Daily Archives: December 7, 2019

New atheists attract a lot of hostility but, if youre not one yourself, consider how infuriating it must be to see church worship on the rise internationally despite all the scientific evidence undermining religious superstition.

Atheists of whom I count myself as one look upon stubbornly high rates of supernatural belief (84 per cent of the worlds population identifies with a religious group) a bit like the way liberals look upon the electoral success of Donald Trump in the United States. It really is hard to fathom!

Just why has atheism been slow to catch on?

Friedrich Nietzsche famously proclaimed God is dead in 1882. Yet, writes historian Alec Ryrie: The dominant religious story of the past two centuries is surely the spread of Christianity and Islam around the globe, a race in which those two hares have so far outpaced the secular tortoise that it takes a considerable act of faith to believe it might one day catch up.

In a new book, Unbelievers: An Emotional History of Doubt, Ryrie explores the forces behind Western secularism. He reminds us immediately what a unique cultural project it is, describing secularism as an offshoot of European Christendom, and in particular . . . of the Protestant world.

Unbelief has been carried along two main streams, he argues. One is of anger at among other things the hypocrisy of priests and preachers and the abuses of religious leaders. The other is of anxiety, whereby earnest faith turns in on itself and discovers an empty hole.

Though Ryrie is a Church of England lay minister, he is generous to followers of all religions and none. Carefully tracing the many manifestations of unbelief from Martin Luther to Father Ted, he highlights how dissent and doubt are cornerstones of the Christian experience just as much as faith. In the process, he hints at an inherent weakness in the atheist stance.

Christianity may have been its own gravedigger as sociologist Peter Berger once claimed but unbelief also seems to contradict itself because lack of faith is impossible to sustain entirely. Ryrie discusses further as this weeks Unthinkable guest.

Why has atheism been slow to catch on?

Actual hard atheism the assertion that there is no God isnt just, in its own way, an act of faith, and a combative stance. Its also an empty position, an assertion of what someone doesnt believe, not what they do believe.

Some very successful philosophies Marxism for much of the 20th century, humanism in our own times include or can include atheism, but they catch on, or dont, for their own reasons, not chiefly because of their religious or anti-religious claims. In other words, atheism can certainly catch on but only if its tied up with a belief or value system that has its own appeal. The same is of course true of the assertion that there is a God.

On its own, the question of whether or not there is a God is like whether or not parallel universes exist: interesting in the abstract, but not very relevant to daily life. It becomes relevant when its part of a wider system like Marxism, or Christianity.

You highlight the way in which Christianity has always had a current of unbelief. Can you be both a Christian and an unbeliever?

To be a Christian you have to be an unbeliever: you reject belief in Ganesh, Maoism, the Force and lots more. The Bible is full of searing, scornful unbelief directed at the idols of the Gentiles. So to be a Christian or a Jew, or a Muslim, or many other things you have to believe some things and disbelieve others.

Faith has never meant believing anything you are told. The trick is to know what, and why. Most of the great moments of renewal and revival in Christian history have been spurred by unbelief by some Christians refusal to accept the easy answers they were being given, but instead to keep searching.

Were supposed to build houses on rock, and how do you know that youre building on rock unless you do some digging first?

You note that mockery of religion by unbelievers tends to be targeted not at God himself, but his earthly representatives. Should believers view ridicule of their religion as a kind of constructive feedback?

Yes! Churches often perhaps usually deserve it, for the simple reason that they consist of human beings. It seems to me that the appropriate Christian response to mockery is neither to lash out nor even, sometimes, to argue back, but to embrace it with humility and to try to deserve it a little less next time.

Whats the single best argument today in favour of Christianity?

I dont think its really a matter of argument, trading debating points back and forth. The intellectual cases for and against Christianity havent really changed much in the past century. The new atheists are most rehearsing old arguments. In fact, much of the discussion remains the same as in Roman times.

We mostly choose belief or unbelief for intuitive, emotional reasons and then find ways of rationalising our choices after the fact. Thats not a bad thing, as long as were aware of it. Its what human beings do, and our intuition can be surprisingly wise sometimes.

Which is to say: the best argument in favour of Christianity is the account of Jesus Christ in the Gospels. If youre won over by his moral authority, then the rest is just tidying up. If youre not, then theres not much more to be said.

Ask a sage:

Question: What are the odds of there being a God?

Blaise Pascal replies: Reason cannot decide this question. Infinite chaos separates us. At the far end of this infinite distance a coin is being spun which will come down heads or tails.

