Contemptible cowards

There are many things about religion in general and Christianity in particular I find to be foul, repugnant and downright wicked. Reading about the beliefs and behaviour of religious people frequently has an effect on me akin to discovering I've stepped in an unusually sloppy and flyblown turd. Actually attending a Christian service feels like someone has rubbed my face in it.

Two days ago I was present at the funeral of an aged aunt. Joan was a strange, solitary old bird possessed of the sort of instinctive, unthinking Christianity that compelled her to attend church regularly, plant her bony old knees on the hassock and pray silently, then wander back home to paint  insipid, two-dimensional, pastel-pale pictures of Jesus surrounded by lambs and birds. She had always been an eccentric loner even by classic maiden aunt standards, but she seemed content to be so. And she was kind. Sadly, the family curse of lingering dementia had overtaken her some eight or nine years ago, and she had spent the final years of her life sectioned to a care home. Last week she succumbed to general weakness and system failure brought on by infections that had left her unable to eat or drink. My sister, a committed Christian, had been primarily responsible for organising Joan's affairs during these latter years and I am very grateful indeed to her for taking that responsibility. She also arranged for Joan to receive the last rites shortly before she died. It is uncertain whether Joan was compos mentis enough to appreciate this, but it was a nice thought, I suppose. It was therefore inevitable and right that my sister should organise Joan's funeral, which would obviously be Christian. It was my duty and my wish to be present. Joan had played a major role in my life when I was a kid and I really wanted to be there.

The service was short and basic, as I suspect Joan would have wanted. Only about ten people were in attendance: my mother, sister and me; my sole remaining aunt and uncle; a former neighbour who had been a great help to Joan in her declining years; a couple of people from the care home and two or three old people who had known Joan at some point in their lives. The only hymn was Crimond, which I sang loudly and without any atheistic qualms. When the vicar asked us to bow our heads in prayer I did no such thing. There are points on which I will bend and there are also lines I absolutely will not cross. I do not bow to real beings; I most certainly will not bow to imaginary ones.

This cleric was about the wettest example of the characteristically damp breed I have come across in many years. I will give you just one example of the kind of childish guff he spouted and which, I suppose, was intended to bring comfort to the bereaved. Obviously this is not verbatim but I swear to you I am being true to the gist and not exaggerating. After saying the committal over the coffin we were treated to this:

What happens to Joan now? As Christians, we know that death is not the end, it is more like a stop on the journey. We have reached a point were we disembark, but in a sense the important part of our journey is just beginning, and the real destination is ahead. We know Joan is in heaven. I like to see heaven as a glorious, beautiful city on a hill. I can see Joan at the bottom of a winding path that leads up to this heavenly city. And I see our Lord Jesus there at the bottom of the path, there to meet Joan with outstretched, loving arms. And together they walk up that shining path to the wonderful city, where all of Joan's loved ones who have gone before her will meet her, and they will be reunited for eternity in perfect happiness. Joan is happy now. It is we who have not yet reached our destination who mourn. But it is only for a short time. Then we, too, will join Joan once more.

This is what happens in one of those modern, liberal versions of Christianity we are constantly told are not as stupid as fundamentalism. This is the sort of Christianity we atheists are told we should lay off. I was grinding my teeth so hard I nearly broke a filling. I stole a sidelong glance at my sister and those others I could manage to see. They appeared to be swallowing this infantile bullshit without  the slightest difficulty. I wondered yet again how any sane human being could listen to such needy, babyish, pitiful, madly delusional wishful-thinking without tasting vomit. How could they not feel utter shame for this befrocked buffoon - and for themselves, if they took his desperate, demented fantasy even slightly seriously? Were they really totally impervious to the gag-inducing reek of sheer terror that prompts such feverishly insane dreams and hopes? These people are utter cowards in the face of death and the clear reality of our inevitable termination. They are such craven weaklings that they can actually persuade themselves that the most obviously deranged wish-fulfilment fantasies are true. Shining cities on hills. Up the garden path with sweet Lord Jesus. Oh look, there's mummy and daddy! Roll credits!

So when I am told that I should respect religious people and their beliefs, especially these nice moderate Christians, I tend to laugh in the face of the dimwit who dares to suggest it. Respect that? Respect the kind of snivelling little baby who needs to swallow that sort of nursery-level nonsense in order to cope with life and death? I couldn't make myself respect such people even if I wanted to, and by hell I do not want to. They don't deserve respect. They're pathetic. They're disgusting. They're gutless weaklings. They're an embarrassment and a  miserable disgrace to humanity.

