This post is about a mini-controversy shaping up at Amanda’s blog. Since it’s the fifth anniversary of the World Trade Center terrorist attack, however, I first look back:
Falwell: “What we saw on Tuesday, as terrible as it is, could be miniscule if, in fact, God continues to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve.”
Robertson: “Well, Jerry, that’s my feeling. I think we’ve just seen the antechamber to terror, we haven’t begun to see what they can do to the major population.”
Falwell: “The ACLU has got to take a lot of blame for this. And I know I’ll hear from them for this, but throwing God…successfully with the help of the federal court system…throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools, the abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked and when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad…I really believe that the pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way, all of them who try to secularize America…I point the thing in their face and say you helped this happen.”
Robertson: “I totally concur, and the problem is we’ve adopted that agenda at the highest levels of our government, and so we’re responsible as a free society for what the top people do, and the top people, of course, is the court system.”
Falwell added, “Pat, did you notice yesterday that the ACLU and all the Christ-haters, the People for the American Way, NOW, etc., were totally disregarded by the Democrats and the Republicans in both houses of Congress, as they went out on the steps and and called out to God in prayer and sang ‘God bless America’ and said, let the ACLU be hanged. In other words, when the nation is on its knees, the only normal and natural and spiritual thing to do is what we ought to be doing all the time, calling on God.”
Anyhow, olvzl, a guest-blogger at Echidne’s place, wrote this post about how atheists should stop mocking religion. (I’m linking to his post on his blog, so you can read his snotty follow-ups.) He failed to link to any specific instances of same. Apparently, religious kitsch mounted in one’s bathroom–right next to the least dignified appliance in the house–by an avowed atheist for the specific purpose of mockery does not qualify as potentially negative PR. Maybe the fancy shell-soaps redeem Amanda. Maybe she’s got a really reverent bidet. Since I’m an atheist, the vagaries of blasphemy escape me.
This is olvzl’s point:
Atheists on the left should cut out the blanket mocking of religious people. What do they hope to gain by it?
In other words, all that disrespect of religion is driving religious moderates away from the Democratic party. (Requests that olvzl produce swing Quakers went unanswered.) Amanda wrote rather eloquently on the need to criticize religion such that it was powerful, and she’s right. I would like to attack the idea that mockery of religion in general by a small number of atheists on the left is driving religious moderates away from the Democrats. First of all, the Democratic party is religiously objectionable not because of its hostility to religion, but because of its difference with certain political preferences held by religious people. The Democrats, leadership and rank-and-file, can love religion all they please. So long as they defend the right of women to choose and gays to exist, religiously-motivated anti-choicers and homophobes will swing right. (And my grandmother, churchgoing superstar, will swing left.) You aren’t the right kind of believer if your beliefs differ.
Second, it is demonstrably false that hostility to religion or lack of respect for religion drives religious moderates away from the Democratic party such that we keep losing elections. It cannot possibly have that effect. How do I know this? Simple: George W. Bush, two-term president of the United States.
I’m not talking about his personal lack of devotion, his failure to go to church, his nonexistent religious education, or his shameless and obvious lies about his love of and interest in Christ. No, I’m talking about his base. You know, those people right up there. No one is more hostile to religious people than someone like Pat Roberston. And I don’t just mean “pagans,” either! Nor yet Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, and Zoroastrians. No, even most other Christians, like Catholics, Methodists, and those poor beleaguered Quakers. You want hostility towards pro-choice Catholics, towards gay-friendly Episcopalians, towards Darwinist Methodists, towards pacifist Quakers, towards environmentalist Presbyterians, towards any religious person whose beliefs might be described as “moderate?” Look at the right wing. Look at its figureheads.
Don’t look at us.
Thank you! I’m sick of people thinking that the only religion is Christian Fundamentalism, which isn’t fair to the many different types of Christians.
I love you Piny. That was an excellent post.
However, I sort of agree with Falwell and Robertson in the first two statements you posted. I think that as much as flying planes into buildings and killing lots of people is a horrible thing for anyone to do, I can see the terrorists’ point. As a nation/government, we did deserve 9/11 and we had it coming a long time, but not for the reasons Falwell, et. al. believe. More for our horribly arrogant, warmongering foreign policy up to that point, and we deserve it even more now for the way our government has reacted to that moment.
Thanks. I should post a follow-up of my favorite pedophile priest jokes.
