But that's the whole art of writing tongue-in-cheek stuff -- plausible deniability in either direction!
> I don't know if Hitchens, Dennett, Dawkins claim they speak for the
> entire clan.
Yes, okay, perhaps they don't explicitly make the claim. But who else is writing about atheism and selling a gazillion books? And [un] surprisingly, all at the same time.
> I also don't know what their sexual orientation or skin color has
> to do
> with anything in this light.
w.r.t domination: a point Doug made: the religious dominate our (the non-religious) lives. That seems to be true only for gay people (whose union rights are opposed by the religious) and women (whose rights to their bodies are opposed by the religious) in any significant sense (when compared to your generic male). It's possible I am ignorant of some oppression I am suffering (that's tongue-in- cheek!) but my kid learns evolution, and its only the rare occasion when I have to deal with some garish festival decorations that the religious bother me with (i.e., apart from what they do to my apparently non-existent gay and women friends ;-)).
> Your attempts are sarcasm are difficult to discern via email which is
> not altogether friendly to that method of communication.
> Even if tongue-in-cheek you do seem to have more animosity directed
> toward those of Dawkins ilk than would seem warranted.
> I'll take the atheists over the superstitious in most instances.
If I am sarcastic its towards well identified entities, yes? Yeah I have no patience (that's tongue-in-cheek but rather obtuse since I am building on my own earlier lame joke) for Dawkins, Hitchens, Dennett and that whole sort of style... a trivial example is Dawkins' stuffy humourless encounter with Ted Haggard which achieved (in my mind) the seemingly impossible by making Haggard look friendly! Plus its tough to forgive someone who would choose a title "Selfish X" when deep down he knows that's meaningless and harmful. Yes, email is a bit different but that's what emoticons and such are for... but I agree on the ambiguity: for instance, when I talk about some part of modern atheists using arguments similar to the right, its not obvious that I am thinking of someone like Pinker, who rather than dealing with the content of the arguments against him, resorts to psychoanalysis and scolding, and is happy to go chat with AEI, etc.
W.r.t whom I will take: it depends on the person I guess... wouldn't you agree?
> Aligning yourself with populist beliefs when you don't generally
> ascribe
> to them is pseudo-populism. It appears this is what you are doing.
> Luxury does not equal advantage so I have no idea why you write that.
> Superstition is a resort to supernatural explanations for things
> rather
> than a natural/rational/scientific explanation. Why is that bad? This
> would seem self explanatory from the definition but IIRC you have some
> animosity towards science and a 'soft spot' for mystical
> explanations on
> occasion even if you claim not to have such animosity. Simply
> because we
> do not have a scientific explanation for everything is no reason to
> fall
> back on a supernatural explanation for any of these unknowns that
> violates what we do know.
But I am not aligning myself with populist beliefs -- I am (to use the supplied word) just plain populist. My dictionary says of 'populist':
a member or adherent of a political party seeking to
represent the interests of ordinary people.
a person who holds, or who is concerned with, the views
of ordinary people.
So one could say I am a false populist by reading my post as an attempt to represent the interests of ordinary people (ignoring the question begging that remains). While it may be true that my argument furthers the interest of ordinary people, even if true, that does not lead to a conclusion that I am making a claim of representation. W.r.t the second definition, well yeah, I would guess all of us are concerned with the views of ordinary people, even if we may not hold them.
But that's going further than necessary already: to suggest that I am a pseudo-populist you have to first show that either (a) I am a populist in the sense in which you seem to define it: someone who aligns himself with the beliefs of the populace, and then that I do not subscribe to those very beliefs, or (b) I am a populist in the sense of the definitions above. I may be, but importantly for this argument, I do not claim to be (other than the tongue in cheek response to Doug about "my genuine populism"). What I did claim (tentatively) was that atheism may be a luxury of the privileged while the religious are probably predominantly poor and working (actually I wrote that religion may be their last resort) and that suggests that Doug's point about who dominates whom (and therefore to whom consideration is due) may be incorrect. That to me is a claim of fact/analysis, not about ideology, identity, etc. If you (hypothetical you) insist on analysis of motivation, then IMHO the way to go is to read it not as a defence of the opposition but a critique of my mates.
On 28 Sep, 2007, at 18:42 PM, Marvin Gandall wrote:
> Ravi writes:
>
>> The truth is more probably that atheism is a luxury of over-educated
>> comparatively wealthy intellectual brats, while religion is the last
>> resort of the poor and the working classes. I would wager that there
>> is even today a significant portion of the "religious" who think of
>> god or go to church for a moment of peace and comfort, to hope for a
>> second for some relief, some higher order, meaning, purpose.
> ===========================
> You would have had to have grown up in a working class community where
> socialist thought was deeply entrenched to have appreciated ...
Okay, you got me there.
> To be instructed that religion
> would bring them a "moment of peace and comfort" would have sounded
> patronizing to working class ears. It was a sentiment often
> expressed by the
> wealthy and powerful, many of whom equated "athiesm" with socialist
> disorder, and wanted the working poor to instead embrace the genteel
> religions they favoured as an antidote.
But the above ("instructed", "patronising", etc) is more wordplay (or what Doug might call faux indignation) for argument. The point is not who says what (wealthy and powerful), why (equated with socialism) and for what reason (antidote) but what is the reality and how are these lives lived. So what if some of the working class community, the brightest and what not, were atheist? Good for them! But what of the rest? We are not talking about religion exploiting them (a legitimate point) but about they (as the religious) dominating us.
> Socialism no longer has any roots in the urban working class, whose
> political colouration is broadly liberal, but religion no more has the
> profound influence you ascribe to it today than it had then.
I think John Thornton wrote about having some respect for it when there was some meaning to "sacred", and perhaps its true that that's all gone and all we are left with is vulgar ignorance -- but I wrote more to the point that religion is the last resort, not a profound influence. Also, religion then has not much influence on them in the other sense in which Chris or Doug think it still does (on a sister thread). Further, if socialism has lost hold, as has religion, it is also true that in the days when the one had roots that produced fruit, so did the other, as we discussed in the thread on civil disobedience (the two well known practitioners of which, in the 20th century, were deeply religious men).
The responses are appearing fast so I hope I will be forgiven the stream of thoughts style of my own [response],
--ravi