Yea, though I walk in death's dark vale, yet will I fear no ill.

LIARS.

Does PZ Myers have Asperger's syndrome?

Look, I really tried to stay out of it. When Myers made his infamous post identifying Michael Shermer as the subject of a rape accusation, I pretty much knew how it would go. It has been quite clear for some time that Myers is increasingly losing his sense of perspective, not to mention various other useful senses such as decency, fair play, scepticism and even-handedness. Those of us unfortunate enough to have followed the guy's activities, both on Pharyngula and elsewhere, have seen with varying degrees of regret (or satisfaction depending on our sympathies) how his ego, fed by the fawning of his frequently frenzied and abusive fan club, has turned him into an arrogant and proudly divisive gobshite who now seems happier slagging off, misrepresenting or slandering a fellow sceptic than going after a creationist or a religious fundamentalist. So I fully expected him to play this as a white-knighting, no-smoke-without-fire, just-protecting-other-potential-victims act of self-sacrificing honour. And he has, only laced with his usual unpalatable dressing of shameless hypocrisy, unhinged venom, and raging censoriousness and demonisation towards those with the temerity to question his actions.

I also fully expected that the inevitable cease and desist letter from Shermer's lawyers would be largely ignored. Myers' monumental ego and massive self-righteousness made that entirely predictable. He knows he is correct. He knows Shermer's accuser is telling the truth, even though all he has is her word and the fact that, well, he knows and trusts her. Why, he probably knows and trusts her every bit as much as I knew and trusted my ex-wife, and how she would never hide an affair from me. Ahem. Moving on...

I don't want to do a post about the many levels of sheer fractal wrongness and wickedness that Myers and his demented pack of screeching jackals are perpetrating here. It would take far, far too long, for one thing, and it's a subject that needs someone to do a really thorough job on it. Not that there isn't a wealth of source material. To collect examples of Myers' unfairness and hypocrisy would now be like hunting for a needle in a needle stack, but man, it's a depressing and wearying task, and ploughing through the Pharyngula comments section is like being simultaneously attacked by fleas and hyperactive four-year-olds.  You say one word that even hints at less-than-total compliance with the doctrine of the hypersensitive über liberal and you're instantly damned as a misogynist and a rape apologist before you have time to say "I'm not saying she's lying or that Shermer didn't do it but...". Those people don't need a trigger  warning, they need a hair-trigger warning.

So yeah... not that.  I hope some patient, rhino-skinned individual does do it, because Myers and his nest of vipers really do need to be taken down big style, but I just don't have the sort of  patience necessary to work him over like he needs to be worked over. There are numerous other blog posts and videos where folks are taking him on over this, but most suffer from the same sense of exasperated impotence and justifiably outraged spluttering in the face of such shockingly bad behaviour from someone who used to be considered one of the leading lights of the atheist blogosphere and convention circuit.

Instead I will remark on just one aspect of  Myers that was highlighted with particularly shocking force by a quote referenced in this Thunderf00t video.  One hapless commenter made the following remark:

I’ve read enough of these 3000+ comments to convince myself that Michael Schermer is being lynched on this blog. 

PZ's response to this?


Infiniteartsupplies has been banned for not knowing what the word “lynch” means.

Yes, you read that correctly. I'd wager a large sum that  Infiniteartsupplies knows very well what the word "lynch" means but PZ, it seems, does not know what the word "metaphor" means. This is very far  from the first time I've noticed Myers do this: either stupidly or disingenuously refuse to recognise when a word or phrase is being very obviously used in a non-literal, metaphorical or ironic sense. The mob took the same line with those who described this as a "witch hunt". They sneered about witches not being real so, duh, what a stupid comparison! Back in the days before I was banned from Pharyngula I noticed this over and over again: in order to launch easy attacks on dissenters Myers and the mob simply refused to recognise the possibility of using words in anything but the most slavishly literal way.  Oh, except, of course, when they did it. If they described something as, say, a clusterfuck they would have laughed their hypocritical arses off had one of us tried to insist they were literally talking about an occurrence of group sexual intercourse.

