Why atheists should respect believers

[rug]

By Sigfried Gold, Published: September 3 at 6:05 am

Certain atheists are happy to proclaim their disgust for religion and believers whenever they get a chance. I recently had the pleasure of meeting a 21-year-old atheist former Christian from British Columbia, who is actively seeking greater tolerance for Christianity than he has at present. I can’t tell you how refreshing it is, in a time of escalating rhetoric and hardening of ideological positions, to find someone who recognizes his own prejudice and wants to let it go. He told me he has “an instinctual desire to mitigate or annihilate my disgust for much of Christianity,” but that he finds this difficult to do. He eloquently elaborates his desire, saying, “There is nothing more effective at pickling the state of the soul and congealing the lucid flow of critical inquiry and the intellect than a rankling prejudice.” I will address just two of his objections to Christianity here: its enshrined anthropocentrism, and its glorification of absolute certainty.

My intention is to help my new friend get past his rankling prejudice, and I hope against hope that this may inspire other intolerant atheists to do likewise. My only qualification for mounting a defense of Christianity–given that I was raised a non-observant Jew and have experienced neither the gifts of Christian faith nor the outrage of disillusionment in such faith–is that I can assure an atheist audience that I have no desire to promote Christianity or to silence criticism of it. I have no doubt that he is perfectly accurate in his criticism of the Christianity that he experienced. The way for him or others to transcend their prejudice is not by being argued out of their considered criticisms, but by being shown that Christianity (like other faiths) is more than its faults. The vapid, punishing, close-minded version of Christianity he is responding to may well have been prevalent in his childhood congregation and in countless other churches, but decent, thoughtful, admirable Christians do exist in the world, and the reason such people remain Christian is that they see something else in Christian doctrine than he sees. The defenses these people might offer would certainly be richer than mine, but, based as they are on assumptions that atheists don’t hold, they would have even less chance of convincing this audience than mine will. So, without further ado, here is my ad hoc atheist apologetics for Christianity in response to two specific charges.

To the charge of anthropomorphism: Anthropomorphism of God is only a metaphysical problem. Given a contemporary, scientific view of cosmology and evolution, imagining the creator of the entire universe to have human qualities or to care about human affairs is absurd. God has human qualities because humans invented God, not because God made humans in his image. Whatever certain Christians may say or believe, atheists should not have a problem understanding this. To criticize Christianity for believing in a God with human characteristics is easy, but it misses the point that a god without human characteristics would be useless in a religious context; such a god would not help people bind themselves into moral communities and give themselves moral support and strength in the face of adversity, violence, temptation, and dissension. As atheists we can scoff at an anthropomorphic creator of the universe, but the function of God in contemporary human life is in the moral sphere, not in the cosmological sphere. Christians, as we know and they themselves know, have to perform all sorts of dubious mental gymnastics in order to hold on to a cosmological view of God in a scientific age. The reason they do so is that it is worth it to them for the sake of the moral and communal benefits they enjoy as a result of their belief, not because they are less capable of understanding the big bang or biological evolution than the rest of us.

Moving on to the charge of “the glorification of absolute certainty”: Faith is not certainty. Belief in the omnipotence of a being who is invisible, intangible, and undetectable–especially in the face of scientific theories that remove the need for God in explaining the origins of the universe or intelligent creatures–requires a lot of faith. If the language expressing that faith sometimes seems over the top, full of hyperbole, expressive of an impossible certainty, let us have some sympathy for what believers are trying to overcome with such language. People don’t believe because they are certain; they use professions of certainty as a support for a nearly unsupportable belief–and, again, they do so because it is worth it to them.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on-faith/wp/2013/09/03/why-atheists-should-respect-believers/

[Duer 157099]

1. Disagree n/t

[rug]

3. You believe atheists should disrespect believers?

[Duer 157099]

5. It depends

but I was disagreeing with more of the content than just the headline.

[MintyWriter]

2. You should.

It's a little disheartening some times to get picked on by atheists. The radicals make a bad image for the few good ones. You have that here as well.

[rug]

4. Welcome to DU.

[longship]

6. I don't give a fuck what believers believe.

I don't care what other people think.

But I very much care how they act and as an ancillary, but related concern, what they say. That is what defines what evil there is in religion to me.

I am more than offended when the airwaves are filled with charlatans like we see who are obviously after nothing more than to fleece their flock. We know of many of them, some who have faded into ignominious history. Peter Popoff, exposed by James Randi on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show. (Yup! He's back. Doing his schtick.) Robert Tilton. Jimmy Bakker. (He's back, too. Hawking bread along with Jesus, of all things.) The Crouch's. (A more despicable pair I couldn't imagine.) Benny Hinn. (Milking his flock for every penny.) Ted Haggard. (I wonder if he's still not gay...)