I disagree. I think that the philosophy that allows any group to exact this kind of payment to balance real or perceived national sins is part and parcel of that horribly arrogant, warmongering foreign policy.
I would NEVER mock religion. Never.
I am, however, a fan of funny writing. Like this.
Any resemblance to religion is purely coincidental. no mockery is intended.
piny, good call.
I agree that progressive antheists aren’t to blame for any kind of religious-person flight from the Democratic party, but I wish (the type of) atheists (who say such things) would lay off all the fucking “durf durf, religion is dumb, anybody to believe is God is an idiot, that shit ain’t real, all religious people just believe what somebody else told them, bargle bargle” fucking bullshit. I’m a heathen, but I’m sick and fucking tired of people mocking each other for their beliefs. It’s small-minded and juvenile and fucking stupid.
True. I try to be respectful for that reason–but then, most of the religion I’m personally exposed to (this being the city it is) is of the anti-fundamentalist type, so there’s not much danger of conflation.
Sure, I got that. And I got the kind of “durf durf” stuff KnifeGhost describes. So — as a religious progressive — where is my home? Where are my people?
The problem is not that the Democrats are driving me away. The problem is that I have a hard time forming alliances with people who openly mock my most deeply held beliefs, and who refuse to believe that we have more in common than not.
These statements are not incompatible.
I’m reading a collection of writings by Muslim women right now, and in one of them, the author says the question we as Americans should be asking is not “Why did this happen?” but rather “Why didn’t this happen sooner?” I’m leaning towards agreeing with her.
With the atheist progressives who don’t mock religion?
I stick with other leftists not because they don’t ridicule my deeply-held beliefs, but because they aren’t trying to legislate against them. That was one of the weirdest things about olvzl’s post: durf-durf as some atheists might be, at least they aren’t the atheist equivalent of dominionists.
Disagreed. No one deserves 9/11. Certainly not the individual Americans working in the towers and flying on those planes who have no personal culpability for American foreign policy. Did the people killed in our invasion of Afghanistan deserve what they got because their government was evil? Do the people of Israel deserve to be killed because their government took particular military actions? Should people living in Iran die because their leader is insane and awful?
NO.
Was it predictable? Probably. Should we try and structure our international policy so that we don’t leave thousands of people poor, angry and full of contempt for us? Yeah. Is a lot of the rage directed at the United States government probably valid? Certainly.
But September 11th was not deserved. No way.
I’m with Jill, pretty much. It’s important to talk about the ways in which we might protect ourselves from this kind of attack and prevent it in the future–and international policy is definitely a part of that. Not just in a create-more-terrorists sense, either. “Deserved” was what bothered me, because it implies that you can punish a population for the sins of its government.
I asked:
… where is my home? Where are my people?
and piny responded:
With the atheist progressives who don’t mock religion?
Just so. So what’s wrong with what olvzl said?
Ugh. Mocking religious fanatics (who, if they were precisely as fanatical about anything else would free and uncontroversial targets) is important because of the massive, insane christian hegemony we swim through every day in this country. Personally I’m driven away from the democrats because of all the lip service they pay to Christians – I assume in an effort to keep them in the party. But I won’t waste my vote on a national candidate that won’t win in spite of my personal spite.
If you can’t look past atheists (or queers, or feminists, who offend plenty of whiny centrist democrats) and choose to vote based on the stronger lip service coming from Republicans (who, aside from “right to life” topics rarely put actual Christian values into legislation). Don’t blame the “freaky” leftists. And definitely don’t whine about how being a christian is an alienating experience.
I have to question whether 13% of the population can mock 76% of the population effectively. Particularly, effectively enough to drive Christians from the Dems to the Reps.
I have an alternative theory. The conservative Christians in the this country, starting in the late 70′s have been prosecuting an agenda to increase their political power. Using their pulpits, radio stations, television, publishing houses, the separation of church and state and the religious freedom provided by our Constitution the Christian Right was and has been much more effective in demonizing atheists as misguided, immoral, or Satanists. Beyond this agenda comes the follow up that casts the Democrat party as the “Atheist” Party.
I personally will continue to mock conservative fundie christians and, as far as that goes, left wing PETA fanatics. I mock their arrogance and extremism, not their basic right to believe as they do.