See the original post here:
Can you be both a Christian and an unbeliever? - The Irish Times

During a rally in Iowa City last night, Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren was asked by an audience member, What is your plan for protecting the rights of atheists and other non-believers?

Warren gave a roundabout answer that didnt really answer the question. Instead, she spoke about the importance of religious freedom. Actual religious freedom. Where theres no government discrimination against anybody based what faith they belong to, even if they choose not to have any at all.

Thank you, Anne. So it starts with the Constitution of the United States, right? It protects anyone to worship the way they want, or not to worship at all, and I think that is powerfully important.

You know, the way I see this is, I am a person of faith. I grew up in the Methodist church. Its part of who I am. I was a Sunday School teacher. But I see it as a fundamental question about what it means to be an American. And I think what it means to be an American is that, at core, we recognize the worth of every single human being. Thats part one. And part two, were called to act on that. That we are responsible for our actions consistent with that. That we dont take advantage of people, we dont cheat people, we dont hurt other people. And we do what we can to support other people, and to build opportunity for other people.

If those are the core values, right down at the heart, that make us Americans, I think that leaves us all the room in the world for worshiping differently or for not worshiping at all.

And thats the kind of America I want us to be. Does that work? Good. Thank you.

Her answer last night wasnt controversial. It wasnt even all that newsworthy or, frankly, interesting. But at a time when conservative Christians have so much power, its nice to see a serious presidential candidate address the topic of atheism without any sort of dismissiveness or revulsion.

A little more substance would be helpful. Id love to know how shed integrate non-religious voices into her government, or if shed allow faith-based groups to discriminate using taxpayer money, or if shed include atheists in any kind of religious advisory board. (Neither President Obama or Donald Trump did that.) Id also like some acknowledgment from her as to the sorts of issues atheists actually have to deal with right now, whether were talking about government endorsement of a specific brand of Christianity or younger atheists being pressured to say the Pledge of Allegiance or pray with their coaches.

Its not that I disliked her answer. I just know that was politician-speak for Let me give you an answer that wont ruffle any feathers. But still. It couldve been worse. Maybe the bigger question is how the Religious Right will frame her innocuous response as proof shes a godless liberal hell-bent on destroying Christianity.

***Update***: The woman who asked the question, Anne, tells me she wasnt happy with Warrens response:

I was disappointed in Warrens answer, however. I didnt hear a plan, and I didnt hear recognition of how difficult it can be for nonbelievers in this country. What I heard was an answer that was socially and politically palatable.

(Thanks to Justin for the link)

See the original post here:
Elizabeth Warren Was Asked About Her Plan to Protect the Rights of Atheists - Friendly Atheist - Patheos

This April, theres a conference scheduled to take place in Brighton, England called the Anti-Theism International Convention 2020. Okay. Fine. Its not weird to see local organizers setting up conferences with speakers well known to those of us who read about or watch people commenting on atheism online.

This particular event, however, is being co-organized by John Richards, the Publications Director of Atheist Alliance International, the organization that just hired David Silverman, whos been accused of sexual misconduct. One of the main speakers is Lawrence Krauss, whos also been accused (many times over) of sexual misconduct.

Those arent the people you want center stage if youre eager to bring new, diverse people into a movement.

YouTuber David Worley even asked the other organizer, Lance Gregorchuk, about Krauss presence at the event. Why invitehim? Whats the benefit to inviting someone with his tainted reputation to a conference like this? What safety precautions are being put in place to make sure attendees are safe?

During an hour-long interview in which Gregorchuk repeatedly insulted Worley for not asking challenging enough questions, he also dismissed the very notion that Krauss was a problem before defending his own alleged groping of women because, you never got wrong signals from a girl that you thought, she likes me [but] she doesnt like you, and you touched her?

Get ready to cringe around the 5:05 mark in the clip below:

It gets worse:

come on, dude. I did it. You did it something. Look, come on, were not the best looking guys in the world Did you know? Come on! When you were 15, 16, 17, did you get the signals? I didnt get them. I have no fucking idea what girls want andKrauss hes just in the higher limelight. Thats all it is. They couldve nailed me, you, anybody else

Im just being honest. If I dont know the signals, and I put my hand on your knee, what do you want me to say?

So, in summary, its fine to touch women who dont want to be touched, and women who accuse men of unwanted advances are doing it to everybody. (Watch out! Youre next!)

