Board Post, February 2 2012

 

Irregular Business

 

As community members have noticed, TBAT has not been visiting all of the websites criticising Froborr's article to explain the situation. There are two reasons for this. The first is that the article has attracted a record amount of trolling in the Slacktiverse's history and we simply don't have time to keep on top of it and go around other websites as well. The second is this: the trolls have been coming in from other sites, and we felt that posting on their sites defending the article was simply too likely to attract more of them. We figured that the people who'd approach the article with open minds would investigate for themselves and wouldn't need an explanation, and the people who might need an explanation were probably too angry to listen to one anyway.

So we aren't going to go around all these other websites defending the post because we're tired and busy and we don't want to borrow trouble. However, we are aware that community members here may also be members of websites that are attacking us, and hence may be wishing they had an explanation to produce. So, here's our explanation: anyone who wants to has our carte blanche to cut and paste it where appropriate. We just ask that people exercise careful judgement about troll-baiting.

TBAT's position about Froborr's article:

A great deal of anger seems to have been provoked by Froborr's article, and many people seem to believe that it claims that:

1. We are arguing that anyone who tries to change anyone's mind is evil and, by implication, atheists should be quiet about their opinions.

2. Atheists in general are evil.

3. Greta Christina advocates the use of force.

We do not believe any of these position, nor would we publish an article we believed promoted them.

Why did we publish Froborr's piece? The simple answer is that we publish any article sent to us as long as it falls within a basic standard of quality, doesn't endorse criminal activity or infringe copyright and doesn't constitute hate speech. As the disclaimer we post to every article says, 'Content reflects the individual opinions of the contributors.'

Some atheists seem to believe that Froborr's article was hate speech. We didn't think it was, which is why we published it. As we understood it, its argument was:

- A person's worldview, whether atheist or religions, can be an essential part of someone's identity and losing it can be profoundly traumatic - not to everyone, but to some people.

- There is no empirical evidence that faith is always harmful.

- To aspire to a world where everyone loses their faith is therefore to wish trauma upon people who were not harming anyone with their beliefs, which places the aspirant's personal interpretation of 'correct thinking' above the wellbeing of others.

We considered this a debatable position, but not one that should be censored on that account - certainly not in a debate forum, which is part of what we are.

1. To address the allegation that we are saying anyone who tries to change anyone's mind about anything is evil - which is a 'gotcha' allegation we've had a lot of - this is not what the article is saying. We believe it makes two important points that render this allegation incorrect. First, that if a faith or non-faith is an essential part of someone's identity, undermining it is a more serious business than 'changing someone's mind'. Second, and more importantly, Froborr's objection is not to disagreement or discussion, but to what he refers in the discussion to as 'eliminationist rhetoric', which he believes 'a world where [religion] no longer exists' constitutes - again, more serious than trying to change some minds on some subjects.

Not everyone on the site necessarily agrees with this position, but again, we don't censor for opinions. We certainly don't think atheists should shut up about their opinions: frankly we considered this piece an atheist expressing his opinion. Not the only atheist opinion we publish either: we have a lot of atheist commenters, have published atheist articles, and are currently working on two collaborative atheist pieces, which will present a lot of different takes on atheism from atheist community members.

2. To address the other word that's caused such anger, 'evil': we felt it was strong language, but we allow greater latitude to authors criticising their own group than we do to authors criticising outsiders. We would not have allowed such a comment from a religious poster criticising an atheist's position, but we felt that to censor a genuinely-held opinion by one atheist towards his own fellow atheists would be against the principles of the site. Fred Clark, the original Slacktivist blogger, was often strongly critical of his fellow Evangelicals, and we felt that publishing an atheist being strongly critical of another atheist was in the same spirit.

We would also point out that this word was not specifically directed against atheists, but against proselytisation in any form; the sentence that includes the word 'evil' specifically states that 'any adherent of any religion' is in the same category as an atheist employing such rhetoric. As such, we considered it to be applied to a goal rather than to a person or a group of people, which falls within our community standards. We do not consider atheists evil - or at least, no more prone to evil than any other group of people. (In point of fact, our admin team constitutes one Christian, one agnostic and one atheist.)

3. To address the allegation that it accuses Greta Christina of advocating force: the article directly quotes her saying 'We don’t want to see this happen by law or violence or any kind of force, of course.' The word 'force' was used in the context of an analogy: Froborr was suggesting that Greta Christina's rhetoric likened religion to a mental illness and pointed out that curing a non-dangerous mental illness by force was unethical - which is to say, it was referring to the history of abuses in the realm of psychiatry by way of pointing out that allegations of mental illness have a political as well as a medical history. In retrospect we probably should have picked up in editing that this phrase was open to misinterpretation, but since it's up there now, we'll have to let it stand.

We'd also like to point out something about our site that newcomers couldn't be expected to know: we treat articles primarily as the starting point for a discussion rather than as a firm statement of position. The whole website in its current form was founded because the original blogger, Fred Clark, moved to Patheos and many members felt that they couldn't in conscience join a site that published anti-marriage equality articles but were distressed at the thought of losing the community that had built up in the comment threads (in which Fred Clark never intervened). With no disrespect to the hard work of the people who submitted articles, we started running the site mostly to preserve the thread conversations. When we publish an article we expect its author to be challenged on it, and the threads form an important part of the whole.

We are sorry that the article has caused distress, but we believe that its basic position is, properly understood, neither a call for silencing nor an attack on a belief system.

Regular Business

Don't forget to send in items that you want included in This week in The Slacktiverse February 4/5 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

[kisekileia]

Would it help for me to offer an adorable little bundle of puppy fluff?

[ZMiles]

"@ZMiles: I find the "personal" standard more restrictive than my "harm" standard--it would mean you can never argue against any religious belief, even a demonstrably harmful one, because all religious beliefs are personal. Given your example, I wonder if you mean "normative" rather than personal? But again, some normative beliefs are demonstrably harmful ("marriage is between one man and one woman," for example), so I find that standard more restrictive as well."

No to both. If someone's beliefs include something harmful like "gay people are evil" or "marriage is [presumably, a construct defined by Someone Else that cannot be changed and is] between one man and one woman," that's not personal in the sense that I mean it -- it's making a truth claim about the world. That gay people are a certain way, or that marriage is a certain thing. I was using 'personal' as a synonym for 'subjective,' which I see now was unclear of me. "I like chocolate ice cream more than vanilla," is a subjective statement because it says nothing about the world itself, only one's reactions to it. [this also addresses burgundy's comment about 'aren't religions personal?']
I suppose it's a point that there are some bad subjective opinions too. "I don't like ice cream at all" guy probably wouldn't be useful for my ice cream store metaphor. And "I don't like gay people" guy's opinion also isn't worth keeping around.
But my larger point is that your claim that a diversity of opinions is always, or generally, beneficial is not supported. There are a great many situations in which there shouldn't be a diversity of opinions. So your claim that 'the AA's who want to eliminate religion are wrong because a diversity of viewpoints is good' is lacking, because a diversity of viewpoints is not always good and you haven't shown that this is one of the circumstances where it is good.

