Coming from a seemingly intelligent woman, the assertion that logic, rationality and empiricism may be at the root of misogyny, is a bit unsettling. Kathryn Lofton, in her post So you want to be a new atheist, over at The Immanent Frame blog seems to be implying exactly that.
Lofton finds the New Atheists annoying – a bunch of know-it-all loudmouths whose style may be even more obnoxious than the substance they promulgate. She finds them arrogant, cynical, evangelical in their fervor and also curiously enough, perfectionists who want to help people. She however does not consider their social conscience an entirely wholesome trait. Lofton suspects that there is a conquest like quality to their outreach and beneath their desire to help may lurk an intention to persuade. (What a surprise!)
If you want to be a New Atheist, first and foremost, you need to possess an unrelenting desire to help. The desire may seem at times cruel, but you have to start focusing on a higher good: the goal here is to get the cannibals to put down their wafer and wine glass. It’s not for your wellness, but for the good of mankind. As Georgetown University professor John Haught wrote in his diagnosis of the New Atheists, “To know with such certitude that religion is evil, one must first have already surrendered one’s heart and mind to what is unconditionally good.” The New Atheists may wrap themselves in torn one-liners and haggard scientism, but beneath their cynical swaddle there lies a charming Perfectionism.
The main target of Lofton's derision and despair seems to be the comedian Bill Maher and his anti-religion movie, Religulous. It is not that hard to rip apart a stand up comic who opposes organized religion as well as vaccination. But in pointing to Maher's loose lips and fuzzy logic, Lofton also takes a swipe at Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and Christopher Hitchens whose arguments against faith based social and political systems are a little better thought out and substantive. It is perfectly alright for Lofton or anyone else for that matter, to take issue with the tone that many among the so called New Atheists adopt while making their case. But it would better help the cause of the religionists to also point out the flaws in their arguments and not just in their character.
The nature of the conversation between the religious camp and the New Atheists has by now become quite familiar and predictable to those who have been paying some attention. It reminds me of the different agenda that a restaurant critic and a nutritionist bring to the table when talking about food. One focuses on the mouth watering quality of a 16 oz steak, the butter dripping crab legs, the fatty lamb biriyani and the decadent dessert immaculately prepared and presented by expert chefs and polished waiters. The other comes across as an earnest killjoy who urges you to eat your whole grains and veggies and then alarms you by warning that overindulgance in the delicious fare recommended by the gourmet foodie, poses the risk of developing clogged arteries, a sluggish liver, a ravaged kidney and extra pounds around your midriff. And the pleasurable torpor you feel after that rich meal is actually a sign of reduced energy. I have so far not heard a fine food aficionado clash with a nutritionist on the grounds that the latter has a shrill, strident style and wants to deprive others of the joys of feasting. But defenders of religion like Lofton and Karen Armstrong and the not-quite-pro-religion-but-getting-there types like Terry Eagleton invariably attack atheists for their lack of charm, style, empathy and another nebulous quality (I think of it as *mysterianism*) which keeps them from fully appreciating the true nature of religion. In the first part of her article Lofton sticks to that formula. Toward the end however, she introduces a new accusation that I have not until now seen hurled at the new (or old) atheists.
What is religion? The New Atheists reply, with clarion diagnostic consistency: Religion is something that sells you something invisible so you may feel that which you cannot find elsewhere. It is something for which there is insufficient evidence. It is something people do because they have always done it, not because they know how to think about it. Religion is irrational, it is emotional, and it is instinctual. Religion enslaves you with its wiles, then forgets to remove the handcuffs. It is the fortune teller reading entrails, not the captain consulting his compass. It massages and preys and toys and plays and screws you over, time and again, with a promise it won’t keep because of its irrationality and its whimsy. Religion is a know-at-all with no knowledge. It makes “a virtue out of not thinking.” Religion is cutting the hedge repeatedly around an erection. Religion is, it turns out, a lot like a girl.
Religion as effeminacy is nothing new. Nor indeed is the accusation that religion is socially sanctioned lunacy. Treating it as a neurological disorder, however, sets the New Atheists within a long tradition of critical misogyny. Under the guise of protecting your children, in the effort to best serve your sweet flock of idiots, if you want to be a New Atheist you have reclaimed a New Virility to counter your post-industrial emasculation. This virility plays out in demonstrations of protective strength, plowing away at the big two nemeses (Christianity and Islam) in the interest of protecting the little guy. It is also exhibited in grand tours of scientific proof, or plodding expulsions of religious duplicity.
Wait a minute! Have atheists and skeptics ever said that religion is like a girl? (Not that there is anything wrong with being a girl) Or that believing in unverifiable myths for comfort is exclusively a womanly quality? Have atheists refused to admit women into their fold? Do they claim that women are genetically incapable of possessing rational minds? On the other hand, organized religion has diligently kept women out of leadership roles through much of history. So, the charge of misogyny from a defender of "faith" sounds strange.
Unless the New Atheists have categorically called religion a girlish pursuit or religious males girly men, (Lofton does not say that they have) it is plausible that it is Lofton herself who conflates irrationality and emotionalism with feminine traits and critical thinking and reason with manly characteristics. She may have again confused style with substance. After all, the majority of the high profile and vocal atheists in the public square are all males. Most of them also assume a combative stance while arguing their points of view. Even if Lofton considers the New Atheists arrogant, self absorbed and boorish, based on her opinion of their discursive temperaments, where did she get misogyny? Perhaps in her eagerness to condemn, Lofton uses the red herring of misogyny without any supporting evidence because it fits the rest of her perception of the atheists. Are some atheists women haters? Of course. Could there be a few among the ones she names? Possible. But it has nothing to do with critical thinking which does not bar women from becoming practitioners. And what is the score in the department of misogyny on the religious side? Start your count with the priestly class and the orthodox.
Whom does Lofton think she is kidding with her innuendo about misogyny and atheism? It is particularly galling coming from someone who is presumably a spokesperson for religion. The sacred bastion of virility, organized religion, is thickly populated by misogynistic power hungry males and at least in the Abrahamic tradition, god too is a masculine deity whose behavior is akin to that of an old fashioned patriarch - one who protects, smites and slays at whim. Whereas misogyny can often be a product of politics, commerce and other secular cultural traditions, I doubt that women have been more systematically and ritually degraded within the realm of any other human enterprise than that of organized religion. Only religion explicitly sanctions misogyny. Think Adam's Rib, eater of the forbidden fruit, the temptress, the virgin who is to be alternately worshiped and sacrificed, the ideal of the Sati, stoning to death of an adulteress, the unclean half of the population which menstruates and undergoes messy child birth… on and on ad nauseum. Now Lofton tells us that the source of misogyny actually lies in empiricism and scientific enquiry. Well, you could have knocked me down with a feather!
[thanks to Prasad for the pointer]
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