They're Even Jerks When They're Calling Each Other Out For Being Jerks, They Can't Help Themselves

That article in the Guardian by Jeff Sparrow, mentioned in my update this noon,  about how atheists can save the "good name" of atheism from the annoying, arrogant, conceited, bigoted new atheist type is rather revealing as to why it ain't gonna happen.   After many words condeming Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, etc. for being the jerks and bigots they are, here is how he finishes it, with my comments.

As my colleague Jason Wilson argues, denunciations of other people’s “stupidity” are a particular temptation of our age. By way of contrast, he puts the case for solidarity, writing that:

"Solidarity requires listening: to stories of the structural deformation of individual lives; to the ways that popular culture makes people feel like they are living against the grain; to analyses that have not yet and may never become wholly coherent, or even depart from common sense."

Now, remember, Sparrow thought that passage from Jason Wilson was an improvement on the new atheists.   Look at this "Stories of the structural deformation of individuals lives,"  apparently this remedy includes the assumption that religious belief is a result of "structural deformation" of individuals lives.  Which is rather hilarious because in many studies, religious people are more likely to have well adjusted lives than non-believers.  Less likely to be addicted to alcohol or drugs, less likely to divorce, longer lives, report higher happiness, etc.   For example,

This study examines the multifaceted relationships between religious involvement and subjective well-being. Findings suggest that the beneficent effects of religious attendance and private devotion reported in previous studies are primarily indirect, resulting from their respective roles in strengthening religious belief systems. The positive influence of religious certainty on well-being, however, is direct and substantial: individuals with strong religious faith report higher levels of life satisfaction, greater personal happiness, and fewer negative psychosocial consequences of traumatic life events. Further, in models of life satisfaction only, the positive influence of existential certainty is especially pronounced for older persons and persons with low levels of formal education. Finally, there are persistent denominational variations in life satisfaction, but not in happiness: nondenominational Protestants, liberal Protestants, and members of nontraditional groups such as Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses report greater life satisfaction than do their unaffiliated counterparts, even with the effects of other dimensions of religiosity held constant. Several directions for additional research on religion and psychological well-being are discussed.

Sparrow continues:

That doesn’t entail abandoning a critique of religion. But it does mean adopting a certain humility when coming to terms with why ordinary people believe the things they do.

First, I have yet to encounter an atheist who cared to develop the knowledge of religion so as to make a critique of any aspect of it superior to the internal criticism of religious scholars.   There may be the odd agnostic or atheist New Testament scholar who has bothered to do that but, really, other than the rarest of instances, what atheists have to say in criticism of religion is generally jejune at best.

And, um, sorry, but given my experience with atheists, I wouldn't bet a nickle on any of them being able to discern "why ordinary people believe the things they do".  They'd be too busy filling that gap in their knowledge with self-serving narratives and attributions f ideas they'd like to imagine religious people hold for the most insulting of reasons they would like that to be true.   Not to mention the INCREDIBLE ARROGANCE DEMONSTRATED BY THAT PASSAGE.  We, the "ordinary people" apparently need the presumably "extra-ordinary" atheists to discern why we believe as we do. Clearly, Sparrow, even as he is posing as not being one of those atheist jerks, can't help demonstrating that he's got exactly the same attitudes that the ones he names do.    Go back and look again at the previous passage, this little gem of unintended revelation of the same kind, "to analyses that have not yet and may never become wholly coherent, or even depart from common sense," to get a firm sense of where Sparrow is really coming from.

In a different world, religion might not be necessary. But we’re not in that world yet. In the struggle for social change, the religious will play just as important role as anyone else. If you don’t believe in God, that’s great. But you’re not helping by being a jerk about it.

Given what I said the other day about atheists never having played a positive role in American politics, that their role has been in volunteering as a foil for the Republican right to use to paint Democrats and liberals as anti-religious, helping that effort with all their might, anyone hoping for change had better hope that religious people play a far more important role in doing that than atheists have and certainly will try to continue to play.

I have given reasons why atheism, especially in its most common form as materialism, will likely play an inevitably negative role in egalitarian democracy.   Without someone to endow all people with equal rights and a moral obligation to respect those rights, the greatest of all prerequisites for producing egalitarian democracy, those rights and obligations won't be held sufficiently firmly by enough people in society to produce or sustain democracy.

If Sparrow wants to do something, he should come up with a very strongly compelling argument that would talk the atheists whose materialism makes them deny the reality of moral absolutes, such as that you are not to treat people as you would not want to be treated, that you must respect peoples rights on an equal bases EVEN WHEN YOU REALLY DON'T WANT TO.   And while he's at it he could come up with compelling arguments against his fellow atheists who try to debunk a belief in the possibility of free thought, free will and a myriad of other positions necessitated by a belief in materialism.    After he's done that, maybe we can talk about other things, without that, I'd rather do without such atheists on the left.

Perhaps Sparrow doesn't know that the path that Christopher Hitchens took here in the United States from Trotskyite to neo-con was a well trodden trail beginning with the original neo-cons at City College in the 1930s, all of whom were atheists.  It never surprises me when an intellectual atheist leaves the nominal left for the lucrative vulgar materialist right.  There really isn't more than a pose of intellectualism that separates the two.