Hapax --

It's true that people like Marshall Hall exist. But I don't actually find it good or charming that he and his followers maintain their wrong beliefs. He's wrong, and I wish that he were right. Which doesn't mean I'm going to be obnoxious towards him, but that's still my wish.
For me to want him to be wrong (or to be content with him being wrong), I would either need to:
1. Dislike him enough that I would derive schadenfreude from his being wrong,
2. Not think that the thing he was wrong about was important, or
3. Not think that being right or wrong in general was important
I don't agree with any of those bullets. I don't hate him, I think that the roundness of the earth is in fact important (the flat-earth idea results in one not knowing how a wide variety of things, like satellites or the 24-hour day-night cycle) work and thus increases one's total level of ignorance, and I think that right and wrong in general is crucially important.
(And now I'm considering a post clarifying my position on point 3. Because I think that's where I may disagree with many other members of the board, that being right and not wrong is such an important thing and one of our highest ethical/moral duties, at the foundation of most of the others, even in situations where it wouldn't seem like it would matter).
Nevertheless, I see your larger point that it is unlikely that religion will ever be totally eliminated even if someone comes up with some easy to follow, ironclad proof that it's wrong. Greta is perhaps overconfident there, or exaggerating for rhetorical effect. Although I don't think that the goal "convert the world" is necessarily made bad by the fact that "you will, at best, be able to convert most of the world, but some people still won't agree." I certainly don't think that Hall's existence means that the scientists of yesteryear shouldn't have tried teaching that the world was round, even though they couldn't reach everyone.

Re: accomodationism.

I actually don't find the distinction to be between pluralists/nice people and anti-pluralists/aggressive proselytizers. There are plenty of anti-theists and anti-pluralists who don't aggressively proselytize and want to bring about their preferred world only through consensual debate and removal of religious privilege. Greta, as far as I know, is one of those. PZ Myers is not; he'll take the offense at times. Similarly, there are loads of accomodationists who are willing to resort to hostile and dishonest rhetoric to sway others (although these actions are usually directed at other atheists rather than religious folks). Take, for example, Sarah Elizabeth Cupp (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S._E._Cupp). She's a full-blown pluralist, in that she's an atheist but says that she "aspires to be a person of faith someday." She's also written at least one book full of lies about how the liberal, atheistic media is destroying Christian America.
There's definitely a division between pluralists and non-pluralists/between accomodationists and AAs, and also a division between aggressive proselytizers and those that are content to merely debate, discuss, and fight religious privilege. But I haven't seen any evidence that one side has more of the rude people than another.

[Bruce Gorton]

Posted by: Kit Whitfield | Feb 04, 2012 at 12:53 PM

Well to start with, I think Ruby deserves an apology for what you did at Feb 04, 2012 at 11:53 AM. I mean, gee that is sure to make her feel less picked on. You found one comment of hers you didn't criticise, woohoo.

And if you are going to publish a hit-piece, stand by it being a hit-piece.

But for the most part just start being fair.

[Mmy]

@Zmile: One sentence stood out to me as I just read this:

I see your larger point that it is unlikely that religion will ever be totally eliminated even if someone comes up with some easy to follow, ironclad proof that it's wrong.

Because reading the bolded (by me) phrase brought two questions immediately to my mind:

1) What definition of religion is presumed in this statement? Remember there are/have been, without exaggeration thousands of different religions over the last several thousand years.

which leads to

2) how could you disprove a "religion" if, for example, followers of that religion believe in a goddess who is non-interventionist and may or may not be omniscient or omnipotent (those matters being irrelevant to their belief in the goddess) and who they believe will never manifest in any way that is empirically provable but who may be "experienced" in a metaphysical way by some but not all people?

[Wysteria]

@timberwraith J-theist has not, yet, reached levels where I'm comfortable signing on to any form of ban. So that would be a no vote, for me. There is being an asshole, and there is being Ben.

[Mmy]

@Bruce Gorton: And if you are going to publish what I consider but cannot prove to be a hit-piece, stand by it being acknowledge my superior brain and intellect by calling it a hit-piece.

Fixed that for you.

[kisekileia]

I agree with Wysteria. J-theist has been pretty bad, but hasn't completely stopped making actual points and hasn't been as egregious in his insults as some of the others.

[Bruce Gorton]

Mmy

Pfft.

[Kit Whitfield]

You and I obviously differ about what's fair, Bruce.

Personally I don't find it fair that Ruby has been sniping at us for months and refusing to suggest anything constructive when asked how to settle the issue.

I don't find it fair that her sniping so often consists of vague, unsupported allegations or rewritten history.

I don't find it fair that while she considers herself free to attack us, and does pretty much every time we mention atheism in any way - heck, she took offence at our proposing a new community article on the subject - any comment on her behaviour is characterised as a 'personal attack' and ignored on those grounds.

I don't find it fair that I've had almost all my spare time in recent weeks eaten up by having to protect community members from malicious and sexist trolls.

I don't find it fair of Ruby that she has nothing to say to condemn the misogynists or compassionate the assault survivors they trigger, but still finds time to accuse our exhausted asses of bad faith for the nth time.

We may have to agree to differ.

[Bruce Gorton]

Mmy

The article singles out one person, calls them evil, tries to invent a rational for that which we would never apply to any other situation ever (Seriously, under Froborr's definition advertising could be considered purest evil) and you say it is not a hitpiece. Shoowah.

[Anonymous]

So, hit piece doesn't mean the same thing as hit song? As in "something that lots of people like"? *confused*

[L. David Wheeler]

Kit: they've pretty much detonated the conversation every time it started to turn into a serious discussion that criticised any of Froborr's points in a rational manner.

In fairness, ZMiles and a handful of others have been civil and thoughtful, and engaged with the actual argument. But it's understandable that their voices would seem drowned out by two weeks of hostility and abuse. (Thanks to TBAT for everything you're doing -- I consider myself by and large a patient man, but I might've said "frak this" three or four days ago were I in your shoes, so it's a good thing I'm not.)

Ruby: It was unproductive last time, and I have no reason to think that it will be productive this time.

So ... what would you consider to be a "productive" response or outcome? I mean, people disagreed with your interpretation and characterization of the OP, the ensuing discussion and the motives you've imputed to Froborr, Kit, etc. Does that in and of itself constitute an "unproductive" outcome.

Do you consider responding to the question(s) I posted about accommodationism/non last night to be similarly "unproductive?"

I don't get this, Ruby. Granted, I'm mostly a lurker who reads most of the OP/threads (here and at Fred's digs) and is rarely bestired to comment ... but from this observer, it seems like a personal difference that you're allowing to color your interpretation of comments, threads, responses. As she has noted, no matter what Kit writes, you seem invested in inputing the worst possible motive, the most bad-faith reading you can give to it. And when she objects, and points out that's what you're doing, you characterize it as giving a laundry list of your failings. (Do you consider this post a similar laundry list? Because I can assure you, it's not.

I don't get it -- and I get that I have no inherent right to get it ... but I understand the general stance of just about every post-er, even the Abusive Trolls (their stance seems to boil down to: A. Nothing Froborr or anyone says in clarification will modify their interpretation of the OP; and B. respecting others' basic humanity is silly, hence their contempt for TWs -- not a stance I can respect, but one I can understand). ... But I can't get your stance. Because when I ask, I get silence. When Kit asks, she gets accusations. You don't owe me (or anybody, really) anything ... but I am, once more, expressing confusion at what seems to be people I respect talking past each other.

A question: If Froborr had made his post but without the element of "purist evil" (though it's since been clarified what he meant) ... would you still have considered it offensive? Or do you consider an anti-accomodationist OP by an atheist to be inherently offensive?

[Mmy]

@Bruce Gorton: Nope (it mentions someone but that is not the same as singles out), nope (it refers to a broad range of activities as evil), nope (you seem not to have read/remembered a great deal of philosophic argument) and yup, advertising can be, by some definitions, considered (in the Platonic or Kantanian sense) evil.

[MercuryBlue]

under Froborr's definition advertising could be considered purest evil

You mean it's not? MY WORLDVIEW IS SHATTERING.

[Mmy]

@Bruce Gorton: Mmy

Pfft.

