Some of our ongoing atheism discussion here brought to mind an analogy that I think is best illustrated by a comic from Lore Sjoberg’s Bad Gods.
Punch line aside, the point should be clear. To argue effectively against religion, you have to be familiar with religion, and to argue it on a point-by-point basis means you have to ingest it point-by-point. However, disdain for religion usually equates to nausea about the whole thing, which means you certainly don’t want to ingest it point-by-point, therefore the theist wins by fiat.
On second thought, even the punch line is relevant here, because those atheists who do take time to sift through the sermons and the tedium to charitably recount the best theistic arguments are then urged to just chill out and let everyone have their own views, which (if you don’t buy some sort of strong Kantian argument for agnosticism) is at least as antithetical to the spirit of philosophy as theistic or atheistic dogmatism and intolerance.
-Mark Linsenmayer
One could easily flip the roles here and have the theist arguing that he has read every single atheistic philosopher etc
Good point, P., though the dynamic is different, in that religion (like fandom) is in many cases a matter of personal and intense enthusiasm on the part of the individual believer, such that if someone tries to talk you out of your religion, it’s a personal attack.
I suppose some people have a similar fan relationship with atheism, but that seems to me perverse. Being a fan of something essentially negative and reactionary? …i.e. being a fan of your own annoyance with what you perceive as others’ foolishness? While I can see atheist college students trying to inflict Nietzsche or Sam Harris on their religious fellows (and I say college students not because us older folks have grown beyond this, but because college offers a rare social environment where this kind of exchange actually happens), but if the religious recipient says “nah, I don’t buy it,” the atheist’s response is not “well then leave me alone!”
While my experience would tend to agree with characterization of religion and fandom as personal, I’m curious on what grounds you would designate religious belief as having special personal value, beyond any other type of belief.
Isn’t every belief held personally?
Ethan, I think this may be my starting Kierkegaard a few days ago talking.
Personal as in purposefully isolated from public (i.e. rational) deliberation per Leiter’s description: http://partiallyexaminedlife.com/2010/10/14/elucidations-podcast-brian-leiter-on-religious-tolerance/. The fact that a belief is held, or even long held or cherished, by an individual doesn’t make it personal in this sense.
Of course, many people don’t see their religion in this way: they preach publicly and/or will put their beliefs up to rational examination in public and think that they’ll withstand it (whether on deductive/inductive grounds or second-order grounds like Pascal’s wager or James’s argument in “Will to Believe).
Yes, I as non-believer can get irritated by being preached at, but that irritation feels more like someone is trying to sell me something or get me to donate to a cause, not that my personal non-belief beliefs upon which my fragile ego is based are being attacked. Now, if someone writes a horrid review of my music or this podcast, that’s a different story, and more what I imagine some believers feel like under criticism, like if Dawkins is saying jerky things about my religion than he must be insulting my intelligence. …Or maybe a better analogy is someone trying to convince me that my wife doesn’t really love me? i.e. it’s not their business, and I don’t have any grounds for doubting it, and if I did, then the question would piss me off more. I don’t feel like I have quite this relationship to my own metaphysical, ethical, or political beliefs.
As a college student I see people hold ethical and political beliefs pretty personally, this of course does not render your point invalid Mark. However, I have noticed a growing trend among my peers to be just as condemning or more so, at least where i’m from(Canada), on political grounds than religious. The religious clubs stay on the down low while the agenda driven political clubs take every opportunity to fill our eyes and ears with their propaganda. Battles between left and right, climate change and abortion(this one maybe be religiously motivate though) .
I can’t count the number of times i’ve offended someone with an off hand comment that differs from their point of view politically, Or the times I lacked some vague definition of political correctness that i was unaware of. Even my diet, the cloths I wear and my choice of transportation have potential to offend.
Anyways for me it’s easy to see how people take any belief that is attacked as a personal attack. I had a discussion with some fellow philosophy students, that it seems that only the non philosophy students who are offended by constant debate and argumentation and who are unable to not invest personally into their position
Hi, Marty,
Yes, we have the ability to set our boundaries of “self” to encompass different things, so I’m sure I’m entirely atypical in not taking most of my beliefs personally; given that I realize this about the self, I’m pretty ambivalent even about things that on most definitions are obviously myself (e.g. my own desires, goals, and habits).
I find it interesting that Kierkegaard and Nietzsche and folks like that criticize most people for not developing an authentic “self” at all, i.e. just going with the crowd and not choosing their own way, yet it seems like if that were accurate than people would be less and not more offended if you criticize these things that they’ve picked up so carelessly.
Hey Mark,
My sense of developing an authenitc self is that you become much less sensitive to criticisms or perceived attacks of any kind because you have already gone through your own questioning and doubt, examined it all thoroughly and forged a relationship to yourself that is secure, i.e. not easily damaged, confused or influenced by outside opinion.
We’ll be laying heavily into the “authentic self” notion in our Kierkegaard episode, to be recorded in a couple of weeks.