I’d like to thank the Academy.
Jerry Coyne has just awarded me the Mooney Prize for “Accommodationist of the Year” and pays a lot of attention to why, he says, no one is paying attention to me.
He defends his fellow atheist headlights and several sidelights by calling Eric MacDonald “Venerable” (which I thought was a title only a pope could bestow on a saint-in-waiting) and to Jason Rosenhouse as a promising young atheist blogger. He has more trouble finding a name for Greta Christina so he just asks, “Has he read her?” Yes, he has.
Since Jerry seems to have the power to hand out titles (who knew?) I will take him at his word that the chums he defends are everything he says they are. And more. He even seems to have access to my insanely jealous private thoughts (“Why not me… Dear God, why not pay attention to me.”) This maddening envy should have been obvious to me, but wasn’t until Jerry pointed it out.
I thought I was attacking the newbies because they are turning atheism into a private joke, or blague privée as we pompoustuans prefer to call it.
But there is no petulance here. –Nor in Jerry’s comments, where he reminds me that he has written two books. One of which, Speciation, “has become the standard text on modern views about the origin of species.” Damn, I wish I’d written that.
He also quotes the Venerable Eric’s humble and charitable response to a note I left on the Venerable’s blog:
“I feel so embarrassed for you, and for the pitiful criticisms you try to make. It won’t do simply to snipe at us. You must respond to what we say, and if you do not have the time to do that, then you should just get out of our way, because your criticisms invariably miss their mark and we have places yet to go.”
It is not everyday you see largess like this in action. And don’t think twice about it: I will be glad to get out of your way–if you just let me know which way you are marching. So far it isn’t clear. (Btw, loved the Robert Frostiness of that last line.)
I know zombies can sometimes also be unpredictable in their clamber for human flesh. What are new atheists after? Where are you heading? A Christian would say to hell, but based on Jerry’s–not to forget the others’ posts–I tend to think nowhere. And that’s pretty clever. It keeps people off guard when you do the God-snatch at the end.
I’m sorry if this seems pompous and incoherent. Accommodationists are a little like theologians that way, I guess. I sometimes find it hard to finish my thoughts in a jealous rage.
I will try to do better in 2012. I plan to study the blog sites of all the headlights and sidelights and use them as models of how it’s done. Whatever it is.
Further reading:
The Surefire Atheist Rapid Response Manual (December 2011)
Atheism’s Little Idea (November 2011)
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[The following comment was submitted a day or two ago at the "New Oxonian" version of this post, in response to comments there by "Dan Gillson" and "Scott," and then seemed to vanish into moderation limbo. I have since been assured that this was not intentional and advised to try re-posting here. I have resisted the temptation to revise or improve anything in the interim (known typos included) and those who want to see the context ought to check that out at "New Oxonian."]
While it’s true that a response from Steph would not really answer my particular questions, no one need apologise for having reacted to my comment and I certainly have no desire that Dan’s comments be removed.
I am unable to give a clear (geographical) answer to the question about the movement. Maybe Prof. Hoffmann feels his criticism is only of certain individuals and not of a movement per se, but he certainly seems to have grouped some of them together for the purposes of his criticism. At the time of writing my comment, “movement” seemed an appropriate term to use (my apologies, by the way, for the typo in “proprietary” above). I can’t state with certainty that there is an “atheistic cultural force afoot.” Whatever there is, my main (but not sole) contact with it is indeed by computer. At which point I might add: I am of the opinion that the computer, or rather, the internet, is the most revolutionary development in whatever it is that is happening right now in atheism. Non-believers, no matter what they call themselves, have always been around, surely. It is the internet that has permitted two innovations, both of some importance, at least to those involved. Non-believers who have felt themselves isolated can participate in online communities of the like-minded and, if necessary, anonymously (the fact that anyone should feel they can only admit to non-belief anonymously is, I think, one of the strongest arguments for a more outspoken atheism – that Overton Window is in desperate need of a hefty shove). Secondly, both the closeted anonymous non-believers and the open ones can network in a way that has at least the potential of making the most of their actual numbers. I don’t think we’ve yet seen an example of what this networking could achieve, but it seems to me likely that we will one day. I think the “grumpy old people” comment is unhelpful. Does one really have to start enumerating all the names that are becoming well-known to the aforementioned “community” that do not fit that description? Even if you were limiting to yourself to the original quartet known as the “horsemen,” you couldn’t make either adjective stick to them all.
I don’t feel it’s up to me to decide whether or not it’s a movement and I’m not sure it needs to fit the definition of one in order to be worth my investing interest and a modicum of time in it. It seems as if something is being created; at the very least, I’d say we have the makings of a network of people with similar concerns. Again, I do not see it at all as being limited to the “elderly malcontented,” as Dan put it. I object more to “malcontented” than to “elderly,” however, because I see age as largely irrelevant here. I am happy both for the experience that the older participants can bring and for the energy (and promise of a future) that the younger ones bring. I am largely galvanised in these issues by the cases in which religion is doing harm. “Malcontent” suggests to me someone who is unjustly dissatisfied with a state of affairs that is really not that bad and we see daily reports of doings in the name of religion to which “white hot rage” would be an inadequate response. I’ve said something like this somewhere before, but in terms of impact, it seems to me you can’t reasonably have it both ways. You can’t say that this “movement” (if such it be) is marginal, irrelevant, or even dead, as Prof. Hoffmann has suggested, and still justify the amount of articles directed against it that we have been seeing. “We” could say what we want about “us” and that on its own wouldn’t make it so. The backlash, however, is all the proof one needs that we are being heard and are having an impact. In countries where atheism can be literally censored, it is. In those where it can’t, it is being attacked. One simply doesn’t waste one’s time attacking a non-threat. That is how I deduce what “we” are to “them.”
“Is that really a movement you want to be a part of?” I hate it when people reply by saying “that’s the wrong question,” but I kind of have to do it myself now. I don’t think of myself as a person in search of a movement who will just join the “best” one there is. There are issues that are important to me and I naturally gravitate to those circles to which the likeminded have gravitated. There is probably no one individual in those circles to which I might be said to belong with whom I agree on all points. The old “herding cats” analogy is really not a bad one; independence of thought and refusal to cleave to any dogma can indeed militate against forming cohesive groups, but that is what we have to work with in this area.
Regarding Steph (Scott’s question): Perhaps, in my less than religious attendance to the New Oxonian, I have simply seen an untypical sampling, but my impression is that she has often taken it upon herself to answer questions in a tone suggesting that she at least thinks she always knows exactly what it is RJH meant. I honestly haven’t counted, but her comments seem to outnumber his by quite a lot and it does seem as if he sometimes doesn’t get back to someone because Steph has already taken care of it (presumably to his satisfaction). Scott is obviously a dissenting voice on this; I don’t know what other impressions are out there.