Am I reduced to devastated silence by this example of the great man's "wit?" No -- my cat used similar arguments but was, I would venture to guess, far cuter.

[L. David Wheeler]

Bruce: The article singles out one person, calls them evil, tries to invent a rational for that which we would never apply to any other situation ever (Seriously, under Froborr's definition advertising could be considered purest evil) and you say it is not a hitpiece. Shoowah.

A thousand-plus comments of clarification and discussion and redefinition across multiple threads, and you still hold on to that interpretation of Froborr's post?

I mean, let's say I read an essay/post/article and react strongly -- and then multiple people, including the author, point out areas of clarification, point out that I'm misreading the implications, point out that I've misunderstood ... I don't dig in my heels. I say, "Huh. I didn't see it that way, but OK."

People ... certainly are sure of themselves. Which, I guess, undergirds the whole larger argument here.

[Bruce Gorton]

Hang on one minute:

I don't find it fair that I've had almost all my spare time in recent weeks eaten up by having to protect community members from malicious and sexist trolls.

Weeks? How long has this been going on? When did it start?

[Bruce Gorton]

Posted by: Mmy | Feb 04, 2012 at 02:12 PM

Lets put it this way Mmy, you are supposed to be a mod not a troll.

[Wysteria]

@Bruce: Froborr's original article was posted January 16th.

[Wysteria]

@Bruce again: Also, mmy is posting as herself, not using the Offical Red Mod Hat. That means she is not speaking as a mod, she is speaking as a member of the board. If she needs to talk to you as a mod, you'll hear from the big red hat in the sky.

[Mmy]

@Bruce Gorton: Hang on one minute: . . .

Weeks? How long has this been going on? When did it start?

Hang on -- you jumped into the middle of what was clearly an ongoing debate without checking out when it started and how?

This particular iteration of The Slacktiverse discussing atheism was kicked off by responses to the article that you are continually referring to (and criticizing). And it was published almost 3 weeks ago.

[Certainly Sylvia]

@Bruce Gorton

The article was posted 16th of Jan. Here we are on the 5th of Feb. Simple math.

[Mmy]

@Bruce Gorton: Lets put it this way Mmy, you are supposed to be a mod not a troll.

In order to even consider that post trolling -- you would first have to stipulate that your post (to which it was a response) was a form of trolling.

[Bruce Gorton]

Mmy | Feb 04, 2012 at 02:20 PM

I'm not talking about when the article got published - I am talking about the troll invasion you guys are talking about.

The first I saw of the article was Greta's blog on January 26th - when a commenter mentioned it. PZ's post was on the 29th, and Ophelia wrote about it on the 1st of Feb.

[chris the cynic]

So, hit piece doesn't mean the same thing as hit song? As in "something that lots of people like"? *confused*

Think of it more as the hit in "hit-man". A hit piece is an attempt at character assassination.

[Bruce Gorton]

Posted by: Mmy | Feb 04, 2012 at 02:24 PM

Word substitution is a troll tactic.

[Anonymous]

thanks, Chris

[Laiima]

TW: fertility and feelings about motherhood

@Ana, I'd be very interested in a post by you (or anyone) on Pagan/Wiccan 'stages of a woman's life'.

I have no reason to think I was infertile, back when that was relevant, but I did know from a very early age that I never wanted to have children. I've been a Pagan for 25 years, and I've had a love-hate relationship with the concepts of the 3 stages of a woman's life, since 2 of them are centered around sexuality and reproduction, in a way that has never seemed to me to be truly focused on the woman herself. "Maiden" to me kind of implies 'PIV virginity', which if so, kind of objectifies the woman in her own archetype. And since I knew "mother" was never going to apply to me, does that mean, even in my own chosen religion, I don't exist? My life experience disqualifies me from counting as a woman at all? Or I'm just a lesser exception?

Epiphany. Maybe this is a large part of why I identify as genderqueer. Because if all 'real women' are, or will become, or at the very least, want to be, mothers, what does that make me?

And then, last year, I went through menopause early, for no obvious reason. I'm in my mid-40s. I have no animus against older women (indeed, I've always looked forward to being one!), but I don't *feel* like I'm a 'crone', simply because any fertility I might have had is now irrelevant.

I'm not sure why 'stages of a woman's life' are centered around sex/reproduction at all anyway. Are the 'stages of a man's life' in Paganism (if there are such things) centered around sex and reproduction too? I don't remember ever running across anything like that, but maybe I just missed it because it wasn't relevant to me.

Basically, I think I, and other women (no matter what fertility status they have), are important for their own intrinsic reasons, not based on potential motherhood or grandmotherhood.

[AnaMardoll]

should TBAT continue to assume "good faith" with submissions, and allow the community to hash it out in the comments?

Yes.

My feeling with the blog-a-round is similar. There is no way TBAT can read everything through, think through everything, and link "perfectly". The people in this community, imho, submit in good faith and TBAT publish in good faith.

Anyone accusing otherwise, thus far that I have seen, is accusing so in Bad Faith. (I say that based on OTHER statements by the same people in the same thread on other topics.) Making TBAT and the community change our policies because of Bad Faith people will have no valuable impact.

[Mmy]

@Bruce Gorton: Word substitution is a troll tactic.

Or, in this case, it was a way of making a much longer argument in a short way. Since it was quite clear which words I was substituting and why you can consider it a lean, terse way of saying "I will not argue with your conclusion because I question the validity of your premises."

If you need to be walked through it I may have time later.

@Everyone: Interesting conundrum. Is it even possible for Kit or hapax or me to be trolls? We could certainly act like trolls but could we be trolls. Given the general internet understandings of the word that I am aware of I think that it would be almost logically impossible.

[Wysteria]

@mmy I think it is possible for a board to have resident trolls. "Oh, that's Bob, he's our troll. Just avoid feeding him ham and you'll be fine."

[Kit Whitfield]

And if everyone could just NOT FEED THE TROLLS, how much easier our lives would be...

[Mmy]

@Bruce Gorton: I'm not talking about when the article got published - I am talking about the troll invasion you guys are talking about.

The "troll invasion" is not the sole cause of the moderators (and other people on the board) being strained and weary. We got new posters almost as soon as the article went up and most of them were not aware of "board standards." I would be reluctant to characterize most of those individuals as trolls but their method of posting and the content they believed to be acceptable caused a serious level of disruption on the board.

It would have been easier for TBAT to simply block all these new voices but we spent hours every day ROT13ing and editing in TWs in order to give these new posters a chance to be heard.

[Anonymous]

@mmy, I have been reading threads closely, but I have not witnessed any behaviour by you, Kit, or hapax that I would consider to be trolling. On the contrary, I have witnessed a lot of hard work to clean up after the trolling of others and am certain that were was more work being done behind the scenes. I really appreciate the work you've been doing and wish there was something I could do to make the burden lighter.

That said, I do not think it would be logically impossible for a person who was the moderator of a board to troll (I think it is unlikely for a community to nominate a moderator that they think would be likely to troll, but the analogy that comes most readily to mind here is that I have been convinced in recent months that my government, which was democratically elected, is trolling us, the populace, and as such it is not outside the realm of plausibility that there could exist a board, somewhere, with moderators who trolled the commentariat. I do not think this is the case here. (It's also possible that you meant something entirely different by your 02:41 PM comment and I've misunderstood you).

[AnaMardoll]

I'm not sure why 'stages of a woman's life' are centered around sex/reproduction at all anyway. Are the 'stages of a man's life' in Paganism (if there are such things) centered around sex and reproduction too?

