Ignorant atheism is as vile as ignorant fundamentalism

The BBQ Pit
1

Just to be clear, I’m NOT pitting individuals, but an idea.

In this thread, Marley23 and Nichol_storm wrote:

Deliberately militant ignorance of a subject, especially one as important as religion, is inexcusable. So you don’t believe in YHWH? Neither do I, yet I fancy myself as reasonably well-versed in the Bible and religious history as any regular churchgoer, and I’ll tell you why.

A. Religion is a powerful force in human history and culture. It has caused wars and migrations, and it has created and destroyed kingdoms and empires. How can you understand Byzantine history if you do not know about the Iconoclasm controversy, Western medieval history without understanding the struggles between emperors and popes, or early modern history without the Reformation? Even today, one cannot claim to have a basic understanding of international politics without understanding the intertwined histories of Islam, Judaism, and Christianity.

B. Religion illuminates facets of other cultural works. One cannot hope to grasp the full meaning of Renaissance painting without a basic knowledge of Christian hagiography and symbolism. (“Mommy, why is that winged man shooting a ray gun at that man in the robe?”). Western literature is a closed book to anyone who does not know Biblical allusions. How will you understand the symbolism of T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land without knowing the allusions to the prophecies of Ezekiel, St, Augustine’s Confessions, the Bhagavad-gita, and Greek mythology? And let’s not forget one of the greatest heirlooms passed down to native English speakers, the King James Bible. It may not be a good translation, but the clarity and power of its words have made it, along with Shakespeare, the premier literary jewel of our language.

C. Deliberate ignorance is wicked. I have no patience with anyone who deliberately chooses not to learn, whether it’s fundamentalists what’s affeerd o’ them EVIL-lootionists or otherwise intelligent posters who allow snobbery and anti-religious bigotry to blind them to an incredibly vital and influential aspect of human culture.

It isn’t as if reading religious texts require you to subscribe to that faith. I’m a big fan of Philip Glass’s operas Satyagraha, which has a libretto taken from the Bhagavad-gita, and Akenaten, which uses ancient Egyptian, Akkadian, and Babylonian hymns as its libretto, but I am not a believer in Hinduism nor do I worship the sun disc. I do not believe in Jehovah/G-d/Allah any more than I believe in Vishnu, Re, Odin, Jupiter, Huitzlopochtli, or Viracocha, but that does not mean that I am not interested in the forces that illuminate mankind’s deepest fears and most glorious dreams.

My axiom is that all knowledge is useful, all knowledge is good, and no knowledge is ever wasted.

Shanti
Shanti
Shanti

2

gobear, everytime I read one of your posts, I always wonder: Do you have to look all those words up, or do you have them committed to memory? There’s no fucking way I could put “Bhagavad-gita” and “Iconoclasm” in the same post without end up looking like a complete bafoon.

p.s. Hear, hear!

3

Generally agreed, although ignorance from laziness or unfamiliarity is more excusable. I have no idea what “pentacoastal” means, though I suspect it has something to do with five boats. Then again, if someone were to explain it to me, I wouldn’t deliberately shun the knowledge. Learning is fun.

If I may add a small complaint to your rant, I hate it when people describe themselves as pagan, when what they really mean is disenchanted with Catholicism. I’ve met far too many people that do that.

And another small complaint about people that say religion is a sham, there is no god, it’s all voodoo, etc., and then proceed to check their horoscopes, cleanse their auras, and attend past life regression seminars.

4

Well spoken, gobear, the more of your posts I read the greater my respect for you grows despite our differences in beliefs.
I personally agree that ignorance, in any way, is just plain vile. It’s been my belief that if a person wants to be able to take a stand on a subject they need to be versed enough in their oppossing viewpoint to actually make an effective arguement. I find ignorant Christians to be some of the most annoying people on the planet and find myself quite often avoiding Christians alltogether because it seems they simply don’t want to learn about anything outside of their little box.

5

I am deeply and greatly moved by what you say, gobear, and I wish to ratify the entire thrust of what you say. I cannot begin to count the number of times that a debate is founded on opposition to premises which should have been cast in the role created by Ray Bolger in The Wizard of Oz.

May I suggest a premise, based in my own Christianity but which speaks to all of us, whatever our beliefs or lack thereof, that appears to move all sincere Dopers:

Magna est veritas, et prevalebit.

