Board Post, January 26 2012

 

Regular Business

Don't forget to send in items that you want included in This week in The Slacktiverse January 28/29 2012.

The three sections of the weekend post are:

The Blogaround

Any denizen of the Slacktiverse who has posted an article to their own website during since the previous weekend post is invited to send a short summary of that article along with its permalink to TBAT. That summary and link will be included in the next weekend blogaround. This will help to keep members of our community aware of the many excellent websites hosted by other members.

In Case You Missed This

Readers of The Slacktiverse can send short summaries of, and permalinks to, articles that they feel might be of interest to other readers.

Things You Can Do

Anyone who knows of a worthy cause or important petition should send a short description of the petition/cause along with its url to TBAT.

Deadlines

Please email all submissions to slackmods at gmail dot com. The deadline this week will be 2000 GMT on Saturday.

Urgent or time-sensitive announcements will be posted immediately rather than being held for the next regular "This Weekend" post.

---

 

The Board Administration Team
(hapax, Kit Whitfield and mmy)



Comments

[Wysteria]

If I may be so presumptuous as to share:

[Mmy]

squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

[Brin]

My thoughts exactly, Mmy.

(What are they? *looks for clues in image URL* Otters. Yay otters! Yay Wysteria, who gives us otters!)

[Wysteria]

(Sorry, I should have said! Yes, that is a picture of baby otters. It was that or this picture of a baby lion being carried by its mom. It was a tough decision to make. o_o As you can see, I have now successfully avoided making it.)

[kisekileia]

Aww! I like how the otter that isn't kissing its mom looks like it's glaring at something. They're so cute!

Oh, and there is an adorable piglet here, an adorable deer and kitten pair here, and adorable little fluffy baby bunnies here.

[Lonespark]

Are we posting cute things? Here!

http://lovemeow.com/2011/05/foster-kitten-adopts-tiny-rescue-chihuahua/

[Deird, who loves her lads]

Don't have a picture, but my two oldest nephews are just about to start school - and have been running into their bedrooms, getting changed, and coming out to proudly display their new uniforms.

If you can imagine two five-year-olds, with new school uniforms that are rather too big (to allow room to grow), grinning from ear-to-ear with excitement... well, it's definitely my Cute Thing Of The Week, even without a picture.

[sarah]

@Lonespark: I saw that on Facebook this morning. Ohsofrickincute.

[Lonespark]

Awww, Deird, that is adorable. My 3-yr-old started a preschool, and she dashes around finding things to pack in her big girl backpack.

[Timothy (TRiG)]

Stop it! Listen to yourselves!

TRiG.

[Izzy]

Awwww otters awww!

[hapax]

Hush yourself, Trig.

Oooo's a cunning little otter, then? You are! Yes, you are!

[Ross]

Fwiw, Don't lick the Bunneh. They don't care for it apparently.

(Tangent: For some reason or other, I looked up once what the technical difference was between lagomorphs and rodents. It turns out that it's four things, among them, where they keep their testicles. Nature is _weird_)

[Froborr]

@Ross: That has probably changed. As I understand it, the differences between clades are no longer anatomical at all, it's entirely a matter of shared ancestry as revealed by genetic testing.

This has had some... odd results. There's no such thing as reptiles anymore, for example, and birds are now a kind of dinosaur. All (I think? Nearly all, at least) land vertebrates, humans included, are now technically types of lobe-finned fish.

[Lonespark]

Wow! I feel great now that I know I am a type of lobe-finned fish.

...huh. It makes sense not to go by anatomy, which can be misleading, but I'm wondering about the terminology.

[hapax]

@Froborr: As I understand it, the differences between clades are no longer anatomical at all, it's entirely a matter of shared ancestry as revealed by genetic testing.

I'm not disputing this, exactly, but as the spouse of an evolutionary zoologist, I'm wondering what authority you're relying upon here.

I don't believe that molecular phylogenetics is quite as undisputed in cladistics as you think it is (as far as I know, it's still hotly debated at the ICZN.) I'd be interested to hear otherwise.

All (I think? Nearly all, at least) land vertebrates, humans included, are now technically types of lobe-finned fish.

Kinda sorta technically true, except that "type" has a different meaning in taxonomy than in general discourse.

[hapax]

@Lonespark -- I *think* that Froborr is referring to PhyloCode, which you can read ALL about by clicking on the link.

