It’s only January 7, yet already the oleaginous atheist-butters* are pontificating in the newspapers. And we have a good candidate in the form of nonbeliever Joe Humphreys, whose article in yesterday’s Irish Times, “Why Irish atheists still need the Catholic Church,” is sure to piss off Michael Nugent, Atheist Ireland, and all the Irish nonbelievers who’ve fought hard to efface the damage that the Church has done to their country. You name it and the Church has done it: raped children, sent unmarried pregnant women to workhouses and taken away their children, lobbied for blasphemy laws and against gay marriage, helped squelch the possibility of abortion for Irish women, and generally insinuated itself into Irish politics so far that government policy is barely distinguishable from the Church’s.
So why on earth do Irish atheists need the Church? For community, of course!:
For all its faults, the Catholic Church is one of the only institutions in Irish society that talks about fundamental values, meaning and human purpose.
On top of that, it promotes an egalitarian ethic that is highly commendable in both ambition and scope. The command to “love your neighbour as yourself” sets a moral benchmark for Christians that, despite bordering on the unattainable, is nonetheless capable of inspiring benevolence in its adherents.
What’s not to like about Jesus’s anti-capitalism? Or Pope Francis’s social conscience? Secular humanists may baulk at the theological reasoning behind the claim that “everyone is equal in the eyes of God” but they must surely observe its sentiment.
The Catholic Church also serves a particular purpose in Ireland by providing the basic unit of community. For historical reasons, the parish remains a key identifier around which sports clubs, fundraising efforts, political campaigning and educational activities typically revolve. It is also the place towards which many people gravitate to commemorate important events like birth, marriage and death.
He goes on to cite accommodationist biologist David Sloan Wilson, who argues that religion promotes good behavior (Wilson obviously doesn’t work with ISIS.) But is Catholic doctrine true? Does it even matter to Humphreys? It sure matters to the Church, which, I think, wouldn’t want nonbelievers or once-a-year Catholics buzzing around the church to meet their social needs. And what does it mean to argue that people should accept false or unproven doctrine so they can have a place to dunk their infant—for social reasons?
Besides, says Humphreys, religion is no worse than capitalism:
Secular communities can similarly have their blind spots. In the debate over religious patronage, for instance, it is curious as to why reformers describe “the baptism rule” as an unfair barrier to education while ignoring the manner in which private schooling in Ireland skews the playing field.
Surely economic segregation is at least as bad as religious segregation?
Could it be that we’re happy to knock the church but afraid to challenge the values of the free market? If so, it strengthens the case for a Christian voice – in the mould of Pope Francis – in Irish educational reform.
It’s odd, as Nick Cohen has pointed out, that comparing secular organizations with religion—like saying “science is just a religion”—never redounds to religion’s credit. It’s like saying, “See—you’re just as bad as we are!”
And no, criticizing religion and not free markets does not strengthen the case for a Christian voice in educational reform. That depends on what Humphreys means by “a Christian voice”, and I don’t think he’s referring to a voice devoid of religious overtones.
I won’t beleaguer the poor Humphreys further, because he hasn’t thought overly hard about the issue. Surely if Scandinavia can live without a strong Church—with Danes and Swedes finding their social needs met in an atheistic society—then surely Ireland can, too. Or do the Irish need to cling to their traditions more strongly? We’re not told.
Humphreys ends on an unwarranted note of comity:
Given the reality of religious difference, our only choice is to work together. That calls for a form of dialogue that is more respectful and realistic than the current slagging match between people with religious faith and those with none.
Sure, Mr. Humphreys, let the Catholic Church work together with secularists to promote liberalized abortion for Irish women, eliminate blasphemy laws, prevent religious indoctrination of children in Church-run government schools, and eliminate discrimination against gays. (The Church, of course, opposed Ireland’s legalization of gay marriage.) It’ll be a cold day in Hell when that happens!
As for “respectful and realistic dialogue,” I’m willing to be realistic about the views of the Catholic Church, but certainly not respectful. Among all forms of Christianity, Catholicism is the most harmful in today’s world, and its doctrine deserves not respect, but criticism and mockery. Catholicism has done enormous damage to Ireland, something that Humphreys somehow ignores.