I measure the believing community by their actions, not their beliefs. What can one say when the only people who seem to want to talk about the outright charlatans are those who do not believe.

Actions and words are important. The extent to which the so-called liberal religionists do not step up on this is the extent to which they may be perceived as part of the problem. I don't want to believe that Sam Harris may be right, that the liberal religious give cover to the conservatives and the outright shysters. But I am beginning to think that they haven't stepped up.

As Jesus might have said, "Isn't time to clean up your own house?"

Then, one can take on the non-believer heathens. Good luck with that.

[LostOne4Ever]

7. Everyone should respect everyone.

Respect is not a thing that only shows up among believers or non-believer. There are believers who are very disrespectful and rude and they should be condemned as well. And, both groups have people who pride themselves on being respectful.


[div class="excerpt" style="margin-left:1em; border:1px solid #bfbfbf; border-radius:0.4615em; box-shadow:3px 3px 3px #999999;"]My intention is to help my new friend get past his rankling prejudice, and I hope against hope that this may inspire other intolerant atheists to do likewise.

Why just atheists? Why not everyone? There are disrespectful people from every group. I greatly support being polite and civil but unfairly focusing on one group is not the way to do so and it only furthers a stereotype against us.

I get wanting to separate oneself from those of one's own group expressing views we disagree with, but if you want to be taken seriously you need an even handed approach. The way in which the author goes about it not only furthers a specific stereotypes against us, but reinforces them in that the people who want to promote such bigotry against us will now go "Look they even admit it is a problem among atheists themselves."

Imagine someone from any other minority generalizing their own group and criticizing them over a stereotype. This is the same thing.

I would rather the author had talked about respect in a universal way and held up himself and his friend as examples rather than chide all of us when many of us strive to be polite and respectful.

[Warren Stupidity]

10. Should I respect the "god hates fags" people?

Or are there limits of this everyone I should respect? Of course the Westboro branch of baptists is aggressively disrespectful toward many groups,so perhaps that is not a good example.

How about very polite and nice people advocating for theocracy? Should I respect them too?

How about the very polite and nice people demanding that children be confused with creationist nonsense?

[LostOne4Ever]

14. Good Point

I was being naively over general.

I should have said we should "treat" everyone with respect when we deal with them whether or not they deserve it. Otherwise, as this cartoon illustrates, we risk making even the most reprehensible positions sound reasonable.



Seems like all one is doing by being disrespectful or argumentative is opening ourselves up to tone trolling and distracting from our actual arguments.

Further, I don't see how we are going to get one of them to see the light if we treat them disrespectfully. If they feel like we are disrespecting them, they won't listen and will only become even more belligerent. Isn't the goal of an argument to get them to see our point of view and logic?

Why be disrespectful? Unless our position is widely accepted it seems to me like we are far more likely to alienate potential supporters than we are to shame people into agreeing with us.

But beyond that, we should be respectful because we are better than than the people you mentioned and can prove it through our words and actions.

[Warren Stupidity]

18. um, somebody should have shot hitler.

with all due respect.

[rug]

9. Are you talking to me? The OP is not about DU.

Why don't you, with 30 posts and four days of membership, post where those "thousands of posts on DU" are to be found.

Or, you can simply post your former name and why you are no longer posting under that name.

[okasha]

11. Make that names.

This guy's living proof of reincarnation.

At least he's lost the multiple exclamation marks. His grammar and syntax still suck, though.

[rug]

12. He still can't count to 100.

[hrmjustin]

16. I wonder if I am on his list.

[hrmjustin]

15. You got here 4 days ago and you have names already?

[dimbear]

13. The cited author's atheist pal needs to focus his rage better. Hone in on the real problems,

like denial of basic scientific facts, population control, sexism, homophobia, the real relevant stuff. Anthropomorphism goes in the who cares box, except for that crap about men being made in God's image and women not. That deserves a beating.

[AtheistCrusader]

17. Respect is earned.

Look to the beam in thine own eye.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=in-atheists-we-distrust

[rug]

28. I say it's the opposite. Disrespect is earned.

Otherwise, it's easy to assume one is talking to an asshole.

[AtheistCrusader]

31. Happens all the time.

[rug]

32. An assumption based on fact is evidence.

[AtheistCrusader]

33. So explain the measurable distrust of atheists that are only hypothetical and not yet even met by

the poll responder?

[rug]

34. Propaganda, demonizing a minority, division of opposition, testing loyalty, etc.

I don't think mimicry is an effective response though.

[AtheistCrusader]

35. Fair point.

[cbayer]

19. It's a good article and I see more atheists who are moving away from their prejudices

and recognizing that some behavior within the atheist community is just as bad as that within the fundamentalist community.