While an interesting proposal, it is not... universally accepted, shall I say, among biologists.

[Ross]

Previously

Ross: For some reason or other, I looked up once what the technical difference was between lagomorphs and rodents. It turns out that it's four things, among them, where they keep their testicles.

But then...

Froborr: @Ross: That has probably changed.

This must have come as quite a shock to the lady lagomorphs.

[Froborr]

@hapax: Conversation a couple of years ago with my paleontology student friend and noodling about on tolweb for a bit. It is entirely possible that he is a partisan in this debate and only gave me one side. He's usually careful about that, but he has done it once or twice before.

@Ross: That was internet-worthy, methinks. *hands one over*

[hapax]

I'm sorry if I sounded argumentative, Froborr, that wasn't what I was going for.

--> insert standard disclaimer about "intent" here <--

I was genuinely curious if something happened that I didn't know about -- nomenclature is one of those aspects of biology that tends to lead to grown humans with advanced degrees yelling and throwing things and hitting each other over the head with blunt objects.

(not really -- but it *does* tend to feuds played out in hilariously snotty published "Notes" and attempts to immortalize one's enemies in the names of obscure species of fungi)

My personal interest in cladistics is the much less fraught application of stemmatics, which involves analyzing manuscripts by copying errors and variant usages.

That, and the fact that "cladistics" is just such a nice, woody sort of word, unlike "taximetrics", which is a shrill, tinny sort of word...

[gleomstapa]

@Froborr: As I understand it, the differences between clades are no longer anatomical at all, it's entirely a matter of shared ancestry as revealed by genetic testing.

The way I've been taught, modern taxonomy is indeed ideally based on phylogenetic relationships/shared ancestry. That doesn't necessary have to be revealed by genetic testing, though; for one thing, you can't get molecular data on most fossil organisms. Instead, clades are defined by shared derived characters (synapomorphies) which could be either genetic or anatomical. The goal is basically to organize life into nested monophyletic groups which include all the descendents of a common ancestor - which is why reptiles are problematic as a clade, because they exclude birds and mammals despite shared ancestry. I don't know that I would really call us lobe-finned fishes, though; I don't think we're fishes by any reasonable meaning of the word; but we are in Tetrapoda, which itself falls within Sarcopterygii, a clade definied by muscular lobes around skeletonized limbs and which includes lobe-finned fishes as well as other derived taxa.

Of course, I was given impression the debate was settled, so I may well be an unwitting partisan in all this. (Or, I guess, it's more complicated than that?)

[hapax]

Of course, I was given impression the debate was settled, so I may well be an unwitting partisan in all this.

@gleomstapa -- No, your masterly summation was my understanding as well. It was the implied rejection of derived characteristics (which some of the PhyloCode folks advocate) in Froborr's comment that threw me.

[Froborr]

I'm sorry if I sounded argumentative, Froborr, that wasn't what I was going for.

Didn't sound argumentative to me at all.

[hapax]

Wowzers, that Greta Christina post.

Umm.

Okay. This, I think, is the crux of the problem:

Religion is a hypothesis about the world. It is the hypothesis that the world is the way it is, in part or in full (depending on the specific religion), because of supernatural entities and/or forces acting on the natural world.

Well, that may be GretaChristina's definition of "religion", but it sure isn't mine. Nor is it one that would be acceptable in a higher-level class in any religion department I've studied in. It is, in fact, an astonishingly parochial, mechanistic, and yes, privileged definition of religion.

If I were going to use her terms, I'd rephrase it instead as "Religion is a hypothesis about the relationship between the self and reality. That is, my religion is the hypothesis that I experience my place in the world is the way it is, in part or in full (depending on the specific religion), because of supernatural entities and/or forces acting on my perception of and relationship to the natural world."

(That above is heavily dependent upon Tillich's influential definition of religion as "that which is of ultimate concern.")

Which makes her statement that "I am saying that, on this particular question, I think I’m correct, and you’re mistaken"
not just "I know what's best for you", but "I know who you are better than you do, I know your relationship to the world better than you do, and I'm going to replace what's important to you about it with what's important to me."

And, as the Tikkun article pointed out, you darn well better know very well each and every "you" and their world before you start mucking about with it.