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*I’m not sure who coined this term, though Richard Dawkins has somewhere revealed the source. It refers to those who say, “I’ve an atheist, but . . . “, then saying something about how we should respect religion, not be vociferous, and so on.
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Oh, you must have access to a better browser than that.
I think it’s WordPress that’s parsing the Unicode wrongly …
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* It’s just fine in Facebook, for instance.
Aha! The flag is rendered properly in the WP app on my iPhone but not in Safari on my iPhone.
My original comment was a pathetic joke based on the fact that in Safari your comment looked like the letters I and E.
And in Internet Explorer, which is sort of weirdly coincidental.
And in Opera for Linux
Shows blue squares with “I” and “E” on them.
Also (click click) in Chromium and Iceweasel (open-source Firefox clone, I think)
cr
Iceweasel?! Wonderful… From Wp:
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Like the Groening quote.
Debian Iceweasel is in fact Firefox, rebranded to avoid a clash between Mozilla’s trademark policy and Debian’s Free Software Guidelines.
This means it can be included in Debian Linux without breaching anyone’s conditions.
The name Iceweasel was, of course, a pun on Firefox.
cr
I just had a thought that an ice weasel would be a great monster for D&D or a similar frpg. Then I found one in the Sword & Sorcery _Creature Collection_ (p. 116) … although smaller than I imagined.
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I TAEK EXCEPSHUN 2 TEH FRASE “ATHEIST BUTTR”. ID PREFR SOMETHIN MOAR DESCRIPTIV, LIEK “ATHEIST NUTTR”.
This message has been sent from my Android!
I immediately thought of Butter the cat too!
I get two definitions on my iMac for “oleaginous”. One is “oily or greasy” and the other is “exaggeratedly or distastefully complimentary”.
Whoever coined that term is a genius by using “Butter” in there.
Your kitteh is an android? 😉
cr
Used to have a Blackberry!
Respect for the Catholic church would not come from me if they paid taxes and sold off all the business around the world and all the property that has nothing to do with religion. Not even if they stopped the pedophilia and paid the correct damages to all those who suffered. Not if they stopped the money laundering and tax evasion tricks going on at the Vatican Bank.
Dressing up in pointy hats and gold jewelry and looking like a better version of the KKK does not help either.
*I’m not sure who coined this term, though Richard Dawkins has somewhere revealed the source. It refers to those who say, “I’ve an atheist, but . . . “,
In the second installment of his autobiography, Brief Candle in the Dark, Dawkins notes that he earlier responded to seven “species” of “I’m-an-atheist-buttery” in the new preface to the paperback edition of The God Delusion (I have only the hardcopy, and so cannot check). In Brief Candle, he also gives credit to Rushdie for popularizing the phrase “but brigade”.
That is correct.
Richard Dawkins reading the preface:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jXafEcV2Jk
cr
Frankly, as a young man, I had to consciously work to shed a reflexive sympathy for the mainstream denominations. Our culture is littered with positive images of religion and clerics in particular that may be what believers want to think is the best of their sects, but which it is doubtful represent any reality. Think of Fathers O’Malley and Fitzgibbon in Going My Way. Only on the premise that a particular sect actually has solved the found the non-existent, invisible, black cat of salvation could their crimes and transgressions against decency be in any way justified. I don’t understand how an atheist could swallow that propaganda (which let’s remember is a Catholic term), and recommend the Catholic Church as worthwhile for society.
Community? Don’t they have pubs?
Well, if atheism is just another religion then I suppose ritually gathering at a specific location to imbibe a revered beverage must count as religion, too.
While I would not hold it up as a shining example for many things, Mr. Humphreys may want to look up this place called “Louisiana.” Rumour has it, they transformed the religious geopolitical unit of community “parish” into a secular geopolitical one. Doing so is not impossible; the religious component is not necessary.
Its not curious, it makes perfect sense. The baptism rule is unfair in a way the economic problem is not because its an intentional restriction, a “feature” of the system. The impact of economic disparities on school choice is not intentional, it’s a “bug.” Now if any Irish private school has a formal rule on the books that prevents people with an income less than $X from going to a school, then that would be equivalent and we would call that rule unfair. But absent any such rule, normal human beings rightfully place more blame on people and systems for the bad things they intentionally do, more than the bad things they accidentally or unintentionally do.
