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ljwritesWhat a week. I traveled to China on Monday for a conference, made a presentation Tuesday, got back Wednesday night, went to work on Thursday, and went to school on Friday for a seminar and another presentation. After the travel-and-academics whirlwind it'll be a relief to settle into a boring workweek, but I am resolved to slack off this weekend and just enjoy myself. Which means, among other things, blogging!
Unfortunately this particular entry isn't all squee and fun, in fact it's sort of unpleasant but I decided to jot it down to put it to rest in my mind. I figure if it's been bothering me for over a week it deserves a full treatment.
For background, I used to hang out at We Hunted the Mammoth, David Futrelle's blog dedicated to mocking misogyny. It was fun for a while, but I was getting bored for the same reason I tire of progressive blogs--it's always about the evil Them and the good Us, deploring the awfulness of the other side while patting ourselves on the collective back for how enlightened and moral we are. Conservative blogs are no better, of course, but as a progressive I can be part of the ingroup only on progressive-leaning blogs and I find the groupthink and us-against-them mentality obnoxious after a while.
Still, the experience of hanging out with people who agreed with me on feminism was pleasant and I stuck around a while. I respect David Futrelle and think he's funny as hell. Pointing and laughing at misogynists is only interesting for me only so many times, but that's no knock on the importance of the work David is doing.
It took comment-thread drama to catalyze my decision to leave. It was about religion, or anti-religion in this case. It was on a post about a leading MRA's predictably awful reaction to the Charleston killings, and I fell to talking about some atheists on another blog being awful about the killings, along the lines of "Where is your God now?" and "This isn't terrorism, it's a mental illness!" I didn't mean to make a comment on atheists in general (after all, I am one) but riff on the theme of people being terrible on the internet about mass murder, but I guess to some commenters it looked like I was derogating atheists in general. I tried to clarify as best I could, that it's only the intolerant strains of anti-theism that bother me.
During the discussion I asked an anti-theist commenter, EJ, to clarify his own anti-theist position, and was troubled when he seemed to be advocating the prohibition of religious instruction to children. To save space I'll give the screencap of my response where I quote part of his comment:
(Click for full-sized screencap)
Text version:
Now, I couldn't be sure that EJ was advocating the government prohibition of religious instruction by parents, which was the only part of his position that I had serious problems with. EJ's answer did nothing to lessen my concern:
I see so many problems with this comment. I didn't go into them at the time because I didn't want to hijack the thread and just wanted clarification on what exactly EJ was advocating, but boy were there problems. First, just because a parent is teaching bigoted things that's enough reason for "interference?" What exactly does interference entail? A gag order? Taking children away from their parents? I have never heard of racism or homophobia alone in the absence of abuse or neglect being a reason for intervention in an otherwise functional parent-child relationship.
Second, I'm troubled by the idea that a child's religious liberty is reason to intrude into families and communities. It's one of those ideas that sound reasonable on paper, until you think about the nitty-gritties of enforcement. Do you actually ban religious instruction to children? Do you prohibit parents from talking about certain subjects (their Christian faith, for instance) in a certain way (by endorsing it)? What if parents and communities don't obey this ban, as I'm sure many will not? How is it going to be enforced?
Besides which, how can anyone possibly think this is a good idea with the history we have of religious persecution, whether of all religions or specific ones? I'm sure observant Jews won't be nervous at all about being told that they can't teach their children their religion, and black communities will be thrilled to have policemen observing their churches to check what's being taught to children. Or do we exempt, say, Judaism or indigenous religions because these are part of ethnic identities as well? Well sure, why not, because no one else's religion is tied into their history and communal identity (you're out of luck, black people).
I mean, are we supposed to believe this blatant intrusion into families and communities is supposed to go well this time around (we swear!) just because it's anti-religious? History doesn't indicate there is anything inherent in atheism or anti-theism that makes human beings more than human, that renders them less susceptible to the temptations of power. And EJ, it seems to me, is talking about a hell lot of power to be handing to anyone.
Third, either EJ has a poor understanding of what religious liberty is or what proselytizing means. Of course he has the full right to try and convert others to the thinking that Keynesian economics are the best, or that South Africa will win at rugby, as long as he doesn't use force or fraud. (And even fraud is unlikely to get him prosecuted, just privately censured.) And of course people of all faiths have the right to spread what they see as the good word to others. No one is guaranteed results because, remember, force and fraud are not allowed, leaving everyone is free to choose.
