Colby's an atheist, and Bene Diction likes him anyway. But what I find interesting is the kuro5hin article by Frank, an atheist from the States, that started this topic:
Unfortunately, those very people make it very difficult. Even when confronted by someone like me, very even-tempered and polite, if and when they learn I am an atheist all the usual stereotypes and prejudices boil up.
I get that sometimes when it comes up that I'm Catholic. Not so much in North America, but in Europe I've certainly had the long look down the nose and "You can't possibly believe that" response. You're a believer? Socially untouchable. But I can sympathize with Frank the American atheist; when I was an atheist I would occasionally get the socially untouchable treatment as well.
Maybe it's the belief that's upsetting to the vast majority of agnostics. After all, an atheist isn't an unbeliever -- he's a firm believer in nothing. Agnostics are the true unbelievers. Most people are complacent or agnostic or some linear combination of the two. Belief makes them uncomfortable.
(Or else it's just something irritating about me and Frank that Colby and Bene don't have.)
I just loved this Reuters opening paragraph in an article about the coffee industry:
ADDIS ABABA, Sept 30 (Reuters) - More than 30 percent of eastern Ethiopia's coffee crop could disappear within 10 years if regional farmers keep up a current trend to dump coffee in favour of a plant with a mild stimulant effect
In the Reuters world, coffee's not a stimulant, and Yassir Arafat is not a terrorist.
Steve den Beste has a long response to an interesting take on Cosmic Justice.
If you recall, about a week ago, Steve was trying to understand the worldview held by people who believe that the correct course of action in the wake of 9/11 is for the U.S. to become nicer. To wit: to increase U.S. foreign aid to everybody but Israel; to ratify the Kyoto treaty, International Criminal Court treaty and the landmine ban; etc. (What lgf calls "idiotarianism")
Steve concluded that such views can be explained if we postulate a belief in cosmic justice. In a worldview that includes this postulate, bad things are happening to the U.S. now because we have done bad things in the past. Counterattacking our enemies in Afghanistan and Iraq is a bad idea -- not only will it not fix the root cause of our current troubles (bad karma), it is actually counterproductive, causing us to pile up more bad karma.
Obviously, I am presenting a mere summary of den Beste's argument. If there's anybody who consciously believes in international karma this way, they probably find this discussion to be an unpleasant caricature of their beliefs. But most people, when faced with this proposed explanation for their worldview, deny the cosmic justice postulate.
Take the letter Steven responded to the next day:
And you go further and accuse the liberals--who believe that American behavior is a HUGE factor in the behavior of our enemies--of some kind of belief in karma, and some kind of supernatural cosmic justice. As a liberal atheist myself, I believe in cause and effect, not karma.
Clearly, we need another axiom -- or a less unpleasant way of saying "Cosmic Justice" to account for these views. A committed Marxist, for example, would never agree with the Cosmic Justice axiom. Matt Cline proposes a color-coded theory of Social Dynamics, which Steve takes on in this article. (Honestly I find the Green/Orange labels annoying, as those are the 'gang colors' for the terrorists in Northern Ireland.)
Steven deals with the ideas put forth by this system. Personally, I like to respond to arguments like this by turning the tables. Okay, you're Green, I'm Orange; you have moral relativism as an axiom (excuse me: you recognize that morality is a social construct), while I believe in an absolute standard of good and evil. I claim that I'm right and you're wrong. You can't judge me because (by relativism) you have to acknowledge my axioms as valid, at least for me. The debate automatically ends because we're arguing on different levels.
I don't find Social Dynamics to be convincing. I put forward the Golden Rule as an alternative axiom which can also lead to these conclusions.
First let me take the very uncontroversial position of endorsing the Golden Rule. I do. You all should do unto others as you wish to be done unto. Here's the take of Christina Hoff Sommers, one of my favorite writers, on this subject:
We must make students aware that there is a standard of ethical ideals that all civilizations worthy of the name have discovered. We must encourage them to read the Bible, Aristotle's Ethics, Shakespeare's King Lear, the Koran, and the Analects of Confucius. When they read almost any great work, they will encounter these basic moral values: integrity, respect for human life, self-control, honesty, courage, and self-sacrifice. All the world's major religions proffer some version of the Golden Rule, if only in its negative form: Do not do unto others as you would not have them do unto you.
I believe that some of those who propose more foreign aid and multilateralism as the solution to terrorism are motivated by Golden Rule-based reasoning. They reason, "The United States should provide aid to the poor, because that is what we would wish done for us, if we were poor." They reason, "The United States should sign the landmine ban, because we don't want our enemies to deploy antipersonnel mines against us." They believe that the United States should use its unique position of power to set a good example for the rest of the world. They fear that by adopting a policy of pre-emption, the United States is abandoning a foreign policy based on the Golden Rule. (It might be a valid concern, but see below.)
And U.S. foreign policy has been based on the Golden Rule for a long time. America is often accused of isolationism; this is in fact an application of the Golden Rule. We want other nations to leave us alone, so we leave them alone. We like to be left alone, mainly.
And although it's a valid Christian interpretation of the Golden Rule to say that when we are attacked we ought to sit still and take it, it's not the way America has run its foreign policy in the past. Remember Pearl Harbor? What about the Lusitania and the Zimmerman telegram? It's in our history. Do not "do unto us"; or else we will come and "do unto you." With pre-emption, we are starting to depart slightly from the Golden Rule. (But only just: after all, they did pre-emptively attack us.)
Imperial fears are raised now but hardly seem warranted, given our history of disarmament and returning to Golden Rule-based isolationism.
It's not that we've abandoned the Golden Rule, even now. We really just want to be left alone. And we'll kill anyone who refuses to leave us alone. Is that so hard to understand?