Krattenmaker, No Berlinerblau Questions Secularists
I wasn’t going to comment on Tom Krattenmaker’s August 20 USA Today column, “Secularists, what happened to the open mind?” but I keep getting directed back to it. Then I discovered his big question is really Jacques Berlinerblau’s question. So I’m still not going to comment on Krattenmaker, but on atheist writer and religion scholar Berlinerblau’s July 16 WashingtonPost.com question:
Can an atheist or agnostic commentator discuss any aspect of religion for more than 30 seconds without referring to religious people as imbeciles, extremists, mental deficients, fascists, enemies of the common good, crypto-Nazis, conjure men, irrationalists, pedophiles, bearers of false consciousness, authoritarian despots, and so forth? Is that possible?
As a matter of fact Berlinerblau wrote an entire book, The Secular Bible: Why Nonbelievers Must Take Religion Seriously, which according to the reviews takes on the bible itself without calling religious people any names. So I guess his question really should be, Can an atheist or agnostic commentator besides Jacques Berlinerblau discuss any aspect of religion for more than 30 seconds without referring to religious people as… (et cetera, and so on).
Still, it’s an interesting question. But it begs another question: How long can a theist or evangelical commentator discuss any aspect of atheism or secular humanism without referring to atheist or humanist as something inflammatory or derogatory? Moreover, would anyone bother reading what was written and quote it if it wasn’t?
Look how well Dawkins, Hitchins, and Harris have sold. I hadn’t heard of Berlinerblau’s work until he wrote something inflammatory about atheist and agnostic commentatators so that Krattenmaker picked it up. Perhaps I should be more up on atheist author’s like Berlinerblau, but I think you see my point: conflict gets reported by the media.
I’m also not sure about Berlinerblau’s original ideas. On page 131 of the aforementioned book he says, “If secularism is to be perserved as the minority position that it has always been (and should always be), it will need to rethink itself.” Now I don’t know if he just thinks it could never be more than a minority position or if he has an internalized athiest-phobia, but I don’t know why secularism should be a minority position and not a majority position.
I’ll just have to get his book I guess and find out where his opinion is coming from. Maybe I can comment on it without criticizing it. Will anyone read it?
Subscribe to Feed
This post should go alongside the previous post on religious tolerance since the issues are similar. On a personal note, one of the reasons I became a Humanist instead of a “simple” atheist was the attitude that was displayed toward religious people. The Humanist articles I read were critical but not derogatory. I missed the opportunity in the previous post to mention that I like the fact that most of the time you do not use contractions to describe religous people in this blog. The contractions (i.e. xian and fundie) can be construed to be ill-mannered and sometimes derogatory. I would request that your practice of restraint in this manner continue.
I think the current political climate is causing tempers to flare and some of the rhetoric gets into the cheap shot area for both sides of the belief system. Once again, someone has to take the lead in showing tolerance and it might as well be Humanists. As for minority status, we will remain that way as long as there are more religious people teaching their children “…the path they should go..” instead of allowing them to think for themselves. It will be several millennia before humanity rids itself of all supernatural religion. It will probably be several centuries before we see the end of extremist religious teaching. Both of those events may coincide with catastrophic human losses that cannot be explained away by a lack of intervention by supernatural beings. The losses and the recovery will only be explained and obtained through human experience and science.
In the meantime, we can at least try to be civil with one another.
You bring up a good point and I know I’ve grown much shorter tempered on this issue since these books have come out and I feel like I’m always defending Dawkins etal. I have just purchased Berlinerblau’s book and if I like it may buy his next book that is due out Thumpin’ It: The Use and Abuse of the Bible in Today’s Presidential Politics.”
But do you think we can get press and publicity without the kind of communication style used in the books like Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, whether you agree with them or their style?