Joy to the World

Atheists can be such uptight downers. And I say that completely seriously and non-sarcastically, despite being a card-carrying atheist myself.

The latest example appears at the Illinois State Capitol, where someone from Freedom From Religion Foundation had the genius idea of erecting this sign among the holiday displays (via PZ):

At the time of the winter solstice, let reason prevail. There are no gods, no devils, no angels, no heaven or hell. There is only our natural world. Religion is just myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds.

Well now, there’s an uplifting and positive message. I’m sure that lots of religious folks came along to read that sign, and immediately thought “Gee, whoever wrote that sounds so much smarter and more correct than me! I will throw off my superstitious shackles and join them in the celebration of reason.”

There is a place to argue for one’s worldview — but not every single place. I happen to agree with all of the sentences on the sign above, but the decision to put in front and center in a holiday display merits a giant face-palm. (So does calling it “hate speech,” of course.) It’s like you’re introduced to someone at a party, and they immediately say “Wow, you’re ugly. And your clothes look like they were stolen off a homeless person. And you’re drinking a domestic beer, which shows a complete lack of sophistication.” I don’t know about you, but I’d be thinking — “Such taste and discernment! Here’s someone I need to get to know better.”

Until atheists learn that they don’t need to take every possible opportunity to proclaim their own rationality in the face of everyone else’s stupidity, they will have a reputation as tiresome bores. They could have put up a sign that just gave some sort of joyful, positive message. Or something light-hearted and amusing. Or they could have just left the display alone entirely, and restrained the urge to argue in favor of waiting for some more appropriate venue. (Maybe they could start a blog or something.)

Understanding how the real world works is an important skill. So is understanding human beings.

123 Comments

123 thoughts on “Joy to the World”

  1. Isn’t it funny how those who accuse the belief in God of hardening hearts, themselves need counsel on the topic?

    Monotheism hardens hearts against that which is destructive to mankind, and softens them towards that which is beautiful and whole, and so it has survived. Nobody wants reason to not prevail. But whose reasoning? One kind of “blindness” is when you refuse to believe in something despite reasonable evidence. Another kind of blindness is disregarding something staring you in the eye, because it does not come from the doors you’re expecting it to, even if it cannot fit through them.

    The first kind is sometimes alright, because the advancement of knowledge depends on skepticism of what is reasonable. It’s a fine line between stubbornness and insight. The second kind is pretty sad, because it afflicts brighter minds as well as simple ones, and leads nowhere.

  2. #98 Ray – the God of the Gaps is the standard anti-teleological put-down. Two points are
    in order. 1) page 252 of Barrow & Tipler “The Anthropic Cosmological Principle” on Hoyle’s
    stunning quantitative predictions regarding nuclear energy levels in Carbon and Oxygen.
    2) is algebra always reductionist – says who ?

    #100 Gordon – tell that to Isaac Newton !

  3. Joel, …don’t know what you are talking about. Of course Newton was religious—if you weren’t you had to hide it totally then or risk ostracism or death. He was a heretic, though, and not a Trinitarian, a stand he had to hide. Keynes called him the last magician. Read all of Newton’s religious exegesis and tell me it isn’t boring, and this isn’t 1680.

    If someone believes in Xenu, and Scientology, I can call him a deluded cultist. If someone has similar silly mainstream religious beliefs, I cannot do the same thing without being attacked as, at best, aggressive , impolite, and disrespectful. If one person has a delusional belief system, he is labelled “insane”. If millions have the same delusional beliefs, it is called
    Religion. As Sam Harris says, most religious people are not insane, but their core beliefs absolutely are.

  4. Michael Kingsford Gray

    Sigh… Another pathetic ‘faitheist’ gets it wrong again.
    Sean, where is your profound sense of awe at the mighty universe that is exposed by science?
    (Versus the measly and shrivelled miracles offered by modern cults. You know: the best that theism can offer you today is a burnt bit of toast. Contrast that with a quasar or a laser.)
    Those are *real* miracles!

  5. Gordon – Evidently Newton did not think it was boring. Some shrinks would have put him
    in a padded cell. How do you know that he would have done any physics without his
    religious beliefs ? Maybe he would have become a lawyer ! Delusional nonsense is not
    confined to religion anyway. Is string theory delusional ? Is Marxism delusional ? A lot
    of people respect ideas that have stood the test of time, and maybe tradition is a comfort.
    Frankly I am not all that impressed by Harris, Dawkins, Hitchens et al. Religious freedom
    makes more sense than demanding that everybody stop being delusional.
    On another note -maybe Wigner’s Unreasonable Effectiveness of Math goes beyond the
    Anthropic Principle. It is not just our physical and biological existence that must be
    possible, but that doing physics and developing technology also make sense in the
    universe. It seems to demand that the design of the world be extraordinarily well behaved
    for this to be possible -and that the development over time from a state of complete ignorance.

  6. Some good points have been made, but we are in a small room containing a big elephant that I do not think anyone has mentioned (although I must admit to having skimmed or skipped over some of the previous 105 posts). Many have commented upon the rationality or irrationality of various points of view and even upon some possible social consequences of those views, but theism and (yes) atheism also involve our feelings. Most, or at least many, people prefer to be happy. They wake up in the morning and hope to have some fun or, at least, not suffer. Offered a choice of two eggs over easy, bacon, and toast with jam or stale bread and mud for breakfast, most would choose the former.