And then Gregorchuk sarcastically joked to Worley about how, if he attends the event, Im gonna put my hand on your knee. Im gonna rub it up your leg. And you can say what you want. (Hilarious, this guy.)

Incidentally, the allegations against Krauss werent just about an unwanted touch or misinterpreted brush-up against someones leg. The main incident looked like this, as explained by the victim:

They made a plan to eat in the restaurant at the Washington, DC, hotel where Krauss was staying, [she] recalled. But first he asked her to come up to his room while he wrapped up some work. He seemed in no rush to leave, she said, ordering a cheese plate and later champagne, despite her suggestion that they go down to dinner.

Then, [she] said, Krauss made a comment about her eye makeup, and got very close to her face. Suddenly, he lifted her by the arms and pushed her onto the bed beneath him, forcibly kissing her and trying to pull down the crotch of her tights. [She] said she struggled to push him off. When he pulled out a condom, [she] said, she got out from under him, said I have to go, and rushed out of the room.

Thats what Gregorchuk is apparently okay with, to the point where he wants Krauss speaking to a group of people on behalf of atheists. Thats also what the other speakers are apparently okay with since theyre still on the website despite Krauss inclusion. Richard Dawkins will even be receiving a Lifetime of Service to Rationalism Award from Krauss.

The Atty Awards [Anti-Theism International Awards] are probably the most prestigious Awards in the Atheist Community and winning a Atty Award will not only get you recognition within the Atheist Community, it will give you a chance to enjoy giving worldwide speaking engagements as well as Keynote presentations at many events around the world. The Awards will be presented by some of the most famous atheist on the planet and the winners will be invited to the VIP area of the after awards ceremony for photo opportunites and press talks.

Thats a lie.

An award thats never been given out before isnt prestigious, and winning an award at a conference that is brand new (or even one that isnt!) doesnt suddenly lead to anything as a result, much less speaking gigs around the world. Its like a participation trophy. It might make the recipient feel nice. No one else really cares.

In any case, if you want to spend 199 for early tickets, or 249 for regular tickets, or 699 for VIP tickets, theyre still available.

Wear pants. Bring mace. It should be an exciting celebration of reason and rationality and laughing off allegations of sexual assault.

I should add that I asked several of the scheduled speakers for comment about their involvement in this conference. Two of them, Aron Ra and Maryam Namazie, told me they will be pulling out of the event. Their names should be removed from the website shortly.

So far, I have not heard back from Dawkins or several of the other speakers.

***Update***: In addition to the featured comment below, co-organizer John Richards has sent me this statement on behalf of the organization, which he asked me to publish (emphases mine):

Unfortunately, my former business partner, Lance Gregorchuk, got a little drunk and had a train wreck of a podcast interview, which has had some fallout on The Friendly Atheist Patheos site.

Some commenters have interpreted his attitude as misogynistic so I have fired him; he no longer holds a position in the Anti-theism International organisation.

I am seeking an interview on the same podcast to make a statement on behalf of the company.

A-T I strongly deplores any form of misogyny or denigration of women.In fact, faith inspired malicious treatment of women is one of the harms that we are very much against and wish to combat.

However, as you are aware, to use Hitchens phrase, religion poisons everything; its not just misogynistic.

Many theists condone the victimisation of homosexuals, the denial of a liberal education for children, the coercion of donations under threat, the mutilation of childrens genitalia, cruel punishments (including death) for disobedience and the committing of acts of terrorism.

There is no doubt that, in the present world, religions cause more harm than good by instigating a spurious reason for division, demonisation and conflict.

Given that there is no evidence for any deity, we should not tolerate religiously inspired human abuse by those who claim power in the name of a god.

Consequently, I am not prepared to be intimidated by a few who have a singular focus, particular as improved female safety is a policy that we support.

The International Convention goes ahead as planned; we already have attendees signed up from the Netherlands, Italy, Germany, the UK, the USA and Canada.We already have many nominees for the Awards and at least two artists wishing to paint the portrait of Christopher Hitchens.

If any of you would like to make suggestions for our celebrity judging panel, please let me know. The task is not onerous, being done online, and the reward is a free ticket for the Banquet.

Just to state the obvious, firing Gregorchuk is fine, but it hardly resolves the underlying problems with this conference, many of which are laid out in the post and in the comments below.

(Screenshot via Facebook)

See the article here:
Anti-Theism Conference Organizer Defends Sexual Misconduct in Bizarre Rant - Friendly Atheist - Patheos

In our latest podcast, Jessica and I discussed the past week in politics and atheism.