It's a good question. I googled around and found someone say they've heard Stag, Father, Sage, which seems like a decent duality in the sense that it retains the budding sexuality of the first, the parenthood of the second, and the wisdom of the third, and thus contains some of the same problems. Post churning in brain now.

[Izzy]

@mmy: Ooh. Good question.

I'd say no. "Troll" has an "is here to piss people off, and good for little else" connotation.

I guess you could be trolls on another board. Like, if you go to my LJ and start telling me how much I suck, you'd be a troll there. You'd also have had your brains scrambled by aliens, probably, but hey.

I think your Evil Ultimate Form on Slacktiverse would be, like, Administrator Tyrant, but that would require some form of strange radiation.

Although you might want to think about it. Those things have a lot of hit dice, and I think they get three attacks per round.

...annd break over.

[Izzy]

Also...three weeks ago?

Seriously?

...wow. Not that I doubt you, especially when there's proof available, I'm just...damn.

Three weeks. What the hell?

[Laiima]

@Ana, further complications with the 'stages' for me, personally, are that I am functionally asexual right now. Instead of going to my doctor, and looking for what might be causing it, I've decided to fully experience it, and see what I can learn from it.

But that has thrown a wrench into a lot of unexpected things. Like, before this, I hadn't realized just how much my worldview/Paganism was in fact entwined with the expression of my sexuality. So there are now aspects of my life that are totally different than they've ever been, so much so that I don't recognize myself. Yet I still exist, and I'm still a Pagan, interacting with the world and the divine.

It's actually been really *helpful* in teasing out places in my life that the patriarchy had colonized my mind without me realizing it. Now that I'm not having the feelings anymore, I can see that the actions I chose to respond to the feelings were sometimes perhaps not in my best interests. I'm also reconnecting with my own body and my own sensuality disconnected from sexuality, which is very interesting.

[Nathaniel]

For the one or two people who want to know more about the terms "accomodationist" vs "non-accomodationist" in the atheist community, accomodationists are typically portrayed as people who agree that god doesn't exist, but think that we should stay quiet about it. Lest we scare off our religious allies. They just wouldn't be able to handle us being out and actually asserting ourselves, the poor dears.

Some might argue this label is unfair. The fact that prominent atheists in the media who have this label attached to them tend to try to call us intemperate and counterproductive, rather than address our arguments doesn't help their case.

Thus if someone wishes to express they feel there is no harm in the existence of religion, it would probably be wise to find a different label.

[Kit Whitfield]

I'd say no. "Troll" has an "is here to piss people off, and good for little else" connotation.

I think there's a subdivision there which might actually explain a lot of the 'He's a troll!' 'Don't call people trolls!' conflict that's been happening of late.

Type A: a troll who is simply saying whatever he or she thinks will get a rise out of people for his or her own mischievous or sadistic enjoyment.

Type B: a troll who is saying whatever seems most likely to upset people because he or she is angry with them and/or what the troll sees them as representing, and hence wants to punish them.

When someone swings in issuing insults left and right, they may just be angry and inarticulate, but they might also be a Type B troll. Time is the only way to tell - and sometimes somebody is just angry and inarticulate but resorts to trolling because they can't think of how else to express their anger, and may swing in and out of it depending on how frustrated they get.

However, for people who felt that accusations of trollery happened too quickly: I'm fairly sure it was a Type B people were thinking of, not a Type A. There's mischievous trolling and there's punitive trolling, and the latter can tread a fine line.

[Kit Whitfield]

The fact that prominent atheists in the media who have this label attached to them tend to try to call us intemperate and counterproductive, rather than address our arguments doesn't help their case.

I suspect this is because the two sides are having different arguments: the accommodationists are trying to talk about how to treat people and the anti-theists are trying to talk about what to do about religion.

[Nathaniel]

\\I suspect this is because the two sides are having different arguments: the accommodationists are trying to talk about how to treat people and the anti-theists are trying to talk about what to do about religion. \\

No, not really. The self proclaimed "friendly atheist" Hemant Meta isn't an accommodationist, mostly because he doesn't believe that atheists should shut up and keep quiet lest we upset people.

Accommodationists don't argue we're wrong. They say we're mean and offputting. And that we should therefore shut up. Given the choices being offered are

Speak up: Soooo mean!

Shut up: Don't noticed because no one pays attention to people who don't speak up

it shouldn't be surprising what the usual response is.

And even if it were about how to treat others, accommodationists have a quite condescending view of religious people in order for their arguments to make sense. In short, religious people are so fragile that to argue for our beliefs in any shape or form, heck, to even proclaim our existence is too much for them.

I have a higher opinion of most for religious people. And for the ones that can't handle my existence, well, their problem.

[Literata]

I absolutely agree that TBAT should not be forced into tighter editing. An invisible process like that is inherently not under community supervision or consensus, and as I understood the TBAT agreement with the community at the time of the Great Divide, they were specifically supposed to function as empowered reflections of community standards. Even more than that, if they have to agree with a piece to post it, this stops becoming a community blog and becomes TBAT's blog.

TW: pregnancy, motherhood

Thanks for the hugs Kit and everybody. I'm a bit like Laiima in that a while ago I decided that ultimately I was not intested in having or in raising children. So now not having kids is kinda part of who I am, or at least how I live my life.

On the other hand, I consider myself a metaphorical mother when I create works, mentor others, and so on. I know it is most certainly not the same, but it's an analogizing that works for me.

I interpret the three stages differently than you do, Laiima, and that makes them less sexist for me. But I also tend to seethem for handy (although sometimes obfuscatory) shorthand. In the organization I'm studying with, there's some analogizing of Level I student - maiden, Level II - mother, etc. This is definitely not perfect, but it also means that women who are of very different ages and in very different parts of their lives are in stages that are pretty disconnected from biological or age-related determinism.

I guess when it comes right down to it, I see them as sort of like the Tarot Court ranks. The traditional ones have their own problems there too, but the idea of life stages -which may also be experienced nonlinearly - has been interpreted interestingly by some newer artists, such as in the Gaian deck.

Anyway, I can (and obviously do) go on and on about theaology at the ping of an electron, so I'll stop before I hijack the thread.

[Mmy]

@Kit: The other issue (at least for me) about trolling is the issue of context.

Context Type 1: There are some topics that are too laden with emotion, trauma and triggers for any behaviour that comes even close to trolling to be acceptable. At one point in the many pages of discussion of Froborr's piece a commenter posted a comment that the two members of TBAT who saw it as it was posted were both attempting to unpublish/ROT13/Trigger Warn AND republish it at the same time.[1] This type of comment is not common at The Slacktiverse but we had two such comments on the same thread.[2]

There is no definitive list of what subjects we would consider out of bounds to any comment that even approached trollery but someone responding "trollishly" to another commenter posting about a death in the family and or to people who are posting in despair would fall into that category.

Context Type 2: Posters are known by the body of their content. If a poster who has been around for years and commented frequently makes what seems an inappropriate or flippant post other people on the board are more likely to "give it a pass" not because of in-group favouritism but rather because other board "regulars" know that this poster is normally kind, thoughtful and insightful in their comments and so suspect that the poster is having a bad day.

Obviously first time or new posters have no body of content by which their comments can be judged, weighed or understood.

[1] And TypePad has some really "interesting" reactions when two people are both signed in as moderator and both attempting to edit the same comment at the same time.
[2] Which helps to explain why your friendly moderators are likely to vote this their least favourite comment thread of all time.

[burgundy]

@Nathaniel - I feel like there's a lot of variation in how people use "accomodationist" (unsurprising, since, you know, people.) For example, Ruby has said that she feels this space is only safe for very accomodationist atheists. I don't expect you to account for someone else's usage of the term, but for me, it implies a meaning different from the meaning that you're using. Because we do talk about atheism here, and being atheists, which means we don't feel that atheists should shut up about it, which means by your definition we're not accomodationist.

