David Silverman and the scope of atheism — Postscript

by Massimo Pigliucci

Predictably, my recent post on some remarks made by American Atheists President David Silverman has generated a firestorm on blogs and twitter, even though I thought the opinions expressed therein are actually quite mild. But such is the nature of debates in the age of social networking. There are several interesting points that have emerged from the thoughtful discussion that has taken place on this blog, for which I thank my readers. (No, I never check discussion threads on other blogs. Sorry, not enough time and energy!)

Some of these points have also been taken up by two of the most critical commentaries, one by PZ Myers and the other one by (future Rationally Speaking podcast guest) Greta Christina. I will analyze these as representative of the discussion, and as an occasion to further clarify my own views.

Predictably, neither piece takes a kind view of my essay, nor, frankly, did the authors try to give it a charitable reading that may lead to fruitful discussions rather than name calling. But in the case of PZ’s sarcastic remarks, I richly deserved it. His entire (short) post takes me up for writing (in the original version of my essay) that “abortion should always be a very difficult and emotional step.” I did not mean that literally, as should have been clear from the context and the examples given. But it was certainly an instance of sloppy writing on my part. After some of my readers pointed it out, I revised the entry to read: “certain types of abortion (say, last trimester)” should always be a very difficult and emotional step,” and later added a footnote to call readers’ attention to it.

This ought to take care of most of PZ’s remarks, though I’d like to hear from him directly. I say most because PZ (and surely Greta, as well as several of my readers) still objects to the “presumption” that someone might dare tell another human being how s/he ought to feel in certain morally salient cases.

I don’t get it. We do this all the time, and it is a cornerstone of our moral education — in true virtue ethical-Aristotelian fashion, I might add. We begin with young children, trying to both explain to them the reasons why certain things (e.g., stealing) are wrong and how they should properly feel about those actions (shame, guilt). We do it to adults too, of course. We criticize the greed (emotion!) of big bankers, we call on our politicians to feel sorry (emotion!) about their misdeeds, and we are horrified by the lack of emotional response on the part of sociopaths when they show no regret (emotion!) at whatever crime they may have committed. And this goes for positive emotions as well, of course: we say that people should feel pride for this, happy about that, and so on. So, what exactly, is the problem with someone arguing that another person should (morally) feel troubled by a certain (ethically salient) decision?

But perhaps the idea is that I, as a man, should not dare tell a woman how to feel or think about something I couldn’t possibly have experienced myself. But that is also highly problematic. As one of my readers pointed out, we do this too all the time. We don’t think that only people who have relatives on death row have a right to express opinions about the emotions and ethical reasoning of people who do. And the same holds for pretty much any other ethical discussion: being a first-person participant is neither a requirement to engage in it, nor necessarily an unquestionable positive (the reason we don’t let families of victims of crimes render verdicts and hand out punishments is that they are too emotionally close to the events themselves).

Moreover, as it happens, I have actually been very close to a painful decision about abortion, so I do have a very good (second hand, since obviously I wasn’t the pregnant one) sense of how complex and wrenching that decision was. It happened many years ago, and I have no intention of going into the personal details of it, but both people involved were definitely secular and were definitely weighing the issue from a non-religious perspective. That didn’t make it a slam dunk.

Now let me turn to Christina’s, longer, much less charitable than even PZ’s, response. I am a bit at a loss to see how a fellow traveler in atheism, skepticism and critical thinking could so grossly misread what I wrote. Below are a few bits from Christina’s post, with my commentary.

> Thank you so much for dismissing the issue of the basic right to bodily autonomy of half the human race as a “tempest in a teapot.” <

I didn’t. That phrase referred to generic diatribes among atheists, not to the basic right to bodily autonomy of half the human race. This should have been clear both from the context and from much of what I’ve written about the New Atheism over the years.