So, is PZ suffering from Asperger's? Of course not. He's suffering from being shamelessly disingenuous and highly selective about when he chooses to recognise non-literal, ironic or hyperbolic speech, and about whom he chooses to recognise it from. He's being, amongst many other dirty and dishonest things,  a hypocrite who applies the double standard with all the unfettered abandon of the worst creationist or religious accommodationist. 

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

Moderately extreme.

There is no such thing as moderate religious belief unless it is of a form so airy, tenuous and ill-defined as to be essentially meaningless.  We atheists have allowed ourselves to be conned into simply accepting the notion that the more common forms of religious belief can be “moderate” because we, quite rightly, agree with the suggestion that most believers do not indulge in murder, bombings, terrorism and so on. Those things are undeniably extreme. Our mistake has been to let this blind us to the fact that the other stuff is too. Most religious belief lies on a spectrum of extremism that has bombings, murder and terrorism at one end and just-plain-batshit-crazy at the other. Just-plain-batshit-crazy is not moderate. This is what we have been fooled into forgetting.

In 1971 I was twelve years old and still very much a Christian. I was a member of a fairly standard C of E church; head chorister in the really rather decent choir and newly, proudly, confirmed. Our congregation was, I suppose, an example of “moderate” Christianity. Most C of E churches back then were. Britain had not yet had any significant influx of bonkers Baptists, mad Mormons or loony Evangelicals. We had certainly not seen much in the way of Muslims. Those crazy condom-dodging Catholics were about as extreme as Christianity got, in those days.

I have in front of me the copy of the 1967 Holy Communion service I was given on the occasion of my confirmation by the Bishop of Lincoln on the 13^th December 1970. Here are some extracts.




From “Introducing the Christian Faith”

First and foremost, if you are going to train for the Christian life of the world today, you will need faith to recognize that God is God, and that you are his… Increasing fullness of truth and the limitless nature of the universe all point towards the infinity and perfection of God.

From “Introduction: My desire to come to Holy Communion”

Holy Father, I most earnestly desire

to come to this wonderful sacrament

and to enter into the presence of thy dear Son.

I want to join the whole Church

In offering this holy sacrifice of his love and faith and hope,

That thou mayest be worshipped and glorified.

I want to receive the life of thy Son

and to be marked with his character.

Help me to be recollected and unselfconscious,

that thy purpose of love may be completely fulfilled.

From “The Thanksgiving”

Let thy holy Word come upon this bread, that the bread may become the Body of the Word, and upon the cup that it may become the Blood of the Truth. And make all who communicate to receive a medicine of life for the healing of every sickness and for the strengthening of all advancement of virtue, not for condemnation, O God of Truth, and not for censure and reproach. For we have invoked thee, the Uncreated, through the Only-Begotten in Holy Spirit.

The Creed

I believe in one God the Father Almighty,

maker of heaven and earth,

and of all things visible and invisible:

And in one Lord Jesus Christ,

the only-begotten Son of God,

begotten of his Father before all worlds,

God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God,

begotten, not made,

being of one substance with the Father,

by whom all things were made:

who for us men, and for our salvation

came down from heaven,

and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary,

and was made man,

and was crucified for us also under Pontius Pilate.

He suffered and was buried,

and the third day he rose again

according to the scriptures,

and ascended into heaven,

and sitteth on the right hand of the Father.

And he shall come again with glory

to judge both the quick and the dead:

whose kingdom shall have no end.

And I believe in the Holy Ghost,

the Lord, the Giver of life,

who proceedeth from the Father and the Son,

who with the Father and the Son together

is worshipped and glorified,

who spake by the prophets.

And I believe one holy catholic and apostolic Church.

I acknowledge one Baptism for the remission of sins.
And I look for the Resurrection of the dead,
and the Life of the world to come. Amen.

From “The Preparation of the People”.

We do not presume to come to this thy table,

O merciful Lord,

trusting in our own righteousness,

but in thy manifold and great mercies.

We are not worthy so much as to gather up

the crumbs under thy table.

But thou art the same Lord,

whose nature it is always to have mercy.
Grant us therefore, gracious Lord,

so to eat the Flesh of thy dear Son Jesus Christ,

and to drink his Blood,

that we may evermore dwell in him, and he in us. Amen.

