The knotty problem of respect

I've been thinking a lot lately about the issue of respect surrounding religious beliefs.  I was slightly horrified at Christmas to learn that six members of my family - my parents, both brothers, an aunt and an uncle - all consider me to be showing gross disrespect for religious people when I call bullshit on their superstitions. One particularly jarring comment came from one of my brothers:

Brother: "You can't respect people if you don't respect their beliefs."
Dad: "He's right, Lu."

To be clear, my parents and my brothers are also non-believers.  I'm less certain about the aunt and uncle, but if they do hold religious beliefs of any kind I've never seen any indication of it.

This issue of respect is one that comes up again and again, and I find the attitudes of other non-believers on the matter absolutely baffling - far more incomprehensible than the anger I sometimes get from believers.  As I see it, there are two main problems with this idea that non-believers should just shut up and let people believe whatever they like.

1: Typically it is not the non-believers making this case who suffer for the privileged place religion holds in the world.  My brother is in no danger of being prevented from living as he chooses to live because of religion; other people - particularly women, gay people, and atheists unfortunate enough to live in religiously-dominated nations - face real dangers and suffer real abuses stemming directly from religion.

2: It is deeply condescending to religious people to adopt the view that while we know better, the superstitious masses need the comfort of religion.  I find it slightly nauseating to be told that I should avoid challenging a mentally competent adult on their beliefs, as if they lack the wit to think logically or to withstand the emotional impact of a rational argument.  And it only seems to go for religious beliefs; no one demands that I refrain from questioning political ideologies, philosophical opinions, ethical decisions (unless religiously motivated!) or anything else.  I think it would be disrespectful - not to mention potentially dangerous - not to give my honest opinion on a person's beliefs.  I would go so far as to say that in pretending to respect religious beliefs, non-believers show breathtaking disrespect to the intellect of the person holding them.

This notion that even those of us who do not hold religious beliefs should nevertheless respect them may be the single most dangerous thing about religion.  It causes well-meaning liberal people living safely in secular nations to grant greater importance to the wounded sensibilities of a Muslim man than to the oppression, routine abuse, mutilation and murder suffered by millions of women at the hands of his faith.  It places the unfounded beliefs of the religiously-motivated "pro-life" (more accurately, anti-choice) lobby over the life of Savita Halapannavar, who died in Ireland after being denied a medically-necessary abortion because a religion to which she did not subscribe forbade it.  It tells a religious parent that their wish to send their child to a "faith school" is more important than the child's right to have a decent education, and not to suffer psychological trauma in the form of horrific threats and unnecessary guilt over imaginary "sins".

If you make the argument that people like me ought to show "respect" to religious people by avoiding criticism of their beliefs, you are not only patronising and belittling religious people... you are also saying that one person's wish not to have his or her feelings hurt takes precedence over the rights of countless others to live their lives free of the threat or reality of violence, abuse, oppression and misery.  That's about as un-liberal a principle as I can imagine.

My family and others living free of the rule of religious dogma are in a tremendously privileged position, unimaginable to millions of people worldwide who cannot safely speak out against the violations of their own rights.  Not only do I have every right to challenge religious beliefs and practices - I think I have a duty to do so.

Always be suspicious of an opinion unbacked by evidence...

...especially when the opinion offered is attributed to an absent third party.

I'm a little late to address this, but I found out today that I was mentioned a while back on Ophelia Benson's blog.  I'm only a supporting act, quoted as having "agreed with" a Tweet by Jeremy Stangroom in which he speculated on the respective attractiveness of "chill girls" versus the more outspoken feminists who think chill girls are too relaxed about misogyny, or even misogynistic themselves.

Interestingly, Stangroom's original Tweet is quoted by Benson, but mine is not (granted she links to my Twitter profile, but given that I Tweet several times most days her readers would have had to click through pretty damn quickly to stand a chance of finding my offending Tweet).

The most obvious explanation for this is that I did not in fact express the opinion she attributes to me.  Here's what I said:

Now, leaving aside the technical impossibility of agreeing with a Tweet which was in fact expressing indecision between two or more possibilities (the "I wonder" at the start is a dead giveaway!), any reasonable observer will see that in fact all I said was that he was brave to speculate publicly on a such a taboo subject - I did not give an opinion on the matter either way.