I know there will always be a group who will stew in their own vitriol, just as there will always be a group who hangs on to their prejudice towards atheists, but it seems to be getting smaller.

Although the tone of superiority adopted by the author towards the end is somewhat off-putting, I think his overall points are good.

[muriel_volestrangler]

20. I don't think making up an entity, and telling others to use your creation as a moral basis

is a good way to run people's lives. And that's what the article is defending.

God has human qualities because humans invented God, not because God made humans in his image. Whatever certain Christians may say or believe, atheists should not have a problem understanding this. To criticize Christianity for believing in a God with human characteristics is easy, but it misses the point that a god without human characteristics would be useless in a religious context; such a god would not help people bind themselves into moral communities and give themselves moral support and strength in the face of adversity, violence, temptation, and dissension. As atheists we can scoff at an anthropomorphic creator of the universe, but the function of God in contemporary human life is in the moral sphere, not in the cosmological sphere.

The 'morals' of God (and the article is about the Christian god) were invented by the few people who wrote sections of the Bible. We don't know who half of those people really were, we have next to no idea what their experiences were, or how much they had actually thought about things before they wrote down their claims for the morals of God. To use an imaginary being as a cover for dictating what the world's morals should be is an inferior way to run society. To continue using the claims for 2,000 years is deeply gullible.

Morals come from society. We need to talk about them, and how they affect us all, not pretend they belong to an entity made up centuries ago.

[rug]

21. That is true only if you belive religion offers nothing but a basis to ruin lives.

That is patently false.

[muriel_volestrangler]

22. I'm going by the argument that the article put forth

The author believes religion is primarily about morals; but he acknowledges that gods are artificial, and he also thinks that most believers realise this at some level. But he thinks that the profoundly conservative nature of religions (and they are extremely conservative - basing themselves on 'unchanging truths' typically articulated over a thousand years ago) is a good way to transmit morals to people today. There's nothing in what I said about 'ruining lives'.

[rug]

27. You're correct. I read "run" as "ruin".

[DrewFlorida]

23. It's one thing to respect someone who genuinely believes, quite another to respect pretenders.

I respect believers, the problem with that statement is, there are very few real believers. I would say that 99.9% of those who say they believe, don't really believe. Instead they say they believe as a means of egoistic socializing, that is, they like to feel that they are better, or more moral than other groups of people. Pretend believers become hypocritically obvious to the general observer when their actions don't match their stated beliefs. This bunch of hypocrites I have little respect for, and I will continually point out the difference between their stated beliefs and the actions which belie their true beliefs.
If you want to call that disrespecting someone's belief in God, go right ahead, I have no intention to suffer fraudulent preachers quietly.

[cbayer]

24. 99.9%? That must fall within the *statistic* that 99% of statistics posted

on the internet are made up on the spot.

Or, in other words, completely false with absolute no data to back it up, and driven by a personal agenda.

While I think there are pretenders, I think you are really off base here.

[cleanhippie]

25. FFS, cbayer.

Good thing you pointed that out. No one would have understood the point otherwise. Well done

[PDJane]

26. Respect is earned. No matter who you are, you will get the benefit of the doubt,

But my respect needs to be earned. I won't make fun of you for believing in God, nor will I, usually, make my distaste for organized anything clear while you are telling me about it. When, however, you tell me that you believe in the efficacy of prayer and that God will save a woman who needs an abortion, orntell me that God should make human law, I not waste time on it. I won't argue, but I'm not going to bless you either.

On the other hand, when you tell me that God is going to smite me because I've had an abortion, or I'm tolerant of the LGBT community, or I think that all colours and creeds are supposed to be here, then I will simply not disguise my disgust. If you think that your God simply only likes you and your kind and not anyone else, then that isn't religion; it's organized bigotry.

Stupidity isn't curable; ignorance is, and most of this comes under the heading of willful ignorance.

Frankly, I think it's time to make fun of the more ignorant factions of religion; of the Christian dominionists, of the islamists, of the many ignorant versions of Judaism, of the coming of age ceremonies that damage children, of the people who believe that beating babies for crying is a fine idea, of all of it. "It's my religion" is not an excuse. It's definitely not an excuse for making me follow your religious laws.

[rug]

29. See #28.

[PDJane]

30. See benefit of the doubt.

[Jim__]

36. “There is nothing more effective at pickling the state of the soul ... than a rankling prejudice.”

His new friend actually gave a sufficient reason to get past his prejudice:

... “There is nothing more effective at pickling the state of the soul and congealing the lucid flow of critical inquiry and the intellect than a rankling prejudice.” ...