Tuesday, December 27, 2011

Debating accomodationism and confrontationalism.

This is a reply to a thread on a Facebook discussion board, posted here to not clutter it up further.  The Stedman article in question is this:
The Problem with "Atheist Activism"


An article I linked to in reply is this:
The Alternatives to Confrontationalism


On to the discussion:


Me:
"I happily confront homophobia, racism, misogyny, religious bigotry, etc. Racism is a personal bugbear to me. My wife and I get dirty looks from whites and blacks, she being black, me being a honky. 


I don't single out Christianity, but since it is among the various sources of such intolerances, it goes on the list of things I have no truck with. The difference is that homophobia and the various other forms of hatred and intolerable (and intolerant) behavior needs to be confronted on their own only when they exist independent of other things."

Daryl:

"Religion is NOT the sourse of intolerances. Specifically racism is caused by oxytoxin (Carsten de Dreu et al) Religion plays the role of providing the justification forthe intolerance, but the intolerance is in the culture. If not religion condoning, then we would use some other mechanism, like a philosophy. "


Reply:
That's an oversimplification.  Oxytocin merely increases biased feelings already present in the subject.  "The intolerance is in the culture" is obvious.  Religion is a cultural phenomenon, one that has been and can be changed to modify the prevailing cultural values present in the world.  Of course there's always going to be some cultural institutions that have a certain degree of intolerance in the value structure they create, but when those crop up, we fight them, too.

Me:

"Confronting religion itself, when said religion is a source of multiple flavors of intolerance, is not only justified, it is more efficient tactically. Within Christianity specifically, for instance, there are scriptural justifications for a wide variety of different flavors of hate and oppression. Homophobia, yes, but also misogyny, racial hatred, justifications for slavery, intolerance for other faiths, etc."

Daryl:

"Paragraph 3, efficient tactically: Not true, Attacking the religion, not the intolerance, then the intolerance never gets dealt with. Attacking the intolerance you can have allies from within the religion, attack the religion, and all you get is enemies."

Reply:

I fight both.  I already said above that I target intolerance.  But I favor a systematic approach where you target intolerance, both direct acts of it and the systematic structures that justify it, religion being one of those.  Intolerance isn't the only problem with religion, if it were, then you might have a point.  But religion engenders other problems like relying on faith rather than reason, encouraging people to ask for intercessory aid from on high rather than enabling them to deal with their problems directly, etc.  

Me:

"All of the above are in scripture itself. If you want to add behaviors by religious institutions like the Catholic church, we can add a systematic and well documented conspiracy to conceal, cover up, and ENABLE child rapists to continue to perpetuate their crimes, internationally, and over the course of decades. So as to not single out the Catholics, we can include genital mutilation, practiced primarily on women by Muslim groups, and on males by Jewish groups."


Daryl:
"What do the scriptures have to do with christianity? The next time i see some family stoning their drunken son on the outskirts of town, a wife living in the shed during her period, Joel Osteen condeming rich men, or Pator Bill Tvelt renounce his endorsement of Bachman because of the book of Timothy, I will concern myself with what is in the bible. Christians don't, why should we? "


Reply:
The scriptures are cherry picked, but still believed in.  I just gave a few real world examples of harms done with scriptural justification.  Stoning still happens in parts of the world.  As does the previously mentioned genital mutilation.  Things like slavery are gone (or at least not globally accepted institutions) because society has already gone against the things justified by scripture and made them unacceptable.  I want to see that process continue.

Me:

"Islam does seem to me to be the worse offender, however, as there exist Muslim states where rape isn't a crime, but a punishment that women can be sentenced to. This is pathological at best, and even right this second I have to damn near physically restrain myself from following such a mention by a long stream of expletives. Even with that said, Islam is an immediate bad instance of what religious ideology leads to, all religious nonsense has to potential to go just as bad, it just needs the right circumstances."

Daryl:

"So do all muslims condone the actions in the most extreme islamic states? Do you see those kinds of activities in the muslim churches here in america? If we run around painting the whole of a religion with the most extreme actions of the most extreme faction, We end up sounding like the nut jobs."


Reply:
We don't paint the whole of a religion with the most extreme actions of the the most extreme faction, and neither do the bloggers that Stedman cherry-picked quotes from.  Stedman continuously makes the error that an attack on the religious doctrine itself is an accusation against every single member of it.  I am talking about a harmful set of ideas, not a war against a group of people.  It doesn't matter if not every member strictly adheres to the most pathological dictates of their doctrine, their subscription to it is a tacit endorsement of it.  The majority of citizens in fascist and Nazi countries in WWII weren't actively rounding up the Jews.  Some of them were ignorant of what was happening, and others suspected but took no action.  Others did take action.  By attacking the doctrines themselves, and pointing out the psychotic content contained within, we are undertaking the job of educating the ignorant about the stuff they should be aware of.  This can also encourage them into taking action against those who adhere to the same doctrine in name, but do decide to act on the more harmful aspects of it.  That is not just an Islam problem, it's a problem with any ideology, metaphysical, political or otherwise.

Me:

"I put the question to you: Should we atheists, and anyone else who object to such behaviors, waste our time targeting each of those crimes, these particular types of hate and intolerance individually? Even when we know that the authority for the existence of the institutions that justify such things are based on logical fallacies that are so obvious that even children can embarrass adult adherents of such faiths with innocent questions that the adults are unable to answer? I say no."


Daryl:
"Answer to your question, Yes we should. Because you can actually accomplish something that way."