6

This is why I love this board. People of wildly divergent beliefs still grant the power of knowledge sufficient authority to be willing to discuss rationally concepts that they can often find common ground in simply because they’re willing to talk to each other. This holds true in areas that are all too often forbidden from polite discourse simply because so few people appear able to rationally discuss them – particularly religion and politics.

My personal beliefs notwithstanding, I have great respect for people of any faith – or no faith – who understand that there is THEIR truth and then there is SOMEONE ELSE’S truth, and the two may not coincide. It’s the wrong-headedess of people assuring me that only THEIR truth is the Truth and that my beliefs must automatically be discounted or rejected because they don’t match theirs that makes me crazy.

And yet here we have a perfect example of why a little tolerance of the right of others to their own beliefs goes a long, long way in avoiding the conflicts that seem to be the root of most of human history. You guys rock!

7

I have been lifted. Go and Poly. Dammit. That’s fine shit.

8

I personally did not see any bigotry in the quotes you posted – I see only apathy, for the most part. You pose a very good argument for learning about religion, but honestly, it could be applied to any subject and I think it’s rather impossible to pursue the infinite amount of subjects require to fully appreciate anything and everything. If someone is a self-professed atheist then I think it is understandable why learning the nuances and details of religion - any religion - is not going to be terribly high on their list of Things To Do. To call deliberate ignorance wicked is, IMO, a bit hyperbolic. I am completely ignorant of how to change the oil in my car, and I wouldn’t say that makes me wicked (though other things do!), and the car has much more impact on my day to day life than an academic working knowledge of Christianity. I personally don’t know what the flaming blue hootie a Pentecostal is, and to be honest with you, I really couldn’t care less because… well, I’m not one, and I have much more important and personally relevant things to do and learn about. Deliberate ignorance? Probably, but I just see it as a different hierarchy of priorities than you.

It’s not like I have studied in depth the theory of evolution… I probably know much more about it than them fun-dee-mentalists. I just can’t really grok what you’re upset about. That atheists don’t want to learn about religion? I personally see it as a bit unreasonable to expect them to be interested in it.

You know, theoretically I’m an anarchosocialist, but I don’t go getting all huffy everytime someone badmouths those goddamn pinko commies. Not everyone has time to go researching the history of the Soviet Union and China, and read Marx and understand the fine points of what true socialism would be like and why what those nations adopted is NOT socialism but state capitalism. There’s ignorance everywhere.

I dunno. I just don’t get why you’re upset.

9

Whoops… don’t know much more about evolution…

10

To reject learning about religion and to CHOOSE to be ignorant makes you as backward as any fundamentalist.

Did you choose not to learn about the workings of cars because you think it’s unimportant, or have just not had the time? We all can’t be ultra-knowledgeable about every subject because we only have one short lifetime to live and learn and there just isn;t time, but to reject knowledge because it offends your personal worldview is unbelievably stupid.

11

Thanks, jinwicked, you saved me the keystrokes.

What she said.

12

I couldn’t agree more. I chat in religion rooms, often, and I don’t think there is anything more obnoxious than someone coming in, and yelling about how ‘Jesus sucks cock’ or somesuch. Then, you get the fundies coming in and screaming about how God hates us because we don’t believe in him and that’s his will. The ridiculous childishness on both sides is disgraceful. It’s not just about ignorance… everyone doesn’t know something. It’s about speaking on something on that subject you know nothing about. It’s particularly irritating about religion, because many people do take their beliefs very seriously. Once someone is angry, it’s very difficult to be logical with them and discuss.

As a Buddhist, I’ve often been attacked by asshats who really, really, have no bloody clue what they’re talking about. If one more person accuses me of being lazy and fat, I really think I might pop my top. And I’m not talking about my shirt.

I love you gobear. I was about to start a thread about this. And then you go and do it for me. :smiley:

13

gobear, with all due respect, get off your fucking high horse. It’s really as simple as this: some people choose not to learn about certain subjects because they simply don’t have an interest in them. Just because you think it’s critical knowledge doesn’t make it so. So please stop calling people wicked, backward and stupid just because they don’t share your world view. It makes you look-- well – wicked, backward and stupid.

14

I think it definitely says something not entirely complimentary about a person who simply does not have an interest in religion. The overwhelming majority of the earth’s population considers themselves adherents of one faith or another, and religions have played a significant role in historical and current events on global, national, and local levels. If you do not have at least a basic understanding of what a person or population believes, that IMO you have little chance of understanding who they are or why they act as they do.

