Indeed. Ignorant atheists piss me off. No, you don’t have to go along with everything your culture does just because everybody else thinks it’s a good idea… but you’d better have a damn good reason for rejecting it.. But there really are a lot of atheists for whom it comes down to something like “talking snake? C’mon!”. It’s worse than being religious.
What’s worse is a lot of these folks love being polemical—they don’t have good reasons for being atheists but want to be loud jerks about it, so religious folk get the idea that atheists are just uninformed rude jerks.
Although I agree with the general thrust of your statement, I cannot forgive the incorrect subargument, “It’s worse than being religious.”
But yes, definitely: atheists should aspire to be skillful, competent, elegant, logical rude jerks. Those of our kind with the rare talent not to be rude jerks could aspire to that part too.
If your friends are atheists, then you see that atheists come with any temperament. But when you hear about atheism from a stranger, there is a big chance he is a jerk, because other people usually don’t impose their opinions on strangers.
It works the same if you replace “atheism” by many other things. The most visible people are usually the most annoying ones.
Thank you for writing this. I started to write something similar, got bogged down in too many layers of qualification, and ultimately scrapped it; you expressed what I wanted to, far more succinctly than I would have.
Hum, depends of where you live. Here in France, atheists are common, recent surveys show almost an even three thirds split between atheists, agnostics and religious. A significant part of many social professions (teachers, nurses, social helpers, journalists, …) are atheists, for example.
But that still holds true for vocal atheists : they tend to be intellectual and nerdy, even if vocal atheists also include a part of the traditional working-class (factory workers, construction workers, transport drivers, …) due to still strong anarcho-syndicalist and marxist currents in French unions.
Indeed, I was speaking US-centrically, and I don’t doubt Eliezer was too at the time.
Though even here, atheists of some sort or another are more common than people think. Almost a quarter of Americans answered “no religion” on the 2004 census. Of course, a BBC poll from the same time suggested that North Americans were about 9% atheist, and those categories might mean different things.
I cannot forgive the incorrect subargument, “It’s worse than being religious.”
I’m not sure how you could misconstrue that as an argument—it’s a single proposition!
If it’s not obvious, consider that they’re rejecting a commonly-held belief for a really bad reason. That’s practically insane. Much better to go along with the crowd until you have an actual reason not to.
And I think being neither rude nor a jerk is vital to being a complete person. You’re setting the bar way too low.
Just because they say “the idea of a talking snake is ridiculous!” does not mean that they rely solely on the absurdity heuristic. After all, they got the correct answer.
“Do not criticize people when they turn out to be right! Wait for an occasion where they are wrong! Otherwise you are missing the chance to see when someone is thinking smarter than you”
If you suspect someone is relying too heavily on the absurdity heuristic, there are absurd things that are true that you can test them on. If you’re talking about “the average atheist” and don’t have time to test a representitive sample, I would not assume that the absurdity heuristic is all they got going for them.
I’d think the majority, if not nearly all atheists see (some of) the biases that lead to religious beliefs. “All your stated reasons for belief are worthless and shared with the majority, and your claim is absurd” is probably enough to discount the majority.
There’s also such a thing as being fair—epistemic justice. That plea can only be made by showing a poor criticism of Them and comparing it to a poor criticism of Us.
I also agree with the post’s assertion that relying on the absurdity heuristic alone is dangerous ground, it is still an excellent tool for at least calling in to question a set of beliefs which, upon further and more rigorous examination, may or may not merit rejection.
But, I must protest, a talking snake is not “a really bad reason” to reject that set of common beliefs. It is an EXCELLENT reason.
Indeed. Ignorant atheists piss me off. No, you don’t have to go along with everything your culture does just because everybody else thinks it’s a good idea… but you’d better have a damn good reason for rejecting it.. But there really are a lot of atheists for whom it comes down to something like “talking snake? C’mon!”. It’s worse than being religious.
What’s worse is a lot of these folks love being polemical—they don’t have good reasons for being atheists but want to be loud jerks about it, so religious folk get the idea that atheists are just uninformed rude jerks.
Although I agree with the general thrust of your statement, I cannot forgive the incorrect subargument, “It’s worse than being religious.”
But yes, definitely: atheists should aspire to be skillful, competent, elegant, logical rude jerks. Those of our kind with the rare talent not to be rude jerks could aspire to that part too.
Why exactly is it rare for atheists not to be rude jerks? This isn’t something I’ve observed strong evidence for.
Opinions of rude jerks are more known to strangers.
If your friends are atheists, then you see that atheists come with any temperament. But when you hear about atheism from a stranger, there is a big chance he is a jerk, because other people usually don’t impose their opinions on strangers.
It works the same if you replace “atheism” by many other things. The most visible people are usually the most annoying ones.
Thank you for writing this. I started to write something similar, got bogged down in too many layers of qualification, and ultimately scrapped it; you expressed what I wanted to, far more succinctly than I would have.
Atheists are generally self-selected intellectual people, therefore generally nerds, therefore generally lacking in social skills.
Also, religion is harming and killing a lot of people, so a lot of atheists get up in arms about that and come off as jerky.
Hum, depends of where you live. Here in France, atheists are common, recent surveys show almost an even three thirds split between atheists, agnostics and religious. A significant part of many social professions (teachers, nurses, social helpers, journalists, …) are atheists, for example.
But that still holds true for vocal atheists : they tend to be intellectual and nerdy, even if vocal atheists also include a part of the traditional working-class (factory workers, construction workers, transport drivers, …) due to still strong anarcho-syndicalist and marxist currents in French unions.
Indeed, I was speaking US-centrically, and I don’t doubt Eliezer was too at the time.
Though even here, atheists of some sort or another are more common than people think. Almost a quarter of Americans answered “no religion” on the 2004 census. Of course, a BBC poll from the same time suggested that North Americans were about 9% atheist, and those categories might mean different things.
I’m not sure how you could misconstrue that as an argument—it’s a single proposition!
If it’s not obvious, consider that they’re rejecting a commonly-held belief for a really bad reason. That’s practically insane. Much better to go along with the crowd until you have an actual reason not to.
And I think being neither rude nor a jerk is vital to being a complete person. You’re setting the bar way too low.
Just because they say “the idea of a talking snake is ridiculous!” does not mean that they rely solely on the absurdity heuristic. After all, they got the correct answer.
“Do not criticize people when they turn out to be right! Wait for an occasion where they are wrong! Otherwise you are missing the chance to see when someone is thinking smarter than you”
If you suspect someone is relying too heavily on the absurdity heuristic, there are absurd things that are true that you can test them on. If you’re talking about “the average atheist” and don’t have time to test a representitive sample, I would not assume that the absurdity heuristic is all they got going for them.
I’d think the majority, if not nearly all atheists see (some of) the biases that lead to religious beliefs. “All your stated reasons for belief are worthless and shared with the majority, and your claim is absurd” is probably enough to discount the majority.
There’s also such a thing as being fair—epistemic justice. That plea can only be made by showing a poor criticism of Them and comparing it to a poor criticism of Us.
thomblake:
I also agree with the post’s assertion that relying on the absurdity heuristic alone is dangerous ground, it is still an excellent tool for at least calling in to question a set of beliefs which, upon further and more rigorous examination, may or may not merit rejection.
But, I must protest, a talking snake is not “a really bad reason” to reject that set of common beliefs. It is an EXCELLENT reason.
Snakes do not talk.