Yes, Humphreys’ comparison of religious to economic segregation was an extremely poor one. Your explanation of why is exactly correct.
(I will leave unsaid, however, that some would argue that no one really has any intentions. ;P )
Well we can phrase the behavior in a deterministic framework too, though its harder. The module of the brain that simulates intentional choice will be more heavily influenced by acts like “arguing” than the other modules of the brain (that don’t simulate intention). So even if we don’t strictly speaking have intentions, the sort of stimuli you use to change the two behaviors (humans promoting a policy of no non-baptized entry; humans demanding a certain number of bills be exchanged prior to entry) isn’t necessarily going to be identical.
Yes, but the single word “intention” communicates everything you’ve written and then some. I think there’s ample justification for talking about things that have or don’t have intentions, which is the lion’s share of the compatibilist position.
From my experience arguing about compatibilism on Jerry’s website, it appears to be like beauty; in the eye of the beholder. Every compatibilst seems to view it differently. Personally I have no problem with using intentional-sounding language to discuss physics, or chemistry, or biology, or behavioral psychology, but would not call my position on language use ‘free will compatibilism.’ But if you want to label it such, well that’s up to you.
What I meant was that we talk about the difference between objects that show intention and objects that don’t because this difference is real. Not magic, not dualistic, but empirically undeniable. I think “free will” is an ok term for this difference but I wouldn’t be averse to using a different term if I felt it was really necessary (another argument entirely). I think the language of choice and intent exists because its referents exist (admittedly at a higher, emergent level, but that’s ok! Water wet and all that).
Anyhoo, that’s enough FW for me.
Humprheys fails to connect how science is where morality can be developed and strengthened through empirical observations.
Religion’s greatest scientific advance has been a set of ludicrous creation myths and Humprheys is suggesting we form a dialogue with benighted soothsayers? He needs to think about how dark his world would be without science.
In the United States, I would say evangelical Christianity is the most harmful.
Since we have no unit of measure to compare quantity of harm, arguments as which causes more harm are not particularly enlightening. Can’t we just get rid of both of them?
Jerry makes this point more strongly, but I’ll repeat for emphasis: it’s perfectly possible for atheists and secular religious denominations or people to work together towards making secular government support services better. You can believe in God and also believe in separation of church and state. The problem here appears to be that the RCC in Ireland does not want schools or other government services to be secular. They are not merely allies with differences, they are simply not allies. Even so, I would bet there are a few local priests out there who are secularists, and yes its perfectly reasonable for atheists to work with them.
Indeed. Many theists seem to think secularism is all about stamping out religion wherever it is found. That’s not even close to true. Secularism works in everyone’s favor, even (especially?) theists.
Agree. And I’ll also point out the hypocrisy (or perhaps blindness) of assuming that the only way that the religious and nonreligious can ‘work together’ on common causes is by both sides agreeing to stop arguing over the truth … permanently.
Really? It’s one way — or the other? Because … why? The Little People simply aren’t capable of changing their minds? They aren’t as wise and strong and thoughtful as atheists, so let’s respect their disabilities, resign ourselves to the status quo, and stop making all those hasty assumptions regarding human equality.
I don’t see how the religious are going to simultaneously identify with their beliefs and push truth off to the side … permanently.
Yes! Religious liberals and atheists probably have much more in common than religious liberals and religious conservatives. It’s a shame that a silly thing like god gets in the way & ruins everything!
Hi Jerry, this is Atheist Ireland response to Joe Humphreys
http://www.teachdontpreach.ie/2016/01/give-us-this-day-our-human-rights/
Here, Humphreys, let me fix that for you:
Why Irish Catholics Think They Need Irish Atheists To Be As Misinformed As They Are
Catholicism offers not community, but a trite and brittle handle on togetherness. Love your neighbour as well as yourself? Catholics can only love themselves if they identify as the sin-laden kids of god and if they capitulate to its power. Even if the Catholic god existed, this perspective is psychologically unhealthy.
Tending and regulating emotions, thoughts, and behaviour is a joy, a secular one. Once you can do this, you have a solid basis from which to connect to others. Nobody has to love anybody in order to achieve peace, however we do have to respect personal boundaries to pull off community, an ability of which the Catholic church is shamefully ignorant. Confession? How invasive!
