Quote of the week #23 - Sammy Jankis on… Well I’m just gobsmacked…

Sammy makes brief commentary on this tell-tale photograph of religious bigotry in action…

“Chairman of In God We Trust Bishop Council Nedd explained that his group isn’t saying that atheists are anti-American, but that they “appear to be”. Glad that’s been cleared up.”

(Sammy Jankis, 2007)

Sarcasm is probably the best way to deal with this rubbish, and SJ has been succinct. Nedd’s “argument” (or rather lack thereof) doesn’t deserve the privilege of a serious, extended debate. If you are interested in a short, serious criticism, well I’ll entertain you. Breifly. Or semi-briefly.

What motivates this hate campaign? Or rather, what justification do they present for their campaign?

Currently (although I expect this may get revised for PR), their “justification” can be found here. If you a reading this some time after it is written, and the link I’ve just given doesn’t work, I’ve taken a screencap for posterity.

“In God We Trust” (IGWT) has taken issue with the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) and made a number of representations. I’ll briefly dot-point the silly notions, half-truths and outright lies .

• “The nation’s largest atheist group wants you to imagine a world without the Pledge of Allegiance…” - It is the words “Under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance that the FFRF object to, not the Pledge itself. This objection is based on the use of “Under God” by theists to out, and then illegally discriminate against non-theists, IN VIOLATION OF THE ESTABLISHMENT CLAUSE and PROHIBITIONS ON RELIGIOUS REQUIREMENTS FOR OFFICE (given how seriously IGWT takes these core principles of American civics, you have to wonder what the word “Allegiance” means to them).
• “…without faith…” - This is taking the term out of context - Freedom from religion (imagining no religious institution interfering in your life) as espoused by the FFRF means the right to free thought independent of church interference, it does not mean the extinction of faith.
• “…without patriotism…” - What? This rubbish is just empty rhetoric by the scoundrel, whereby the scoundrel simply defines “patriotism” as necessarily agreeing with their vision for a nation simply by fiat and hence people who have the audacity to disagree are automatically cast as enemies of patriotism.
• “…and without America as we know it…” - Given that those Americans credulous to IGWT’s propaganda must also, necessarily have a poor understanding of their own nation’s constitution (and it must also be said; history), America as they know it, isn’t very much. One may as well complain that the FFRF is asking you to imagine that you don’t live in Narnia.
• “Why does this particular atheist group seem to want to banish people of faith?” - Nobody is talking about banishing anyone. Sure, it’s a poorly selected choice of words (”Imagine No Religion” - damn John Lennon tragics) on the FFRF’s billboard (to which IGWT directs this remark) but it still doesn’t talk about banishment or anything of the sort. This is just an outright fib.
• “Our sign doesn’t say, ‘Imagine No Atheists.’” - FFRF’s billboard doesn’t say ‘Imagine No Theists’; it’s directed at both a positive belief and a degree of organised proselytism, both of which atheists don’t have an equivalent of (hence an inversion-reductio of this meaning can’t work and the mentioned attempt at a reductio isn’t an inversion of what the FFRF is saying). Perhaps instead of focusing on an imaginary call to “banish people of faith”, IGWT should focus on its fellow people of faith who currently and actively run people out of jobs and out of towns because their victims aren’t people of faith.
• “We want the atheists to defend some of the Anti-American statements they’ve made.” - Which ones? And by which ones, I mean the ones atheists are actually making, not the ones attributed to them by liars.
• “Not only that, but we would like to know how ‘Imagine No Religion’ is different than ‘Imagine No Christians’ or ‘Imagine No Jews’?” - A Christian isn’t a religion. A Jew isn’t a religion. They are people. ‘Imagine No Religion’, while a rather poorly chosen phrase, is different from ‘Imagine No Christian’, or ‘Imagine No Jews’ on the basis that it doesn’t refer to people. It refers to a belief and to interference by an institution.
• “Think about what these atheists are really saying. ‘Imagine No Mother Theresa?’ ‘Imagine No Martin Luther King, Jr.?‘” - Are they really saying this? Really? Where? Has anyone asked them? Strangely enough, I don’t think this and nor would any of the Atheists in my social network. Let’s face facts. Whatever good there was in the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., it had all been said by other people (indeed was all present in humanist philosophy prior to MLK Jr. saying it.) You can appreciate his finer points without religion, so it doesn’t follow that one free of religion necessarily rejects his ideas. Mother Theresa? Please, she grappled with her religion up until the end and to be honest, I wouldn’t even be surprised if she really was an atheist. I rather doubt that a lack of belief in God would have stopped her from doing the work that she did. This is just disingenuous crap; asking you reader to “think” about what atheists are saying and then telling your audience what they are supposedly saying, in stark contrast to what many (if not most) of them actually believe, and to what many of them have already said in public.

So there you have it. Based entirely on a (rather poorly chosen) three word caption on a billboard put up by a single organisation (who’s publications contradict many of the claims attributed to them) that in no way can be capable of (nor does it present itself as being capable of) representing atheism, IGWT pretends that atheists (no caveats like “some” or “except those” employed anywhere in IGWT’s literature - ergo they refer to all atheists) want to get rid of religious people. Ironically, they are dishonestly accusing an entire group people of engaging in a personal attack against another group, itself a personal attack*.

This crap is just a mini pamphlet size version of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, except targeted at atheists rather than Jews. ‘Why do Atheists hate America?’ may not be as bad as ‘Imagine no Atheists’, but it is equivalent to other deceptive, uniform attributions made to out-groups. It’s no more accurate nor less bigoted than say “Why are Jews so greedy?”

There is no reason whatsoever to assume that Atheists hate America (heck as an Atheist Australian, I wish my nation had the same constitutional barriers between church and state that Americans enjoy). Not based on any of the tripe Nedd is selling at any rate. I’m hesitant to imagine what this nastiness is a pretext to.

~ Bruce

* I’m seeing a lot of this projection/persecution-complex like rhetoric of late. Like when AV was accused of bigotry by someone based on nothing at all, by someone who was writing off people as not being real Christians (out-group bigotry against other denominations). I can remember Romana copping some of this as well on her blog some time back.