We talked about:

The organizer of an anti-theism conference defended sexual harassment in a bizarre rant. (0:40)

Elizabeth Warren needs a better response when it comes to defending the rights of atheists. (14:22)

One of the most anti-abortion conservatives in the country just got a lifetime appointment to the federal bench due to Republicans. (21:02)

Ohio Republicans want doctors to reimplant ectopic pregnancies. (25:33)

This Christian man says no one has it worse in America than Christian men. (29:24)

New laws in favor of sex abuse victims could cost the Catholic Church over $4 billion. (31:57)

Three girls from Utah defended their classmate after a teacher insulted his gay dads. (36:40)

The U.S. Army is not anti-Christian. (41:59)

Televangelist Paula White says she cant abandon Donald Trump now because what would that say about her?! (45:59)

Wed love to hear your thoughts on the podcast. If you have any suggestions for people we should chat with, please leave them in the comments, too.

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or Google Play, stream all the episodes on SoundCloud or Stitcher, or just listen to the whole thing below. Our RSS feed is here. And if you like what youre hearing, please consider supporting this site on Patreon and leaving us a positive rating!

Continued here:
Podcast Ep. 299: The Self-Imploding Anti-Theism Conference - Friendly Atheist - Patheos

Detail of a portrait of Michel de Montaigne, 1570s(Wikimedia Commons)Unbelievers: An Emotional History of Doubt, by Alec Ryrie (Harvard University Press, 272 pp., $27.95)

In his 1580 masterwork Essays, the French writer and statesman Michel de Montaigne drew a straight line between the Protestant Reformation and the execrable atheism that had begun to sweep through Europe. The problem, according to Montaigne, lay in the difficulty of preserving the average mans religious faith in an age that had taught him to question long-established Church doctrines. Once you have thrown into the balance of doubt and uncertainty any articles of [the common peoples] religion, he wrote, they soon cast all the rest of their beliefs into similar uncertainty, having no more authority for them, no more foundation, than for those [beliefs] you have just undermined. That Montaigne, a Roman Catholic famously skeptical of the power of human reason, should lay unhappy consequences at the doorstep of Protestantisms priesthood of all believers is perhaps to be expected. What is more surprising is that Alec Ryrie, a self-proclaimed licensed lay minister in the Church of England, wholly endorses Montaignes thesis.

Which is not to say that this new book by the author of Protestants: The Faith That Made the Modern World is merely a close examination of one alleged side effect of the Reformation. Rather, Ryrie, a prize-winning historian as well as an ecclesiastic, has broadened his scope to take in nearly 750 years of doubt and disbelief in the professedly Christian West. The continent-roiling movement commenced by Martin Luther gets its fair share of attention Ryrie is, after all, one of our foremost experts on the subject but Unbelievers has a larger story to tell, one whose roots touch medieval Europe and whose fruit still blooms today, whether or not one wishes to taste it. Because Ryrie has written an emotional history, to borrow the language of his subtitle, his concern is with religious unbelief as it has played out in the psyches of the masses across centuries. The result is not only a convincing rejection of what one might call the Great Godless Man theory of history but a stirring glimpse into the souls of everyday citizens, whose struggles to maintain their faith in a complex world feel all too familiar.

In Ryries telling, the traditional narrative concerning the emergence of atheism in the West has long given undue weight to the scientists and intellectuals whose frontal assault on God during the Enlightenment rendered religious sentiment increasingly problematic. Against this standard account, Ryrie puts forward a populist counterargument: that unbelief clearly existed in practice . . . before it existed in theory and that historians of religion have not only been looking at the wrong centuries but profiling the wrong suspects. In furtherance of this claim, Ryrie asks readers to imagine two streams of popular unbelief, each feeding a river of elite opinion that would crest with the publication, in 1670, of Baruch Spinozas Theological-Political Treatise, one of the foundational texts of modern atheism. As a member of a world-bestriding intellectual class, Spinoza is clearly worthy of historical consideration, and his treatises attacks on the credibility of the Bible successfully anticipated the arguments of many of this centurys anti-scriptural polemics. Yet like all philosophical documents, Spinozas work was fed by source waters. It is to those that Ryrie wishes to draw the readers eye.

