Bloodsport for all

In some ways, religious accommodationists are more of a problem than the religious themselves. You know who I mean. The hand-wringers. The apologists. The “live and let live” brigade.  The “I’m an atheist but…” crew. The people who, for whatever perverse reasons, have managed to blinker themselves to the many ways in which religion does real and lasting harm in society, or who have somehow convinced themselves that this doesn't matter because their mum and that nice vicar at St. Simperer’s are decent, well-meaning people, and hey, they’re religious. Lovely. Then I’ll shut right up about infant genital mutilation, AIDS in Africa, murdered abortion doctors, Islamic terrorism, denial of women’s rights, indoctrinating children and widespread religious interference in society. They wish.

This particular brand of intellectual coward tends to like parroting certain catchphrases. One of the more popular of these goes something like this.

“You won’t persuade people by mocking and abusing them and their beliefs.”

No shit, Sherlock. Try to get something into your limited understanding of reality: when people like me lay into the god-botherers – whether in debate, argument, or taunting a street-corner loony – we are not trying to persuade them. Let me repeat that with some helpful emphasis. We are not trying to persuade them. The only thing we are trying to do to them is to let them know, very forcefully, that they and their pernicious nonsense are vigorously and loudly opposed. If we are interested in persuading anyone it is other people. Onlookers. Debate attendees. Youngsters idly surfing r/atheism or some other web location where the crazy exists.

Here’s something else the whining accommodationists don’t want to get their soft little heads around: this approach works. I have seen countless examples of people saying that what first made them start to doubt was seeing a knock-down verbal sparring between a nasty but  knowledgeable atheist and a flailing faith head, and being impressed by the drubbing delivered by the atheist (and, sometimes guiltily, being amused by his or her satirical barbs). Sometimes this occurs after they initially wade in trying to help the bloodied believer, but often they’ve just watched the carnage from the sidelines and found themselves being driven to think between the LOLs. It’s that thinking stuff we’re looking for, we combative atheists, but we’re not after whichever Kool-Aid addict  happens to be on the receiving end of our assault. We tend to regard them as lost causes, especially if they’re older than about twenty five (seriously, if you haven’t worked out that religion is bunk by that age, you’re probably done for. You might need some help with your shoelaces too, I imagine).

Occasionally, I have seen religious people persuaded (or at least started on the road to recovery) after being directly harried by an atheist. It can happen, but it’s relatively rare. So much so that when it does occur we tend to stand back and gape awhile in silent awe, as if we were witnessing an unexpected astronomical event, precisely because it is so unexpected. It’s not what we were after.

Here’s a thing about religious people who actually take their religion seriously: they need it. They believe because somewhere in their fragile, fearful little selves they have a powerful need to believe. It brings them comfort. You see the evidence of this time and time again in the arguments they employ, which are laughably weak. Tired, thoroughly debunked old sallies that use the sort of fallacious logic, special pleading, circular reasoning and so on that they wouldn't accept for one second if it were being used to justify anything else but their spiritual security blanket.

The other thing you notice is that they absolutely shutter their minds to rebuttal. You can tear an argument to shreds and leave it scattered all over a thread with its numerous fallacies and flummeries exposed like body parts at a crash scene, yet often before you’ve had time to finish wiping the metaphorical mess off your hands you will see the same person avidly advancing precisely the same argument again, sometimes in the very same place where it has just been kicked to death. This seems to me to be no coincidence. Many religious people are attracted by the fixed creed, the mantra, the cosy glow engendered by repeated declaration of faith. Kyrie eleison, Christe eleison; Peace Be Upon Him; Shanti, Shanti, Shanti. This is effectively what they are doing when they “argue”. They are declaring their faith, not engaging in genuine debate. Such people are not interested in true argument. They are not open to persuasion. And that brings us full circle, back to the point: there is no point in trying to persuade such people. So we don’t. They are merely tools, in both senses of the word. Still, at least they’re not accommodationists