So it feels to me like a word that is both loaded and a little squishy in its use, and I am more and more certain that I personally will be using it as little as possible.

[Laiima]

@mmy, @Kit, @hapax, I don't see how any of y'all would be at all likely to become trolls here.

[MercuryBlue]

Literata: I'd say 'hijack the thread, please, do', but this thread's scheduled for termination.

accommodationists have a quite condescending view of religious people in order for their arguments to make sense. In short, religious people are so fragile that to argue for our beliefs in any shape or form, heck, to even proclaim our existence is too much for them.

Hi. I'm an atheist. Here I am, proclaiming my existence.

*watches hapax crumble from the shock*

I happen to think that, when hapax says she experienced the Divine, what she experienced is not the Divine, because I don't think there's any such thing as the Divine. I won't speculate on what she did experience, because I'm short on information and also it's not my place to say what is going on inside hapax's head. hapax hasn't got evidence that's likely to persuade me that what she experienced is the Divine, and I haven't got evidence that's likely to persuade her that what she experienced is not the Divine.

What makes me different from an anti-theist is I'm not taking her absence of evidence in favor of the Divine as license to go at her with both barrels and my certainty that she did not in fact experience the Divine. I'm not that stupid. My best argument against the Divine is an absence of evidence in its favor, and absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. But if 'accommodationist' is defined as Nathaniel says, then I'm not one of them either. So what am I?

[hapax]

ZMiles:

I think that the roundness of the earth is in fact important (the flat-earth idea results in one not knowing how a wide variety of things, like satellites or the 24-hour day-night cycle) work and thus increases one's total level of ignorance, and I think that right and wrong in general is crucially important.

Is it too late to go back to this?

Because it kind of interests me, and I think I disagree -- not in a "You're WRONG!" sort of way, but in a "Huh. That's different from my experience" sort of way.

Because first of all, although the planet Earth certainly isn't flat, it certainly isn't a sphere either. (I know that you didn't say it was, and I'm sure you know better, but that's how most people think of it.)

So, yeah, "Spherical Earth" is also "wrong", but I don't know many people who make a point of insisting, "No, no, no! The Earth is actually a sort of asymmetric oblate spheroid with many divergences in local topography and a large bulge depending on where the Moon happens to be!"

(I do know a few people like that, but I don't think anyone in this conversation aspires to be them. So, yeah)

The thing is, even people who thing "right" and "wrong" is crucially important are content to let the vast majority of people be demonstrably, objectively WRONG about a simple fact like the shape of the Earth, because the existing mental model is "close enough."

Which brings me to my second point.

I work with a lot of people who have never been more than a few hundred kilometers from the place of their birth. Never flown in an airplane. Never visited outside the immediate tri-state region. Have no need or desire to.

And for most of their needs, a "flat Earth" is a perfectly sufficient model. In fact, "spherical Earth, just too big for me to ever notice" is not only not particularly useful, it might in fact be a distraction and a confusion.

Which is not to say that they believe in a flat Earth. I don't recall ever having in the past couple of decades when someone said "Well, taking into account the curvature of the Earth...", to be frank. It simply isn't relevant.

(Okay, that isn't quite true. I had a patron come to the desk last year trying to figure out "Why and How time zones?" I tried to demonstrate, with my coffee mug and desk lamp, but either my explanation was horrible or she couldn't grasp the concept, because she kept getting more and more frustrated. So I printed out a FLAT map of the USA time zones, and now she knows when she can call her sister in California, and everybody's happy.)

I suppose that these unsuspected Flat-Earthers could be plotting nefarious deeds against me, motivated by their Wrong Beliefs (what? I don't know, but maybe it's connected with the constant disappearance of all my precious binder clips?), but honestly, in that case, it would be much easier for me to keep my supplies in a locked drawer and stop their ACTIONS, rather than to tease out the tenuous connection to their worldview and change their BELIEFS.

So does all that mean I devalue the Truth? Maybe. I don't think so, personally -- after all, "Truth" is one of the epithets the Divinity I worship claims.

I just think that if "True / False" (or "Right / Wrong" or "Real / Unreal" or "Correct / Incorrect") turns out to be so unexpectedly complicated in this one objective empirical non-value-laden instance, I haven't much of a chance of pinning it down when it comes to the amalgamation of hugely diverse, personal, subjective, normative beliefs / practices /values / institutions we lump together under the word "religion."

So I'm more likely to remain on the right side of the Wheaton Rule if I concentrate instead on "Is this helpful? Is this useful? Does this work for you?"

[J-theist]

Here's another reason why Froborr's attempt to portray atheist proselytism as evil is so completely wrong: in much of the US (where GC comes from), atheists are the most hated and shunned group.

Read this article where people in the "red states" are ostracised for being public atheists. Not even for proselytising, just admitting what they believe:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/d2239780-4d4e-11e1-8741-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1lRmwNf8y

Atheists have to live in the closet or face the consequences. Fundies hate them more than gays or Muslims. I can't believe it is so bad over there.

And yet Froborr *dared* to smear Greta Christina as an eliminationist. Loud atheist proselytism and rights advocacy is a necessary lifeline for people trapped in this totalitarian fundamentalist society. It's fundamentalist Christianity that is the eliminationist ideology, and Froborr is a victim-blamer.

It's the same logic as supporting gay rights as long as you don't ever see gay couples holding hands in public, or blaming Jews for being persecuted because they aren't "integrated" enough.

I hope Froborr's retraction of his article is going to include an apology for his accusation of "eliminationist rhetoric", as well as the list of "tactics" that he said GC would endorse.

It's hard to sympathise with TBAT's extra workload when they've published such a hacky hit piece, refused to correct it or take it down even when Froborr admits that some of it is wrong, denied at times that it said what it actually said...

[Kish]

@Everyone: Interesting conundrum. Is it even possible for Kit or hapax or me to be trolls? We could certainly act like trolls but could we be trolls. Given the general internet understandings of the word that I am aware of I think that it would be almost logically impossible.

I think any or all of the three of you could--speaking purely theoretically, of course--start posting in ways chosen to draw angry reactions at any time, and sure, then you'd be trolls. More-powerful-than-standard trolls, yet, due to your ability to gaslight anyone who tried to call you on it. ("I never said that! Look for yourself, no such comment exists on this board!")

[hapax]

I happen to think that, when hapax says she experienced the Divine, what she experienced is not the Divine, because I don't think there's any such thing as the Divine.

/blinks in shock/

Really?

Why didn't anyone TELL me before?

Well, fooey.

Ah well, At least I'm glad that all that nonsense in my head got cleared up before Lent started.

Because, y'know, AWK-ward.

[MercuryBlue]

J-theist: shockingly enough, many of us are from the US as well, and we know exactly how atheists get treated over here, having been on the receiving end not a few times ourselves. Loud advocacy for atheist rights is a necessity. Atheists trying to convert others to atheism is emphatically not.

And for the hundredth time, proselytism is wrong when anyone does it.

[MercuryBlue]

*high-fives hapax*

[J-theist]

Proselytism is wrong unless what you're promoting is the truth.

[J-theist]

Proselytism is wrong unless what you're promoting is true. It's not wrong to proselytise to let people know they need to eat enough vitamins.

And also, how do you think ideas spread in the first place? How did 12 apostles convert the whole Roman Empire to Christianity without proselytising? So really, if proselytising is evil, Christianity is a religion founded on evil. As are all religions.

