The Sacred and the profane at ScienceBlogs
Scienceblogs.com is a venture of SEED publishing, where science-related bloggers collect to write about their work and their lives. It’s pretty cool watching the various personalities bump into each other; it humanizes scientists and generally makes science more accessible. It exemplifies SEED’s motto; “Science Is Culture”.
Predictably, some SciBloggers are more popular than others, and there are resentments. PZ Myers, a biology professor from Minnesota, writes Pharyngula, and is personally responsible for about one-third of ScienceBlogs’ web traffic, among about 130 SciBloggers. He’s snarky and profane and merciless toward religion, and his commenters tend to be more so, and there’s a long-running debate over whether he’s “civil” enough.
In fact several Scibloggers recently left the collective to form their own independent blogs or to go over to Discover blogs. One pair of bloggers, Chris Mooney and Sheryl Kershenbaum, even identified PZ Myers as “the main reason we left Scienceblogs”.
Chris Mooney is the author of The Republican War On Science, a book with a pretty self-explanatory title. Recently Mooney & Kershenbaum published a new book, Unscientific America: how scientific illiteracy threatens our future.” In it, M&K apparently take Myers to task as representative of big ol’ atheist meanie-heads who drive people away from science, by not being not deferential enough to religion, and even (gasp!) using profanity! Even the F-Bomb!
God, the humanity…
I’d try to provide links but these internicene debates sprawl across dozens of URL’s. Here’s a general discussion on Myers’ blog that will give you a flavor of the whole thing.
I’m not clear how leaving SciBlogs gave M&K any more breathing room: even though it’s a big Internet, every site is right next to every other site. It’s not like you can run away and be safer someplace. Maybe they don’t like all the attention that Myers gets at SciBlogs’ conventions, or they chafe at the fact that he hangs out with Richard Dawkins. I suppose it’s tough to watch a superstar in action, if you are a bit player.
M&K’s major complaint about Myers seems to be that he isn’t nice enough to religion. It’s true that he’s confrontational. Myers once published a picture of a consecrated communion wafer, nailed to a copy of The God Delusion through a page from the Koran. His point was that no ideas are sacred; all should receive equal challenge and the best ideas take the lead. He got thousands of outraged emails from Catholics, some including death threats. No death threats from other scientists, or from any Muslims, though.
It’s remarkable to me that M&K think Myers has anything to do with science illiteracy; despite his popularity in the small sphere of scienceblogging, most Americans have never heard of him.
How does a mild-mannered (and by all reports, he is just that in person) scientist become a bar room brawler on the Interwebs? The answer might be in this quote from MIT Technology Review, from a mathematician who exercises confrontational humor in his talks:
“2: Ridicule bogus claims related to your topic, particularly claims that received wide currency in the popular press. (To be honest, I do this not so much because it gets laughs—though it does—but as a small service to humanity. If I can make one budding crackpot think twice before hitting “Submit” on a disproof of Bell’s Theorem, I will not have lived in vain. Of course, the ridicule should always focus more on ideas than people; and even then, a few in the audience will frown on it, considering it unscientific or unprofessional. Forty or fifty crackpots ago, I agreed with them. It’s only experience that hardened me into a vigilante.)”
– Shtetl-Optimized by Scott Aaronson: Essentials of complexity-theoretic stand-up comedy (emphasis mine)
Perhaps when he first started, “PZ” was a more patient man. When I first started blogging, I thought it was possible to engage creationists, climate deniers, and right-wingers (but I’m repeating myself) in a rational exchange of ideas. It might still be possible, but it takes a better man than I to do it; idiocy deserves mockery. It doesn’t matter how nice you are, how deferential, how carefully you avoid giving offense in style; just stating that you don’t believe in god, or saying that we humans need to change our behavior to keep from screwing up the environment, is enough to get you branded “militant”. In fact, I think the so-called “New Atheists” are just plain old atheists who have finally said “Enough!” and stopped trying to godlycoddle the believers. Faith and science are only as compatible as an individual’s ability to compartmentalize them in the same skull without explosive fracture.