[hapax]

Sorry, in case it was unclear -- the above was a response to this post:

http://freethoughtblogs.com/greta/2012/01/26/atheist-argument-racist-cultural-imperialism/

which was referenced in the completely open thread, and Mmy suggested any discussion of it be moved over here.

[Mmy]

Thanks hapax -- I was struggling at putting into words my problems with the GretaChristina post but you stated if far better than I.

One of my concerns with the piece is the degree to which she fetishizes "being right": My primary objection to religion is not that it’s harmful. My primary objection is that it’s wrong.

and then

I hold to the position that religion, on the whole, is harmful. I hold to the position that religion, on the whole, does more harm than good. And I hold to the position that the benefits that religion confers, the comfort and community and so on can be achieved without it.

She does not, however, provide any proof that religion is any worse that atheism -- although she does claim to provide proof of the harm that religion causes. However the only proofs she offers are a link to a book (which I am not going to buy just to see if it backs up her claim) and to a post of her own that links to a series of articles but, is woefully lacking in peer-reviewed articles that examine any of the polls she references.

I get it Greta is angry. But Greta is angry, to a great extent, about particular attitudes of Americans and some other people but never bothers to consider the possibility that the behaviour/attitudes she inveighs against are caused not by religious belief but rather the underlying cultures and traditions of different believers.

What I see in these two posts is weak reasoning and pseudo-rationality that rests on a fetishizing of the "truth" over all else.

[Ross]

@Mmy: Schoedinger's special-guest-commenter PZ Meyers just recently ran an article saying much the same thing. Though his position is perhaps more defensible (Not more reasonable, since it's an imho unreasonable position to hold) position that religion is wrong because it is false: he has decided that all religions are (accordign to him, provably and proven) false, and therefore they are harmful purely because it is (according to him) harmful to believe false things:

No, because the test is so much simpler than that. You see, scientists have done the science — a few hundred years worth of intense scrutiny and experimentation — and the fruit of all that work is a fairly good (but of course, incomplete) description of the nature and properties of the universe. We know quite a bit about human history, the makeup of stars, early cosmology, geology, chemistry, etc., and we can look at those 4300 religions and ask how many of them describe the universe in a way that actually matches reality.

And the answer is…none of them.

They’re all wrong! They all sound like the guesses a totally ignorant bozo with a desire to manipulate people would make, and not at all like the insights someone with a genuine connection to a vastly greater source of cosmic information would provide.

So how do we know that the whole category of religion is harmful or poisonous? Because it teaches falsehoods about humanity and the universe around us. That is enough right there. We value truth. Teaching lies therefore does harm.

I leave to other people addressing how problematic it is to start from the position that anyone who disagrees with you is an "ignorant bozo".

I'm given to understand that in a lot of the more atheist-friendly parts of the world, the majority of atheists aren't people who hold the positive believe that all religions are provably and proven false, but rather the majority of them just find the existence of gods uninteresting and the evidence uncompelling, but would not assert that they "know for a fact" that religions are all "false".

I've never heard New Atheists address that kind of atheist -- it seems logically like they would consider them to be "just as bad" as religion. But I've never seen that position espoused. The cynical side of me wonders if it's not exactly analogous to the way the dominionists consider most people who self-identify as christian to not be "real christians" when they're claiming persecution, but are happy to count them (as Useful Idiots) when they're asserting that they're the majority.

[AnaMardoll]

I don't know quite how to say this without sounding snarky. I intend to try, nonetheless. I hope this comes out correctly:

Since my religion makes no attempt to describe the universe, nor to make statements of truth about humanity nor the universe around us, I do not recognize my religion in the quoted statement above. And because I do not recognize my religion in the quoted statement above, I am skeptical that the speaker has in fact closely examined all "4300 religions" (a round number!) out there.

I mean... well, that is my opinion. I'm... sorry? I guess? Gosh, I feel rude saying that. I just think that this whole 'all religions are wrong and false and harmful' mentality seems to posit that the speaker has examined my own religion, and... based on their own statements I can't help but feel that they haven't.

There's a trope on TV Tropes called "All Animals Are Dogs", and talks about how horses, bears, whatever in movie act like doggies. It's pointing out an inaccurate perception in our culture. I feel like there needs to be a similar one called "All Religions are RTC Christianity". My religion isn't RTC Christianity. It makes no claims about, say, geology. To persistently posit that it does is... unfair, I feel.