The problem is that I have a hard time forming alliances with people who openly mock my most deeply held beliefs, and who refuse to believe that we have more in common than not.
I am, I expect, someone who would fall under the category of “mocker.” I’ll happily mock all the live-long day. Frankly, I find the notion behind religion fascinating, but basically absurd, and I’m all for mocking a little absurdity.
But never — never — have I mocked a religious person unprovoked to his or her face, and never have I been anything other than respectful in a religious setting. That’s not down to some essential respect for religion, it’s just garden-variety politeness. My mocking takes place solely in contexts in which any religious folk wandering by are there by their own choice; I mock only on my own turf and in the public square.
So while there’s no shortage of assholes in the world, I’d be genuinely surprised if the kind of aggressive god-hating that’s so often insinuated in these “stop making fun of me!” speeches actually happens very often, and certainly not often enough to require a crackdown on uppity atheists. Usually what I see is a religious person getting all knotted up over stuff said by unbelievers in an entirely appropriate setting — in effect, trying to quash dissent from their deeply-held but unshared beliefs. Sorry, but y’all have a seriously bad reputation for not being able to take a joke.
Which is a long-winded way of saying, if somebody walks into your church on Sunday morning (or your sabbath as applicable) and throws a big atheist cream pie in your face, you have every right to kick their ass out. I also support your right to be religious in public, as long as you don’t force anyone else to go along with you. But if you’re going to “believe deeply” in public, where atheists sometimes appear, you’re just going to have to put up with a certain amount of mocking.
Sister Novena, you are my new f*ing hero.
He argued that atheists were driving people away from the Democratic party. I’m sorry, but I think that’s bullshit.
He also had several really big problems with answering substantive criticism of his post. I’m having trouble getting into Pandagon right now, but I criticized his post because his concern seemed to be getting atheists not to respond to attacks made on them by the shit-stirrers at Newsweek (though he did not link to any articles) because that would be rising to the Republican bait. To which I responded, well, why are you advocating reaction rather than proaction? Why not answer the articles by stressing that Democrats respect *everyone’s* rights, including atheists, and that freedom of religion was one of this country’s founding principles?
His response was to tell me that I was being childish and call Amanda a liar.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Echidne wasn’t re-thinking this whole guest blogger thing if this is the kind of defense this guy mounts to substantive criticism.
Nonsense. “I know you are but what am I?” is a perfectly good rebuttal. You’re just jealous because you’re stupid.
I remember him getting into it with McBoing on punkassblog, but I could be wrong; he (if it was the same person) was complaining about godbag and how it’s supposedly a slur on his grandmother, who AFAIK has never prostrated herself in the doorway of an abortion clinic.
I guess I’m a horrible person because my reaction here is “Too bad”.
First of all, who are these people? I’ve never been shy of saying that Christianity makes no sense whatsoever, but that doesn’t mean I think believers are some kind of alien weirdos.
I know it exists, but even within the subset of liberals who also see religion as stupid, it seems like only a minority of people actually take it beyond “Your ideas are goofy nonsense”.
I mean, PZ Meyers, say, constantly explicitly says that what you do or don’t believe is your own buisness, and doesn’t make you a bad person, just wrong about a certain issue.
Second, religion is an empirical issue; it covers questions of what exists in the world and how those things work. If your hypotheses are crappy, then they’ll get criticised. That’s how it works when you talk about the world., and that’s really how it should work.
Maybe ‘deserved’ isn’t quite the term I should have used. I meant it in the karmic sort of way, as in what goes around comes around. Not that the individuals who died, etc., actually deserved it because our government is a giant clusterfuck.
I think we’re wandering away from the point: is the progressives’ tent really big enough to include people whose spiritual beliefs differ? It’s rather necessary if we’re going to defeat BushCo.
What I heard olvzl saying, and what I concur with, is that there is no good reason to alienate political allies just for fun, or just to demonstrate your superiority, or just because you’d rather mock them than work with them.
I don’t think this is even a hypothetical question.
Now piny, why didn’t you tell me you were slamming me on your blog when we were having that polite little exchange on Amanda Marcotte’s blog today. It really would have been so much more ethical for you to let me know you were holding forth here.
I must say that this episode has taught me quite a bit about the underhandedness of some bloggers and commenters.
I have my hands full with correspondence or I’d join in. Why don’t you suggest that these nice people actually read what I wrote instead of the distortions that are being spread around. You can find them at my blog.