My blog is one of the few corners of the blagosphere where you will still find a profanity filter. At one time, I had fond hopes of letting this blog slip unnoticed through keyword-based censorship in high schools and workplaces. Watching hand-wringers and pearl-clutchers whinge about “profanity” in these debates, though, makes me want to turn that filter off. They’re uptight about the “F-bomb”? Really? Well frack them, and the adorable little pony they rode in on. The world is burning, and it’s pretty much religion dragging its feet every step of the way towards the fire-extinguisher.
Will Rogers said “The world is divided into two groups: those who divide the world into two groups, and those who don’t.” It may be that there are two separate nations of cussers and non-cussers. I’m a cusser, and so were my dad and gran’pa. I embrace it, and it could be that there are neurological differences between the two groups. In fact, a recent study found that the use of profanity actually increased tolerance to pain.
Perhaps even the pain of arguing with creationists, which would explain a lot.
NOTES:
- (h/t to commenter “truthspeaker” at the Pharyngula thread linked above for the “snugglenet” image)
- ***Dave highlights Mooney & Kershenbaum speaking out from their new digs at Discover Blogs
- MrsDoF has some memories and thoughts on profanity in Morning of reminisce
- The Friendly Atheist has a good post on The debate over Unscientific America, in which he proposes exactly when it would be worth taking M&K seriously.
- Joel at Your Religion Is False has some insights on Why accommodationism is false. Not a reveiw of M&K’s new book, per se, but of the concept that science and religion are, as Francis Collins says, all groovy together.
- Fred Clark at Slacktivist writes about a very, very early offensive cartoon in On Offendedness
- Jason Rosenhouse at Evolution Blog has a three-part review of the book. Part Two discusses the specific chapter on Crackergate, and finds it wanting. Part Three, in which he discusses the Pluto section, and the strange and curious attitude towards Alan Sokal and other science demonstrators. Conclusion? A flawed book that skirts the issues while playing the victim.
There is no use arguing with creationists/religionists/superstitionists, at least no more use than arguing with rocks.
The world is burning, and it’s pretty much religion dragging its feet every step of the way towards the fire-extinguisher.
Not just dragging feet but digging in with all its might and pulling backward as hard as possible. We have problems that need to be addressed yesterday. I am so frustrated with certain people that I can no longer limit myself to polite persuasion. I have become a militant.
Anyway, I have a longer and well-worded comment in may head but editing out the cuss words is both painful and time consuming. I don’t really trust people who do not cuss.
Nice article.
Mooney and Kershenbaum speak out here ( http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/intersection/2009/07/15/pz-myers-vs-unscientific-america-part-iii/ ). The comments demonstrate your point, George, that one cannot get away from a particular audience segment by changing sites.
I personally find Myers, by turn, both illuminating and obnoxious. He goes out of his way to insult and offend (the Crackergate* contretemps being the most public example), and it rarely seems to be in order to educate, but because he just enjoys watching people he disrespects blanch or turn purple. That’s not scientific, civil, nor particular effective, except in getting huzzahs from the peanut gallery.
(*It’s possible to dislike Myers behavior here while being still more appalled at the fanatics who issued death threats at him over it.)
I’m not looking for the SnuggleNet (well there are times that would be nice), but I think there’s a middle ground between that and the Kick-in-the-crotch-Net. It’s one thing to be angry at the social (and political and environmental and etc.) damage done by some religionists and another thing to intentionally kick sand in their faces (and, in fact, in the face of any theist). One can “riducule bogus claims related to your topic” without categorizing a broad swath of people (some or many of whom are not making such claims) as idiots.
Huh – my own blog just dumped my comment. Let’s see if i can retype it from memory.