In fact, no parent who gives their child religious instruction is guaranteed results either. Look at all those homeschool apostates who speak out against the fundamentalist Christianity which they were not only instructed in but explicitly brought up to be foot soldiers for. Heck, look at me, an atheist after going to church at my parents' insistence for almost twenty years. People raised in their parents' religion are not brainwashed robots who never had a chance, we can and do find our own path whether it leads us to our childhood traditions or elsewhere.
Katz, another commenter, had much the same idea about EJ's startling proposal and had this to say:
Actually he doesn't sound like Stalin: EJ's proposal, if I am understanding it correctly, goes further in the area of religious instruction than the Soviet leadership ever did. Lenin, after all, forbade the teaching of religion in schools (both public and private) to minors, but did explicitly say citizens may teach and be taught religion in private. As far as I understand, and he hasn't denied this, EJ would permit even less freedom in this area than Lenin or Stalin did. This is not to say he advocates mass murder or terror; but in terms of religious liberty he seemed to be presenting an extreme position with highly disturbing implications.
So I hope you can see why I was freaking out at this point. EJ had seemed a pretty swell guy in our other interactions, and I didn't want to believe that he was advocating what he seemed to be advocating. I tried again to clarify what it was he meant by bringing up the real-life issues with his position, how it would be enforced and what enforcement would entail:
I also have serious concerns about the statement that "we" (as individuals? As a society?) would "think nothing of interfering" because children were being given a bigoted religious upbringing. Do I think that environment is ideal for a child? No, of course not. If the interference in this case means a neighbor or teacher having chat with a bigoted parent, I'm all for it. But if it means government interference, up to and including splitting up families, then no person with a shred of sense would "think nothing" of such a measure especially when the child is loved and taken care of. That was why I had so many questions, to find out what exactly he meant by interference.
Disappointingly for me, EJ thought answering my questions would be threadjacking:
I was puzzled because all it would have taken was a "No, of course not," who did I think he was, or some other answer to the effect that I had misunderstood him entirely. It's not that he needs to give me an answer in exactly the way I prefer or owes me any answer at all, it's that it would have been ridiculously easy to disabuse me of the totalitarian phantoms dancing in my head. The fact that he wasn't doing so seemed to mean I was correct in my interpretation.
At this point I was upset and confused for this and other reasons. It was late and I should have been in bed hours before. I lay down and tried to sleep, but I couldn't. I was dealing badly with unrelated real-life stuff (including the aforementioned presentations), my heart was doing a painful thump-drag, thump-drag in one of my occasional bouts of arrhythmia, and my panicked mind kept running circles around the discussion. Conditions were ripe for a bad decision and giant brain-fart, both of which would happen in due course.
Unfortunately this particular entry isn't all squee and fun, in fact it's sort of unpleasant but I decided to jot it down to put it to rest in my mind. I figure if it's been bothering me for over a week it deserves a full treatment.
For background, I used to hang out at We Hunted the Mammoth, David Futrelle's blog dedicated to mocking misogyny. It was fun for a while, but I was getting bored for the same reason I tire of progressive blogs--it's always about the evil Them and the good Us, deploring the awfulness of the other side while patting ourselves on the collective back for how enlightened and moral we are. Conservative blogs are no better, of course, but as a progressive I can be part of the ingroup only on progressive-leaning blogs and I find the groupthink and us-against-them mentality obnoxious after a while.
Still, the experience of hanging out with people who agreed with me on feminism was pleasant and I stuck around a while. I respect David Futrelle and think he's funny as hell. Pointing and laughing at misogynists is only interesting for me only so many times, but that's no knock on the importance of the work David is doing.
It took comment-thread drama to catalyze my decision to leave. It was about religion, or anti-religion in this case. It was on a post about a leading MRA's predictably awful reaction to the Charleston killings, and I fell to talking about some atheists on another blog being awful about the killings, along the lines of "Where is your God now?" and "This isn't terrorism, it's a mental illness!" I didn't mean to make a comment on atheists in general (after all, I am one) but riff on the theme of people being terrible on the internet about mass murder, but I guess to some commenters it looked like I was derogating atheists in general. I tried to clarify as best I could, that it's only the intolerant strains of anti-theism that bother me.