Is it wrong for me to feel so?

[Laiima]

@Ana, feelings are not wrong. They just are.

But I agree with you anyway. Possibly because we are both Pagan types. :) I also doubt that PZ or any other atheist has personally studied 4300 human religions, and definitively proved them all false. He despises religion and religious people (that's why I stopped reading him years ago) -- would he *really* have put in the time, and studied all those religions in a respectful way, when he already 'knows' they are Wrong and Bad?

[AnaMardoll]

Thank you, Laiima. I feel better knowing that... I'm not the only one to feel so. :)

[hapax]

Is it wrong for me to feel so?

Well, if it is, we'll sit on the Group W bench together.

Serious question: was the definition I preferred in my post above similarly privileged, or does it work for your understanding of religion?

I was kinda waffling about leaving in the whole "supernatural entities and/or forces " part, because Buddhism, but even Theravada Buddhism doesn't *deny* the existence of supernatural forces and their role in the relationship between self and world, it just doesn't find them very important.

Of course, I'm ready to be corrected.

(And I haven't, for the record, a clue about the Dinka)

[Mmy]

Well Laiima, I guess Myers just knows that all those religions are wrong because, well, by definition they have to be.

Really, his attitude (and GC's) are offensive in so many ways that you get to pick your favourite. Here are two of mine:

1) I, as an empiricist find them to be offensive because they are bad (sloppy, illogical) empiricists and therefore I don't want to be associated with them

2) They are proceeding on the idea that there are, at most, a few types of religion and since they have decided that the types they are aware of (not to say they are well informed, but they THINK they are) are false then all religions have been proved false because, well, they just proceed on the presumption (unproven and therefore unscientific) that there are no differences among religions that are relevant to their argument about religions.

I find their attitudes as offensive as their arguments. They seem to revel in the idea of blowing up someone else's worldview. And their self-importance is mind-boggling. The place for people with different worldviews and experiences is to sit at their feet and appreciate their brilliance.

Damn it, I am an atheist. I have been an atheist for decades. And I am offended by their narrow parochial self-satisfied attitudes.

So Ana, go ahead and snark.

[hapax]

I will, for the record, note that the commenters at PZ's blog (I didn't see it at GC's post) did make one very trenchant criticism of the Tikkun article.

The author is not himself* Native American, or a member of any of the minority religions he cites; and the tone of his article does carry more than a whiff of appropriation of the suffering and oppression experienced by Native and African peoples.

I think he could have made his point better without that -- simply stating "you have no idea what function 'religion' serves in the lives of the people for whom you assert it is primarily an intellectual acceptance of a [wrong] scientific hypothesis; and you might do well to study a bit outside your narrow cultural boundaries before you make such claims" would have been a much stronger argument.

*the author is, I am told, transgender but for the time being prefers the male pronoun

[AnaMardoll]

@hapax, Team Wrong for the Win!

Serious question: was the definition I preferred in my post above similarly privileged, or does it work for your understanding of religion?

Oh, gosh. You ask one of the resident relativists what she thinks of a definition. Where can I begin? LOL LOL LOL. No, no, I will be grown up about this and not make jokes about myself, much as I am tempted to! *game face* This one?

"Religion is a hypothesis about the relationship between the self and reality. That is, my religion is the hypothesis that I experience my place in the world is the way it is, in part or in full (depending on the specific religion), because of supernatural entities and/or forces acting on my perception of and relationship to the natural world."

Hmmmmmmm. I might take out "supernatural entities and/or forced" because I'm still not sure I believe in any. No, that's not the right way to phrase it. I will say, "I'm not sure the ones I believe in exist outside of my own imaginings." (If I believe the the supernatural entities I interact with are probably properties of my own imagination and I believe in them anyway in this framework, would that make me an Honorary Atheist? What if I only believe they're imaginary on certain days of the week? It's just so darn complicated.)

And I might take out "natural" in "natural world". Because I'm not sure all religions would be able to meaningfully parse that term in the same way.

Maybe... my Relativist take would be...

"Religion is a hypothesis about the self. That is, my religion is the hypothesis that I experience my self and the world around me in a certain way."

Shoot. That's a horrible definition. I clearly suck at this. Probably the first definition, unaltered, is better than anything I could come up with. My perspective on religion is... complicated.