[Nick Kiddle]

//Loud advocacy for atheist rights is a necessity. Atheists trying to convert others to atheism is emphatically not.//

I'm starting to think this is some kind of Overton Window engineering thing. The principle would presumably be that if enough atheists go around saying that all religion is harmful and all churches should be razed, simply saying, "I don't believe in god," looks less frightening by comparison. That makes it understandable, in that the people who are coming out with these comments consider it simple self-defence, but the basic "people as things" problem is still there, maybe worse than ever.

[MercuryBlue]

Yeah, but the actual problem from the PoV of the atheist-fearing religious person, far's I can tell, is that all atheists seem to want to raze churches. And the actual solution to that problem is more atheists getting out and saying 'Hi, I'm an atheist and I exist', 'Hi, I'm an atheist and I volunteer at the food bank', 'Hi, I'm an atheist and I don't object to your Nativity scene on the courthouse grounds as long as you don't object to my Tree of Knowledge on the courthouse grounds'. Not more atheists saying 'let's all go raze us some churches!'

[burgundy]

Or "Hi, I'm am atheist and I object to your Nativity scene on the courthouse grounds, but I would also object to other religious displays, and let's have a discussion on the role of religion in the public sphere." I think there are times that vigorous disagreement is called for (see also: "Hi, I'm an atheist, and I object to your hanging a prayer banner in a public school"), but disagreement need not be attack. And for the people for whom it is an attack, because a fundamental part of their belief system is the belief that they ought to run things in a religious way... well, so be it. We'll fight it out.

[sarah]

Meh. I kind of don't think there should be nativity scenes on the courthouse grounds, myself.

...Of course, I really like going back to my hometown and seeing the giant menorah and the wee Christmas tree next to each other on the rotary, but perhaps that's just 'cause it warms my cynical, longing-for-ecumenism heart. And maybe I'm contradicting myself here.

Um, I have no objection to the tree of knowledge, but I'm not sure what it actually is. It brings to mind biblical images of the tree in Eden, but I'm pretty sure that's not what you're talking about.

[Timothy (TRiG)]

(I do know a few people like that, but I don't think anyone in this conversation aspires to be them. So, yeah)

Ah, yes. That would be me.

Actually, I think the relativity of wrong does matter quite a bit.

TRiG.

[MercuryBlue]

Tree with books on it, (in context of religious displays) written by atheists or otherwise atheism-themed.

[sarah]

Got it.

[hapax]

"Hi, I'm an atheist and I don't object to your Nativity scene on the courthouse grounds"

"Hi, I'm a Christian and I really really REALLY object to your Nativity scene on the courthouse grounds, and anywhere else that's government property, for First Amendment reasons, for theological and ecclesiological reasons, and on account of that it's really amazingly tacky."

I am *so* popular at work in December...

[Kit Whitfield]

And yet Froborr *dared* to smear Greta Christina as an eliminationist. Loud atheist proselytism and rights advocacy is a necessary lifeline for people trapped in this totalitarian fundamentalist society. It's fundamentalist Christianity that is the eliminationist ideology, and Froborr is a victim-blamer.

It is, surely, possible to have two groups of people each taking an eliminationist attitude towards the other? At least in theory?

It seems the gist of what you're saying is that because atheists in some parts of the US face serious oppression - and I, for one, am not denying that they do - that means that there should be a limit to how forcefully one criticises an American atheist because ... what? They're more sinned against than sinning? They were provoked? The other guys are worse?

Personally I don't see any of these as reasons not to criticise someone's position. If you criticise their opinions while denying their context then obviously that's unreasonable, but if you acknowledge their context and say 'But I still don't like this thing they said', I don't see why that should be considered an outrage.

--

Regarding the question, 'Could I troll?'

Yep.

Frankly, when I've been in a bad mood with everyone, sometimes I've been tempted to.

But I won't, because I made a commitment to support this community, not undermine it.

[Nick Kiddle]

//Yeah, but the actual problem from the PoV of the atheist-fearing religious person, far's I can tell, is that all atheists seem to want to raze churches.//

Understandable doesn't imply well thought-out; I've done things that were much more counterproductive when I thought I was under attack. (Screaming swear words at social services, no matter how badly they were assailing my triggers, was never going to work out in my favour.) But I was just imagining motives to try to bridge the "who on earth would think that was helpful" gap.

[burgundy]

I long ago gave up being grinchly about Christmas displays, but that wasn't me being an "accomodationist" atheist, that was me being a very weary and tired Jew. (I draw the line at Nativity scenes though. Christmas trees, stockings, wreaths, etc, they are displays for a holiday that I do not celebrate, but they are not intrinsically religious the way a Nativity scene is [or a cross, for that matter.] Also, when my middle school tried to be ecumenical by putting up dreidel ornaments on the school Christmas tree, that was Not On and the Jewish parents got that taken down right quick.)

[Mmy]

@Nathaniel: Like MercuryBlue after reading your comments I am left wondering exactly what (according to you) am I?

You say: Hemant Meta isn't an accommodationist, mostly because he doesn't believe that atheists should shut up and keep quiet lest we upset people.

Well I most definitely don't think that "atheists should shut up and keep quite lest we upset people." I am an atheist. Everyone who worked with me knew I was an atheist.[1] The priest who officiated at my mother's funeral knew I was an atheist. My friends know I am an atheist. I have had long conversations with different people about how one lives an ethical life without placing god(s) at the center of one's moral universe. We have books by Hitchens, Dawkins, Harris and Dennett sitting in full view of visitors.

So, I guess I am not an an accomodationist.

But, I have many friends who are theists and I have no sense that I am right and they are wrong. I don't think the existence of a god (or gods) is necessary to explain the universe and the way it works. Some of my theist friends agree it isn't necessary but think that is nonetheless true (just as it isn't necessary to use large amounts of garlic every time you make fried potatoes although I cook as though it is.)

I respect my friends. I believe them when they tell me of their perceptions of reality. I believe them when they tell me that they have had experiences best described as apprehensions of the divine. They in turn do not scoff when I tell them that I had an epiphanic moment in a statistics class when the full beauty of the mathematics that unpinned survey statistics was revealed to me as the professor explained when and why the finite population correction factor was applied in analyzing data.

So contra your statement:

accommodationists have a quite condescending view of religious people in order for their arguments to make sense. In short, religious people are so fragile that to argue for our beliefs in any shape or form, heck, to even proclaim our existence is too much for them.

I have a higher opinion of most for religious people.

I have an entirely different opinion than you about the nature of truth and the ability of human beings to know it.

When it seems appropriate and reasonable in conversation I will volunteer/comment I am an atheist. I am open to the possibility that the universe is far more complex than any of us can understand, I believe that we might all be right and we might all be wrong. Just as I don't experience the universe in the way that hapax or Literata or Laiima, or Literata do (I know I am leaving out people, but this is getting long enough) they don't experience the universe the way I do. Perhaps each of us is aware of a only a small subset of all there is to experience of the universe. Perhaps we are all right just as Schrödinger's cat is both dead and alive.

So, that leaves me, like MercuryBlue, asking "what am I?"

[1] Okay, they knew I said I was an atheist. My most common frustration was not that they treated me badly because I was an atheist but that they had such a strong stereotype of atheists as people who were either angry at their parents or blamed God for something traumatic that had happened to them or that people rejected God so that they could live lives of riotous crime that they couldn't quite wrap their mind around the idea that I was really an atheist. Most of them seemed to think that I was a nice person who was going through some type of phase (which had at last count lasted at least 40 years) and that I would get over it.

[sarah]

Dreidels on a Christmas tree? What?

(I have lovely memories of making dreidels in fourth grade. Never got really good at the game, though.)