    Religion and atheism both address an inherent preference for contentment. As at the ages of two hours and two years so today we care about how we feel. Perhaps, a particular atheist feels a satisfaction in being intellectually “correct,” as he sees it. Religion can involve a whole melange of powerful feelings, including love, hate, fear, and reassurance. An understanding of the topics raised in the OP requires more than a dry cerebral exercise.

  7. Joel: Of course you aren`t impressed by Dawkins et. al. I could have predicted that.
    Few irrational folks are impressed. They also are not `demanding` that people stop being delusional. Clearly, you are proof that this is impossible. Marxism and string theory are not
    positing virgin births, resurrections, transubstantiations, arks—basically your fairies in the garden stuff. As for traditional thoughts giving comfort, what wimpy, craven bs. Yes, an afterlife could be comforting to many—-too bad it is imaginary.
    Newton`s religion and obsession with alchemy most certainly interfered with his other
    scientific work, as did his obsession with the Mint. In any case, there was only one Newton.

  8. Gordon: As Douglas Adams said – “Mostly Harmless”.
    I rather enjoyed the commentary of Richard John Neuhaus in First Things over the
    years regarding Dawkins et al. hmmm – why would a hard boiled atheist be reading
    First Things anyway ? Could you predict that ?
    You take things out of historical and social context. Claude Levi Strauss had interesting
    things to say about taboos.

  9. Funny. I thought that described the “believers”. I guess one tends to
    lose a sense of humor when confronted by pig ignorant folks. One does though
    tend to cultivate a sense of irony.

  10. I don’t think I am taking Newton out of context at all. Read “The Baroque Cycle” –Quicksilver, The Confusion, The System of the World , by Neal Stephenson. Or Westfall’s “Never at Rest”, or Keynes’ lecture on Newton (delivered by his brother).

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  12. I’m a scientist and an atheist, but here’s what I’m worried about now: I like domestic beer. Is that ok? I’m worried.

  13. Besides, an atheist putting out his point of view isn’t something to be ashamed of, especially when we just had an example of a religiously motivated terrorist trying to blow up a plane.

    What a fascinatingly logical argument.

  14. Just a few thoughts:

    1-There really is no agnosticism. You believe one thing or another-own it.
    2-Fanatics don’t need religion. It’s a relationship of convenience.
    3-Untruth does not equal no worth. Would the religion protesters think it ok to travel into a remote region and preach science to indigenous animists because they would so benefit from scientific rationality? Life doesn’t have to be truth it just needs to ultimately serve the emotional and physical well being of the liver.

  15. Gordon: the issue is not what Newton wrote but whether he would have written
    his scientific works if he had some other religious beliefs. Nobody knows, period.

  16. Sean: Just when I start agreeing with you on one or two things, you wimp out 🙂
    Atheists are not the problem. Religious kooks, particularly in the USA are. Get onside with
    Hitchens and Dawkins and be proud. I thought the bus ad was brilliant and fun. Dont let
    the ubiquitous scummy TV evangelists have the media all to themselves. To misquote the
    Bible, the meek will not inherit the earth. The proportion of born again nuts and evolution deniers in the USA should be totally alarming. It sort of undermines pointing the finger of
    irrationality at the arabs. Perhaps Bill Maher is right—Americans are stupid.

  17. “My faith is whatever makes me feel good about being alive. If your religion doesn’t make you feel good to be alive, what the hell is the point of it?”

    “The history of the Catholic Church is written on charred pages splashed with gore. It is a history of inquisitions and genocides, of purges and perversions, of ravings and razzings. Yes, but through those same bloody pages walk parades of saints playing their celestial radios and sowing their sparkles of love.”

    “A world leader who’s convinced that life is merely a trial for the more valuable and authentic afterlife is less hesitant to risk starting a nuclear holocaust. A politician or corporate executive who’s expecting the Rapture to arrive on the next flight from Jerusalem is not going to worry much about polluting oceans or destroying forests. Why should he? Thus to emphasize the afterlife is to deny life. To concentrate on heaven is to create hell.

    In their desperate longing to transcend the disorderliness, friction, and unpredictability that pesters life; in their desire for a fresh start in a tidy habitat, germ-free and secured by angels, religious multitudes are gambling the only life they may ever have on a dark horse in a race that has no finish line.”

    “A sense of humor, properly developed, is superior to any religion so far devised.”

    -Tom Robbins

  18. Liam – ever read the Black Book of Communism ? – talk about splashed with gore
    and genocides. Let’s see – Stalin refused to give the Bomb to Mao because he thought
    Mao was crazy. Between the two of them, that is over 100,000,000 dead humans.

  19. Yes, and it has nothing to do with atheism. Nada. Zip. Straw men.

    “The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”
    — Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion)

  20. yes Gordon, it certainly appears that Stalin and Mao were doing their best to
    act like the God of the Old Testament – but instead of fiction they made it a reality.

  21. Joel,

    None of what I quoted advocates communism.
    What it does advocate is enjoying and focusing on life while keeping a strong sense of humor.
    Religion is pretty lousy when it comes to both of those (In the Gospel, Jesus never laughs + Christianity beleives the earth is cursed) but it has its “sparkles of love”

    I just felt like it eloquently summed up a lot of points that came up previously.

    Where did you get the idea that any of that was promoting Maoism?

  22. Ah, Christians can be such uptight downers. They really need to learn tolerance and relax a bit more.

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