Have a pleasant night.
Because that would be both unnecessary and kinda self-aggrandizing? A trackback appears at pandagon–and probably at your blog. It certainly didn’t take you very long to find this post, which I wrote after the bulk of pandagon comments I directed at you.
Apart from referring to you as “snotty,” which you continue to be, there was no slamming. I disagree with you and lay my reasons out here. My commenters have certainly said some unkind things about you; I happen to agree with them. At this time, I’d like to add, “defensive bordering on paranoid,” to the list of negative things I’ve said about you.
I linked directly to your blog, and quoted you entirely in context. I’m not sure why you think I haven’t encouraged people to read your posts. If so many people are reading you as saying something you say you didn’t intend, perhaps the problem is with your writing.
“Slammed”? I saw no slam. I saw a disagreement, and piny’s response to it. Which is how it goes in blog-land, as fas as I can tell. It’s not unethical or underhanded in any way — the post is public, and piny even left a trackback at Pandagon, which would have directed anyone to this post. It’s not like he sent out a mass email to his friends mocking you behind your back. He just took the conversation to his own space, because he wanted to add something that wouldn’t have been appropriate in the Pandagon comments section.
If you read Feministe regularly (and I’m assuming you don’t), you’d know that this is piny’s style. He’s certainly more deeply connected in the blogosphere than I am, and often will give a more detailed opinion about some blogging controversy over here, rather than dominate someone else’s comment section. I think this is the first time I’ve ever heard someone accuse him of lacking ethics for essentially doing what every blogger out there does from time to time.
Ah, Jill. No, unfortunately I do not come here, there are only so many hours that I can spend reading blogs and so many blogs to read. You read mine lately?
I spend a lot of my time reading material to then write about, trying to understand what I am going to write about. Unlike the initiator of this smear job on me. If you want to read more please feel free to read my response to part of her very, very long post which I posted at my blog early this morning.
Is zuzu here too?
Nope, don’t read yours either. And I wasn’t trying to be snarky about you reading Feministe. You’re right, there are only so many blogs one can read in a day, and I certainly don’t expect us to be on your list.
And yes, Zuzu is here too. It’s an all-star line-up.
Yes, it’s a conspiracy. Amanda has pictures of me fellating Jimmy Swaggart, and Zuzu owes her money.
You’ll be glad to know the negotiations were broken off by your friend a short time ago. So you can continue to distort away.
I will seek my fortunes among a more adult level of bloggers, thank you. It’s a big internet, there are adults out there. You know.
A series of email exchanges with olvlzl confirmed to me that he’s mostly just thin-skinned. Which explains why he gets so incredibly upset when he hears people mocking religious faith in a public arena, even though that mockery is aimed at the publically pious who generally wish to push their beliefs on others and/or people who are real sheep and deserve a thwacking. I pretty much never see said jokes aimed at thoughtfully religious people. And contrary to what anyone might think, most of us who are engaged in public creative acts of irreverance and poking holes in sacred cows are not generally in the business of insulting believers to their faces.
Good lord, what a whiner. olvlzl, you built your cross; now hang from it.
“Negotiations?” Does she have pictures of you fellating Jimmy Swaggart, too?
Hahaha piny I love you.
You know, Penny, I bet you wouldn’t see so many atheists making jokes about religious people if they felt that the religious people in their own party had their backs. As it is, and as we’ve seen from olvlzl’s posts, the party leadership, terrified of being labeled anti-religious, is more than happy to throw the atheists under the bus, where they will enjoy the company at one time or another of the feminists and the queers.
What we see in this little thin-skinned boy’s writings, as well as in the party at large, is an attempt at appeasing the very same voters that comprise the Republican base. Guess what? They’re not going to vote Democrat.
Moreover, one of the problems the Democratic Party has had for a very long time is that it does not take clear stands on issues. Imagine the effect it would have on both religious people and atheists and agnostics alike if the party took a stand and said that religion has no place in government (and government has no place in religion), and all people of all faiths (or none at all) are equally deserving of respect. And, moreover, values like social justice, helping the poor, and what have you are values that we ALL share, regardless of whether we believe that the Bible commands us to or whether we’re secular humanists and just believe that it’s the right thing to do.
THAT, Penny, would be one way not to alienate potential allies.