[Nathaniel]

\\So, that leaves me, like MercuryBlue, asking "what am I?"\\

That's not my business to say. People around here seem to object to people slapping labels on each other, so I decline to. Find a label that makes sense for yourself.

[burgundy]

@sarah, I know, right? I think they thought they were being inclusive.

I was going to say that I think I've gotten more unpleasant reactions from being Jewish than from being atheist, but I don't think that's a fair comparison, because that probably has more to do with age than anything else (that is, my interactions as an atheist have all been as an adult, whereas a lot of the weird stuff about being Jewish was when I was a kid interacting with other kids. A lot, but not all.)

Here's an interesting thing though: my department director is Christian, and conservative in some ways but not in others and I've given up trying to pigeonhole him. He likes to talk about religion and philosophy. He asked once how Jews enforce moral behavior without believing in hell. I pointed out that atheists aren't inherently immoral, and that's without any kind of god/external punishment at all.

And he said sure, but being an atheist in our society requires a lot of strength of character anyway, and he was talking more about "the masses" (not his exact phrasing, which I no longer remember, but the same idea.)

[sarah]

[[mmy: But, I have many friends who are theists and I have no sense that I am right and they are wrong. I don't think the existence of a god (or gods) is necessary to explain the universe and the way it works. Some of my theist friends agree it isn't necessary but think that is nonetheless true (just as it isn't necessary to use large amounts of garlic every time you make fried potatoes although I cook as though it is.)]]

I think I'm with your theist friends here. I'm...an uncertain Christian, and I think I'm okay with that. I'm more concerned, really, with how I act. So if I get to the end of my life and everything I believe is false, well, I hope I can say, "I loved my neighbor, and I loved my enemy. I treated people with kindness, and I worked for justice and peace." That'll be good enough for me.

But there's no such thing as too much garlic. Of THAT I'm certain. :)

[Mmy]

@Nathaniel: Well you posted about who is ane is not an accommodationist based on certain defining in/actions -- and I think both of us were trying to present "it's more complicated than that" answers to you.

One can be open and above board about one's atheism and yet be respectful of those around one who are religious without for a moment thinking that the religious are, to use your word "fragile."

I don't want to put a label on myself -- I was responding to your use of them (in the sense that I thought your implied definitions were imprecise at best.)

[Kit Whitfield]

Possibly this is the effect of too much YouTube, but right now I'm kind of wishing we could just square off the pluralists and the anti-theists and have a rap battle. That would at least be fun.

[Nathaniel]

For the most part, the accommodationist label has been used in relation to arguments people have made in the media and online about how and when atheists should express our positions. It in my experience, it hasn't been used much in terms of how people relate to each other personally.

To give a good example, PZ Myers is used around here as a go to example of an asshole. Yet in his personal life he interacts constantly with religious people. They are inescapable in the U.S. The notion that he goes around constantly berating people for being wrong is a humongous straw man. But believing in that notion is the only way that the online accommodationist position could make sense.

[Nick Kiddle]

//But there's no such thing as too much garlic. Of THAT I'm certain. :)//

If you'd eaten at my house the day 15-year-old Nick responded to running out of chili beans by crushing the best part of a bulb of garlic into a tin of baked beans, that might have shaken your certainty somewhat ;)

[Mmy]

@Kit: Possibly this is the effect of too much YouTube, but right now I'm kind of wishing we could just square off the pluralists and the anti-theists and have a rap battle. That would at least be fun.

**closes eyes and imagines this**

Yes, it would be fun. Far more fun than checking each and every link in the blogaround to make sure there are no broken tags and so forth.

Speaking of which.....I'll be (or at least I should be) off concentrating on that for a while so I will be dumping out of any conversations I am taking part in.

and

@sarah: re garlic -- SISTER!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[sarah]

@burgundy: huh. I grew up in an area where you were either Catholic or Jewish (culturally; I can't speak for anyone's actual religious beliefs). Everything else got you a strange look. My biggest childhood regret is that we moved right before my friends had their bar and bat mitzvahs. :)

@Nick: Yowch. That sounds strong.

My little brother, who's a chef, did this thing during the holidays where he roasted four or five big cloves of garlic and then blended them into his tomato sauce. It was a-frakkin-mazing.

[sarah]

@mmy: TOTALLY!! Garlic is a staple of my cooking.

[burgundy]

@Kit:

yo I'm burgundy, and I'm here to say
all this in-fighting just makes me go "oy vey"
we've got war and poverty, hatred and fear
we've got oil in our oceans and our air ain't so clear
the whole human race is full of foibles and mess
our brains are still like monkeys, and if I had to guess
I'd say there isn't just one reason why we get things wrong
you eliminate faith and something else comes along
we should be fighting our instincts to be them v us
we should be focusing on actions, 'stead of making a fuss
about what someone might be thinking, deep inside of their head
about who made the world, or where they go when they're dead
I think it's more important to help the weak face the strong
than to make a point of saying when I'm right and you're wrong
but I just can't figure out quite how to finish this rhyme
I could work on it some more but I just can't spare the time

[Ross]

People ... certainly are sure of themselves. Which, I guess, undergirds the whole larger argument here.

What undergirds both religious fundamentalist and New Atheist thinking (and, I think, douchemillnery) is exactly that, the belief that the worst thing in the world would be for them to be wrong. About anything. If creation didn't literally take 7 24-hour days, the RTC's worldview is shattered. If some social injustice wasn't caused directly by religion, the New Atheist's worldview is shattered. The SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT THING for such people is that they be and be recognized as absolutely correct.

(This is something I have some experience with. I feel the draw of this kind of worldview. But unlike some, rather than finding it of special importance to always be right, I focused on finding it of special importance to never be wrong. And that's why, as many of my friends, who had a preexisting condition of asshattery, were drawn in turn either to atheism (flavored "I'm a Superior Being to those fools who believe in the Magic Sky-Daddy") or RTC Christianity (flavored "I'm a Good Person unlike those moral degenerates whose eternal sufferng I am gonna laugh at") I became for many years alternatingly an agnostic and a deist, unwilling to say "God doesn't exist" because I knew one could never *prove* the non-existence of God, and therefore there was no way to be sure atheism might turn out to be wrong -- the existence of a distant, non-interventionist God whose existence could not be proven or disproven seemed like a "safe" thing to believe.)

[sarah]

*applauds burgundy*

That kinda brightened my day.

[Laiima]

@burgundy, round of applause! that was marvelous.

[burgundy]

*bows*

[Madhabmatics]

Is it kinda idealistic that my ideal relationship with an atheist would be like the two protagonists of The Ball and the Cross? Only maybe we could fight over the honor of Ali instead of The Virgin Mary.

[Storiteller]

@burgundy - Hilariously lovely.

[hapax]

@burgundy -- reading that *almost* made this whole mess worthwhile.

[Amaryllis]

I haven't had time to keep up with this thread, and I haven't read all the comments yet -- sorry for dropping in and out like this.

But it occurs to me that I've seen arguments on this site that went on for days or weeks, and that ended with the debaters conceding that they probably never would understand each other's point of view. And yet, those arguments never descended to implied threats or crude personal insults.

It took J-theist a single day to get there. So no, not impressed with supposed superior argument skills. And if the point is that we're not worth arguing seriously with, then why are you still here?

(Maybe you're not by now, I don't know, but the discussion goes on for two pages further than I've gotten and looks as acrimonious as ever.)

---
I'd also like to read a piece on Paganism/Wicca and motherhood. Am having Thoughts about how that might contrast with the Either/Or model of some strains of Christianity -- no, not Madonna/Whore, merely Mother/Celibate -- but I'd better read the rest of the thread first.

