The Concept Of Being "God Fearing"

[broncofan]

I think they're fireproof; they're not being burned at the stake. I agree the name is a bit irritating to those who have been atheists since before ever hearing of Harris et. al. I think the big difference is they're speaking out and writing best sellers. What decade was the first to have a best seller on atheism? They can easily be accused of proselytizing (as I sometimes do) but one can also object that they are merely and finally pushing back against the influences of religious fundamentalism that constrains our politics and stifles the lives of even non-believers. Besides accusing them of being a bit proselytizing, I also thank them for creating an atmosphere (at least here in the U.S.) that has allowed atheists to come out of the closet...not that we'll have an openly atheistic president, Congressman, Senator or Supreme Court Justice anytime soon.

I rarely highlight someone's post just to say one part I like, but this is how I feel. I am not saying there is no such thing as "new atheist", but typically the word is used in a lazy fashion as a pejorative. It almost has no value to call them "new atheists" if the only thing new about them is that they are more vocal in their criticism of the excesses of religion and more eager to express the value of non-belief in a deity. If the practice of religion were invariably a benign and personal endeavor, their aggressive expression of non-belief would be puzzling and unnecessary.

I've also heard some people say stuff like "the new atheists are extremists just like religious fundamentalists." I have not seen anything from them that is dogmatic or at all analogous to religious fundamentalism. They are strident in their criticism, but they are trying to identify problems that flow directly from belief in various doctrines. I actually think that many new atheists have in good faith pointed out that religious dogmas frequently interfere with the public's ability to engage in reasoned discourse on a broad range of social issues.

[broncofan]

They can easily be accused of proselytizing

I want to focus on this part Trish. I agree they are more solicitous and sell their viewpoint more aggressively. But I think what distinguishes religious proselytizing is that the religious are selling people on personal, spiritual benefits. They say, "believe Jesus is the savior (or some equivalent) to save your immortal soul." They want you to believe in something not because they are under threat from non-belief or competing religious beliefs, but for belief's sake. It is an aggressive intrusion into the lives of people who pose no threat to them, disguised as altruism.

New atheists are trying to sell people on the social and collective benefits that accrue to everyone from reasoning without constraints. Everyone who believes something will want others to believe it if they think the alternative interferes with their life. If a creationist wants intelligent design or some other dressed up form of creationism to be taught in schools, it soon becomes an imperative to identify the big picture problem. The big picture problem is that people allow their personal religious philosophies to interfere with policy, which secularists believe should be based on a rational interpretation of the available evidence.

[trish]

I want to focus on this part Trish. I agree they are more solicitous and sell their viewpoint more aggressively. But I think what distinguishes religious proselytizing is that the religious are selling people on personal, spiritual benefits. They say, "believe Jesus is the savior (or some equivalent) to save your immortal soul." They want you to believe in something not because they are under threat from non-belief or competing religious beliefs, but for belief's sake. It is an aggressive intrusion into the lives of people who pose no threat to them, disguised as altruism.

New atheists are trying to sell people on the social and collective benefits that accrue to everyone from reasoning without constraints. Everyone who believes something will want others to believe it if they think the alternative interferes with their life. If a creationist wants intelligent design or some other dressed up form of creationism to be taught in schools, it soon becomes an imperative to identify the big picture problem. The big picture problem is that people allow their personal religious philosophies to interfere with policy, which secularists believe should be based on a rational interpretation of the available evidence.

The goal of proselytization is to convert. In the case of religion it would be to convert people from one religion to another or (as in the case of large non-denominational Christian churches) from one Church to another. The explicit motivation behind proselytization is to save the the souls of those to be converted. On the face of it, it seems to be a highly altruistic endeavor. The missionary’s soul is already saved, but her mission is to save the souls of as many strangers as she can.

Insofar as atheism is neither a religion nor a belief the proselytization of the “New Atheists” (if indeed they do proselytize - they do aim to “educate”) could only have the aim to convert people from a particular theistic belief to non-belief; i.e. so sow doubt. I think the fairly explicit motivation behind the books and websites of the “New Atheists” is to undercut the hold of religious fundamentalism on people, our schools, laws and political institutions. On the face of it, an altruistic endeavor.

In my mind, the difference is that one is nonsense and the other a worthy goal. But I’m not sure if that’s the crucial difference between proselytizing and educating.

As long as the aim of both is to spread, I have see them as nearly equivalent. The only real difference is content.

Perhaps the best we can do is take whatever it is we think is knowledge and make it available to people, be there to explain it and explain why we are enthusiastic about it. That is a noble goal. Expanding your numbers: not so much.

But wait. By this criteria isn’t all political campaigning ignoble? That can’t be, because democracy depends upon changing peoples minds and gathering votes. Speaking truth in the public square to power. You see what a quandary I’m in?

I’m left (right now - I’ll change my mind in an hour or two) with one conclusion. Content makes the difference between proselytization and education. One spreads memes and the other teaches critical thinking. The difference between teaching and indoctrination is the former encourages students to think and to examine everything - including the conclusions and methods of the teacher - with a critical eye (toward improving it or even undoing it all and starting over again)...the later reinforces the rote and amplifies the meme.

It remains for individuals to decide what Richard Dawkins is doing, or what Pat Robertson is doing, or what Pope Francis is doing.

[hippifried]

Proselytizing is proselytizing, regardless of who's doing it or why. It's "Wayism". They're all preaching "THE WAY, MY WAY, OUR WAY, THE ONLY WAY", etc... Wayists sell memes. Let's face it; a huge part of what we believe or think we know is memetic. All points of view are up for debate because there's really no such thing as "ONE WAY". If there was, there would be no need for memetic competition, or memes at all for that matter. Fanatic fundamentalism is extreme wayism, measured by the amount of intolerance toward memetic competition. Content & motive really don't have much to do with it, IMO.

