Daily Kos: Sociological Systems, Insults, and Tribalism

Maher starts the segment in setting up a strawman fallacy for how he believes religious people characterize atheism, as another religion, and subsequently ridicules the claim without addressing the charge. And that?s fine, he?s a comedian, prone to hypocrisy and irreverence. But you dear reader, don?t have to be like him. Let me explain a few things, in case you missed them the first go around when making up your mind about what you believe or do not believe.

There are sociological systems of culture, rooted in language, values, and policy. These are institutions in society, such as the church, or police, or Wall Street, or the court system, etc. These institutions are social entities that impact individuals (Dept of Ed with Stafford loans) and wide swaths of the population (Dept of Health & Human Services and teen pregnancy rates). Marx & Nietzsche correctly identified Religion as an opiate, an institution that kept the populace from popular uprising despite all the shit that happens from authoritarians and capitalists. In order to combat this, they advocated atheism in an organized way. And that is what has happened (I like Nietzsche & Marx btw, this isn?t ?red baiting?).

As a social scientist in the last stages of my PhD, I deal every day in thoughts of policy, institution, and effects in the populace. I am well aware of the philosophical principles of objectivism, and how it manifests (as well as the merits of subjectivism). For those that wonder what I?m talking about, please see Bernstein (1983), Much of early social science research of religion was carried out by militant atheists in psychology and anthropology (Stark, 1999), and religious researchers later joined the mix in the academic discourse of peer reviewed journals, which, are not part of the popular discourse because private corporations have rigged the peer-review world for those who can pay (most academic institutions pay subscriptions so researchers have access to our literature, but the nonacademic typically does not read our dialogues).

But this is not to say that atheists get a free pass simply by denying the charge. You know, even broken clocks are right twice a day. The charge as laid out is something I?ve noticed in my interactions with self proclaimed atheists at my university, online at DKos, and based on popularized atheist leaders such as Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens. There have been others in the past, such as Diderot, D?Holbach, Camus, Sartre, but the new breed of atheist seems to woefully ignorant of the God they despise, ridicule, and disbelieve. I might take atheists today seriously if it were not for their sins of hypocrisy.

Let us count the ways. First, atheism is organized. There are clubs for it. Atheists can go to meetings to meet other atheists. The atheists I know flock to hear popular atheist speakers. Dawkins came to my university to speak about two years ago. The Atheist Society on campus flocked to see him, perhaps to find new converts. But Dawkins had been invited as part of Darwin?s bicentennial with the Dept of Zoology, the Museum, etc. One guy my wife and I knew, let?s call him Dick (a PhD student), is a hardcore Atheist. He gets mad whenever he talks about religious people. He constantly ridicules religious thoughts or systems in a sort of fraternity sort of way. While in line, with Dick behind us, I heard him exclaim ?I hope some Christians start something, I want to punch them in the face? as he was flirting with a girl from the Atheist Society. He knew my wife and I were within earshot. Knowing Dick?s problems, I simply turned the other cheek and ignored him. Why? Because Dick was touchy about his unbelief. He saw the world as an Us vs. Them mentality. His tribe against everyone else.

As an aside; the issue of the scientific method being in conflict with religious attitudes was originally put to rest by Immanuel Kant in the Critique of Pure Reason (and then people forgot, or never bothered to read Kant). Kant sets forth the parameters of science as methodology, by recognizing what it can and cannot do. The methodology can measure any subject that has extension (space) and duration (time). Any concept beyond these two parameters is not suitable for science (such as concepts of divinity, which is classically outside of the material universe). This is apparent when heading into any museum with a Picasso, or a Rembrant, or it should be apparent when you enter a Cathedral, Mosque, or Temple. When the scientific method was being advanced, the catholic church saw it as a rival epistemology (how we know what we know), and the first atheist martyr is often cited as Copernicus (but you know what? He did not die for science. He understood science for what it was, a methodology).

Back to Dick?s sort. The Dawkins speech was likewise uneventful. Except for one person who had to be escorted out, the crowd was polite and listened to Dawkins. His message was not that intellectually curious; it was a talk on Darwin, his theories, and then it became a ridiculing session on organized religion, and a defense of atheism. That was when I decided that Dawkins was playing the role of a minister to his flock.

You see, in a sociological context, modern atheism is synonymous with a church. It provides a social milieu of self reinforcement, people can wear their atheist best (with T-shirts that proclaim their unbelief), and the ritual of ridicule is pervasive. It?s like a catharsis perhaps, a way to unload steam, to blatantly insult the opposite institution, to drag believers down and try to make perceived enemies just like them.

