Theodore Dalrymple and Austrolabe: What Dalrymple is helping to prevent them from seeing

Thanks to Blogotariat, I’ve come across a new blog (at least to my eyes) called Austrolabe. I’m seriously considering adding it to my blogroll. Their mission statement goes;

“Austrolabe is a news and analysis website serving Australia’s Muslim community. The site is maintained by a group of volunteer editors and authors.

As the astrolabe helped early Muslim explorers navigate the world, so we hope that, in its own small way, this site will help Australian Muslims navigate the modern world.”

(Austrolabe, 2007)

At first glances it is an admirable objective and I haven’t seen anything that suggests that it is purely (or even at all) rhetorical. I have however seen one example where Australian Muslims may be mislead by content published at Austrolabe, but authored off site. No intent to be misleading being evident on the part of Austrolabe of course.

While not at all alleging dishonesty on the part of Austrolabe, I’d like to forward a contrary view toward their Muslim readers.

Theodore Dalrymple (aka anti-modern Anthony Daniels), in the snippet reproduced at Austrolabe, is helping to prevent theists from seeing the truth regarding “New Atheists”. I have no doubt whatsoever that he is being disingenuous. That may sound a little harsh but I believe I can (easily if unfortunately not quickly) make my case.

Firstly, the term “New Atheist” itself in innately misleading, although on this point I think Dalrymple is just being a tad thoughtless/ignorant rather than outwardly malicious. It’s not easy to criticise groups of people easily. You want to criticise a particular behaviour, tendency or idea, but when grouping people by these properties there is often the risk of overshooting and leveling a claim against people who don’t espouse or exhibit these traits. For this, a certain degree of innacuracy is forgivable if the spirit of the criticism isn’t to defame.

I suspect Muslims know this well, very well indeed since September 11 2001. So often a pejorative term has been concocted without care for the truth and I suspect many a Muslim has found themselves charged with a view that they don’t hold, or with practices they have never wished or themselves (or their philosophical ancestors) enacted. Sometimes, people have criticised groupings of Muslims, and while attempting to be accurate in doing so, have accidentally, through their lack of familiarity with Muslims, overshot the mark and leveled criticisms at Muslims who not only are not guilty of the charges, but also condemn those Muslims who are.

I think the latter is forgivable, but that the former isn’t. I’d characterise Dawkins’ mistakes as the latter, and the broad generalisations of Ayaan Hirsi Ali as the latter (which perhaps given her own horrendous experiences are understandable if one can not bring themselves to excuse her). One should not draw to much of an inference from the free association between Dawkins and Ayaan Hirsi Ali either. One of the very few things that charaterise this thing disparagingly called New Atheism (aside from atheism itself) is that dissent is not at all an impediment to free association.

Where the equivalent level of dissent in religion may cause schisms or cause denominations to arise, such dissent within the “New Atheism” simply doesn’t matter because “New Atheism” isn’t a school of thought, it is a dynamic and quite ambiguous social phenomena. It’s an informal network, not a congregation and as such it doesn’t have any dogma to breach.

Perhaps you have heard the phrase “…organizing atheists has been compared to herding cats, because they tend to think independently and will not conform to authority.” If one hasn’t, they are poorly equipped to interpret or much less criticise Dawkins, because they are his own words.

Now given that the “New Atheism” has very little in the way of a universally shared opinions or practices, it should become immediately apparent that the risk of over- generalisation about atheists is extremely high. Imagine yourself being repeatedly attributed with the views of another theists that you don’t share, then imagine the propensity for being misrepresented if you had even less in common with your fellow theist!

“New Atheists” is a misleading term (even when used by atheists) when used in lieu of just old fashioned “atheist”. It implies some kind of change in philosophy, however the very minimalist core beliefs of “old atheists” and “new atheists” have not changed at all. It’s like claiming that one of two churches of the same denomination has splinted into a new denomination just because they have recently decided to hold a regular spring picnic in the parklands. The recent general openness of atheists is just a change in the season of public discourse; atheists are coming out of the seclusion of a sheltered winter because the weather of public debate has changed.

Circumstance, not the nature of atheism, has changed.

I suspect that for interlocutors who disparagingly launches the “New Atheist” tag, it is just a literary exercise in culture war. “Atheist” used to be a pejorative term (see the old editions of Webster’s dictionary if you don’t believe me – the word “wicked” springs to mind), but atheists ended up owning it much in the same way homosexuals have appropriated the word “gay”. The loss of a stick to beat a perceived opponent with and the loss of a relative privilege in public discourse are indeed likely to induce pathos in any hegemon, religious or otherwise.

“New Atheist” while signifying nothing new at all about atheists (and hence being misleading), I suspect is nothing more than an addition to the dictionaries of theists who are dis-empowered by the loss of their old pejorative and disheartened that public debate has evolved to the point that it allows atheists equal say (and with unprecedented popularity I may add). Again, the change is in the environment atheists find themselves, not in the nature of atheism itself.

Muslims should note similar sentiment repeated by the Hillsong Church and the Daily Telegraph.

