Taking off the 'irate atheist' hat

Or at least shrinking it to a less obtrustive yamaka-type thing.

Lancelot Finn, always a good sport and, I think, quite willing to stretch his thesis in order to provoke a good exchange, has responded to my rather hotly-worded commentary.

Nathanael points out that Christianity has within it messages of tolerance meant to counteract the impulse to squash differing opinions, contra atheism, for which I supply no equivalent. This is, of course, absolutely true. There's nothing about atheism qua atheism that requires it to tolerate anyone. There's nothing in atheism that indicts mass murder, torture, rape, pillage, sophistry, or poor government, for the very simple reason that atheism is not an integrated world view, but rather consists entirely of the lack of any theistic belief. It prohibits nothing morally, and only obliquely indicts theistic belief on epistemic grounds.

Of course this is not really new information, but sometimes one must be reminded that atheism doesn't equate to secular humanism, which which it is usually associated. Of course, sometimes it's associated with communism, or Naziism, or Mormonism, but I generally regard those as mistakes. I lost faith in technocracy and other top-down management ideologies somewhat before I became an actual atheist.

Does secular humanism have within it an explicit antidote to the totalizing impulse? A quick quote for context:

Why should you tolerate a belief system you think is absurd, and which will lead people to do things that you feel endanger the Republic, like vote for George Bush/John Kerry? What if you really hate it that people think that way, and you just know that they're wrong? Maybe you can't actually force them to change their beliefs, but can't you make them shut up about it and keep them to themselves? Christians have an answer to this: it violates the Christian religion to impose one's beliefs on anyone. That's not to say that many Christians haven't violated their religion in this way (and in many other ways) over the years, but the antidote to Christian intolerance is contained in the Christian faith itself.

In the Council for Secular Humanism's Statement of Principles, #4 is:

We believe in an open and pluralistic society and that democracy is the best guarantee of protecting human rights from authoritarian elites and repressive majorities.

and #6

We cultivate the arts of negotiation and compromise as a means of resolving differences and achieving mutual understanding.

The Council for Secular Humanism by no means represents all secular humanists - not even me, though I stole their little logo for my orginal livejournal. However, they are a fairly typical example of organized secular humanist belief, and they have dictates of tolerance in their short list of principles. It's true that, since this list was not composed by Ultimate Authority, it is always subject to revision, but there was a time when the New Testament didn't exist as well. Both before it was written at all and before the Council of Nicea. And if you're a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints, then there were times before the Pearl of Great Price and the Book of Mormon, both of which, if they contradict the Old and New Testament, are regarded by the LDS as more authoritative. The LDS, for the record, consider themselves Christians, though plenty of other Christians disagree.

On to another item:

Is it an "anecdote" that millions of religious parents are taxed in order to have their children compulsorily sent to schools where the curriculum contradicts their beliefs?

Actually, they can send their children to religious schools if they have the cash. The issue is that they nevertheless get taxed to pay for public education in which curriculum is decided by the state, which is explicitly secular. Not explicitly atheist, but explicitly secular. Of course, since atheism is a negative position and so is secularism, there's a lot of similarity, but the secularlism consists in bracketing religious belief while atheist is a rejection of them.

One can argue about the concept of education being funded by income taxes instead of user fees, but complaining that the curriculum contradicts one's beliefs is not in any way unique to religious questions. In science where the best-supported theories are usually in at least a little controversy, the practice of giving the majority opinion of scientists is merely a best guess method of choosing what to teach.

I mean, I had to sit through classes in my public high school in which it was taught that fiscal policy is an effective way of regulating the economy despite that I thought that only monetary policy had a non-illusory affect*. Does it follow that monetarists who also have to pay for those classes are being oppressed by Keynsians? Or anyone?

Moving on to Lancelot's ideas about Europe... well, I tend to agree. Though I still think the EU should at least put Turkey's admission up for review.


*I'm no longer the Austrian-school purist I was at the time, but I think the argument still carries.