NOTICE:

[xenologer]

LGBT activism isn't about creating more gay people; it's about supporting and advocating for the ones who're here. Still, atheist activism is framed (by people who aren't doing it) as evangelism. We don't care about converting you; we're just... out. Get over it.

Jeez.

Comments

Re: I wish this was true, because it's very well stated.

[count-fenring.livejournal.com]

And thanks for jumping right in and making my point. Note that you say "limits of tact" in the same post as "what they believe is fucking awful" and "needless baggage." That's not exactly tactful. And, frankly, neither is Richard Dawkins, although it's considerably closer.

I think one of the problems with a lot of atheist rhetoric currently out there (at least the informal, SlashDiggDdit variety) is that it comes from the position that the arguments for atheism are not just persuasive, but so thoroughly, unquestionably correct that they can be used as common premises. This doesn't function too well in an argument on the validity of those premises.

In discussion with a religious (or even agnostic) person, this simply isn't true - the other person by definition hasn't, thus far, found atheism persuasive, and holds different beliefs that they find equally persuasive. Their premises may seem ridiculous and horrible to you, but I assure you, they look just as askance as yours. You may see your position as infinitely superior to theirs, and by pure logical reasoning, you may even be right - but it isn't going to win you the argument. Not even atheists actually argue from pure reason all the time - no human does - and humans who believe in religion will base their arguments, rational and not, from a perspective of that religion being correct, especially if pushed into a defensive stance by offensive behavior.

TL;DR version: it don't matter if you're right, if all your argument convinces the other person of is your own disagreeableness.

Re: I wish this was true, because it's very well stated.

[virginia-fell.livejournal.com]

I think one of the problems with a lot of atheist rhetoric currently out there (at least the informal, SlashDiggDdit variety) is that it comes from the position that the arguments for atheism are not just persuasive, but so thoroughly, unquestionably correct that they can be used as common premises.

Could you clarify this for me? I'm not quite sure what you mean.

Re: I wish this was true, because it's very well stated.

[count-fenring.livejournal.com]

It's hard to express.

I think a number of atheist arguments ignore that religious sentiment is, in fact, the majority position, and that its premise isn't experimental validity. Thus, when "there's no evidence for God" fails to convince the other person, they instantly denounce that person as irrational, because their premise is valueless. There's a lack of understanding that, from the religious person's perspective, their premises aren't valueless, and since they're not based on the idea that evidence is the final arbiter of truth, arguments based on lack of evidence aren't a killing word to them.

Note that I'm not saying that only atheists do this - there are tons of religious people who assume that their logic deriving from faith-based premises will trump atheist arguments.

Re: I wish this was true, because it's very well stated.

[virginia-fell.livejournal.com]

I think a number of atheist arguments ignore that religious sentiment is, in fact, the majority position, and that its premise isn't experimental validity.

I can't think of a polite way to ask this, but what universe are you in that the atheists you know have somehow managed to go a single day without awareness of these things? I'm a little surprised by this, because it sounds like it's coming from somebody who's heard more about atheists than from atheists, and that doesn't seem like you.

Also, for the millionth fucking time in my life that I have to make this point (and please understand that I am angry in general and don't hate you specifically or anything), just because theists don't understand the difference between calling a belief irrational and calling them irrational does not mean there isn't a difference, and it certainly doesn't make it the atheist's fault for not making it clear enough. There is no amount of clarity and fairness that will immunize criticism of religion from being taken as a personal attack, which means that constantly making it about how atheists are failing in their presentation is total bullshit, because there is no such thing as "good enough."

Re: I wish this was true, because it's very well stated.

[count-fenring.livejournal.com]

I honestly run into these arguments on a weekly basis on Slashdot, and rarely but not never in person. I do want to make it clear again that I'm not claiming this is the majority or even a large minority of atheists; but I run into it a LOT online, I'm guessing because of the "megaphone for crazy" factor of the internet.

My wife runs into it a lot in person, but she goes to a super-libertarian law school, so the well is somewhat poisoned as far as her environment goes.

It's not that theists don't understand the distinction, it's that the distinction doesn't prevent it from being offensive to them, just as the difference between someone saying "your atheism makes you immoral" and saying "atheism is an immoral stance" doesn't actually mitigate the impact on you.

I'm not saying that atheists should stop making the argument, or that if they played nicer, they would convince all the religious folks. What I'm trying to get across is that it's useless pretending that it's a polite stance to say "Religion is a mental disease" to the religious, any more than it would be to say "atheism is a failure of morals" to an atheist.

Re: I wish this was true, because it's very well stated.

[mothwentbad.livejournal.com]

"Limits of tact" can also be a matter of when and where. I don't knock on people's doors to tell people what I think about religion and why. They have to follow me over to Livejournal or Facebook, and I don't confront believers uninvited in their spaces - churches, wall posts, whatever. That's my policy for now, anyway. I don't think tact is the end-all and be-all of discussion. Substituting "theist" for "blonde" in a joke would be out of the question, for example, while referring to a lake of fire as a dwelling place for unbelievers "fucking awful" is totally warranted.

Only if I were actually having a sincere conversation with someone who really didn't understand that would I go to any extra lengths to try to break that down further in a less polemical way. It takes a lot of effort to have that kind of conversation, and I don't want to bother unless I'm specifically writing an outreach piece or if I have a very specific audience.

I don't know if there is any way to beat the immortal "I want to believe" argument. In any case, I would've found Dawkins convincing if I had read it when I was a very young agnostic. I also oppose the use of "evangelism" because it's overloaded with connotation and was invented as a word specifically for Christianity. Yeah, that's not atheism. Calling it "atheist evangelism" because "it just means trying to convince someone of something you believe" is just a bait and switch for conflating science with superstition, and inquiry with submission. Anyone who makes a point of using the term has an agenda, and anyone who's ever seen street preachers scare the young and the naive with talk of hellfire should know better.

Re: I wish this was true, because it's very well stated.

[count-fenring.livejournal.com]

I don't think tact is the be-all and end-all of discussion either. Also, I think the "not in their spaces" thing is certainly an important distinction, but I'm not sure how it maps onto the discussion - as far as I could tell, we were mostly talking about situations where it's nobody's explicit space.

I can certainly see making that case against using the term "evangelism," in fact, I largely agree, but that's not (as far as I could tell) the case V_Fell was arguing, or the case I was arguing against.