There’s plenty of room for different approaches, ***Dave. For instance your persistently sane example is more powerful than a hundred crazies pulling the other way. You singlehandedly make it impossible for us evil atheists to say “all Christians”, and you set Episcopalians far apart from whatever the hell Pat Robertson is.
PZ wasn’t just being nasty with crackergate, by the way. He acted in defense of a college student who was being severely, even dangerously harassed for mistreating a cracker. It wasn’t a scientific act; he wanted to expose the nasty side of the student’s tormentors and their supporters.
My approach has changed over the years. For instance, I now believe that PZ is needed, and if he didn’t exist we’d have to invent him. After interacting with some of the crazies who visit his blog, I understand him a little better. Experience has hardened me, I guess.
Thanks for the kind words, George. Though I’m not someone who actively evangelizes (shudders), I am aware that I am taken as an example of all the various classes I belong to—American, white, male, glasses wearing, gamer, computer geek, etc. In many of the circles I’m in online, my particular religious bent comes into play a lot more often than it does IRL, and I do keep in mind that, given all the, um, Robertsonesque figures out there, I may be the most “persistently sane” theist / Christian / Episcopalian a lot of folks I encounter have a chance to see. Which is daunting (and sad) to say the least.
I do realize that Myers had a point with Crackergate, and while the picture of what initially happened was a bit muddy, certainly the folks harassing and threatening the student in question deserved condemnation for it. Certainly not in keeping with Jesus’ observation that the Sabbath was made for Man, not Man for the Sabbath.
That said, I think Myers did go beyond where I’m comfortable with. Observing, even standing up to, brutish and irrational behavior is one thing; *provoking* (and even reveling in) it to “expose the nasty side” is another.
I can understand the anger, but aside from feeling better letting it out, I’m not sure what it accomplishes; entertainment, solidarity perhaps. But not education or persuasion. It doesn’t advance (in Myers’ case) science, nor does it effectively draw in those who might be worthy allies against people who dangerously act out on their “delusions.”
I can understand being hardened by experience and personal abuse, too. But acting harshly, even for a good cause, and even with provocation, only provokes in kind, and leads to the injustices of condemning all of your enemy (Christians, atheists, Iranians, Americans, Jews, Muslims, whites, blacks) as “evil” or out to get you. It turns everything into black and white, when the world is not only various shades of gray, but various tones of color, too.
I don’t know how often I’ve found blog posts / feed items that I thought had brilliant points to make, that spoke to and supported my own ideas, articulating them in a way I wanted to share with others—and that ended up sweeping from the particular to a generalization along the lines of “and all Christians are dangerous idiots who ought to be stuffed in a bag and thrown in the river” (or, less rarely in the circles I travel, “and thus we can see that without God, people have nothing but their animal instincts to rape and murder”)—and the post goes unshared, its otherwise goodness wasted.
I don’t expect that everyone will agree with me on everything, or even on any particular thing, nor do I expect I’ll agree with anyone on every thing, either. I do agree that there are ideas, and actions, that need to be opposed, vigorously and relentlessly. But with care as well, lest gazing into the abyss we become monsters, too, fanatics that redouble their effort as they forget their aim, and other cliches like that.
You’re welcome, ***Dave, but I’m not being kind. You really do have a different approach and one I think other Christians should study.
OK, and it’s fine for you not share posts that you feel swing too broad a brush. But Myers wasn’t acting like the people he was opposing.
The student’s tormentors had threatened violence and tried to have him at least thrown out of the (secular) university. Myers responded with symbolic mockery, defended freedom of expression, specifically disavowed violence, and sought to highlight the difference. Not the same thing at all.
If a cartoonist is threatened with death for a drawing, doesn’t that make you want to get out a pen and start drawing? And in fact I think it’s totally appropriate to do so.
But the beauty of it all is; there’s no requirement for anyone to deal in bombast. Plenty of people wrote erudite editorials, a few wore armbands, and some (me included) wrote letters of support to college presidents and student deans.