So, I guess a person who simply does not have an interest in religion, **simply does not have an interest in **human nature,history, current events, …

Let’s see, what DO they have an interest in? Reality TV?

15

Well, I think it definitely says something not entirely complimentary about a person who judges people based on differing interests in life. So there you have it.

16

The OP overlooked a crucial difference between the two types of ignorance. In the case of ignorant fundamentalists, they are (frequently) ignorant of matters that impact their own beliefs. In the case of ignorant atheists, this is generally not the case. So the former is a lot worse.

Of course, this might depend on the specifics of a given case. If someone is an atheist solely because he has rejected the specific teachings of a particular religion, while not understanding what those teachings actually are, he is foolishly ignorant (& foolish in general, FTM). Conversely, if fundamentalist understands all aspects of knowledge that pertain to his beliefs but is merely ignorant of some nuances of atheist thought, he is not being foolish at all. But in the stereotypical case - the fundamentalist who has no exposure at all to Bible criticism or science (that bears on religion) or the atheist who has no interest in the details of a religion that he wouldn’t believe in in any event, the former is foolish and the latter is merely disinterested.

But this doesn’t mean that everyone should know every detail about everything. In general, one should know enough to be able to make an informed decision about matters of importance. After that it’s a matter of what you happen to be interested in.

17

Shayna, I don’t think you read the relevant quotes nor did you understand the OP.

To make a point of not knowing about something? Is that a position you really wish to defend?

As I already noted, we can’t know everything about everything because we only have oine short lifetime and there is simply too much to learn, so of course we have to prioritize. for example, I’ve chosen to learn Korean, Chinese, and Japanese because I have a great deal of interest in that region, so I have never gotten around to learning Sanskrit and Pali, despite my interest in Buddhist scriptures. But, and here’s the part you missed, I would never close my ears and refuse to learn if somebody pointed out an interesting definition of a Sanskrit word.
I have no interest in soccer, so I don’t know that much about its rules or its history. But, I’m not proud that I don’t know, and I certainly wouldn’t close my mind to learning about it if the opportunity came my way.

If you are proud of your ignorance, you can be so, just don’t expect me to respect you for it.

18

I think you’re wrong Shayna. In gobear’s example, people were being smugly superior, saying that they “didn’t know anything about THAT” while at the same time reveling in the fact that they had strong opinions on “THAT”. Sounds like textbook ignorance to me. Gobear was spot on.

19

Hey, I am not, nor do I pretend to be, an expert in how evolution works, the genetic mechanisms and all that. If the topic comes up, I look to Ben, who is. I recently encountered a problem dealing with immigration law – and immediately got in touch with Eva Luna. The difference between the Orthodox doctrine of theosis and the Mormon doctrine that parallels it came up over on the board where I moderate – and I asked our resident Orthodox scholar, Oblio, to explain the Orthodox view. I’ll probably ask Monty to try to clarify the LDS view if further questions relating directly to it should occur.

My impressions are twofold:

  1. Gobear was pitting, not indifference to something that doesn’t matter to you personally, but intentional ignorance – the sort of view that insists that I must be wacko for believing in a Magical Sky Pixie, even though I’ve tried to clarify my position on theism time and again.

And that’s the mirror image of the same sort of stereotyping that insists that every gay man is an effeminate, promiscuous pedophile.

  1. Whether or not you personally subscribe to any religious view, it’s incumbent on you if you choose to be culturally literate – and this board is 99.9999% people who do – that you have some awareness of what goes to make up Western culture – and world cultures. And, whether or not you buy into it, a fair proportion of what does, and what historically has contributed to them, is founded in religions.

Try making any sense out of the Thirty Years War, or the reign of Henry VIII, without knowledge of the religious issues involved. Walk through any art museum – MOMA not excluded – without a handle on what half or better of the works displayed are intended to symbolize. Try figuring out what is going on with the abortion dispute, or the gay rights dispute, or the question of whether Alabama’s Attorney General should or should not be named to the U.S. Circuit Court, without some handle on the religion-based views of one or both sides in the argument.

No blame accrues to you from holding a given view and opposing the other one in any given controverted question. But at least have the human courtesy to find out what the view you oppose is really saying, instead of constructing a misbegotten mockery of it out of straw and wind.

20

That is not what I said, and this pretty much clinches my thesis that you didn’t understand the OP.

My OP was about taking pride in deliberately not knowing something and still presuming to have opinions on it.

Do you defend that position?