No, actually I won't. I don't believe you are correct about atheists gaining any advantage by using mockery. If the great string of brilliant atheist mockers of religion over the past two thousand years haven't gotten more people to give up religious belief what I've seen online isn't going to do it for you. And if it did it wouldn't bother me one bit.
I am indifferent to the status of anyones' belief, I care about their actions. In September of 2006 the action I care about the most is how they will vote in November, as stated in the piece. That's what the piece, very selectively quoted by Ms. Marcotte, was very explicitly about.
How many atheist mockers of religion can you name? It's only been in the last century or two that you could criticize religion without facing the bastinado or the stake. Even now, you face social sanctions here in the US: it's difficult for an atheist to get elected to public office, for instance, and in the Bible Belt you can get beat up or your property vandalized for being godless.
I definitely believe that if more people would stand up and speak out against religion, the movement would grow. As it is now, most people know the safe course is to lie low and avoid the question altogether.
4:53 AM, September 11, 2006
Anyone who knows me can probably guess my answer to that question. (For those of you who don't, it's "No". See here, here, here, and here for starters.). Amanda Marcotte has a lengthy post on Pandagon addressing this very issue (in response to this post on Echidne). Her conclusion is that atheists would be stupid to surrender so powerful a tool as mockery, especially when it is used so effectively by others: I know, it made me cringe to type it, but it’s a very real fact and we have to face the truth. The entire reason that the right wing in America is so powerful today is because they use ridicule so frequently. The jokes don’t even have to be funny to be effective. Believe you and me, I know a lot of wingnuts and when they mock liberals, it’s often a fairly grim exercise. The entire phenomenon of “I’m not a feminist, but” exists strictly because anti-feminists refuse to argue with feminists so much as make jokes that are often more exercises in grim, unfunny mockery of hairy legs and burning bras. Same with the conservative/liberal divide—the reason that most people have liberal politics and yet so many of them identify as conservatives has little to do with politics and everything to do with the endless stream of burned-out hippie jokes radiating from talk radio and other sources. You might not be able to change true believers with mockery, but people that are hovering out there undecided get the message loud and clear when they hear ridicule. And that’s why I think a lot of liberal Christians get pissy about mockery. It’s not just the understandable dislike of feeling mocked; it’s also the knowledge that atheists who speak up and mock, say, Southern Baptists, and not just for their hypocrisy but for their piety, well, there’s a chance that young people will hear us and get the idea that religion itself is kind of silly. And I understand their concern, but they’re just going to have to deal with the fact that if there’s one thing atheists don’t care about, it’s your ability to recruit and keep people in your church. And passing off requests to us not to interfere with your ability to keep your church rolls high as arguments that are for our good and the good of the country is dishonest and, frankly, unChristian.
posted by Zachary Drake at 7:07 AM on Sep 10, 2006
"Should Athiests refrain from mockery for tactical reasons?"
2 Comments -
Pissy? I'll show ya pissy if you want pissy.
No, actually I won't. I don't believe you are correct about atheists gaining any advantage by using mockery. If the great string of brilliant atheist mockers of religion over the past two thousand years haven't gotten more people to give up religious belief what I've seen online isn't going to do it for you. And if it did it wouldn't bother me one bit.
I am indifferent to the status of anyones' belief, I care about their actions. In September of 2006 the action I care about the most is how they will vote in November, as stated in the piece. That's what the piece, very selectively quoted by Ms. Marcotte, was very explicitly about.
4:20 AM, September 11, 2006
How many atheist mockers of religion can you name? It's only been in the last century or two that you could criticize religion without facing the bastinado or the stake. Even now, you face social sanctions here in the US: it's difficult for an atheist to get elected to public office, for instance, and in the Bible Belt you can get beat up or your property vandalized for being godless.
I definitely believe that if more people would stand up and speak out against religion, the movement would grow. As it is now, most people know the safe course is to lie low and avoid the question altogether.
4:53 AM, September 11, 2006