And we were the “moderate” ones! I could post many more extracts in this vein, but I think you get the idea. This is what went on at our “moderate” Christian church: this embarrassing, pitiful chanting of magic words, the more potent of which were capitalised to give them extra power. This shameless and shameful farrago of groveling self-abasement and pleading; this contemptible, wretched, sniveling sycophancy. All for an invisible being. And then we would sing drab little songs to it. We’d get on our knees to it. We’d importune it with needy little prayers. We’d make respectful symbolic gestures every time we passed in front of its cruciform fetish on the altar. I put it to you that there is nothing in the least bit “moderate” about this sort of behavior. This is the behavior of the primitive and the lunatic - or at very best, the hopelessly inattentive. In this day and age it appears about as moderate as doing a rain dance and seriously thinking it will make a difference to the weather.

But that was forty years ago, Jack! It’s not like that now! Except yeah, it really is. I often appall myself by listening to the morning service on Radio 4. I did so again this morning. Sorry, accommodationists, it’s still just like this, except there are fewer thees, thys and thous. They still plead and grovel. They still drone out whiny hymns. They still do the kinky submissive’s we-are-not-worthy routine. They are still pathetically preoccupied with the afterlife, with “being with you in eternity, dear Lord”. They still bang on about how unworthy they are, and beg for forgiveness for their sins, that they might not be marred in the presence of their dear Lord’s perfection. They are still, in short, behaving in a manner that is, by any normal standards, absolutely bloody barking nuts.

“Moderate” Islam is certainly no better. They do the same contemptible groveling and begging. They stick their faces to the floor and their arses in the air, and pray. They chant nonsense. They attach a startlingly unreasonable importance to an old book that any objective reader can see really does not deserve it, and they do so for no good reason at all.  Same with “moderate” Jews.  Hindus. The whole sorry lot. These people are unreasonable. Their beliefs and actions are unreasonable. The embrace of unreason is not moderation.

Here is the only religious belief that deserves to be called moderate: "Hey, I think there's some sort of power behind all this that we haven't really figured out yet. I have no idea what form that power takes and so it makes no sense whatsoever to act as though we ought to respond to it in any particular way, and I accept that this is just a feeling I have rather than an evidence-supported theory. That's all."

Anything beyond that is mad delusion, and not moderate at all. Again, we have allowed ourselves to become persuaded and diverted by this bogus idea of the religious "moderate". It's a good tactic by the religious; I'll give them that, but I've had enough of it and I’m calling it out. There is essentially no moderate religious belief. We are dealing with the aforementioned spectrum that runs from "mad" to "violently and dangerously mad". We need to wake up to this fact and stop meekly accepting the idea that the people who behave in a shockingly irrational manner are somehow "moderate" just because they don’t go around killing, kidnapping or torturing people. They're not. They're in thrall to really, really whacked-out ideas, and deserve to be treated accordingly, not with the unwarranted respect they so earnestly crave.

Short sharp shame.

 "According to my Bible, which I didn't write, homosexuality is immoral" - Michelle Shocked.

Sorry Michelle, you're not going to be permitted to get away with that. You don't get to hide behind your book. You've made a personal decision to stand behind that book but that is precisely what makes you complicit with the bigotry it enshrines. It isn't a shield you can protect your own bigotry with. By respecting it, by declaring it to be your guide, by stating  that it represents the will of a divinity you worship, you become a supporter of what it contains. And I'm going to hold you personally responsible for that.

Imagine I am a Maoist. I make a public declaration based on a quotation from the Little Red Book. Let's say I repeat Mao's claim that the socialist system will eventually replace the capitalist system, and that furthermore this is an objective law independent of man's will. You find the view expressed in this quotation to be immoral and offensive. You call me out on it. I say, "Hey, I'm a Maoist. It says in the Little Red Book - which I didn't write - that the socialist system will eventually replace the capitalist system, and this is an objective law independent of man's will. " Is that okay, then? That absolves me of responsibility for repeating the view? My being a Maoist who regards the words of Mao as being peerless jewels of universal political wisdom ought to protect me from any personal criticism or repercussions for expressing his opinions publicly? And it in no way implies my tacit support for those opinions?

Grow up, Michelle. Own your bigotry. Face up to the fact that your beliefs are your choice, and you are responsible for the choices you make. We all are. We are not children; we are not witless automata controlled by forces entirely outside our control. You chose to believe in a book chock full of lies, myths and ancient tribal moral nastiness. You chose to support that, to declare it to be truth, to find it admirable. You're a guilty bastard, Michelle, and now you get to reap your karma. Actions have consequences.  Choices matter. Enjoy the death of your career.