[AnaMardoll]

So Ana, go ahead and snark.

LOL, thank you.

The funny thing is, I am astonishingly sympathetic to their arguments. I am torn between wanting to read the whole thing as an I-statement versus trying to delicately point out that, ah, as much as I agree with them about certain FORMS of religion... like, say, the religious extremism that dominates USAmerican politics and tries to force itself into USAmerican public schools... well, that that's not ALL religion.

It's... it' like looking at a truly righteous cause that I wholeheartedly support, but then having to cringe when in their enthusiasm they go a little further than I'm personally comfortable with. :/

[Lonespark]

Ohhhh, coming up with our own definitions of religion is a wonderful challenge. I've just begun to contemplate it and already tied my brain in knots.

I think I would have a very hard time making any authoritative pronouncement about religion in general. I could do "my experience/knowledge of religion."

[Froborr]

I, as an empiricist find them to be offensive because they are bad (sloppy, illogical) empiricists and therefore I don't want to be associated with them

This-this-this-this SO VERY THIS ARGH!

@Ana: My favorite definition of religion is Ninian Smart's. It starts at the top of page 9 of Religions of the West and finishes about a third of the way down page 20.

The gist of it is that religion is a complex of ritual, ethical, emotional, mythic, philosophical, institutional, and artistic ideas, impulses, and behaviors that are treated as a singular element of personal and community identity--however, different religions and individual practitioners emphasize different elements of that definition.

He does point out that you can also analyze non-religious belief systems in the same way--all of those elements are present in nationalism, for example--so ultimately my definition of religion is, "Anything a person might give as an answer if you ask them what their religion is."

[Izzy]

I'm with Ana and Hapax and Laiima. Except inclined to express myself more bluntly, and with the profanity I was describing elsethread.

For what it's worth? Neither the four of us, nor any of the religious people I know offline, have seemed an iota more inclined to accept statements on face value, fall for con men, join UFO-based cults, or any of the other things that believing in something-greater-than-the-material-universe will ZOMG INEVITABLY LEAD TO according to GC/PZ/etc.

Extremely hierarchical religions where you don't get to question the doctrine? Sure, I can see the harm. But lumping every single belief in Stuff in with the FLDS and Scientology and similar? Meyers, go soak your fat head.

Insert snarky statement about Objectivists here.

[kisekileia]

Do languages other than English lump all of what we call "religion" into a single unified construct with roughly the same form as "religion" in English?

[burgundy]

My problems with the post have nothing to do with the definition of religion (a question which I don't feel capable of answering, and in which I have no personal interest), and everything to do with the inconsistency in her professed beliefs.

The post that Froboor quoted in the Problem with Proselytizing says that the goal of New Atheism is a world without religion. That doesn't place religion in the "marketplace of ideas." I understand her frustration in feeling that religion is off-limits from criticism; I've seen it myself that saying "well, that's my [religious] belief" is often used as a trump card that means you can't argue. But asserting that religious beliefs should be up for debate just like everything else is very different from saying that you want to get rid of them altogether.

I can think of few if any beliefs that I feel should be eradicated totally. Even something like belief in anthropogenic climate change, what we really need is policy makers and a critical mass of ordinary people behaving as though it's real. I wouldn't say we need to convince every single person on the planet. Things like sexism and racism and homophobia, yeah, I'd say we'd be better off if no one believed those things anymore (although I'm still concerned more about behavior than belief.)

But the reason I think we'd be better off if no one believed such things is not that they are wrong, but that they are harmful. What makes it so important to remove all religion from the planet? Just that it's wrong? Is the idea to expunge every single wrong belief? Or is religion special, and if so, why? What about religion is so bad that it's not enough to disagree, it's not enough to try to change some people's minds, it's necessary to erase it entirely?

So it feels disingenuous to say in one post that religion shouldn't be treated differently than other beliefs, while in another post presenting goals that do seem to treat religion differently. And if there's not a disconnect, if it really does bother her that much that anyone anywhere in the world might hold a single belief that she thinks is wrong or unsupported by evidence...well, that seems like a rather unattainable goal.

[AnaMardoll]

@Froborr, you are a delight to me. Why, you ask? Because this:

He does point out that you can also analyze non-religious belief systems in the same way--all of those elements are present in nationalism, for example--so ultimately my definition of religion is, "Anything a person might give as an answer if you ask them what their religion is."