It’s one thing to say “No idea deserves special treatment” but quite another to demonstrate it. Myers did the latter. I’m not given to dramatic symbolic acts, but I’ve learned to appreciate those who are. That’s how my understanding of expression has changed.
The kerfluffle on SciBlogs has been going on for a long time. It all started with Matt Nisbett saying - in so many words – that Myers and Dawkins and Dennett should just shut up and let communications specialists like them speak for science. You can imagine how well that went over. Eventually, M&K joined in, opining in their blog that there was no room for calling idiocy idiotic, morons moronic, or immoral religious monsters hypocrites.
True. I was thinking more in terms of hardening of hearts (and attitudes and rhetoric). It’s the “you are now my enemy, we are at war, and I must defeat you at all costs” syndrome—and in war, it’s the civilian population that suffers most.
Myers was absolutely right that the behavior of the student’s tormenters was highly disturbing and inappropriate. “Defending freedom of expression, specifically disavowing violence, and seeking to highlight the difference” was a laudable response. Even “symbolic mockery” was a fine idea—but, as with the war metaphor above, he did it without disregard as to whether anyone other than his targets was in the blast zone.
There are people for whom the consecrated bread is highly meaningful. It may be an irrational or delusional association—but no more so than, say, a flag, or a snapshot of a loved one, or an old teddy bear, or anything else to which people have strong emotional attachment. Myers, in his actions, didn’t just mock the people who were acting distinctly un-Christlike in this episode, he mocked anyone for whom the eucharist is of value. That doesn’t help sway any of them to the cause of freedom of expression. That’s like, rather than insulting the mother of someone in a bar who is acting like an ass, insulting the mother of everyone in the bar.
Or, let me put it another way: when Myers writes, “But don’t confuse the fact that I find *you* and your church petty, foolish, twisted, and hateful to be a testimonial to the existence of your petty, foolish, twisted, hateful god,” it’s hard to not take it personally as someone who belongs to a church and worships a god right in the same ball park, even if I (and most of the folks in my church) do so in a different fashion. It’s one thing for someone to say that another’s action is wrong, and mean, and hypocritical, and destructive, and not in keeping with a fundamental value of human freedom. It’s another thing to say that all religion is idiotic, theism is moronic, and Christianity is a danger and we’d be better of without it.
DoF? Did you just coin the term “godlycoddle”? It’s brilliant!
I wish I could take credit for it. I first saw it from Pharyngula commenter “articulette”. Seems like a term that deserves wide use, no?
***Dave, the “blast zone” is that of the entire sphere of violent, anti-science, nationalist Christianity. As we’ve discussed at length in the “Christian bad guy” thread on SEB, it’s really hard to draw distinctions when Christians seem to prefer not to. And I couldn’t speculate as to what PZ takes into consideration or not. I have seen his approach be very liberating to some individuals who felt they couldn’t acknowledge their lack of faith. What’s the name for that effect where the extremes make room for the middle?
Of course, I obviously don’t “get” theism anymore. But as it says on my homepage sidebar, I once did, so I’m sympathetic, to a certain point.
Update: I may have stumbled across the source of “godlycoddle” and other related terms. There’s some good ones in there.
“Faith and science are only as compatible as an individual’s ability to compartmentalize them in the same skull without explosive fracture.”
That’s brilliant. I promise not to steal it. I have stolen this, but only because I don’t know its attribution:
“If you don’t want me to make fun of your beliefs, stop believing such ridiculous sh_t”
I too, wonder at the Mrs. Grundys of the world and their sensibilities as concerns choice language.
“Godlycoddling” is right up there with “Tragicle”. I won’t hesitate to use it when circumstances dictate.
As for PZ’s stunt, it brings to mind George Carlin’s “Symbols are for the symbol-minded.” Watching those “symbol” souls freak and geek over this meaningless crap is almost enough entertainment value to make me forgive them for being so gullible. Almost.
