I read this other arti­cle on the new new athe­ism. A sug­ges­tion that female athe­ists should take the lead for athe­ists in order to push a more mod­er­ate and tol­er­ant atheism.

Here’s a quote…

I heard two very dif­fer­ent argu­ments at this event. The first was the old line of the New Athe­ists: Reli­gious peo­ple are stu­pid and reli­gion is poi­son, so the only way for­ward is to edu­cate the idiots and flush away the poi­son. The sec­ond was less con­tro­ver­sial and less utopian: From this per­spec­tive, athe­ism is just another point of view, deserv­ing of con­sti­tu­tional pro­tec­tion and a fair hear­ing. Its goal is not a world with­out reli­gion but a world in which believ­ers and non­be­liev­ers coex­ist peace­ably, and athe­ists are respected, or at least tolerated.

And here’s a bit of demo­graphic analysis…

“Females pre­dom­i­nate in the over­whelm­ing major­ity of reli­gious groups in the United States, so it makes sense that males would pre­dom­i­nate here. But XY types also dom­i­nated the ros­trum, which saw a parade of white men join­ing John Lennon in imag­in­ing no religion.”

Per­haps this means athe­ism is actu­ally bad for the sur­vival of the species — who will all these athe­ists breed with? Athe­ism is clearly a genetic weak­ness. No won­der they want to prop­a­gate their ideas with evan­ge­lis­tic fer­vour. Actu­ally, PZ Myers, the guy who killed my blog, has a post about some “sci­ence” that sug­gests that athe­ism is an unde­sir­able genetic muta­tion. Cop that atheists.

“How­ever, there must be a deeper psy­cho­log­i­cal rea­son than short-termist hedo­nism why so many intel­li­gent peo­ple have cho­sen the mal­adap­tive trait of Athe­ism. I have recently pub­lished a the­ory try­ing to explain the phe­nom­e­non of ‘Clever Sil­lies’. Clever Sil­lies are peo­ple whose pro­fes­sional and expert attain­ments may be at the high­est level, while their psy­cho­log­i­cal and social beliefs and behav­iours are just silly — I was think­ing in par­tic­u­lar of the preva­lent luna­cies of Polit­i­cal Cor­rect­ness among the rul­ing elites. In essence, I argue that the root of the prob­lem is that high intel­li­gence often brings with it a ten­dency to overuse intel­li­gence — even when ‘instinct’ is a bet­ter guide to reality.”

The guy who wrote the paper being quoted by PZ has sug­gested that athe­ism is a delu­sion. In that post he spells out why athe­ism is maladaptive…

The word ‘mal­adap­tive’ has a strict bio­log­i­cal sense, and also a more dif­fuse social mean­ing. In strict bio­log­i­cal terms a mal­adap­tive trait or behav­iour is one that reduces rel­a­tive repro­duc­tive suc­cess. Basi­cally, some­thing is mal­adap­tive if it reduced the num­ber of viable off­spring. By this strict def­i­n­i­tion Athe­ism is a highly mal­adap­tive trait, since Athe­is­tic beliefs are asso­ci­ated with choos­ing to have reduced num­bers of chil­dren: less than the 2.1 chil­dren min­i­mum needed to replace the par­ents and cover pre­ma­ture deaths.

Back to the point about “peace­ful tol­er­ance”… oddly enough, Dawkins (who has pre­vi­ously described faith as the equiv­a­lent of a harm­ful virus) trot­ted out a sim­i­lar line in a let­ter to young athe­ists I read on the Friendly Athe­ist today.

Of course we must leave peo­ple in peace to prac­tise reli­gion if they so choose. But the rest of us must be left in peace to live our lives with­out it. The reli­gious want more and more influ­ence over gov­ern­ment pol­icy and, if they suc­ceed, our soci­ety will be the poorer: less tol­er­ant, less equal, less just, less edu­cated, less rational.

It seems there’s a bit of a philo­soph­i­cal bat­tle rag­ing amongst the athe­ists — per­haps they’ll start their own denominations.

Here’s another quote, from another Friendly Athe­ist post, it comes from a media release one athe­ist organ­i­sa­tion wrote to describe a cam­paign con­ducted by another athe­ist organisation.

Last year, the Wis­con­sin orga­ni­za­tion, the Free­dom From Reli­gion Foun­da­tion (FFRF), dis­played a sign in the capi­tol rotunda which read, “Reli­gion is but myth and super­sti­tion that hard­ens hearts and enslaves minds.” Seat­tle Athe­ists shares [many] opin­ions with the FFRF regard­ing the sep­a­ra­tion of church and state, and about the harm [that] can be done in the cause of reli­gious belief. How­ever, we feel that the mes­sage was need­lessly provoca­tive and inap­pro­pri­ate for the con­text of the capi­tol rotunda.

Push­ing for tol­er­ance is all well and good. The prob­lem is push­ing for tol­er­ance where the two sides of the issue are bina­rily opposed. Athe­ists can harangue Chris­tians for not being pre­pared to con­sider the other side of the debate all they like. But until both sides are able to oper­ate hold­ing con­fi­dence in per­sonal beliefs in ten­sion with the pos­si­bil­ity that the other guys might be right we’re not going to get any closer to this peace­ful coexistence.

I’m more and more con­vinced that’s the key. I’m pretty cer­tain God is there, but I should afford athe­ists the right to live as though he’s not, and that should cut both ways. Athe­ists should be pre­pared to acknowl­edge that the other guys might be right — despite their inter­pre­ta­tion of the evidence.

But so long as lead­ing pub­lic athe­ists trot out talk­ing tips like the one below it’s unlikely that we’ll see that sort of admission.

“To say that God or the spir­i­tual realm exist out­side our ordi­nary plane of exis­tence, and can’t be under­stood by rea­son or evi­dence, makes no sense. If God or the spir­i­tual realm exist and have an effect on this world, we should be able to observe that effect. If they don’t have any effect on this world, their exis­tence is a moot point. ”

You know what Chris­tians call the abil­ity to observe the effects God has on the world — we call it science.

Author: Nathan Campbell

Nathan runs St Eutychus. He is currently a student at the Queensland Theological College. In a previous professional life he worked in public relations for an economic development and tourism marketing organisation. He is married to Robyn. He likes coffee and the internet.

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