This is pretty small beer, but seems worthwhile making a short comment on. In the Independent Mark Steel has a very short piece which claims that “just because you’re an atheist doesn’t make you rational.” Indeed, it doesn’t. Poor Mark. He made some remarks about Richard Dawkins and got fuming responses, he says. But then he goes on to say this:
It’s not the rationality that’s alarming, it’s the smugness. Instead of trying to understand religion, if the modern atheist met a peasant in a village in Namibia, he’d shriek: “Of course, GOD didn’t create light, it’s a mixture of waves and particles you idiot, it’s OBVIOUS.”
But of course this is nonsense. A modern atheist would no more shriek such a thing at a peasant in Namibia, than at a journalist at the Independent. Some modern atheists might write internet comments that seem not very short of shrieking, but then the internet is a medium which both encourages shrieking and makes innocuous words seem like a shriek.
What’s strange about Mark Steel’s piece is that he lards his very short article with comments about what some anonymous atheist has said, and some irrelevancy about missing the point by making the refutation of God one’s primary aim. For instance, he speaks about an interview with Giles Fraser — the one who quit as a canon of St. Paul’s cathedral, and how, during the interview, in which, we are to understand, Fraser spoke with “inspiring compassion”, he was interrupted by an atheist
who declared the Christian project is doomed because we’re scientifically programmed to look after ourselves at the expense of anyone else. So the only humane rational scientific thought to have was “GO Christian, GO, Big up for the Jesus posse.”
I’m not confident I know what this means, but I do not think this is representative of the atheist project any more than I think that Giles Fraser is representative of the Christian project. Nor do I know any atheists who would think that this was a particularly useful interruption.
But by this time the article is almost finished, and he ends on this note:
Similarly, Hitchens appears to have become obsessed with defying religion, so made himself one of the most enthusiastic supporters for a war he saw as being against the craziness of Islam. But the war wasn’t about God or Allah, it was about more earthly matters, which the people conducting that war understood. And, as that war became predictably disastrous, they were grateful for whatever support they could find. And so a man dedicated to disproving GOD was praised in his death by the soppiest, sickliest, most, [sic] irrational, hypocritical Christian of them all.
This just seems confused to me, and I wonder why anyone thought it worthwhile saying, and, moreover, why the Independent thought it worthy of publication. (And, just so that Mark Steel is clear on this point, since religion is really about earthly matters, even when it most pretends to speak about the divine, wars can be about God or Allah even if these non-existent worthies are not mentioned.) Even if Tony Blair is ”the soppiest, sickliest, most irrational, hypocritical Christian of them all”, it’s hard to imagine what Mark Steel had in mind by taking Christopher Hitchens’ death, anonymous atheist commenters, some freeform abuse of Tony Blair, and a few ill-chosen words into a hat, shaking them vigorously, and then writing down the jumbled ideas that resulted. The moral of the story is, just because you write something about atheism not making people rational, doesn’t mean that what you have written manages to achieve rationality. Why do people think that, by writing such empty-headed nonsense, they are doing anything useful? If it’s meant as comedy, Mark, it simply falls flat — this, since Mark Steel is reputed to be a stand-up comic. Apparently, he can’t even do it sitting down. If it’s meant as serious journalism, the man needs to go back to school.
Yes, I commented on Mark Steel’s poorly thought out article, embarrassed by the stupidity on display.
FYI, I think here Steel was talking about Start the Week on Radio 4, wherein Claire Tomalin and Susan Hill made some rather simplistic, I would say, remarks that verged on genetic determinism. For example, Tomalin, who spoke after Fraser, said:
Tomalin overstates the case here; just because we have these tendencies does not mean we are bound to behave according to them, nor that altruism is anathema to our evolutionary heritage as ‘survival machines’. And just because we’ve evolved to behave in certain ways in the ancestral environment, doesn’t mean this is how we should behave, which I think is the point Steel is getting at. I think the issue she was trying to highlight was the lack of accommodation for human nature in Christian doctrine, so I think Steel’s paraphrase is misleading, if this is what he’s referring to, although one can imagine a curmudgeonly anti-gnu like Steel seizing on the remarks in the way he did. It’s an uncharitable interpretation, I think.
It has been a while since I read Hitch-22, but I don’t think Hitchens supported the war because it was against Islam, he supported it because it was against an oppressive dictator with a history of violence and murder against his own people.
I’m rather surprised that Steel should be doling out such ridiculousness when he generally goes for higher-brow humour through his various radio lecture series such as the one he gave on The Theory of Evolution in his Revolution series where he goes to town on religionists, creationists et al. Someone could just as easily quote anything he said there and paint him as smug and irrational.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mark_Steel_Lectures
Mark Steel is simply wrong about describing 18th Century Atheists as not against religion, many were, but they were mostly against the institution of the state and consequently the political influence of state supported religion. That is why many also formed alliances with rational thinking Christians or deists who were also against these institutions of the time. It was complex, with many different movements and influential figures.
However, he is correct that atheists are not necessarily rational. I think we invest far too much energy and emotion into the word ‘atheist’ as if being atheist is the opposite to religion, stupidity, irrationality and hate, but it’s not. I see plenty of silly comments made by smug and intolerant atheists on the various atheist blogs, that are simply embarrassing.
Being atheist is not enough. There has to be a focused effort to both think critically and judge ethically, and preferably as a free thinking intellectual or artistic community.
Hitchens wasn’t simply an atheist, he was an intellectual force and natural genius, and it was those qualities that made him who he was.
I don’t know why, but all of the theologian/apologist articles that have crossed my path in recent days seem to be able to be described by their logical fallacy.
This one is a tu quoque logical fallacy.
Nobody is 100% rational 100% of the time. We all engage in irrational behaviors, magical thinking and the like.
The difference between atheists and theists is that atheists engage in one fewer category of irrational thinking and behavior than theists do.
And atheists tend to recognize our own foibles — and maybe even laugh at them more than theists do. They’re so damned serious about their irrationality.
He is absolutely correct in saying that being an atheist does not mean that you are rational, but I think that he has framed the question the wrong way around. I would say that it is generally true that being rational means that you are an atheist, or at least a Deist. I have read many rational attempts to logically justify belief in some kind of god and can, at least, concede that they may have some merit. However, even if you grant them the benefit of the doubt on every single one of their claims, the rather pointless god of Deism is all that they can claim to prove. The additional claims about this god that religions are built upon still remain infantile superstitions that all rational people reject. I would also go further and say that the Deist’s appeal to their deity to explain the things about the universe that we do not yet understand is irrational. Every time that another mystery is explained, this god gets a little smaller. We may never solve all of the mysteries that lie before us but to do so is possible in principle. Even the nebulous god of deism is dependant upon human ignorance to exist. Remind me again why so many religious folk are so hostile toward science.
Mark Steel, who’ve I’ve spoken to on the phone once (for a local media interview) seems like a nice enough bloke. But he does thrash about a bit when he’s trying to formulate an argument for or against something. His programme on Oliver Cromwell was fun but all over the place. This doesn’t matter if he’s got the audience with him, but when he’s writing his confusion over issues is a bit obvious. I mean, of course atheists aren’t 100 per cent rational – how could they be human if they were?