Open systems support virtuous circles. The Catholic one is closed, meagre, and a vicious, failed one, not because there is no god, but because its boorish, crude, and cruel perspective no longer can hold a candle to neuroscience and psychology.
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I agree with Ant. +1
I too was thinking upon the claims of “community”.
That would be “egalitarian” in the sense of “stratified” :
1) God
2) Jeebus and other members of the trinity, fighting it out with Mary.
3) Angels, saints and Pope (he doesn’t talk much about the competition ; the rest are as silent as the dead or non-existent).
4)The rest of the priesthood, ranked.
5) Good, compliant, saved people ; i.e. Catholics.
6) Unbaptised babies.
7) Bad and innocent people who are going to fry in hell for eternity (unbaptized babies, followers of a different religion)
I’m not sure if they have an explicit circle for atheists. In fact, I got this far before I realised I was channelling Dante, and I forget which circle he put the atheists on. But you can be sure that we’re down there. Well down there.
This is some strange new use of the word “egalitarian” with which I am unfamiliar.
I would be willing to consider a ‘take the bad with the good’ argument, only the bad includes the very very bad and the good is… the … occasional … warm fuzzy feeling??
Sorry I ruined your life forever, kid. Now, pull your pants up. Well, she should not have had unprotected sex. Too bad she died from an ectopic pregnancy. And remember, people, there is a church bake sale next week. We will of course be taking donations.
Yes. Hitchens’ challenge is apropos: what good does religion do that cannot be accomplished without it?
I regularly use biocides at work, when I want to preserve a sample from biological contamination. What we normally use these days are things that wreck the metabolism of ATP, IIRC. Poisons absolutely everything.
Potentially, religion has the possibility of replacing those nasty chemicals. A sort of, if you like, non-homeopathic, organic and spiritually-acceptable substitute biocide.
Somehow, I fear I won’t get a budget line to investigate this proposal.
I think we already have plenty of evidence that religion can indeed function as an effective biocide.
What bollocks, even on the most basic level.
There is a slim chance that someone from a socio-economicly deprived background can make capitalism work for them. No matter how decent Francis is, for a Pope, The Church is never going to work for someone who doesn’t fit into their mores.
“What’s not to like about Jesus’s anti-capitalism?”
Well, it’s just me, but I have great difficulty finding anything not to like about it. I also have difficulty finding much fault with the Church’s preferential position on the poor. (Whether the Church “walks that talk” is a different matter.) Seems that’s a charitable position one could reasonably and appropriately take regardless of ones (ir-)religion.
I once gingerly mentioned that to the president of a division of a NYC-based media conglomerate, to the effect that perhaps a member of the top 1% monied elite might sleep a little better at night as a result of a sliver of his bounteous income being diverted on behalf of a destitute family. He vigorously shook his head in opposition.
Here in the Land of the Fee and the Home of the Craven, I wonder if the day will come when even parents start referring to their offspring as “human resources” or “social capital” or units of “human capital.”
So many American Catholics are secular Catholics similarly to secular Jews and their political stances, for the most part, mesh. Both groups hate religious and ethnic discrimination and the Catholic Church was the rare Southern white institution that was on the right side in the 1960s on civil rights. Contrast that with Jerry Falwell et al. They are the worst in my opinion.
” the parish remains a key identifier around which sports clubs, fundraising efforts, political campaigning and educational activities typically revolve.”
When I lived in Ireland, my sports club did decidedly NOT revolve around the parish – we had a hardy group of 30 lads for whom the best thing on a Sunday morning was a 4-hour spin (bike ride) in a freezing drizzle.
The GAA (Gaelic Athletic Association) which runs all the Gaelic Football and Hurling in Ireland, is organised at parish club level. It’s the single biggest sporting organisation in Ireland by a long shot and almost certianly what Humphreys is referring to. While deeply enmeshed in Irsh nationalism and Irish Catholicism, ironically it would (and does) maake a workable substitute for the Church for all the social reasons Humphreys describes.
So, nothing like a seminary with morning cold showers then?