This was one of your most brilliant posts ever, my dear! I do believe your brain has made a full recovery.
I’m still amazed at the number of people who can’t get past what PZ did to a cracker in order to grasp the larger point. And the fact that M&K keep harping on how mean and divisive and just not nice to them he is reveals them for the sniveling little brats they are – well, that and the fact they keep whining at their critics without ever answering the criticism. They, not PZ and Dawkins, are the real insults to atheism.
As far as all this accommodationist crap: we tried it. Accommodation failed. We are done ceding ground. If people want accommodation, they can accommodate us for a change. Perhaps then we would be a little less abrasive.
I shall go now before this comment ends up becoming a post… thanks again, George! You truly made my night.
I’m sure it would be nice to be equanimious and dispassionate about someone pissing on your mother’s grave, spitting on the flag of a country you fought for, burning books, tearing down a childhood home, or wearing a swastika, to think of a few “symbolic” acts which might irritate some “symbol-minded.”
Symbols mean things, at least to the people for whom they mean things. I might not hold the same symbols to mean the same things as you do—in fact, I certainly do not, nor do any other two people. But to ignore or belittle the symbolism to others is not only counter-productive to actually communicating with them, but is predictably liable to provoke counter-reaction.
This is not to say that those who went apeshit over what Myers did were justified in how they acted, or that Myers brought it on himself, or that criticizing those who confuse the symbolic with the “real” is always a bad thing to do. It’s just to say that dismissing symbolism as unimportant and laughable is shortsighted, if not usually hypocritical.
(Interestingly, I think one could argue that, through the Church’s despicable behavior over time, as well as through this recent dispute, the eucharist has become a strong *negative* symbol for those who see the Catholic Church as irrational, corrupt, and/or dangerous. The sight of it, and people giving it respect, engenders a strong negative emotional reaction from a lot of people, not because of what’s before their eyes, but because of what it symbolizes.)
Didn’t George W. Bush say that in 2002?
Is the New Atheist mantra, “You’re either against them or you’re against us”? Has this become that Manichaean a conflict?
How is it that accommodation by atheists has “failed”? What would success have looked like? What accommodation are you looking for?
I thought it was a great way to visualize the idea of “not holding any idea TOO sacred.” I thought it did a great job of showing how we need to have a society in which all ideas are open to the free marketplace of ideas. One simple picture even showed how Myers’ own ideas are not to be held so sacred as to be free from scrutiny. How was it not educational on that front?
Now I certainly could be talking out of my ass and since this conversation takes place online there may not be a good way to judge how sincere I really am, but I can assure you Dave that without George, Les, and PZ I would have never had the courage to step up and admit who I really was. And as sincere as I can be, that is no BS!
For awhile I thought the same as you until I realized what people like PZ do. They give those of us that are afraid to be a minority, courage to step up. Some people need to be coddled into learning the truth. Some people need someone to simply show them facts. Some just need to know there are others out there like them and you shouldn’t be afraid to be who you are. And what Matt and M&K can’t seem to realize is that they all serve a purpose and the atheist movement would be worse off without any of them. All the bickering taking place is getting them nowhere, but making them look childless.
If M&K or Matt had their way and PZ, Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, and others decided to shut up for awhile, then I would not have a voice. I would be alone and would feel like I have to fend for myself. I wish I was as smart as Dawkins and could come up with the witty arguments and retorts to religious folks that he has come up with over the years, but I’m not. I try to be independent and do my own thinking as much as I cann, but I have to leave the rest up to those that are much smarter than I will ever be.
There are people for whom the picture of Muhammed is held highly sacred. Is there actions justified? Are we not allowed to show pictures of Muhammed because of their religion? Are we to do what the thousands of faith ask us to do because we can’t tread on their beliefs?