“There is a tremendous contrast between the politically correct censoriousness which now hampers discussion of Islam in Australia, however extreme some of its manifestations may be and the misrepresentation and, often, abuse which the normal Australians at Hillsong have to endure.“

(Hillsong Church, 2007)

There is no politically correct censoriousness, Islam in various manifestation is still criticised, what the hegemon laments is the fact that now that Hillsong is also subject to criticism it has lost some (but by no means all) of its privilege in Australian discourse. Between Hillsong and the Daily Telegraph, and those that decry the “New Atheism”, Australian Muslims and atheists should find grounds to sympathise with each other. They shouldn’t fall for the rhetoric that either has been granted some magical and undeserved boon to their standing in society that allows them to wail on Christendom while Christendom is innocently bound and prone. This simply isn’t the case.

Of course, as with these kinds of criticisms of Muslims, it is just a way of preparing an audience (by prepare I mean inculcate in prejudice) for far more outlandish claims about the target group. That theists can make such a preparation in the single term “New Atheists” in itself is a monumental achievement in black propaganda (although there are similarly efficient terms used to evoke prejudice about Muslims), it rarely compares to the level of deception achieved afterward.

You’ll remember that I said of Dalrymple; “I have no doubt whatsoever that he is being disingenuous.”

Here’s the clincher.

“But so have secularists and atheists, and though they have had less time to prove their mettle in this area, they have proved it amply. If religious belief is not synonymous with good behavior, neither is absence of belief, to put it mildly.”

(Dalrymple by way of Austrolabe, 2007)

Aside from his monumental negationism which really deserves a post all to itself* (thankfully David Bath has one pre-prepared on a similar topic which may tide people over), Dalrymple tells us that this is what the “New Atheists” don’t see. Categorically false.

He talks about “the surface of all the neo-atheist books”, none of which are more controversial, popular or criticised by theists that Dawkins’ The God Delusion. Say what you will about God Is Not Great, to make categorical commentary on “the surface of all the neo-atheist books” and to expect to be taken seriously is necessarily to claim that you have read The God Delusion.

This is very much problematic for Dalrymple. Because the history of secular attrocities that he alludes to have been extensively covered by Dawkins, in The God Delusion and elsewhere. He talks about it over and over and over again. More problematic is that “If religious belief is not synonymous with good behavior, neither is absence of belief” is a statement very much in tune with some of what Dawkins says in Chapter 6 of (and elsewhere in) The God Delusion, as well as in sentiment he has expressed elsewhere.

“I am not necessarily claiming that atheism increases morality, although humanism – the ethical system that often goes with atheism – probably does. Another good possibility is that atheism is correlated with some third factor, such as higher education, intelligence or reflectiveness, which might counteract criminal impulses. Such research evidence as there is certainly doesn’t support the common view that religiosity is positively correlated with morality. Correlational evidence is never conclusive…” – Pg 229.

And in Chapter 7…

“Nevertheless, Hitler and Stalin were, by any standards, spectacularly evil men.

‘Hitler and Stalin were atheists. What have you got to say about that?’ The question comes up after just about every public lecture that I ever give on the subject of religion, and in most of my radio interviews as well.” – Pg 272.

After discarding the irrelevant and in any case dubious claim that Hitler was an atheist, Dawkins moves on to Stalin who he quite easily accepts is an atheist.

“Stalin was an atheist and Hitler probably wasn’t; but even if he was, the bottom line of the Stalin/Hitler debating point is very simple. Individual atheists may do evil things but they don’t do evil things in the name of atheism.” – Pg 278.

Indeed, Chapter 6 is often where critics of Dawkins start peddling deceit, John Cornwell, a director at Cambridge University has been running a line of deception about The God Delusion, even going as far as altering quotes of Dawkins’ work! But back to Dalrymple.

Dalrymple has either read The God Delusion in as far as is required to critique it or he hasn’t. He has claimed that “neo-atheist” books and “New Atheism” in general have/has glossed over the atrocities of secular regimes, that they/it don’t see what happened and hence ignore it. Chapter 6 and 7 of The God Delusion, along with the numerous times in public discussion that Dawkins has addressed these issues (not to mention how many times they come up on atheist forums and blogs on the Internet) make this claim of Dalrymple’s categorically false.

Now either Dalrymple has read The God Delusion and he is grossly misleading people as to its content (and the content of much of the discussion of “New Atheism”), or he hasn’t read it and he is misleading people as to the degree of his scholarship by generalising about books the most prominent of which he has never even read. Like Cornwell’s work, Dalrymple’s article is dishonest bunk, motivated by a chip on the shoulder and frankly demonstrating only half of the scholarly endeavor one could expect of an earwig.

If Muslims want help navigating the modern world, I’m all for it and I say more power to them. But they are going to be mislead if they seek guidance from the dissembling of authors with prejudices against groups that are of modernism. I don’t want Muslims to be mislead, nor do I want the ill faith between groups that this kind of outgroup prejudice cultivates.

If Muslims want a representation of the views of atheists, they would do well to seek out atheists. It’s good advice for Dalrymple as well.

~ Bruce

* I’ve wanted to post on this topic for a while now, and I hope to do so after my election blogging is put aside in December.