegory it has. You have to strain hard to see it, so hard that I think people who see Christian symbolism are simply making it up. And you can’t say that about C.S. Lewis’s Narnia books.

          And it wasn’t C.S. Lewis, but Hugo Dyson, who uttered the “not another f**king elf” line.

          3. Yeah, Mark, all I said about sci-fi applies to fantasy. The difference between the two is often the first line, like an overwrought mid-Atlantic intro to a bloated summer blockbuster trailer: ‘Thousands of years ago/in the future….’

            What is the point of reading 1,000 pages of prosaic pastiche of Beowulf, consciously 1,000 years behind its time, tiresome mock-heroic monikers, fairy tales for grown-ups? Who cares about interminable fake-medieval battles, endless ersatz odysseys?

            Thanks for the Dyson nugget: a pity. The anecdote has more punch if it’s C.S. Lewis’ line: who’s heard of Dyson? x

          4. Fantasy is not all fake-mediaevalism and portentous Nordic names.

            For example, check out Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels, which on the one hand deliberately feature every mythical, ominous or legendary creature known to the imagination of Man – werewolves, vampires, trolls, dragons, assassins and accountants – and on the other hand reflect a thoroughly modern and highly entertaining worldview.

            (Nowhere in Pratchett will you ever find such as “Sir Aelfric was sore vexed that the legions of the Fire Riders yet laid siege to the Eastern Gate, portal to the Forbidden Worlds of the Dark Shadow, wherein lay the dread secret of the Long Ages” (how am I doing? You may scream if you wish. I think the Postmodern Generator could be hacked to produce this sort of stuff ad nauseam).

            cr

          5. Infinite…, don’t you mean, ‘Hlaford Ælfric…’? I đink that’s slightly more auđentic. I like the parody, but it does make me scream. x

          6. Oh yes, that’s much better. You can see I’m a novice at that sort of thing 😉

            cr

        2. Half your summer holidays? I read _LotR_ in six consecutive days during my summer holidays c. 1980. (And _The Silmarillion_ in three.)

          “more f—king elves” – that would be more recent fantasy fiction.

          /@

        3. Well, of course, LOTR is absolutely NOT sci-fi, it’s fantasy. Though the line between the two is often blurred, I think LOTR falls wholly at the fantasy end of the spectrum.

          I certainly can’t agree that _all_ sci-fi or fantasy is shit, though Sturgeon’s Law does apply (as it does to all fiction).

          cr

        4. I can (somewhat) understand not enjoying LotR, but to write off all modern sci-fi or fantasy because you didn’t like it? You’re missing out on some brilliant writing and storytelling.

      2. In fairness to the sci-if nerds and the comparison with religion, it should be pointed out that I’ve never heard of someone killing someone over whether the Federation or Klingons are better, nor persecution of fans of the Empire by self-professed Jedi, nor abuse of self-styled Dark Lords by people in elf costumes. The nerds will get into their arguments with passion, no doubt, but they almost always maintain a distinction between their love and reality (and those rare few who are truly delusional are NOT going to be supported by the, shall we say, “moderates”).

        If the religious acted like the nerds, I’d have few issues with them.

        1. Point taken.

          I guess if any fan seriously tried to argue that LOTR (/Star Trek/etc) held the answers to all of humanity’s problems, and we should all live our lives by it, they would get laughed out of the room. Evangelists, though, seem to be immune.

          This is not to say that there aren’t moral lessons to be found in e.g. LOTR, as with all fiction. In fact part of my liking for (some works of) scifi / fantasy is precisely because they can throw light on society’s problems – in an interesting way.

          cr

    1. You think you’re poking fun at them, but not a few say exactly this–from Tertullian (iirc) saying “I believe that I might know” to Ken Ham stating that the believer and the atheist look at the same data, but interpret it from different worldviews.

  22. My sophisticated theology.

    What, how or why? “Da, god dun it” — repeat ad infinitum until satisfied or insane.

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