That would be the “solidarity” part I alude to above. And it’s certainly of value in any movement. What often restrains people from acting (or realizing the desire to act) is the sense that they are all alone, that there’s nobody to support them, that their own personal feelings are unique (and aberrant). Seeing others echo your thoughts can be greatly liberating. (You can see this phenomenon in college when kids first arrive, too.)
So that’s addressing the need of one constituency, but at the cost, it seems to me, of others.
The actions of those who threaten (or commit) violence against people who show a picture of Mohammed (let alone an inflammatory one) are not at all justified and deserve to be condemned.
On the other hand, intentionally trying to provoke a reaction by being knowingly disrespectful kind of makes you a dick. That may be useful or it may be needful, but that doesn’t change the nature of it. And being a dick has consequences in the ideological give and take. What’s wrong, it seems to me, is trying to ignore, downplay, or mock those who find one’s actions offensive. If you’re going to be knowingly offensive, and that’s the only way to accomplish a higher goal, then do what’s necessary. Just don’t pretend that’s not what you’re doing.
In a broader sense, offensiveness against what folks hold sacred or meaningful is inevitable in any society, let alone a global one. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to avoid it when we can (and admit it when we can’t avoid it).
The trouble with Crackergate is that despite PZ’s intentions, it came off less as a protest against Webster Cook’s mistreatment and more like deliberate provocation for the malicious joy of seeing people go nuts against him. Myers in effect overshadowed the original story where Cook had accidentally triggered a torrent of unrighteous anger and death threats—which even Catholics could condemn—with a story that fit more easily with the stereotypes about atheists.
Another thing. When people go to war, they psych themselves up by imagining the enemy as this homogenized, exaggerated evil. We also see this on a lesser scale in culture wars as well, with Ann Coulter as a prime example. When I see talk about “faith-heads” or “little old ladies who faint at the sight of monkeys,” I see the same process occurring. It is potentially dangerous, and it is definitely irrational, and anyone who wants to use this process to advance a movement based on reason is, to put it bluntly, fracking for chastity.
What J.J. said.
Because he used a cracker that religious people with certain specific religious beliefs hold sacred? If he used a similar looking cracker would the point have gotten across to you?
One other question that popped up, why weren’t any atheists or Dawkins for that matter upset that he tore out a page of the God Delusion?
Present buttered-cat discussions about Crackergate aside, I realize I forgot to answer this question from ***Dave:
Accommodation has failed in that religion still insists on being treated as a special class of ideas, above rational criticism. God is apparently too fragile to endure it.
In the case of evangelicals generally, success would mean recognizing pluralism and the separation of church and state, and all that implies. In other words, if something is permitted by law, but they think it’s a sin, they should refrain from doing it. They shouldn’t try to make others face discrimination or penalties of law for it.
In the case of Catholics specifically, it would mean recognition that their symbols are sacred to them and not threatening a college student who clearly does not share that numinous association. Oh, and Full. Cooperation. with prosecutors going after child-molesting priests and their conspiratorially defending bishops would be nice, too. Sans endorsement of that concept, I’m really not interested in any of Bill Donohue’s blather about what’s “sacred”.
Dana may not be subscribed to this thread but that’s what it would mean to me.
webs05: “One other question that popped up, why weren’t any atheists or Dawkins for that matter upset that he tore out a page of the God Delusion?”
Because it was a footnote to an anti-religion protest and overshadowed by Myers’ treatment of the cracker.
What do you think would have happened if Myers had only torn a page out of The God Delusion as an example of how he, unlike the Catholics, doesn’t treat anything as sacred, not even the words of a prominent atheist?
George: “religion still insists on being treated as a special class of ideas”
Careful there. Religion is a thing, not a person, and it can’t insist on anything. I realize that this seems to be pedantic, but if you had said, “the religious still insist on having their religions treated as a special class of ideas, above rational criticism,” it would have come across as an overgeneralization. By speaking the way that you did, it obscures how big a generalization has been made. Note what I said about the tendency to see an enemy as homogeneous? You just delivered an example of that.