I'm not going to give my own opinion on my looks or on anybody else's - beyond reflecting that unfounded generalisations and assumptions of the kind made in the comments about women Benson has labelled "pretties" would quite rightly be met with anger if they were aimed at women NOT considered "conventionally attractive" - because looks ought to be irrelevant to reasoned discussion.  I'm not going to try to contend that "pretties" have it worse, or better, or equally bad, because I don't think a person's right to get pissed off about misogyny in our culture is affected by their appearance, or whether they personally happen to have experienced exactly a given species of sexism.  Nor am I going to comment on the "Nine Ugliest Feminists in America" article Ophelia also quotes (nor will I link it), for the simple reason that it does not deserve anybody's attention.

What I will say is that I am disappointed by Benson, and even more so by her readers.  Granted, Stangroom - not I - was the point of the piece, so it's entirely natural that the majority of the comments should focus on what he said and not with my alleged agreement with it.  But in more than eighty comments at the time of writing, not a single person has thought to ask what the "pretty" being accused of holding a revolting opinion actually said,  to ask for evidence that she holds the opinion attributed to her.  No one thought it was strange that Benson directly quoted Stangroom, but did not directly quote me. Seriously, nobody thought that was odd?

Given what the opinion I was falsely accused of holding was used to justify, that's pretty shocking.  Skepticism fail, people.

Update: I posted this link in the comments section of Benson's blog.  She and I have since had a conversation on Twitter, and - after some resistance - she has accepted that my meaning in that Tweet to Stangroom was not what she interpreted it to be, and has said she will update her original piece.  I'd like to thank her for discussing it with me, and I look forward to reading the promised amendment.

Census results - one figure we shouldn't underestimate

The results of the 2011 census were published today, and some of the stats on religion are interesting.

Thanks to a poll commissioned by the Richard Dawkins Foundation (findings outlined here and here) we already knew that the number of people self-identifying as Christians was significantly down on the 2001 figure.  This is encouraging, particularly on a day when supporters of the Church of England are standing up in the Commons to defend its right to define marriage for what it pleases to term our Christian nation.

But a figure that's new to me and by which I think we should be immensely encouraged is the percentage of people now identifying as having "no religion", which has risen to 25% from 15% in 2001.

Superficially, this looks a bit obvious.  The figure for Christianity has gone down significantly while the figures for other religions that have risen have done so only slightly.  So y'know - I mean, duh, where else could all those people have gone?

But there are two things worth noting here, as they have a bearing on the finding.

One; the religion question in the census is heavily loaded to give false positives.  It is not "which, if any, of the following religions do you practice?" or even "which, if any, of the following religions do you identify with?".  Instead, it's "what is your religion?", followed by a list of options.  The options do include "no religion", that's true; but the way the question is phrased is shockingly leading and led the BHA to run this campaign in the run up to the 2011 census.  The fact that the "no religion" figure has risen so steeply is testament to the growing unwillingness among the British population to identify out of habit with the religions with which they were raised - and they've registered that opinion in spite of this heavily loaded question.

Two: the religion question in the census is a voluntary question.  Nobody was obliged to answer it, as with all the other questions. Non-believers were completely free to just ignore the question completely, skip it if they didn't think it mattered or if they have no opinion on religion in policy.

But 25% of the population of England and Wales, as it turns out, are not religious... and felt that position needed to be stated.

I was among them (of course).  I'm not religious myself, but I can't ignore religion as I would like to because it affects too many things in my life and in the lives of others.  I didn't skip the question thinking religion is irrelevant to me; I deliberately identified as non-religious, I stood up to be counted.  So did twenty-five percent of the rest of the country.  I can't say this often enough; twenty-five percent.

A quarter of the population of England and Wales are not only non-religious, but have voluntarily chosen to be identified and represented as such.  That's HUGE. That's EPIC.

That's a start.

Our politicians need to get caught up.  We know that even the majority of people who identify as Christian don't support a lot of what the Church of England and others want to do in their name, using their numbers to back its demands.  And the number of people actively troubling to say they have no religion has risen from 15% to 25% in just ten years.  That's a far bigger chunk of the population than is accounted for by any group except Christianity, but everybody's too busy panicking about offending religious sensibilities to have noticed us.

How big a group of voters must we non-believers show ourselves to be before our politicians start pandering for our approval?  I don't know, but judging by the news coverage it's not enough yet.  People ask me all the time why I'm so vocal against religion.  This is part of the reason; non-religious people are now the second largest group in England and Wales, but nobody seeks our opinions or worries about offending us.  This MUST change.

I love you guys...

I'm not drunk.  Well, maybe very slightly, but I love you all anyway.

