Telling Better Deconversion Stories

May 9, 2012 By leahlibresco 25 Comments

A while ago, Hemant Mehta of Friendly Atheist had a post contrasting atheist deconversion stories with Christian conversion narratives.  He thought atheists need to beef up speaking skills to be able to match the intense emotion of Christian “once was lost” stories.

A lot of atheists stop believing in god after a long process of introspection. Maybe they read a book or a friend (or, ironically, a pastor) started them down that path, but there usually isn’t a “born again” moment. When we talk about why we’re atheists, we talk about logic, science, what’s true, and what’s not…

Not a lot of stories. Not a lot of emotion. Not a lot of anything that’ll make the audience shed a tear. Not a lot of the things that draw in people who think with their gut instead of their brain. Not that it’s a bad thing to use your brain, but if we’re trying to reach out to people beyond our own bubble and convince them we have it right, we need to meet them where they are and draw them in.

I’m always in favor of getting into public speaking and reframing your talks to have a narrative arc (this was always my first piece of advice when I ran pre-science fair murderboards), but I think it’s not enough to fill in the rhetorical gap that Hemant is talking about.  It’s not just that Christian converts tell their stories with more aplomb; their arcs are intrinsically more satisfying.

Christian stories usually take the form of “Our hearts are restless til they rest in thee.”   They end with a homecoming. Atheist deconversion stories feel a little more like the end of The Graduate: the escape has been effected, but it’s not clear what you’re going to do next.  The problem puts me in mind of a quote from the beginning of E.L. Konigsburg’s (totally stellar!) book From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler.  Two siblings are planning to run away from home, but they hit an snag:

“Of all the sissy ways to run away and of all the sissy places to run away to…” Jaime mumbled.

He didn’t mumble quite softly enough. Claudia turned on him, “Run away to?  How can you run away and to?  What kind of language is that?”  Claudia asked.

We shouldn’t cleave to a flawed philosophy just to have the peace of answers, but, if we believe in an orderly universe, we should expect to find rest and peace at some parts of our philosophical quest.  The real purpose of questioning everything is to turn up some answers.  But when atheists pick ‘skeptic’ as their main self-descriptive adjective, it can seem like they’ve picked process over the goal and it’s impossible to match the emotional draw of Christian conversion stories.

That’s why I’m delighted to see that Free Thought Blogs’ Crommunist is starting a “Because I am an atheist…” series, meant as a compliment to PZ Myers’s “Why I am an Atheist” posts.  Atheists need to talk about what philosophical propositions have passed their newly rigorous criteria, not just explain how religion failed.  It makes your position more compelling and it’s a good check to make sure you’ve calibrated your false positive/false negative filters appropriately.

Filed Under: Atheism, Debate Tactics, Epistemology/Philosophy Tagged With: 25 Comments

More Beating Up on Lazy Humanism

April 17, 2012 By leahlibresco 24 Comments

There was a link to the definition from Webster’s that the Council for Secular Humanism highlights at the top of their “What is Secular Humanism?” page (ellipses theirs):

Secular. “Pertaining to the world or things not spiritual or sacred.”

Humanism. “Any system of thought or action concerned with the interests or ideals of people … the intellectual and cultural movement … characterized by an emphasis on human interests rather than … religion.”

Holy False Dichotomy, Batman!

I would never accuse religion of not being concerned with the interests or ideals of people (except probably Cthulhu-placation).  What we’re really accusing them of is being wrong about what is in the interest of people.  The people who are totally unconcerned about human interests are nihilists, and I’m all for ganging up with religious people to beat up on them.

You don’t need an airtight, comprehensive philosophy to be allowed to complain about other people’s ideas.  We can dismiss the child-beating philosophy of Michael Pearl without having an answer to the First Mover problem because it looks savage and cruel, and the Pearl clan hasn’t come up with a good reason why we should override our anti-infant-beating intuitions.  But if we’re arguing with more sophisticated interlocutors, we need to be able to say more than “We like humans!  And things that are good for humans!”

Looking over the “What is Secular Humanism?” page, I don’t see anything that goes beyond pablum.  I’ve excerpted the blockquote below, so double check the page to see if I missed something meaningful:

Secular humanism is comprehensive, touching every aspect of life including issues of values, meaning, and identity. Thus it is broader than atheism, which concerns only the nonexistence of god or the supernatural. Important as that may be, there’s a lot more to life … and secular humanism addresses it.

Secular humanism is philosophically naturalistic. It holds that nature (the world of everyday physical experience) is all there is, and that reliable knowledge is best obtained when we query nature using the scientific method. Naturalism asserts that supernatural entities like God do not exist, and warns us that knowledge gained without appeal to the natural world and without impartial review by multiple observers is unreliable…. Secular humanists see themselves as undesigned, unintended beings who arose through evolution, possessing unique attributes of self-awareness and moral agency.

Secular humanists hold that ethics is consequential, to be judged by results. This is in contrast to so-called command ethics, in which right and wrong are defined in advance and attributed to divine authority. “No god will save us,” declared Humanist Manifesto II (1973), “we must save ourselves.” Secular humanists seek to develop and improve their ethical principles by examining the results they yield in the lives of real men and women.

Being a consequentialist isn’t a get-out-of-metaphysics-free card.

I have very little patience for people who waive aside philosophizing and say, “I’m just practical.  I just act according to expected outcomes.”  For one thing, they tend to spend less time studying bias and probability than necessary to forestall charges of negligence.  But, more to the point, preferring certain outcomes to others still requires an answer to the question: What is a human and what ends fulfill its nature?

Filed Under: Atheism Tagged With: 24 Comments

Atheist vs Humanist

April 17, 2012 By leahlibresco 19 Comments

As you’ve noticed, Patheos has rolled out a site-wide redesign, and the best changes have come to the new ‘Channel‘ pages (previously ‘Portals’) for the different religious groups on the site.  The old portal was kind of a placeholder, and they were holding off on major updates til the redesign.  One question that came up in consultations with bloggers before the rollout was whether our section should be under the heading “Atheist” or “Humanist.”  It used to be “Humanist” and I’m quite glad we switched the names.

Humanist is a pretty vague word.  To me, it just suggests to me an interest in human nature and human purpose and it doesn’t necessarily preclude a belief in the spiritual or supernatural.  Note that a lot of people in the atheist community feel the need to insert the word ‘secular’ before humanist when they use it to refer to themselves.

Another personal frustration with ‘humanism’: it sounds like it’s got more of a creed attached to it than ‘atheism’ (which is just the absence of theism), but humanism tends to be very vaguely and variably defined.  I’d rather take diffuse definitions like ‘humanist’ off the table, so people can’t avoid getting their feet held to the fire during debates. Atheists are often (and fairly) asked to talk about what they do believe, instead of just talking about what they reject. Humanists have a tendency to confuse their interlocutors, who can’t remember whether there’s any there there.

 

So, three questions for you all:

Have you ever heard an interesting/compelling definition of ‘humanism?’

If you are an atheist, what goes in your atheism and ______ slot?

Any feedback on the redesign that you want me to pass on to Patheos Central?

 

Filed Under: Atheism, Housekeeping Tagged With: 19 Comments
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