The first such tributary, Ryrie argues, was a stream of anger flowing from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance and comprising an unbelief of suspicion and defiance held by women and (especially) men who refused any longer to be taken in or ordered around by priests and their God. Among the many figures whom Ryrie plucks from medieval obscurity are Durandus de Rufficiaco de Olmeira, a French merchant who was overheard to say, in 1273, that the doctrine of transubstantiation was false and that financial profit was superior to virtue; Uguzzone dei Tattalisina, a moneylender who told Mass-goers in 1299 Bologna that they might as well venerate their dinner as the consecrated bread; and Jacopo Fiammenghi, an Italian monk who, that same year, responded to accusations of debauchery by denying the existence of the soul. What all these men had in common was their hunch, formalized in Niccol Machiavellis The Prince two centuries later, that religion was a political trick played by the powerful. To deny the Churchs precepts was to reject an arbitrary authority governing ones behavior and to free oneself to operate in the world as one wished. Though Ryrie is quick to concede that religious disbelief rooted in anger was insufficiently widespread to become a movement, its existence nevertheless proves that the more complicated doubts that would arise during the Reformation did not sprout in virgin soil in which no seed of unbelief had ever been sown.

Where Reformation-era atheism did represent a new phenomenon was in its unique intellectual tenor, a quality that leads Ryrie to characterize it as an unbelief of anxiety. This second stream of pre-Enlightenment doubt, deplored by Montaigne in his discourse against Protestantism, was the unexpected (though perhaps inevitable) consequence of reformers tendency to make witty mockery of the absurdities of the papists, in the words of John Calvin. Because Protestantism taught that certain Catholic doctrines were simply too ridiculous to be true transubstantiation chief among them the Reformation undermined the ability of the laity to accept any irrationalities where religious dogma was concerned. Thus did the Protestant elite transform doubt into a weapon of mass theological destruction. In the process, Ryrie suggests, they stirred up anxious unbelief like never before.

Though Unbelievers provides example after example in support of this contention, two cases in particular stand out. The first is that of Sarah Wight, a pious young woman in 1640s London who made multiple suicide attempts in an effort to free herself from religious uncertainty, recalling, after one of them, I felt myself, soul and body, in fire and brimstone already. The second is that of Hannah Allen, an English teenager of the same generation, whose doubts regarding the possibility that she could be saved (There was never such a one [as wicked as me] since God made any Creature) led her to the very brink of giv[ing] up all for lost, . . . clos[ing] with the Devil, and forsak[ing] my God. While both cases are extreme, they nevertheless illustrate the anxiety and intensity of Protestant piety. Because that piety necessarily found expression in a religious environment scrubbed clean of Catholicisms institutional certainties, it could no longer be founded upon a simple, unreflective acceptance of universal truths. It had to be built on something else instead.

What that something else looked like in the centuries after the Reformation is the subject of much of the rest of Unbelievers, a tour that includes not only the faithful Protestants who overcame an unprecedented license to doubt but the Schwenckfeldians, Spiritualists, Muggletonians, and Ranters who were corrupted by it. Of the many post-Reformation radicals whom Ryrie examines, the most fascinating by far are the Seekers, whose utter paralysis in the face of doctrinal uncertainty led to the abandonment of any religious practice at all beyond a periodic gathering to discuss what is good for the Commonwealth. Like their spiritual heirs in 21st-century progressive Evangelicalism, Seekers came to the erroneous conclusion that the only way to truly follow God was to abandon dogmatism, striving instead to adhere to a supposedly universal moral law. As Ryrie concludes, and as many an orthodox Christian already knows, that may be magnificent, but it is not religion.

What it is instead is a striking ideological forerunner of what Ryrie calls the inflection point of the 1960s, when a newly muscular secularism appeared in the global West and a linked set of principles about human equality and bodily and sexual autonomy began to displace traditional biblical doctrines. To the extent that Christianity was willing to align itself with these new values, it could retain its place in the public sphere. Yet when Christianity and the new humanism were in conflict with each other, the faithful too often found that their humanist ethics [had] made their religion appear redundant. This is not, of course, a cheering thought. It is merely the most astute diagnosis of post-war irreligiosity that many readers will have encountered.

In February 2014, Adam Gopnik famously took to the pages of The New Yorker to declare that we need not imagine that theres no Heaven; we know that there is none. For those who wish to understand the cultural evolution that made so bold a statement possible, Alec Ryrie has written a necessary book.

This article appears as That You May Disbelieve in the December 22, 2019, print edition of National Review.

Go here to read the rest:
'Unbelievers: An Emotional History of Doubt' Book Review - National Review