This morning I asked a question on Twitter: "Question for atheists; had you been born before we knew anything about reality (say 500 years ago) do you think you'd have been an atheist?"

I've had a lot more answers than I was expecting, which is always lovely in itself, but what's made me really happy is how honest everyone was willing to be about the extent to which their ability to reason and reject religion has been a product of the time in which they're lucky enough to have been born, and the opportunities they've been lucky enough to receive.

The vast majority of people who answered said they think they'd have been theists or deists if they'd been born before we knew so much about the universe as we do now:

I love this, beautiful tweeps - I don't think one could ask for a better rebuttal to the common claim that atheists are arrogant than the fact that so many of us are willing to state that we'd have been believers too had the fortune of our birth been different.

Even the few people who were prepared to say they think they would have been atheists five hundred years ago were for the most part very hesitant about it; there was a lot of hedging going on:

Again, this is great; even when giving the more controversial answer, everyone was completely happy to say that they were only conjecturing, that they couldn't be sure. Again, how far from arrogance could you get?

For myself, I'm going with "not sure", too.  If I had to place a bet on what my own beliefs would have been five hundred years ago, I think I'd have to go with deism.  I'd realised conventional religions were rubbish by the age of eleven or twelve, before I knew any science to speak of, so I'd like to think I'd have got that far.  Then again, ignorant as I was at that age I still knew that the earth went around the sun, that there had been dinosaurs, and that logic mattered... I don't really think it's possible to answer the question with any conviction.

There was one tweet I got in reply to my question that echoed my own thoughts very accurately:

THIS is the other reason all the answers I got to my question made me so happy. I agree with Adrian; the atheist movement has grown unimaginably even in my own lifetime.  More and more people all over the world are rejecting religious superstition, and we're becoming more vocal and more recognised.  This is what science and modern education allow; not everyone gets over their indoctrination, of course, but the point is that so many people now have the opportunity to do so.  Information is freely available to so many of us, and for some people all it takes is an awareness that there is an alternative to religion to pique their interest and make them seek out that information.

This is why I think we need to be sure we're heard.  We don't need to be rude or cruel, but we need to be sure that everyone we can reach knows that there are people in the world who don't have religion at all, that non-belief IS an option and that there is a whole community of people waiting for them should they decide to make the leap.

Failing at Feminism; A How-To Guide

Right, can we get something straight here, do we think?

No one who insists that a woman should be protected from unpleasant messages, from invitations to coffee, or from criticism because she is a woman is any kind of feminist. If you put your opinions out there in a public forum, those opinions are subject to dissent and mockery – ownership of a vagina doesn't change that. More shockingly, I contend that even people who own [hushed whisper] penises are allowed to disagree with you. No, really. I know that sounds radical.

Rebecca Watson has appeared in Slate this week to bitch some more about how hard it is to be her – an educated, white, middle-class American woman whose rights are protected under law.

She claims she's been “grabbed and groped” at atheist conventions, and if that's true then THAT – I completely acknowledge – is out of order. But guess what? I get groped from time to time in bars and clubs, and on trains too. Do I blame that on the clubbing community? Do I blame it on commuters? Er, no – I blame it on the people who grope me. I'm not sure how that's difficult to understand. And no one's denying such people exist, by the way, even among the atheist community.

As for the rest of Watson's claims, that she receives nasty emails and tweets... well, so fucking what? I stated a few weeks ago in a tweet that I've never received abuse from other atheists. Since posting THAT tweet, I have. And again – so fucking what? What sane reason could I possibly have to think I can say something people won't like in a public space and expect not to get shit for it?! I've been getting sexist comments, sexually graphic messages, even direct threats from religious people for years. Do I blame the religious community for that? Again, no – because the vast majority of religious people don't behave like that.

I think the most galling part of that Slate article is the way Watson's wedged Richard Dawkins in there. I've suspected for some time that she's far more interested in creating a platform for herself than in fighting any kind of social injustice – I mean, the only right she seems to be interested in is her own right to piss and moan about how tough she has it, and she doesn't seem to have noticed that nobody's denying her that. I wish Dawkins hadn't sent that “Dear Muslima” note, not because I think he's wrong but because his doing so has given this shamelessly self-absorbed and deeply manipulative pseudofeminist more exposure than her opinions ever deserved.

