Revisiting the Existential Threat to Western Society

I've argued this before but the topic is still hot so I'm going to approach it from a different perspective.

Believe it or not, Muslims are not inherently bad or evil. It's one thing to challenge their claims and criticize their actions when they behave badly, but that's not what a lot of the criticism is doing. I don't like vilifying Muslims as a group for a number of reasons. One is because they're not a majority in my society the way Christians are, so it's not as easy to punch up. Were I living in Iran or Saudi Arabia that would be a different story, but that would carry its own set of problems worthy of criticism in their own right. Vilifying Muslims in a Christian-dominated society doesn't promote secularism or anti-theism so much as give shade to Christian agendas. Even if you're not intending to promote Christian supremacy, unintended consequences are still a thing. If we want a post-religious society then I strongly believe that secularism needs to be our goal, not anti-theism. When enforced correctly secularism can't be so easily subverted to promote a sectarian agenda. Anti-theists can get so caught up in focusing on a particular threat that we ignore all others.

Another reason I don't support vilifying Muslims or other minority groups is because in spite of our recent gains atheists are still a minority. If there's anything that Christians and Muslims agree on is that atheists are a threat to religion. If you think that Christian society is a valid defense against Islamic aggression what you're doing is empowering Christians to fight against ideological threats. That necessarily includes us. Speaking as an atheist, if you think that Christians won't use the power we give them to shut us down with the same zealotry they'll use against Muslims you're sorely mistaken. We are the original Other, the true existential threat to all religious agendas. We may not use violence to achieve our ends the way Christians and Muslims do, but we are no less dangerous to their goals.

Christian extremists have been looking for ways to roll back the clock on the Enlightenment, to overturn secularism and restore their religious power in Western society. We should not help them achieve their goals by undermining secularism in our zeal to oppose Muslim terrorism. It will not stop with Muslims.

So think again before you share a post from Breitbart, World Net Daily and other right-wing sources. Look to see what else they have to say about religion in general; are they just anti-Islamic in particular or do they promote secularism in general? If the latter then go ahead and share it and I'll support it when I see it. But if it's just the former then most likely they're promoting a Christian agenda and no matter how much you may hate Islam or Muslims, that's not going to help anyone who isn't a Christian. Like me.

Disavowing the Chapel Hill Murders

I've been slogging through a post taking another look at Pope Francis I as he enters his third year as the Supreme Pontiff, but the murder of three Muslim students in Chapel Hill demands a response. I disavow this act of bigotry. Violence is not justified by atheism or even anti-theism. I will happily do violence to your default assumptions about religion, but not to your body, your rights or your freedom. There is no justification for killing someone because of their religious beliefs. However, it seems that the primary motive in this case was just as petty:

Police said in a statement Wednesday morning that a dispute about parking in the neighborhood of rented condominiums may have led to the incident.

“Our preliminary investigation indicates that the crime was motivated by an ongoing neighbor dispute over parking. Hicks is cooperating with investigators,” Lt. Joshua Mecimore, a police spokesman, said.

Do I really have to express just how stupid it is to end anyone's life over parking?

Nevertheless, I don't think we can rule out religion just yet. Since this idiot has been a fairly vocal atheist the press is naturally digging into what appears to be the first major incident of "atheist violence" since Pol Pot. And I suspect there really was an element of religious bigotry involved, but if it was informed by either his atheism or his anti-theism I can't see it. Why target Muslims in a region dominated by Christians? Back in October I talked about the dangers of anti-Islamic rhetoric. I suspect this is my prediction coming true. "So let's stop pretending that Islam is the great threat of the Twenty-First Century and buying into the culture of fear that's allowing Christian extremists to undermine secularism in the West. If they succeed it's not Islam that will take over."

Abusers and Victims

In psychology there's a concept developed in the late seventies called the cycle of abuse in which domestic violence follows a continual pattern of tension, explosion, reconciliation and then back again. Those three were later broken down further into fourteen identifiable stages, but that's not the worst of it. Children who witness or suffer such abuse are more likely to become abusers themselves. They learn that this sort of behavior is correct and even necessary and they propagate it to other people in their lives as they grow up. It's tragic, but it doesn't end there.

For the most part throughout history atheists have been the abused more than the abuser. People really don't like it when you don't share their beliefs. But as I've previously explored atheists are just as human as believers and subject to the same human foibles. Believers like counter our criticism by bringing up abuses wrought by atheists, and it would be dishonest to deny it. There are atheists who have been monsters just as much as believers, and the fact that atheism doesn't inform our actions is another topic altogether. The simple truth is that atheism doesn't make us immune to violent attitudes. However, in the last few generations we've learned there are more effective ways to promote our agenda, ways that don't require violence or coercion beyond making sure everyone behaves themselves, believer and nonbeliever alike.