Let me quote Shapin (2010) as he explains Boyle (1657) on the problems of ridicule.

?For I love to speak of persons with civility, though of things with freedom.? (Boyle 1657)

The ad hominem style must at all costs be avoided, for the risk was that of making foes out of near dissenters. This was the key point: potential contributors of matters of fact, however wrong they may be, must be treated as possible converts to the experimental philosophy. If, however, they were bitterly treated, they would be lost to the cause and to the community to whose size, and consensus, validated matters of fact:

?And as for the (very much too common) practice of many, who write, as if they thought railing at a man?s person, or wrangling about his words, necessary to the confutation of his opinions; besides that I think, such as quarrelsome and injurious way of writing, does very little misbecome both a philosopher and a Christian, methinks it is as unwise, as it is provoking. For if I civilly endeavor to reason a man out of his opinions, I make myself but one work to do, namely, to convince his understanding; but, if in a bitter or exasperating way I oppose his errors, I increase the difficulties I would surmount, and have as well his affections against me as his judgment: and it is very uneasy to make a proselyte of him, that is not only a dissenter from us, but an enemy to us. (Boyle, 1657)?

The Dawkins? episode was not conclusive to me, until I ran into a vociferous and insulting crowd at DKos. Not all atheists are insulting mind you; my wife and I absolutely adore our friend Sally, who at least took the time to understand Christianity and Buddhism before rejecting them. She married an Aussie (who is a believer, and mechanical engineer) and they now live on the west coast. If you?re an atheist, and you can discuss things on an even keel, without getting emotional, then you?re doing it right. But that?s not my experience here at DKos.

People get emotional when their beliefs are questioned. Our beliefs are core truths, a priori, that must not be questioned (at least by others). When people are questioned, and shown inconsistences, they generally lash out. They make it a ?I know you are? type of thing. It almost always devolves into insults, but that?s how fundamentalist atheists actually start the conversation. To make matters worse, I?ve seen regular Atheists (on this discussion board as well), and Atheist leaders (like Dawkins) treat Science as a deity. It usually starts like this ?Science says that??

Bullshit.

Do not anthropomorphize a methodology. Science does not say anything. Scientists make claims, based on evidence, and their warrant ties their results to their claims. Science is a methodology based on reason, hypothesis testing, and replication of results. I?m a social scientist (and my wife is a science educator, also getting her PhD). We do science year round (I often accompany her for water samples, critter collection, etc., for her workshops at the museum). It is really easy for scientific studies to be wrong, either by blatant fabrication, or making a Type I or Type II error. The Scientific method is not infallible, but it is the best that we have and we can be measurably certain of our findings (95% confidence interval in Social Science, 99.5% in medical science). We often have to make corrections to previous studies, and sometimes it takes decades to catch culprits of malfeasance, if at all. We are drawn to news stories of academic misconduct, and it?s usually based on motivations of the Do or Die mentality at research one institutions. People?s jobs are on the line after all, and tenure is a crowning achievement in any academic field.

It?s the anthropomorphizing that gets me, and it?s what conservatives are catching onto. Religious persons recognize each other because of certain characteristics, and behavior. Religion is a social organization, it tries to affect policy, it has ritual, and it has tenets of belief. These are the sociological institutional measures as practiced in the West. The charge against atheists is pretty clear, and in my mind, the ideology of organized atheism bears the same resemblance to organized religion. It meets the same material needs while leaving a mystery at the top (Carl Sagan?s universe). Maybe it?s the dance that goes on between rival institutions that reshapes one to resemble the other. I really do not know.

But Bill Maher and I disagree on this issue. And I?m fine with it. I know I?m going to catch flack for posting, and chances are pretty good this post is going to be buried under a barrage of ad hominems, I know you are-s, and all manner of childishness. I was warned about touching on this topic by another trusted user, but it does need said.

Citations
Bernstein, R.J. (1983). Beyond objectivism and relativism: science, hermaneutics, and praxis. University of Pennsylvania Press.
Stark, R. (1999). Atheism, faith, and the social scientific study of religion. Journal of Contemporary Religion, v. 14 (1).
Shapin (2010). Never pure: Historical studies of science as if it was produced by people with bodies, situated in time, space, culture, and society, and struggling for credibility and authority. The Johns Hopkins University Press.

Source: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/02/04/1061774/-Sociological-Systems,-Insults,-and-Tribalism

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