Incidentally, she's given herself away dreadfully with her criticism of Dawkins' “Dear Muslima” comment – I'm astonished she didn't realise it before submitting her piece to Slate. She's slammed Dawkins for telling her – legitimately - that Western women haven't got it as bad as women in the Islamic world... ON THE SAME PAGE as telling us about this incident:

… so essentially, a message saying “you don't have it that bad, stop moaning” is OK if it comes FROM her... but not if it comes from someone else TO her. She's allowed to shrug off male circumcision on the grounds that it's not so bad as female circumcision, but Richard Dawkins isn't allowed to shrug off an invitation for coffee on the grounds that it's not so bad as getting beaten.

Right then.

(As it happens, I agree with Watson that female circumcision is probably more damaging most of the time than male circumcision – although I'm sure plenty of people disagree with me and I'm quite happy to discuss that. But I also agree with Dawkins that being beaten is worse than being invited for coffee; if Watson wants her point about relative harm to be valid, she has to at least consider the possibility that Dawkins' precisely analogous point might be valid, too.)

I sincerely hope Richard Dawkins will not be tempted to respond, because Watson doesn't deserve his notice. She's not a sceptic and she's certainly not a feminist; she's a self-serving, immature individual who's worked out that throwing the word “misogyny” around can get her exposure in – for example – Slate magazine (for which, by the way, I am disappointed in Slate). The fact that this tactic works is far more of a comment on the community calling itself skeptical than all her stories about nasty emails could ever be.

I don't need the patronising protection of Watson and others of her view, and I resent the implication that she speaks for me because I'm a woman too. I am not a weak, defenceless little creature hiding in the corner from all the nasty men, and I don't need to be rescued and patted on the head by anybody, not even another woman. Seriously; I can look after myself, thank you.

So, men; we all know how Watson thinks you're allowed to act, speak and think. Basically, you're not allowed to – not if Watson is present. I happen to think that's a little unreasonable, so here are some guidelines I set out should you happen to care what I think (unlike Watson, though, I don't make the assumption that you do):

1: Say what you like to me. If you disagree with me, say so. If you want to call me a cunt, go for it. I won't necessarily pay a blind bit of attention to you if the latter is how you choose to approach me, but I won't stop you doing it. Why would I? It's just a word, and as someone opposed to blasphemy laws in all forms it'd be pretty hypocritical for me to then turn around and say “but you have to be polite to me”.

2: (This one goes for women too.) If you would like to ask me for coffee - or even for sex - ask me. Really, it's fine. I'm quite capable of saying “no” should I wish to. Being attracted to someone is not a problem; in fact, some biologists and anthropologists have advanced the opinion that it's normal and even necessary.

3: Just think about it before you touch me. A touch on the arm or a playful nudge probably won't bother me if we're getting on, but a hand on my arse probably will (unless we're really getting on). Use your common sense; read my body language, listen to what I'm saying, put yourself in my place - and if you think physical contact would be unwelcome don't make it. I'm not an alien, I'm just a person. If that's too complicated, then wait to see if I touch you first – fairly or not, being female means I don't have to worry so much about making you feel intimidated (although I will, of course, also refrain from touching you if it seems likely to be unwelcome).

4: The above said, don't touch my breasts or my crotch however well you think we're getting on. If I'm OK with that level of physical contact, you'll know about it and we won't be at a damn convention.

5: This is the most important one, really; 99% of you don't need to worry about these guidelines. You're fine. The vast majority of you are not misogynistic gropers and you already think of women as, y'know, real people. And let's face it; the 1% of men who do think it's OK to grope a woman without her permission basically have no interest in how women would like them to behave, anyway. So carry on as you are, and don't let yourself get suckered into thinking women are feeble little things who'll be scared if you talk to them. THAT is condescending and sexist, and THAT pisses off reasonable women.

Atheism Plus; the Last Rites

Atheism Plus, it seems, has passed away.  Many of us predicted it, although I think we're all pleasantly surprised by just how quickly reason has prevailed among the sceptic community.

Many reputations have taken a hit with it; sorry PZ, you handed people a share of your influence for no better reason than that your fear of being thought a misogynist mattered more to you than whether they were actually worth listening to. Even if you HAD then actively disavowed the illogical and spiteful use to which they put their new power you'd still have looked a fool - and you didn't do that, so you look a coward too.  The name Richard Carrier has become short-hand for the kind of vitriolic with-us-or-against-us mentality that characterised fundamentalist APlusism from the beginning (whatever its sophisticated moderates might have tried to say later), and Jen McCreight has shown herself to be so self-obsessed as to feel no compassion for a homeless man and to think people should ask her permission to masturbate.

