Angry Atheists

[poliphilo]

A happy atheist- by which I mean an atheist confident in their unbelief- wouldn't continually be banging on about God the way Dawkins and Hitchens and Pullman do, they'd just let the matter rest and get on with their cheerfully Godless life, wouldn't they?

I read a piece by Dawkins the other day. (Thanks to chiller  for the link. ) It's very ecrasez l'infame- very shrill. Dawkins thinks he's got the Pope on the run and is giving chase with loud cries.

Philip Pullman is just about to publish a book about Jesus with a provocative title. I doubt that it'll be any good. Fictions about Jesus- for or against- never are. I enjoyed the Dark Materials trilogy, but the anti-God stuff was clumsy. As Eliot said of Matthew Arnold, Pullman is dealing with a subject "in (which) reasoning power matters, and it fails him."
 
I've been an atheist. I've dreamed that dream. The one where the bastille is tottering and you put just a little more weight on the crowbar and something gives and the masses come staggering out into the light of pure Reason. It's not going to happen.

Comments

[jfs.livejournal.com]

One might say the same about happy and unhappy Christians (or members of any other religion), no?

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

A happy atheist- by which I mean an atheist confident in their unbelief- wouldn't continually be banging on about God the way Dawkins and Hitchens and Pullman do, they'd just let the matter rest and get on with their cheerfully Godless life, wouldn't they?

Depends on temperament and experience, I suspect. I'm pretty contented in my unbelief, but that doesn't save me from being irked from time to time by the towering dumbness, hubris, and outright evil that believers manage to get up to. Sometimes I act on the feeling of ire, sometimes I don't. But I can certainly empathize with it in others.

[sunfell.livejournal.com]

Aggressive atheism is as annoying and irrational as One-True-God-ism, and just as shrill and ill-mannered.

Ever notice how miserable both sides tend to look?

I'll have to check out the Pullman book. I did like his Dark Materials trilogy, but you're right about his handling of the anti-God element.

Personally, I'll stick with my cloud of myriad Small Gods, and Short-Duration Personal Savior Catch-and-Release program. :-)

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Well, I do believe Christianity includes various exhortations to proselytize, which atheism doesn't -- makes a difference, that.

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

I've dreamed that dream. The one where the bastille is tottering and you put just a little more weight on the crowbar and something gives and the masses come staggering out into the light of pure Reason. It's not going to happen.

That's an interesting thought. I wish I had the time and mental capacity today to speak more to that thought, but I don't. Or, at least, not now.

[jfs.livejournal.com]

*grin* some brands of atheism, perhaps. Others seem very clearly to include the need to correct the 'obviously wrong'.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Yes, certainly.

There's a link, I think, between personal insecurity and the need to win converts.

[jfs.livejournal.com]

I think Pullman has more chance than either Dawkins or Hitchens because of two things:

Firstly, humans are inherently story telling creatures, and he's approaching the atheism argument by telling stories which subsume and replace belief.

Secondly, because behind everything that Dawkins, Hitchens and their ilk have to say, you can hear the not so sub-text "If only you were as clever as me, I wouldn't have to explain this to you."

[jfs.livejournal.com]

The "See! I must have been right!" reaction?

Oh yes.

[ideealisme.livejournal.com]

Dawkins' article - spoken like a true member of the Oxford University Debating Society. Point of information, Mr Speaker!

[ideealisme.livejournal.com]

and yet Dawkins is not astute enough to recognise his own special pleading. He does not seem to realise the comforting role religion plays in the lives of people around the world whose lives are hard and toilsome. He would diminish the value of cultures who celebrate religious rituals - as if he is not part of any such culture, as if he is above culture.

I'm not 100% down on Dawkins. I do believe he is sincere and passionate - but fails to understand how he comes across sometimes.

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

There's a substantial extract from the Philip Pullman book in Saturday's Guardian (you can read it here if you're interested).

[jfs.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'd have hated to be taught by Dawkins; that lack of empathy would have made him an awful teacher.

And my gut feeling about your 'comfort' argument is that Dawkins would say that it's irrelevant compared to the damage religion has done and continues to do.

But then I think that Dawkins would have kicked Tiny Tim's crutch away "for his own benefit" - after all, if Richard can stand on his own two feet, why can't Timothy?

Though to be fair to him, I've read interviews with him where he acknowledges that he is a creation of Christian culture and art, as much as anyone else.

"I'm a cultural Christian" - http://richarddawkins.net/articles/2034

[veronica-milvus.livejournal.com]

When I see Dawkins interviewed on TV he always seems much more reasonable than his book, which was a bit sneery. He wants us all to see the light of logic and reason but doesn't seem to be able to employ those tools consistently.

But I too can become an evangelical atheist at times, especially where I see religion as limiting horizons, loading people with guilt, being used as an excuse for bigotry and abuse, driving divisions between people, and causing general misery.

Atheism is, in the end, a kinder belief.

[oakmouse]

Thank you. Dawkins has always struck me as being like the angry teenager screaming at his parents about how much he hates them: he's nowhere near so rational and fact-based as he thinks he is.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I can empathize with it too. I've skidded all over the place in the matter of belief and unbelief- and the present state of affairs in the Catholic church certainly gets my goat. I've been shrill on both sides of the argument- and I think the shrillness betrayed my insecurity.

[chiller.livejournal.com]

I understand the frustration Dawkins et al feel on the topic, I really do. But I think if the alternative to dewy-eyed BELIEF OF OUR LORD is to be countered, it cannot be countered with the same sort of name-calling and rock-throwing as the Other Lot tend to use. If the godless are going to appeal to reason, they must do just that.

[jenny_evergreen]

I think of myself just that way...as a content atheist compared to an angry one.
Sometimes I am highly frustrated by the fact of that last paragraph, but usually I live with it okay.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Good manners may be what it's all about.

I don't like shoutiness. If you're going to attack religion do it with sly wit. My hero is the wicked, surrealist film maker Luis Bunuel.

I like small gods too- and especially when they're smaller than I am.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Sometime, maybe?

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

Definitely.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Pullman is a fine story-teller. I wish he'd stick with what he's good at. I think he undermines his art with his preachiness.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

In the context of a spoken debate it might have been quite effective.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

It's cleverly written, but I'm afraid I think the basic idea is rather silly.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I have Dawkinsish moods too.

But I think his strategy is wrong. He uses the cudgel when the stilletto would be so much more effective.