Humphreys’ “whataboutery” re. private & Catholic schools in Ireland is complete bunk too. There are very very few truly private schools in Ireland. The concept has been consistently nibbled away at since the founding of the state. Most these days are pre-university exam preparation schools. The Church still controls 90% of Irish publicly funded schools. Private schools discriminate by wealth of course, but if you can’t get in there are always public schools to go to in the area. Good luck finding a local school if you are not Catholic.
I have worked (as a volunteer) with Catholics, including clergy, on various projects related to economic justice and so forth. I think they are often right about these things and the differences are minor. I also sort of understand why the older members are still around; sunk costs on priest (as opposed to social work, say) training, etc. But what I don’t understand is why there are still many young people taking part. I think it is because there are so few secular organizations (like this one was, despite being founded by a priest) doing this sort of thing, so it wins by default. There is also one tiny advantage to having clergy around, too: people take them seriously about moral matters, even if in general I would say that this is dangerous for all the reasons we discuss on this site. This does allow them “into” places where perhaps otherwise they would not be able to go (e.g., in Central America) but this is, I hope, in the limit, overcomeable.
IOW, Marx was right about opiates in various ways.
Hi Gerry and Co,
If I may have the opportunity to reply to some of these comments, can I say, first of all, I welcome constructive criticism and there are a number of interesting points raised here – several of which I agree with.
Regarding the piece I wrote in The Irish Times, it followed a number of previous articles which I’ve written strongly criticising the Catholic Church’s role in education, calling for and end to the “Catholic first” admissions policy in their schools, and exposing elements of hypocrisy in the church’s educational policy.
I’ve given a detailed response on my own blog here (joehumphreys.com) but, in short, I wrote the piece to try to advance the debate over school patronage which has gone nowhere over the past five years, despite various initiatives, consultations and (half-baked) reforms.
Firstly, I thought it would be a useful public statement to make, as an atheist, that there are aspects of religion (specifically Christianity) that I respect. This is my sincerely held belief, and I think it’s no harm demonstrating to Catholics (who can portray atheists very negatively) that they need not see atheism in Irish society as a threat. (You can argue that I am “appeasing” too much in the article, and not adequately reflecting the way in which Catholics are unreasonably hostile to atheists but I’ll park that issue – or at least leave it for other people to judge.)
A crucial point here, relating to the schools issue in Ireland, is that nothing will change unless Catholics themselves start to see reform as something to their benefit. Because of Ireland’s written constitution (again see joehumphreys.com for more details), it is likely to take a referendum to force a change in school admissions policies, and to make it illegal for Catholic schools to demand a baptism certificate on entry. Such a referendum will only win if a majority of the (still) largely Catholic population vote in favour.
Ireland last year passed a referendum legalising same-sex marriage, and the campaign was won in part by convincing Irish religious conservatives that a Yes vote was not just the right thing to do but the Christian thing to do.
But there was a bigger issue I was seeking to explore in the piece, for which I have no definite answer, and that is: How do we create communities that can guarantee our harmonious coexistence in the future?
The headline may have given a mistaken impression that I believe religious communities are necessary. What I stated in the piece, rather, was that such communities are a fact of life (and unlikely to disappear) and I posed the question:
“Should one try to dismantle existing community bonds in order to build a better and fairer society? Or should one work with church bodies to try to achieve the same goal? From a practical viewpoint, the latter seems much wiser.”
I’m uncomfortable with the notion of segregation in Irish society – or indeed any society – on grounds of religious belief/non-belief, and incidentally I don’t think it benefits what might be called the secular cause. I wonder, for example, are voters in US hostile to the notion of an atheist President for the very reason that most voters do not encounter, or engage with, atheists in their communities.
A challenge for Irish society is how to avoid greater segregation as it becomes more diverse.
Hi Goe!
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Oh you!
Dear Geo,
This line is where you have gone badly wrong …
“A crucial point here, relating to the schools issue in Ireland, is that nothing will change unless Catholics themselves start to see reform as something to their benefit.”
What we are seeking is for our Human Rights to be respected. You manifestly have no understanding of Human Rights if you feel that respect for same requires us to seek the permission and cooperation of our neighbours. The very point of Human Rights law is to protect minorities from the tyranny of the majority.
John.