The problem I have with fundamentalists is not that they want me to think as they do. But rather that they want me to do as they think.
~ plageurized from a t-shirt I saw in passing ~

[trish]

Proselytizing is proselytizing, regardless of who's doing it or why.

Never claimed otherwise. My claim is that some teaching amounts to something akin to proselytization and some does not. My suggestion is that the difference is in the lessons: do they include self-criticism and illustrate the principles of critical thinking in general? A high school physics lesson on friction might just give the usual formula for friction (the frictional force on a body sliding down an incline is proportional to that component of the body's weight normal to the incline) or one could attempt to explain where that approximation comes from, why it's only an approximation, discuss its domain of application and have the students suggest other factors that might play a role outside that domain. The former approach is memetic and indoctrinates students into a set, formulaic way of thinking, the latter is self-critical and deviates from the one-and-only-ONE-WAY approach to the issue. In the former the meme is the approach and the content. In the latter, the many-ways idea and self-criticism is both the approach and the content.

Does Dawkins The Selfish Gene proselytize or educate? You have to read it for its content to find out. Does Pat Robertson's 700 Club proselytize or educate? You have to watch a few shows to find out. Both will of course maintain that they have the correct solution to a certain sort of problem. Do they reason you through the solution, contrast it with other proposals, compare it with observation & experiment, discuss what sorts of future observations would confirm and what sorts of observations would disconfirm their hypothesis?

I'm wondering if doubt isn't one the more important elements of an education. One needs to know how to doubt, test, refine and doubt again. Doubt is an essential part of real confidence.

[hippifried]

Sorry Trish. That doesn't work. Proselytizing is an attempt to covert a person or people to a specific doctrine or point of view. Noone's contesting the idea that friction affects a downhill slide, or that there's a way to figure out a formula to measure the effect. This is about tolerance or intolerance toward differing points of view. It's that egoistic contention between memes that causes so much trouble, not the teaching techniques.

The arguments over technique can become contentious. But most of that is short lived & silly to start with. I remember the big public argument over whether to scrap the "see-say" method of learning to read in favor of the phonics system. At 7 or 8, I understood what the argument was, but not why, since both methods were used in my class. It didn't last long. But the memory came back when I saw the scene in Gulliver's Travels where war was breaking out over a disagreement about which end of the egg to break. Silliness seems to be an age old problem. Common sense consensus usually wins out over such nonsense. But memetic arguments over politics or religion present a different dynamic because there's usually a dearth of factual information to base the most contentious opinions on.
I guess that's why we have this separate board. Right? Butt don't worry. Nobody gets left out. The general board still gets to deal with all the insipid bullshit over who's gay or not.

[trish]

Noone's contesting the idea that friction affects a downhill slide, or that there's a way to figure out a formula to measure the effect.

Not the point of the example. Suppose someone wrote a book about (say friction, or the methods of dating geological features, or how natural selection operates at the genetic level) and that one of the premises of the book was that one has to look at all seriously competing views - including the ones the book may be endorsing - and judge them on their relative merits; i.e. their explanatory value, their internal consistency and their consistency with observation and experiment. Suppose also the book examined and clarified the conditions under which its conclusions would fail. Suppose doubting, checking, testing, eliminating inconsistencies and doubting again is not just a technique of presentation but one of the main points of the book. Would such a book be an example of proselytization?

Is Dawkins', Selfish Gene such a book or does it fail in that regard.

For that matter, does your post against "wayism" support (by way of its content) a single doctrine: the doctrine of "anti-wayism?" Is "anti-wayism" a kind of "wayism," and at the same time intolerant of "wayism," or does it somehow escape the charge of proselytization and the charge of intolerance? I'm inclined to say the latter, but I'm not sure. You seem to be saying the former, or am I reading you wrong?

[hippifried]

For the most part, I find broad wayism to be silly, unmanagable, sometimes dangerous, & an infinite source of entertainment. We all have our own strongly held opinions. My post was merely an explanation of my perceptions. I try to keep the scope of my own proselytations & wayist viewpoints as narrow as possible.

I've heard of the selfish gene theory in passing. I think I vaguely understand the concept. But I've never actually read Dawkins' thesis, & probably won't. (Cateracts) The little bio info I've seen though, tells me he's an activist in the spread of atheism. By default, that makes him a proselytor. That's how you change beliefs or opinions in a politic manner. The term itself is neutral. We all do it to some extent. The techniques of the argument can make it more or less effective, but that doesn't change what you're doing.

[martin48]

Firstly, I think we need to separate Dawkins’s thesis as expressed in The Selfish Gene and his very proactive activities in condemning religion. For me, Christopher Hitchens was the far superior commentator on the failings of Abrahamic religions. I quote:

“Here is the point about myself and my co-thinkers. Our belief is not a belief. Our principles are not a faith.
We do not hold our convictions dogmatically. We believe with certainty that an ethical life can be lived without religion. And we know for a fact that the corollary holds true - that religion has caused innumerate people not just to conduct themselves no better than others, but to award themselves permission to behave in ways that would make a brothel-keeper or an ethnic cleanser raise an eyebrow.”

The underlying concept embodied in The Selfish Gene is very simple and could have been expressed in 30 pages and not 300. It is a pity that Dawkins choose the adjective “selfish” – as in no way did he imply emotions or intent to the inanimate gene. He was expressing a gene-centred view of evolution as opposed to focussing on the organism and the group. The genes that survive, that is reproducs, are the ones that embody the organism most likely to survive. It was not a radically new idea.

[martin48]

,,,,,