If Myers had only torn a page from The God Delusion and showed it in a trash can as saying that no ideas should be sacred, I doubt it would have sparked literally thousands of letters to his university calling for his firing, death threats, and multiple threads in international blogs running to more than a thousand comments each.
It’s also interesting that the display of a page from the Koran in Crackergate apparently caused no responses like that, either.
That’s a valid point, JJR. It’s hard to speak without shorthand, though. In this context I’m referring to “the set of people who take umbrage at any criticism of religion”, which gets tedious to say. In particular it does NOT mean; “Religious people who devote a great deal of their attention to positive community, humanitarian endeavors and otherwise take a live-and-let-live attitude.” Even the author of the Gospel of Matthew included the phrase; “Let the reader understand”.
As a generalization, I don’t think there’s ever been a discussion of religion vs. atheism that didn’t keep coming back to warnings about over-generalization. But as with every other communication, a lot of the meaning can be, and must be, found in the context.
Well, yes, of course—it was only meaningful because it was what it was. Burning an American flag is offensive to many Americans. Burning a piece of paper with red, white, and blue stripes on it would be less so.
So, similarly, pissing on a patch of grass is only mildly noteworthy behavior. Pissing on my grandmother’s grave would be far more offensive, even if I objectively can understand that they are physically the same act. Pissing on a patch of grass with a cardboard tombstone that says “Your Grandmother RIP” would probably fall somewhere in-between.
J.J.‘s point that I thought was valuable was that Myers, willingly or not, changed the focus of the story away from the unconscionable behavior toward Cook to his own actions. To that extent he weakened his case, or, rather, shifted it more to be about his own willingness to tweak the noses of Catholics.
Because his text isn’t considered “sacred,” or vested with deep emotional associations? If that was the last copy of Dawkins’ book, or his original manuscript, there might have been more outrage, even if objectively it were the same thing.
Myers himself said he wanted to take heat off the student. He, as a tenured professor in a university hundreds of miles away, was in a much better position to handle it. The student was vulnerable, and it was Myers’ perception that his tormentors badly needed their noses tweaked. His message, at least initially, was “Hey Bill Donohue! Why don’t you pick on somebody your own size, you big bully!”
I’m puzzled by the notion that he shouldn’t enjoy the causes he takes on, though. He’s absorbed a lot of abuse over the years from people who think he’s an instrument of the Devil. He’s supposed to plod along joylessly?
If success or failure are a binary choice, then I suppose one could consider it a failure. Or perhaps a success, since atheists (in this country, at least) aren’t stone, banished, or tortured into acquiescence with the majority religion.
By the same token, diplomacy with China has clearly not succeeded because the still torture dissidents, threaten Taiwan, and have failed to let their currency trade freely. Therefore we must give up on diplomacy and bomb them.
Atheism, as a relatively organized movement and something-other-than-fringe anti-philosophy, is relatively new (Russell and Ingersoll and the like notwithstanding). With millennia of religious domination of society, freedom of (or from) religion is a relatively novel concept.
The First Amendment is only a bit over two hundred years old. Given the remarkable changes for the better in pluralism and separation of church and state since then—or even in the last 50 years—I’d say that there have been tremendous successes in this area. (Noteworthily, these changes have been driven not just by atheists but by liberal—or self-interested—religious as well.)
Oh, and for what it’s worth, I would have used an unconsecrated cracker. And probably nobody would have noticed, and the student would have been expelled from college and his life screwed up. “Says here you were expelled for a hate crime.” “Please, let me explain…” Might have taken him years to get his life back on track.
Agree. A good thing, too; I’d be sad if it was just atheists.
“I’m puzzled by the notion that he shouldn’t enjoy the causes he takes on, though.”
Enjoying the causes that he takes on is one thing. Enjoying making people miserable is something else.