During the discussion I asked an anti-theist commenter, EJ, to clarify his own anti-theist position, and was troubled when he seemed to be advocating the prohibition of religious instruction to children. To save space I'll give the screencap of my response where I quote part of his comment:
(Click for full-sized screencap)
Text version:
@EJ
[Quoting from EJ: ]"The most common atheist (antitheist) position on that is that we should work to undermine the teaching of religion to children by their parents. If someone wants to convert freely as an adult, that’s their choice, but if we take away the “default option” of following the religion then we strike at the mechanism which transmits the embedded cultural assumptions."
[My comment starts here: ]Doesn’t that entail interfering in the family relationship, not to mention religious liberty? I had my differences with my parents on religion, but somehow I don’t think intervention by a well-meaning third party (including government) would have Improved things.
Also I’ve seen a study saying religious groups are often important sources of community and support for disadvantaged groups. I know I would have serious concerns about any effort to undermine the teaching of religion in, say, black communities, since that would almost certainly lessen community cohesion and reduce social resources including political mobilization capacity.
Also, thanks for the clarification of the New Atheist scene and the blog rec!
[There was also a remark to a different commenter, Policy of Madness, about attributing someone else's comment to her. I was to make the same mistake again on the thread, to my regret.]
Now, I couldn't be sure that EJ was advocating the government prohibition of religious instruction by parents, which was the only part of his position that I had serious problems with. EJ's answer did nothing to lessen my concern:
@PussyPowerTantrum:
[Quoting me:] "Doesn’t that entail interfering in the family relationship, not to mention religious liberty? I had my differences with my parents on religion, but somehow I don’t think intervention by a well-meaning third party (including government) would have Improved things."
[EJ's answer: ]1) Yes it does, but many things entail interfering in familial relationships. If someone brings their children up to hate black people then we would think nothing of interfering; similarly, if someone brings up their children to believe in a deity who says you must hate gays and women, we would think nothing of interfering.
2) Children have religious liberty too. They are not the property of their parents, and have the right to choose their own religion. Since a child cannot truly make choices independently of their parents, it means that having a parent teach them religion as they grow up is an abuse of parental authority to privilege a particular religion over all others. As such, a child should not be taught religion by their parents.
On the other hand, when that child grows up, they may choose to join their parents’ religion or any other, and that’s fine.
3) Nobody has a religious liberty to proselytise. They have the liberty to teach those who come to them freely, and they have the responsibility to represent themselves truthfully and impartially to those shopping around in the marketplace of ideas, but that’s as far as it goes. If you’re a Christian, you have no more right to spread that belief than I have the right to spread my belief in Keynesianism or that South Africa will win the rugby.
I see so many problems with this comment. I didn't go into them at the time because I didn't want to hijack the thread and just wanted clarification on what exactly EJ was advocating, but boy were there problems. First, just because a parent is teaching bigoted things that's enough reason for "interference?" What exactly does interference entail? A gag order? Taking children away from their parents? I have never heard of racism or homophobia alone in the absence of abuse or neglect being a reason for intervention in an otherwise functional parent-child relationship.
Second, I'm troubled by the idea that a child's religious liberty is reason to intrude into families and communities. It's one of those ideas that sound reasonable on paper, until you think about the nitty-gritties of enforcement. Do you actually ban religious instruction to children? Do you prohibit parents from talking about certain subjects (their Christian faith, for instance) in a certain way (by endorsing it)? What if parents and communities don't obey this ban, as I'm sure many will not? How is it going to be enforced?
Besides which, how can anyone possibly think this is a good idea with the history we have of religious persecution, whether of all religions or specific ones? I'm sure observant Jews won't be nervous at all about being told that they can't teach their children their religion, and black communities will be thrilled to have policemen observing their churches to check what's being taught to children. Or do we exempt, say, Judaism or indigenous religions because these are part of ethnic identities as well? Well sure, why not, because no one else's religion is tied into their history and communal identity (you're out of luck, black people).
I mean, are we supposed to believe this blatant intrusion into families and communities is supposed to go well this time around (we swear!) just because it's anti-religious? History doesn't indicate there is anything inherent in atheism or anti-theism that makes human beings more than human, that renders them less susceptible to the temptations of power. And EJ, it seems to me, is talking about a hell lot of power to be handing to anyone.