We can't help but be influenced by our experiences and a lot of former believers who have rejected their religions come away with the impression that religion is a bad thing. Even nonbelievers who were never religion get this impression when they look at the world around them. Of course, those are the more extreme examples of religious behavior and we're scolded for cherry-picking the bad and ignoring the good that religious people do. But even at its best religion causes problems because it takes claims we don't know are true and demands we must treat them as truth. The result is that people have trouble distinguishing between fantasy and reality. It's a pattern that gets propagated with each new generation of believers raised to assume that there are some things we just have to accept no matter what the evidence supports. They're taught that even when they should follow the evidence in all other aspects of their lives they should do what they're told where this issue is concerned. This would be less of a problem if religion didn't bleed over into so many parts of our lives, from our personal interactions to our assumptions about how the universe works. Every believer does this to greater or lesser degrees.

This is why I consider believers victims of religion. That they dole out abuse as required by their religious beliefs doesn't make them any less victims of that abuse themselves. They are the children of abusers, who were themselves children of abusers and so forth. Whenever this cycle began it behooves us to recognize it and figure out how to break it. I become a victim of religion whenever a believer learns I'm an atheist and assumes the worst about me. I'm a victim whenever religious privilege is promoted over people's rights or needs. I'm a victim when justice becomes subverted by religious principles. But all these things that make me a victim apply equally to believers as well. Religious violence is just as often inflicted on other believers, religiously motivated injustice is just as often inflicted on the faithful. When a Muslim woman forces a female relative to suffer the same genital mutilation that she received, they're both victims. When a Christian woman suffers humiliation and violence without complaint because she's been taught that it's her place, she is also a victim.

We often feel a sense of moral outrage when the guilty are allowed to get away with their crimes, and this is a good thing. Our desire for justice motivates us to take action and create change to make a better world for us to live in. But it's so very easy to fall into the trap of confusing justice for vengeance. We must hold the guilty accountable for their deeds, but we shouldn't forget that in many cases the guilty are also victims themselves. Justice isn't served by simply dismissing them as animals, evil and beyond redemption. They should be made to atone for what they've done, but they should also be helped to realize why atonement is necessary in the first place. Otherwise we'll never break the generational cycle of abuse.

When Freedom of Speech Meets Privilege

In the wake of the the Charlie Hedbo massacre, the always quotable Pope Francis I took the opportunity to weigh in. Did he condemn the violence and urge greater tolerance? Not exactly.

Asked about the attack that killed 12 people at the offices of Charlie Hebdo – targeted because it had printed depictions of the prophet Muhammad – he said: “One cannot provoke, one cannot insult other people’s faith, one cannot make fun of faith.

“There is a limit. Every religion has its dignity … in freedom of expression there are limits.”

He gestured to Alberto Gasparri, who organises papal trips and was standing by his side, and added: “If my good friend Dr Gasparri says a curse word against my mother, he can expect a punch. It’s normal. It’s normal. You cannot provoke. You cannot insult the faith of others. You cannot make fun of the faith of others.”

Cautioning against provocation he said the right to liberty of expression came with the obligation to speak for “the common good”.

It seems no matter how many times I point this out I always end up needing to repeat it again: "Freedom of speech means freedom for those who you despise, and freedom to express the most despicable views." Anything else is simply not free speech.

The problem that Pope Francis has here is that his beliefs and his institution has enjoyed a position of privilege for a very long time. Oh, I grant you that they struggled for recognition in the beginning as the Roman Empire wobbled back and forth between Christian and pagan beliefs but eventually the matter was settled by law and sword that Christianity was the official religion and all others were eradicated. In its golden age after the fall of the empire the Catholic Church was still the supreme power in the Western world (and perhaps the entire known world if it hadn't been for those pesky Persians) making kings and their kingdoms dance to their tune. There was a time when even suggesting anything contrary to official church dogma could earn you a visit from an Inquisitor and if you didn't recant quick enough you'd be lucky to get away with your limbs intact, let alone your flesh unburnt.

We no longer live in a world where the Church can terrorize the average citizen with torture or death with impunity, but that assumption of privilege is still there. Today in the secular world you can criticize art, fashion, news, parenting, politics and just about anything else that we interact with, but woe betide those who dare to criticize religion or religious beliefs! "You cannot make fun of the faith of others." Actually, yes. Yes you can, and you should. There is no idea, no concept, no institution or practice that is so sacred that it should not be held up to scrutiny and criticized. It doesn't matter if your religion is Buddhism, Christianity, Islam or Zoroastrianism, your beliefs are no better than anyone else's and if you think otherwise you are invited to show us how. We've been waiting for that evidence for thousands of years, and I'm not holding out hope that any will be forthcoming in the next few thousand years.

