I have been spending a lot of time recently discussing whether the claims made by Sam Harris and Bill Mahar on a recent episode of Real Time count as bigotry. The reason that this is important to me is because there is an underlying set of physical facts at work here - and if atheists ignore these facts they are as prone to wrongdoing as those they condemn. Those who want to blame religion for all evil either have not studied history, or studied history but have a case of confirmation bias that would make a young-earth creationist green with envy. Humans have evolved a disposition to divide the world into us (the models of human virtue), and them (who are corrupt and wicked and a danger to all that is good). It is in our genes. Researchers have found this behavior in other primates, who will brutally attack others of their species for the simple crime of belonging to a different group - for being one of them. I hate to break it to my fellow atheists - but you are human. You are disposed to see the world in terms of us and them and to attribute to us virtues we do not have and to condemn them for wrongs they did not commit. It is simply psychologically comfortable to join up with fellow members of us and engage in the condemnation of them. It is also comfortable for them to get together and to promote unjust attitudes towards us, but that is not because them are them - the corrupt and wicked and the enemy of all that is good. It is because them are human, and this is what humans (including us) are disposed to do. However, being somewhat intelligent creatures, we have the capacity to recognize this in our nature and to fight against it whenever we see it emerge. And the best place to fight against it is not when it is found in them, but when it is found in us. So, when I encounter atheists making unjust and bigoted statements about them, I think it is important to speak up and to point out exactly what those atheists are doing, and to demonstrate this fact through reasoned argument, and to tell them to stop. I would hope that among them there are people who are doing the same thing - but I have to leave that up to them.
Posted on: Fri, 10 Oct 2014 13:44:48 +0000
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