...was precisely what I was butting up against. I cannot think of a "definition for religion" that couldn't ALSO be used to describe any number of other human phenomena.

(Though, of course, the fact that *I* cannot think of such a thing does not mean it cannot be done, Argument From Lack Of Imagination, and all that. But I love that I'm not the only one to have that problem. And a 10-page definition of religion sounds LOVELY.)

[AnaMardoll]

Interestingly (and then off to bed!) I wonder if the fact that religion is difficult to define is why one can get all No True Scotsman-y and claim with a straight face that Communists totes don't count as atheists because Personality Cult!

I mean, I kind of *get* the idea of, "well, they were treating Bob as one would a god, and God Gene and Memes and God Delusion and Dawkins because Jasper", but one is left with the unfortunate impression that ANYTHING can be construed as a religion, regardless of whether it's a question of supernatural forces or not.

Like, that whole Little Ender / Big Ender war in Lilliput? That was totally a religious war because it was over a silly ideology I don't agree with, therefore: religious.

Wait, what.

[Ross]

@AnaMardoll: One of the great triumphs of RTC dominionism is that even a lot of those who oppose them still accept their basic argument: that their particular not-all-that-common flavor of only one of the world's many popular religions, is the *definitive* be-all and end-all of religion.

I, as an empiricist find them to be offensive because they are bad (sloppy, illogical) empiricists and therefore I don't want to be associated with them

Yeah. It cheeses me off no end when someone like Dawkins, who by all accounts is actually pretty good at science when he's actually doing it, thinks that it's a logical argument to say "I am fit to pronounce judgment on all religions as worthless. It does not matter that I haven't studied many of them at all and even fewer in depth, because there is no value in studying them in depth, because, as per statement 1, they are all worthless, and therefore having studied them would not improve the quality of my argument"

[Froborr]

Yeah. It's like... I'm seriously concerned about signs that fascism is having a bit of a renaissance, have been for over a decade. So I read up on fascism.

Sometimes I wonder if Dawkins et al are aware that there is actually such a thing as the secular study of comparative religion, and that its findings by and large do not support their claims about what religion is, let alone what effect it has.

That's why Dennett is the only oen of the Four Horsemen I really respect.* I disagree with many of his conclusions, but he has clearly made much more of an effort than the others to try to understand what religion is and how it works and why people might want it.

*Well, that and the fact that of the four, his writings on other topics are by far the best. Dawkins' popular science books are decent but he's no Gould or Sagan or Asimov, Harris AFIAK writes nothing but antitheist screeds, and Hitchens' political writing is utterly vile.

[Froborr]

You know, I totally need to write something about Carl Sagan and what his work meant to me. I'ma go do that now.

(The upcoming Atomic Robo RPG, its creators have promised, will include stats for Carl Sagan. I have not been this excited for an RPG since Slayers d20.)

[AnaMardoll]

I am posting from my phone, in bed, with a cat in my arms, because I have to get this thought from my head.

Trigger Warning, Pain

I find the assertion that comforting falsehoods are automatically harmful to smack of privilege. I live a life where every movement I make is bought with pain. Tonight, the act of walking through my kitchen ended with me clinging to the refrigerator door, knees buckled, trying not to fall from a sudden onset of pain that nearly pushed me unconscious. I yelled in surprise/pain, but I'm so used to this I can't even cry about it.

I believe in reincarnation because without that belief I, personally, would have no quality of life. That is a personal need that is personal to me. I believe that the ballerina that I desperately want to be will be available to me in the next life.

Not everyone believes what I believe. That's fine. But don't tell me that the belief that literally gets me through the day is harmful just because it's probably not true.

And I don't mean to make this personal, to be all Screw You Atheist Guy. I don't mean it like that. If you want to work to make my life better, to eradicate my pain so that I don't need to believe in reincarnation to get through the day, well, more power to you and my grateful thanks.

But in the meantime, while I still have my current circumstances, don't expect me to accept on faith that all False Beliefs are Harmful Beliefs. Because in order to assert that, I feel you need to demonstrate how this particular probably-false-belief harms me for holding it.

[burgundy]

Ana, I am very sorry for your pain.