As an atheist, my beliefs (or lack thereof) get mocked all the time. There are sites and forums dedicated to creating extreme caricatures of who I am and how I behave, and guess what: that's fine. If you think my opinions are wrong you're invited to explain why. I will do my best to defend them and we'll see who wins in the open marketplace of ideas. What Pope Francis is declaring is that the marketplace of ideas is not open where religion is concerned, that religious ideas should be sheltered from criticism where they might be exposed as false. This tells me he's afraid of criticism, and that can only lead me to suspect that he's afraid his beliefs are false and he doesn't want anyone to admit that the emperor doesn't look good in his birthday suit.

Violence is never justified in the defense of beliefs, no matter how offensive you may think something is. Offense is not an argument, and it's not a trump card, it's censorship. If your ideas can't be defended then they don't deserve protection, they deserve to be destroyed under critical analysis. You can't bully me by crying out that you're offended. You just provoke me to insult you again.

What to do about Islamic extremism?

If you haven't seen the news today, Islamic terrorists shot and killed 12 people at the satirical magazine company of Charlie Hebdo. Their reason why? Because the magazine dared to print a cartoon caricature of the prophet Mohammad. It's not the first time Muslim terrorists have done this sort of thing, and it won't be the last. These people don't just demand unearned respect for their beliefs, they demand submission to them. The idea of civil rights and personal freedom doesn't seem to be part of their vocabulary.

This is a problem. It sets up a conflict between the Islamic world and everyone else in which no compromise is possible, it's either us or them. So far the Western world has been relatively measured in its response, which seems ridiculous considering the widespread destruction we've inflicted on Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and more but that's us restraining ourselves. If we truly commit to all-out war with people who are a dedicated threat to us we can do much, much worse.

There are factions in the Western world who are screaming for us to do just that. The more Muslim extremists provoke us, the more likely it becomes that people will listen to those factions. More and more people are looking at the Muslim world as problems rather than partners. I sincerely hope to avoid this, but as I discussed previously there are Christian factions looking to use this as an opportunity to come to power.

What do we do? Bringing these extremists to heel is going to be costly and troublesome on our own, and the more trouble it becomes the less likely people are going to treat it as a cost-effective solution. The Muslim world needs to be convinced to police their own, and it doesn't seem likely that this is going to happen. We're not hearing from the moderates, only the fundamentalists. Only it turns out that isn't true either, Muslim moderates are standing up in protest of their own extremists and we're not being told about it. Did I mention the Christian factions? Christians can be and are just as extreme but we're not hearing about them, either. We're getting a very skewed view of extremism in the world and it's not helping our decision-making.

We really need to put an end to this nonsense. We have competing religions vying for dominance, both of whom are willing to be ruthless in their use of violence to achieve their ends. We have moderates who are interested in peaceful coexistence and power elites who clearly have an agenda in which the winner takes all. It's time for us to take power back for ourselves and reach out to other moderates interested in peace. It's time to stop glorifying the extremists on both sides and acknowledge the destruction they're causing. It's becoming another Christianity versus Islam battle because we're allowing ourselves to be manipulated into it, but we have the power to stop this. We just have to stop buying into the idea that one side or the other is right. Neither of them are.

What Is The Great Existential Threat To Civilization?

Thanks, Bill Maher.

Lately there's been a lot of discussion about ISIS/ISIL, Islamophobia and whether or not Muslims are a threat to civilization (or at least Western civilization). It came to a head when Ben Affleck argued with Bill Maher and Sam Harris, accusing them of bigotry against all Muslims for their criticism of Islam. Some people agree with Affleck that Harris and Maher take it too far, others side with Maher and Harris that Islam is a genuine threat. Also, Christianity has been reformed which is why we don't see these problems in Christian countries. I want to come back to this in a bit.

They're all correct and they're all wrong. Islam is a threat, no doubt about it. Any religion that isn't constrained by secular law is a threat both to its own members and non-members alike. But Islam is not an existential threat to civilization. They're not going to take over the West and establish a European or North American Caliphate. Yes, liberals in Europe have taken the idea of cultural and religious tolerance too far (as I've previously observed it's self-defeating to be tolerant of intolerance). But as hard as those immigrants try to avoid assimilation they can't succeed. Living in a non-Islamic country under non-Islamic rules means that you can't stop your children from encountering non-Islamic ideas and eventually they're going to pay attention. Yes, Muslim families are probably going to outbreed us but future generations born in France and Britain are going to be French and British. The world will continue to turn.