Third, either EJ has a poor understanding of what religious liberty is or what proselytizing means. Of course he has the full right to try and convert others to the thinking that Keynesian economics are the best, or that South Africa will win at rugby, as long as he doesn't use force or fraud. (And even fraud is unlikely to get him prosecuted, just privately censured.) And of course people of all faiths have the right to spread what they see as the good word to others. No one is guaranteed results because, remember, force and fraud are not allowed, leaving everyone is free to choose.
In fact, no parent who gives their child religious instruction is guaranteed results either. Look at all those homeschool apostates who speak out against the fundamentalist Christianity which they were not only instructed in but explicitly brought up to be foot soldiers for. Heck, look at me, an atheist after going to church at my parents' insistence for almost twenty years. People raised in their parents' religion are not brainwashed robots who never had a chance, we can and do find our own path whether it leads us to our childhood traditions or elsewhere.
Katz, another commenter, had much the same idea about EJ's startling proposal and had this to say:
EJ: You are pushing a really profoundly creepy type of social engineering here, and I say that not so much as a religious person but as a student of history. Seriously, you sound like Stalin right now. I mean, a lot like Stalin.
Actually he doesn't sound like Stalin: EJ's proposal, if I am understanding it correctly, goes further in the area of religious instruction than the Soviet leadership ever did. Lenin, after all, forbade the teaching of religion in schools (both public and private) to minors, but did explicitly say citizens may teach and be taught religion in private. As far as I understand, and he hasn't denied this, EJ would permit even less freedom in this area than Lenin or Stalin did. This is not to say he advocates mass murder or terror; but in terms of religious liberty he seemed to be presenting an extreme position with highly disturbing implications.
So I hope you can see why I was freaking out at this point. EJ had seemed a pretty swell guy in our other interactions, and I didn't want to believe that he was advocating what he seemed to be advocating. I tried again to clarify what it was he meant by bringing up the real-life issues with his position, how it would be enforced and what enforcement would entail:
@EJ
[Quoting EJ: ]"If someone brings up their children to believe in a deity who says you must hate gays and women, we would think nothing of interfering."
[My reply: ]What would that interference look like? Are the parents given a gag order? Should the children be taken away? And what if the religious teaching is not bigoted, just religious? Should parents be forbidden from discussing something that matters deeply to them with their children, or including them in community activities--and if so, why stop with religion? Why not, say, libertarianism--or atheism for that matter? It seems to me if children should not be brainwashed to make up their minds about religion, they also shouldn't be taught religion is inherently harmful so they can make up their own minds later.
Also I notice you didn't address my other point about disadvantaged groups and religious community. Would you be okay with, say, Mother Emanuel church being forced to discontinue Sunday school?
I also have serious concerns about the statement that "we" (as individuals? As a society?) would "think nothing of interfering" because children were being given a bigoted religious upbringing. Do I think that environment is ideal for a child? No, of course not. If the interference in this case means a neighbor or teacher having chat with a bigoted parent, I'm all for it. But if it means government interference, up to and including splitting up families, then no person with a shred of sense would "think nothing" of such a measure especially when the child is loved and taken care of. That was why I had so many questions, to find out what exactly he meant by interference.
Disappointingly for me, EJ thought answering my questions would be threadjacking:
@PussyPowerTantrum;
I've said that I'm going to step back from the discussion on religion and I should keep my word. I don't want to derail the thread any further and I'm leery about getting compared to mass murderers.
I'm happy to fill you in, but I don't want to cause an internet fight.
I was puzzled because all it would have taken was a "No, of course not," who did I think he was, or some other answer to the effect that I had misunderstood him entirely. It's not that he needs to give me an answer in exactly the way I prefer or owes me any answer at all, it's that it would have been ridiculously easy to disabuse me of the totalitarian phantoms dancing in my head. The fact that he wasn't doing so seemed to mean I was correct in my interpretation.
At this point I was upset and confused for this and other reasons. It was late and I should have been in bed hours before. I lay down and tried to sleep, but I couldn't. I was dealing badly with unrelated real-life stuff (including the aforementioned presentations), my heart was doing a painful thump-drag, thump-drag in one of my occasional bouts of arrhythmia, and my panicked mind kept running circles around the discussion. Conditions were ripe for a bad decision and giant brain-fart, both of which would happen in due course.