Back later, I hope.

[Lonespark]

As a Wiccanish person who doesn't want biokids ever, I'd be very interested in reading that as well. Not the same issues, but certainly the archetypes make me go "...hmmm..." at times.

Not Wiccan or ish, but archetypes are a Big Pagan Thing, and I've been working on a post about roles of women in myth (and stuff), so yeah, I want to hear your thoughts ASAP.

[Laiima]

I've been talking about archetypes for years, and then recently, I not only read some of what Jung himself said about archetypes, but I also read someone else who said that Jung's archetypes ~ Plato's Ideal Forms, and Do Not Want. I hate Plato's Forms with the fire of 10,000 suns. So I've been rethinking what I find useful about the concept of archetypes, and I think I have a different metaphor (for the structure) that I like better.

Have been trying to decide if I should write a blog post about it, or maybe no one but me cares about stuff like this.

[Lonespark]

I can't deal with a three-stage thing for women that has to include Mother. I have kids, bio-kids even, but I neither identify nor aspire to identify primarily as a mother. I've considered Warrior as a middle archetype, broadly interpreted, as in The Wiccan Warrior. I'm also very fond of Queen.

Also, re: the scary aspect of Motherhood... There was a big discussion on the Troth mailing list a while back about how f***ing scary Frigga (and also Holda) can be, even to devotees of Odin. I have kind of the opposite opinion and experience personally, but the discussion was compelling.

[Laiima]

@Lonespark, that Troth discussion sounds fascinating. Care to elaborate?

[Lonespark]

Holy wow burgundy, made or awesome.

[Froborr]

Was out most of day, and conversation has largely moved on, but I wanted to say:

I believe the experience of the Divine does exist, as it has measurable real-world effects. I therefore completely believe hapax when she says she has the experience of the Divine.

That said, I have the experience of Brown on a daily basis, and yet there is no such frequency of light. That doesn't mean my experience of Brown is false or even that it isn't very useful to me. Quibbling over whether Brown exists is kind of pointless outside of very specialized contexts that won't matter in most people's lives, so what's the point in arguing over it.

[Lonespark]

Hmmm. I could elaborate, but I don't know if I could do it succinctly, nor whether this is the thread for it. Also, small child bathtime.

[timberwraith]

I believe that the experience of the Divine exists, too.

When I spend time in nature and I feel a sense of ineffable connection with the land and the life around me, I strongly suspect that religious people experience very similar emotions. The difference is they attribute those emotions and that sense of connection to "God", "Goddess", "Vishnu", "Allah", or whomever. I experience this as a connection with living things and the planet that sustains me. They experience it as a connection with an otherworldly presence. So?

We're social creatures who thrive on establishing a sense of emotional connection with the people, places and things that surround us. In that context, is it so surprising that people have a sense of emotional connection with something they can't quite pin down?

So, in spite of not believing in deities, I think I actually "get it." As long as folks don't use their sense of connection with the ineffable to hurt or control others, I don't mind.

I also think it's nigh impossible to drive that tendency to form a connection out of people. Regardless of how we express it, it's a part of our humanness.

But then again, I'm probably just another dangerous, irrational, cognitively defective person.

[Timothy (TRiG)]

When I spend time in nature and I feel a sense of ineffable connection with the land and the life around me

People keep talking about this and I'm never sure I know what they're talking about.

TRiG.

[Froborr]

I also think it's nigh impossible to drive that tendency to form a connection out of people. Regardless of how we express it, it's a part of our humanness.

And a good thing, too. I'm not sure we'd still be something I'd call "people" without it.

[Nick Kiddle]

@timberwraith: This, this and still more this.

I have spoken of god as being similar to the notional quantities that often pop up in physics because they make the equations easier to express. They don't "exist" in the same way that, say, a spoon exists, but they are no less useful for that.

//I also think it's nigh impossible to drive that tendency to form a connection out of people. Regardless of how we express it, it's a part of our humanness.//

And denying that leads to bad places. I tried for a while to purge all my "wrong beliefs"; my breakthrough came when I accepted that the effort was yet another form of victim-blaming. I am human and therefore less than perfectly rational, and this is an OK way to be. People who will not accept that frighten me.

[Timothy (TRiG)]

I remember sitting in the National Gallery in Dublin, looking at a stupendous painting (a Caravaggio of Cain and Abel), and wondering what I was feeling. Was I actually responding to the art, or was I responding to what I felt I should be feeling? I've often felt that way about visual art. I've even felt it about sunsets. Oddly ambivalent. About music I am largely indifferent. The only place I actually feel confident of my response is with prose. Even there, I can't offer useful criticism, but at least I trust that when I like something, I genuinely do like it.

So when people start talking about "connection" with nature, and even more so when they start using words like ineffable, I sometimes begin to feel a little left out. Because I can never feel that without analysing and double-checking myself.

I do love long walks in the woods. I do feel more alive on top of a mountain. I do experience beauty, both in nature and in art. It's just that I rarely manage to avoid feeling that I'm looking over my own shoulder.

TRiG.

[Madhabmatics]

@TRiG

I don't think people that have experienced can really know what people who have are talking about, part of the experience is that it cannot be explained. William James write about it in the Varieties of Religious Experience, and says that it is the first factor of a mystic experience:

1. Ineffability.- The handiest of the marks by which I classify a state of mind as mystical is negative. The subject of it immediately says that it defies expression, that no adequate report of its contents can be given in words. It follows from this that its quality must be directly experienced; it cannot be imparted or transferred to others. In this peculiarity mystical states are more like states of feeling than like states of intellect. No one can make clear to another who has never had a certain feeling, in what the quality or worth of it consists. One must have musical ears to know the value of a symphony; one must have been in love one's self to understand a lover's state of mind. Lacking the heart or ear, we cannot interpret the musician or the lover justly, and are even likely to consider him weak-minded or absurd. The mystic finds that most of us accord to his experiences an equally incompetent treatment.

2. Noetic quality.- Although so similar to states of feeling, mystical states seem to those who experience them to be also states of knowledge. They are states of insight into depths of truth unplumbed by the discursive intellect. They are illuminations, revelations, full of significance and importance, all inarticulate though they remain; and as a rule they carry with them a curious sense of authority for after-time.

These two characters will entitle any state to be called mystical, in the sense in which I use the word. Two other qualities are less sharply marked, but are usually found. These are:

3. Transiency.- Mystical states cannot be sustained for long. Except in rare instances, half an hour, or at most an hour or two, seems to be the limit beyond which they fade into the light of common day. Often, when faded, their quality can but imperfectly be reproduced in memory; but when they recur it is recognized; and from one recurrence to another it is susceptible of continuous development in what is felt as inner richness and importance.

4. Passivity.- Although the oncoming of mystical states may be facilitated by preliminary voluntary operations, as by fixing the attention, or going through certain bodily performances, or in other ways which manuals of mysticism prescribe; yet when the characteristic sort of consciousness once has set in, the mystic feels as if his own will were in abeyance, and indeed sometimes as if he were grasped and held by a superior power. This latter peculiarity connects mystical states with certain definite phenomena of secondary or alternative personality, such as prophetic speech, automatic writing, or the mediumistic trance. When these latter conditions are well pronounced, however, there may be no recollection whatever of the phenomenon and it may have no significance for the subject's usual inner life, to which, as it were, it makes a mere interruption. Mystical states, strictly so called, are never merely interruptive. Some memory of their content always remains, and a profound sense of their importance. They modify the inner life of the subject between the times of their recurrence. Sharp divisions in this region are, however, difficult to make, and we find all sorts of gradations and mixtures.