Self-obsession, really, is the overwhelming impression Atheism Plus will leave with me.  Well, self-obsession and a devastating want of introspection.

I think the most contemptible thing about Atheism Plus, though, was the fact that it had two purposes; a superficially admirable ostensible goal, and an underhanded, dishonest and rather sinister ulterior motive. In the beginning, A+ was about helping marginalised people within the atheist/sceptic community to feel more included - many of us thought that laudable, as in fact I did myself when I first read about it.  It became clear pretty quickly, though, that its real purpose was to exclude white men above a certain age (unless they demonstrated total and unquestioning faith in the teachings of APlusism), shout about how tough it is to be an educated white middle-class American woman - and to shut us all up if we tried to ask questions or disagree with them.

In case my contempt is not clear on this point; the "feminists" behind Atheism Plus started out trying to tell us they were going to help gay and bi people, transsexual and transgender people, black people, Latino people and other groups underrepresented in the atheist movement. They used that platform to bitch about men trying to make conversation with them in public places.  No one should be more pissed off with them than the people they co-opted, shamelessly exploited, and then ignored.

Once it had stopped pretending to care about gay people, black people and transgender people, Atheism Plus was supposed to be about helping women to feel safe in the atheist community. Not only did many of us feel perfectly safe already, but those of us who've had the temerity to point this out have rather amusingly then found ourselves experiencing abuse and anger from other members of the atheist community for the very first time.  Devising a product then manufacturing the need is a time-honoured method in business - just look at mouthwash.  But A+ don't seem to have grasped the idea terribly well; what they've done is try to sell us a mouthwash to cure dog-breath we don't have, then force-feed us garlic when we didn't want to buy it.  Then wonder why we told them to get the fuck off our property.

If I have one good thing to say about A+, though, it's that it's failed equally in both its goals.  It took a while, but the sceptic community has now almost unanimously rejected the dogmatic tyranny of Atheism Plus.  I think many of us wish the whole embarrassing melodrama had never happened - and I certainly sympathise with that position - but for my part I have to say I find myself reassured about the ability of the atheist movement to make the rational decision as a group.

So Atheism Plus has left me with a pretty bad taste in my mouth.  It was petty, small-minded, vicious, dogmatic, hypocritical, exclusionary, dishonest, irrational, selfish, uncaring and deeply, deeply sexist.  We shall not miss it, but we are wiser for having known it.

Why religious moderates should be THANKING us.

I just had a conversation with a woman on Twitter who professes to hate religion but is a self-identifying Christian. Yah, that just happened.

Anyway, I had a look at her page trying to work out where she was coming from, and saw this:

...and realised that all of us in the atheist, secular, humanist, rationalist movement have been missing something we should be pissed about, and that we should be using in our PR.

Moderate religious people like this woman should be GRATEFUL to us.

When we atheists fight for the rights of women to control our own reproduction, our doing so benefits not only ourselves but religious women too.  When we stand up and tell religious lunatics that they don't have the right to stop gay people marrying, we help religious gay people too. When we campaign to keep creationist drivel out of schools, it is not only our children who benefit from a decent science education but everybody else's children too. When we battle superstitious restrictions on scientific research, that research helps everybody, not just atheists.

We of the "New Atheist" movement take shit from all directions, from religious leaders, from politicians, from faith-heads, even from other non-believers. And most of the time that's fine, we're happy to deal with it because we care about creating a more secular and less superstitious world.

But when "moderate" religious person with no idea of how much they owe to us turns around and demands to know why we care so much about religion when we don't believe in God/s, or even mocks us for caring - that pisses me off.  Do you have ANY IDEA what our society would be like without secularists to fight your battles for you?!  The woman who posted the above tweets is a single mother, a woman who has received an education, who has a say in how her country is governed, who has the right to work, and who is considered an equal member of our society.

Do you think she would be allowed to be or to have or to do ANY of those things if christianity were allowed to govern unopposed?!

If you are a religious person who is in favour of equality and freedom, you are in a difficult position. Your values are being opposed by people who share your faith and in fact use that faith to oppose those values; this means you don't really have a leg to stand on if you want to tell them they're wrong, since you believe the same stuff they do.  We atheists do not have that problem; we're free to tell them their beliefs are utter rubbish without being hypocrites.

We atheists, secularists and rationalists fight a lot of your battles for you, religious moderates, and for the most part we're happy to do so.  Just maybe try not to be totally ungrateful when you're enjoying equalities, justices and freedoms that have been hard-won by other people in the face of the religion you're telling us we shouldn't care about.