I am somewhat bewildered by value systems that do not prioritize human well-being. For example, there's this article. It doesn't really lend itself to summarizing, but I'll try: married couple, two very young children. Father has heart attack, followed by prolonged oxygen deprivation that caused significant brain injury. He lost almost all memory of his life beforehand, and is no longer able to fully care for himself. The children were too young to have any memory of him as their father. After 7 years of devoted care, the wife begins a relationship with an old friend. Rather than ditching her first husband for a second, they are all integrated into the family: guy #2 builds a strong friendship with guy #1, parents the kids, etc. After much agonizing, and with support from the extended family (including guy #1's parents), they decide that she will divorce husband #1, marry husband #2, move the family to live in husband #2's city of residence, and bring husband #1 along (moving him from one assisted-living facility to another). Husband #1 is perfectly happy with this. Everyone involved, it seems, is happy with this. All parties are loved and cared for and their support networks are increased by this decision. The article makes me sniffly.

But some of the comments to the article approach it differently. She is selfish. She is not honoring her wedding vows. She should be making more of a sacrifice for her first husband. It seems to me that they are prioritizing the institution as they understand it (Marriage is Supposed to Be Like This) over the well-being of the people involved. It's not about being happy, or being fulfilled, or having love and support. It's not even about better long-term outcomes: the children are probably better off having another involved parent, and husband #1 is probably better off because he has another person in his support network and his wife is less likely to burn out. Instead, it's about Doing It Right.

Some of the New Atheist philosophy seems similar to me. It's not about being happier, or finding a way to get through the day, or finding something that can help you cope with pain (or grief, or fear, or anything else.) It is not True. We've had several comments here, along the lines of truth being the most important thing. To believe in something that is not True is to not be Doing It Right.

Presumably they feel that there are alternative ways to cope, and maybe they think their ways of coping are better. But I don't see people talking about it that much. It's true that atheists find ways of dealing with pain and grief and fear, but I think it's arrogant and unfair to assume that my way would work for everyone. It would be especially arrogant given that I've never had to deal with really significant levels of pain or grief or fear. I never seem to see the people saying "all the stuff that religion provides could be gotten without religion" really engage with those needs in an empathetic way.

Because they don't seem to value well-being as much as they value Doing It Right.

[mercredigirl]

Trigger warning: dehumanisation, invalidation, ableism

@Ana:
Similarly to what someone (was it J. Enigma? Will? I cannot remember, I am very sorry) said earlier, it's along the lines of certain kinds of atheists positing that religion is (and the word in this context is already very ableist) a "crutch".

This is where I cannot ever agree with the type of atheists that Froborr's original post was about, because - why should it be anyone's business to arbitrate or decide or judge what other people need and value for their own comfort and wellbeing and peace of mind? There is nothing shameful or wrong with using something that's familiar and comfortable and to hand to prop oneself up and keep going.

[burgundy]

Did I get a post caught in the spam filter?

I will try a shorter, link-free version: there are people who prioritize things other than well-being. You may have a situation in which everyone is happy, no one is harming anyone else, people are better off than they might otherwise be... but some people will still disapprove, because it's not being done Right (e.g. non-traditional marriage arrangements, because it's more important to do marriage the right way than to be happy, fulfilled, and cared for.)

There have been several comments in these discussions along the lines of "truth is important, it's best to believe things that are true." And that sounds to me like people prioritize truth over well-being (or think that truth inherently confers well-being, even if that's not immediately apparent.) I see New Atheists saying things like "all the good stuff from religion can be obtained without religion" but I don't see them really engaging those needs in an empathetic way. Some of this may be that they have met those needs without religion (or don't have those needs in the first place), so they don't think it's a big deal.

But some of it, I think, is the same feeling that Doing It Right is more important than anything else.

[Froborr]

@AnaMardoll: I absolutely agree. For starters, I have to behave as if my subjective feelings and preferences are in some sense true, because otherwise why get up in the morning? I think this is why so many New Atheists are desperately insisting on or searching for some kind of objective, empirical basis for moral standards and preferences, because of the cognitive dissonance between "Only believe things that are objectively true," and "I should get up and go to work."

Not to mention, you know, there definitionally cannot be evidence for empiricism itself or a logical proof of the validity of logic, but if you bring that up, they start crying "sophistry" and "post-modernism."

(Yet another thing New Atheists and right-wing Christian fundies have in common: They don't know what post-modernism is, but they know they don't like it.)