[...] try to make the point that Pat Robertson doesn’t speak for me. Recently I tried to defend someone who I thought was simply making the case that making fun of religio [...]
Ah, trackbacks. Where would we be if we had no way of knowing when someone goes back to their blog to write a snippy little post about “anger?”
You know, I wasn’t angry before, but I’m pretty annoyed now.
Hey, Piny
In general, I agree that there is far too much piling on by writers-with-an-agenda of the whole “liberals/atheists should stop mocking God.” However, although I also agree that it’s lame that the poster didn’t list any specific examples to support the point, it’s not as if there aren’t ANY to be found. I think it might be articles like this one by semi-well known writers like Matt Taibbi, entitled “God Can Suck My Dick” which might give a little credence to the charges. Passages like “Since childhood, when my parents dragged me to Catholic masses so that I could watch grown men mumbling in unison while some old drunken priest with burst capillaries in his face waved his arms around under his silly white dress, I have believed very strongly that any person who believes in God is certifiably insane. However, since there were so many of these people, and since people who shared my general point of view seemed mostly to feel sorry for Believers and adopt a position of tolerance in regard to them…” just might be the sort of thing that olvzl was referring to.
Now, frankly, I think that Taibbi’s article was hilarious, in that full-throated sort of way that’s reminiscent of Hunter Thompson, but can you not see where that might cheese off a person who took religion even a little bit seriously? While I’m a firm believer in the notion that people should be able and willing to support the claims they make, olvzl’s simple failure to do so doesn’t mean that such things don’t exist, and exist in significant enough quantities that people can recognize it as a trend. This isn’t some Karl Rove-made-up non-issue. It may be overblown….but I don’t think it’s nonexistent.
Some pirate. She thinks *that* was having her ass handed to her?
Pheno, I do agree that there are some atheist liberals who make fun of religious people. I don’t think there are very many of them, or that they have any influence in the Democratic party. I also don’t think they have any power to drive religious progressives away from progressivism. That was mostly what I was complaining about: the idea that the teasing is to blame for apathy among religious progressives, or the belief among some religious people that the Democrats are godless.
I’m sorry you thought my post on Real Live Pirate was snippy, Piny. It wasn’t intended to be.
I truly am puzzled, and I truly am trying to understand, why atheists identify the religious left among the enemy, when I believe that we have more in common than not. We have a strong starting point for agreement here:
What atheists are you talking about here?
I’m talking about anyone on the left who values factionism over common-cause-making. I’m not your enemy, Piny.
Penny, it really doesn’t help the common-cause-making when you start accusing everyone of valuing factionism (except for you. Because you’re cool like that).
Moreover, you didn’t respond to any of the points I made above, so I’d appreciate it if you addressed the following points:
And this:
What’s more, the atheists don’t run the party — the Christians do. And though they seem to think that the Republicans will just stop calling the party godless if only they can somehow shut the snarky atheists on the internets up, that’s not going to happen. Shutting up the atheists is no substitute for doing the work that THEY need to do, which is getting out in front of the criticisms and appealing to universal values, regardless of their ultimate source (Bible, Koran, Torah, I Ching, Plato or common sense).
Piny asked, I answered. I didn’t accuse anyone of anything, and I certainly did not imply that I am cooler than anyone else.
Zuzu, you’re right that the religious left has not done enough to protect the rights of atheists. The Democrats are spineless on this and many other topics. It’s one reason why I’m an independent.
We can heartily agree on this:
I’d like to point out that I’ve said nothing about shutting up atheists. What I have tried to do, obviously very imperfectly, is to point out that thoughtlessly and reflexively mocking religion and religious people does nothing to help build the alliances that are crucial to winning elections, and to creating a truly inclusive progressive movement.
You really think that the mockery of atheists who have to see proposals from people like olvlzl that the atheists must be shut up, it’s regrettable, but be thankful nobody’s trying to kill you and maybe we’ll get around to supporting you next time out is always thoughtless and reflexive?
Here we have someone who’s so paranoid that the Democrats might not be able to get this group over here who doesn’t already vote Democrat to vote Democrat that he’s willing to throw that group over there, who already *does* vote reliably Democrat, under the bus. What he’s counting on is that the atheists won’t mind and will still continue voting for the Democrats even though they’re being told that they don’t matter, and they’re embarrassing to have around, and they can’t expect the party to fight for them like they do for evangelicals. Because, hey, what other choice do they have?