Reply:
I agree.  I just don't agree that it's impossible to accomplish something the other way, either.  People can change when they come to realize that a philosophy they've adhered to is based on nonsense.  It's how many people become atheists, or evolve politically from more extreme positions.  It happens all the time, I simply encourage open dialogue about said problems.  I'm not advocating violent suppression of thoughtcrime, just unfettered and open conversation.


Me:
"You present me a religion that does not rely on unsupportable appeals to faith, presents a coherent ethical framework, and doesn't have a record of harmful behavior, but does provide a sense of community and collective ritual to honor particular social customs, and I will happily leave that religion alone, although I will probably question why it's called a religion in the first place."



Daryl:
"You can question why it's called a religion all you want. You will be wrong. Shit is shit, even when it doesn't stink."


Reply:
If a religion or any other ideology is shit, I feel it is so because of the attributes I just described.  If it doesn't have those, why is it still shit?  I think I gave a fair summation of the parts that are problematic.  


Me:
"Unfortunately, even the more benign religions in the real world like Buddhism and Jainism exhibit some of the more harmful behaviors I have previously enumerated, and they have to be at least reformed, if not abolished."



Daryl:
"So you are sympathetic to Buddism? Following your model, we should oppose buddism because in the 50's in tibet, the Dali Lama endorsed serfdom."


Reply:
I'm sympathetic to some of the philosophy contained in Buddhism, especially early Buddhism, before it had really developed the authoritarian structure of religion that various forms of it developed later.  Tibetan Buddhism, and in particular, the Dalai Lama's position as a theocratic head of state is opposed by me.  He has endorsed various positions that have led to violence between different schools and factions of Vajrayana Buddhism, murders have occurred, etc.  Buddhism as a religious institution has many of the same problems in other countries that I previously identified in relation to Christianity and Islam.  Even here in the states there have been Buddhist teachers that used their authority as "enlightened" teachers to take advantage of their students, in sexual and non-sexual ways.

None of that kind of behavior should be tolerated.  As I mentioned in paragraph 9 (included below for completeness), I'm sympathetic to modern, secular redactions of Buddhist thought, with all of the metaphysical nonsense stripped out.  I am not at all sympathetic to those parts of Buddhism that exhibit ANY of the behaviors I mentioned above.



Me:
"I myself am highly sympathetic to Buddhist thought, being rather fond of Sam Harris's thoughts on the subject, and a fan of Stephen and Martine Batchelor, amongst others in the burgeoning "secular" Buddhist movement, and I do my best to keep up a regular meditative practice and engage in serious contemplation of Buddhism's "Eight Noble Truths" as at least decent philosophical offerings, although I don't cheapen such conjectures with notions of metaphysical holiness."

Me:

"Since it will probably be brought up, when I do target Christianity, or any religion, my targets are the bad ideas contained within such ideologies. The rank and file members of Christianity, or any other religion, are generally good and decent people when one takes the time to get to know them. What needs to be confronted is the irrationality of faith itself, which holds members of religion in varying degrees of mental thrall.

Religious indoctrination is a willful manipulation, somewhere in the continuum between the parishioner in the pew and the pastoral heads of particular religions (I'm sure that there are some ministers who are true believers, hence why I paint it as a continuum), and boils down to mind control and totalitarian thinking."



The members of Christianity, or any other religion, are victims of the authoritarian structure they are enmeshed within, and the whole reason that religious institutions and clerics of said institutions piss me off is that they are parasites on those people. The whole reason to confront religion is to liberate the good people enslaved by false ideologies from the glorified con-artists somewhere in the authoritarian structure of their churches, if not their direct priests, ministers, and imams."


Daryl:
"Umm, no dude, that is so wrong. There is no master puppet master, pulling the strings, willfully manipulating people to follow his will. The menbers are not slaves. The leaders of the religion actually believe the stuff they are teaching (watch the HBO documentary, A question of miracles). "


Reply:
They're not slaves, but they are being manipulated.  I did say that there are ministers who believe, and that it was a continuum. It's not a conspiracy theory.  If a preacher gets up in church and preaches against gay marriage, for instance, he's going to influence the opinion of a certain proportion of his congregation, and they are going to adjust their behavior towards that issue politically when it comes time to vote.  Some ministers are going to do so because they honestly believe in the doctrines in the Bible that they are basing that view on, others are going to be in collusion with political figures to cynically encourage that their parishioners vote a certain way.  It doesn't matter whether they believe or not, or to what degree of control is involved, the manipulation occurs because the minister is an authority figure that the congregation is going to accept as delivering received wisdom to various degrees.  His authority and the authority of the text are based on demonstrably false information, and I see nothing wrong with pointing that out.  The texts contain lies.  Point out the lies, and at least some people who hear that will start to question the truthfulness of those doctrines, and they may be on their way out of religion.


Me:
"I disagree completely with your assessment of Zahn's reply. Zahn heard Stedman's anemic complaint quite clearly, she simply rejected it, as she should have."


Daryl:
"Then go back and read it again. Eventually it will sink in."


Reply:
I recommend you do the same.  I have.  


Me:
"Confront religion itself, because if you attack the foundations of unthinking faith that support all the injustices done in the name of various religions, you don't need to attack each particular injustice. Any behaviors that do turn out to be beneficial, and therefore worthy of preservation don't deserve to be sullied with the label of religion, because they are frankly superior."


Daryl:
"And finally, paragraph 13, attack the foundations, and you bang your head against a wall. You move nothing, and get a headache."


Reply:
This is demonstrably false.  Questioning the foundation of my own former belief structure is what led me to discard it.  There are plenty of others who have done likewise.  It's not going to happen quickly or in huge swathes of people, but it does happen everyday.  It's a long struggle, but one worth participating in, in my view.