There are steps we need to take to protect ourselves from the threat of religious invasion and domination, and we already know what those steps entail: secularization. Most sane Western nations have already implemented it to great success. It's the reason why those countries aren't under any threat of living under a theocracy, because their laws aren't dominated by religious preference. Christians can be Christian, Muslims can be Muslim and atheists can be atheist. Everyone is protected and no one gets special privilege for their beliefs.

This is how we defeat the Islamic threat: not with bombs and military action but with secularism. When people behave badly we don't bomb a village and hope we got some terrorists in the process, we do police work to identify the perpetrators and arrest them. We show the Islamic world that secularism doesn't just protect our innocent, it protects theirs as well. Islam rejected secularism a thousand years ago when their clerics took back control, but that doesn't mean it can't work again.

Secularism is the reason why people have the mistaken impression that Christianity has been reformed and isn't a threat to us the way Islam has become. No, Christianity has not been reformed, it's been leashed. Before we started instituting secular law religious authorities were brutal about purging anything they considered heresy before it could spread among the population. Men and women were murdered on the strength of nothing more than the accusation of a neighbor hoping to curry favor with the authorities or to exact revenge. Ideological purity was enforced by the priests who recognized no authority but their own, and they interacted as peers with the nobility in a mutually beneficial relationship. Is it any wonder that French Reign of Terror and the Communist uprising in Russia targeted the priesthood as enemies of the people?

Christianity has been restrained by secularism. Its priests and authority figures don't have the right to punish heresy, giving way for people to construct their own liberal interpretations of the old religion. That mighty bastion of the old guard, the Vatican, is currently playing catch-up to modern morality without ever publicly conceding that liberal interpretation is valid. How ironic is it that the current pope, bad as he is, is probably more liberal in his religious beliefs than was Martin Luther the German reformer?

What do you think would happen if we let Christianity off the leash? Do you think the liberal churches would survive very long? How long would it take before a new Inquisition or three are resurrected to root out the heresy within Christendom? Not very long. Fundamentalist Christianity is no better than Fundamentalist Islam, it just doesn't have as much slack.

So let's stop pretending that Islam is the great threat of the Twenty-First Century and buying into the culture of fear that's allowing Christian extremists to undermine secularism in the West. If they succeed it's not Islam that will take over.

The Problem of Evil

Today I ran across a discussion that rehashed the Problem of Evil, specifically some problems I had early on with how an all-powerful, all-knowing and benevolent god can create an entire universe knowing that the fate of its creation is to have 99% of it suffer in eternal torment that it inflicts on them. Some Christians try to reconcile this by saying that their god isn't truly omniscient, or doesn't exercise his omniscience all the time (ref: Mr. Deity). Others claim that he willingly refrains from exercising his omnipotence in order to preserve free will and so forth. None that I've met are willing to concede that if he exists he saw the wholesale death and suffering of humanity and did nothing to correct it because he either doesn't care or wants that result.

The problem, as far as I see it, lies in magical thinking. You have this god who is supposed to be looking out for you and your best interests. The world doesn't really seem engineered to give you the best life experience; every day is a struggle and it often seems that events conspire against you. But this can't be possible if your life is being overseen by a loving, all-knowing and all-powerful god. Therefore there must be another reason for it, one that is beyond your comprehension because the alternative is that one of your assumptions about your god is wrong and if you follow that thought process you might discover that all of your assumptions are wrong and you might have to abandon the idea altogether. So we fall back on our default assumptions and assume it'll all make sense later on, probably after we're dead. "Jesus, take the wheel."

It's one way to cope, although the cognitive dissonance it necessarily creates is never comfortable. But Christianity has an answer for that, too: "Blessed are those who suffer for doing what is right. The Kingdom of Heaven belongs to them." Of course, in doing so you run the risk of ignoring obvious solutions to temporary problems in the name of validating your religious beliefs. Simple, easy things like making the world a better place instead of assuming it's pointless since your god will wipe it all away to create a new earth to live on.

Naturally, different Christians will have different answers for how they attempt to reconcile this problem. Some will deny it's a problem altogether. Others will present different variations or apologetics. Nevertheless, I haven't seen any answers that don't fall back on magical thinking. Their god created the world by magic (divine, but still magic), therefore the answers must be magic as well. You just have to have faith that it's true.

And of course, SMBC Comics offers the simplest explanation possible.