> What a great way to make women in the atheist movement, and women who are considering joining the atheist movement, think that our issues are taken seriously by the movement’s leaders. <

Except, again, that that sentence had nothing to do with any of that (and I’m no leader of any movement — more on this below). Christina might have missed that the post was about a very specific claim, that there are no reasonable secular arguments against abortion — it wasn’t a call to shut down abortion clinics around the country. My strong pro choice position ought to be clear, and I take women's issues very seriously. But you’d hardly know the difference if you just read her post.

> By all means, let’s treat the right to abortion as a philosophical exercise in which both sides should be thoughtfully considered and given intellectual validity <

Ah yes, the by now mandatory dig at philosophy as a useless intellectual exercise indulged in by mostly white (mostly dead) men. Except of course that we get much of our non-religious ethical discourse precisely from philosophy, and that to reject the need for rational discourse on ethics is a bizarre position to take for someone who is interested in reason and critical thinking. (And I would add that to refuse to grant intellectual validity to thoughtful opponents is precisely the tactic of the Religious Right, not to be imitated.) 

Moreover, and importantly, Christina confuses a discussion about the ethical issues raised by abortion with support for curbing women’s access to the procedure. While the first is obviously relevant to the second, one can very consistently maintain that there is something to be debated about the ethics of abortion while at the same time staunchly defending a woman's right to have one.

> Stephanie Zvan has already masterfully taken apart your whole thing about how abortion should always be a very difficult and emotional step. <

I’m sure she has (I haven’t read the piece, see note above about limited time and energy). But Christina already knew of my correction to the above statement (she acknowledges it at the end of her post), which should have set things straight. Why didn’t it? Why did Christina go on with her diatribe even though I had already corrected my post and explained what I actually meant? No interest in being charitable, apparently, nor in actually engaging in a discussion. It’s all about rallying the Forces of Change against the Old Guard.

> Do you seriously think abortion has nothing to do with atheism? Are you aware that the fight against abortion rights has been waged, almost entirely, by the Religious Right? Are you aware that the case against abortion rights is almost entirely centered in religion? <

I do seriously think about what I write, I’m not a comedian, I’m a philosopher. Being an atheist carries no logical (broadly construed, see below) connection whatsoever to a lot of political positions about social issues. And yes, I do read newspapers and I am aware of where the opposition to abortion (mostly) comes from. But, as usual, things are more complicated than that simple narrative. To begin with, there are plenty of religious people who are pro-choice. There are also plenty of prochoice people who would not have an abortion themselves. Second, my original post was much more narrowly focused: I was disputing the ill informed statement by Sarah Moglia that there are no secular arguments against (certain types of) abortion (not abortion rights). Of course there are. And even though I don’t find them convincing (as I said in my original post), they are neither irrational nor informed by bad science, as Moglia stated. We (the pro-choice camp) are right, rationally, morally and scientifically. But there is no reason to pretend that the other side is made up entirely of religious nuts and ignorant country bumpkins.

> What atheism has to say about abortion is, “There are no gods. You have no evidence that your god exists — and you certainly have no evidence that your god shares your political opinions.” <

But the discussion I started had nothing at all to do with religiously motivated objections to abortion. It concerned the (alleged) lack of secular reasons against it.

> First, and very importantly: Abortion access is a church-state separation issue. <

Psychologically, maybe, in the sense that most opponents are indeed religiously motivated. But not rationally, or even legally. No law aimed at restricting access to abortion procedures is couched in religious terms. Our opponents are doing precisely what John Rawls said people should do in a pluralistic society: they are translating their concerns into secular language, making this a secular debate. The terms of that debate are partly philosophical (ethics is a branch of philosophy after all), partly legal, and partly scientific (when does life begin? When do fetuses start to feel pain?). Just because someone has ultimately religious motives to take up a given position, that doesn’t make the debate itself an issue of church-state separation.

> Second: You’re arguing that organized atheism should only work on issues that logically and directly descend from atheism itself. … There are literally no issues that logically ought to unite every atheist. <

Here Christina is playing the card of taking my writing so literally (again, lack of charitable interpretation) to make it sound absurd. Yes, of course if we are talking about formal logical entailment (are we using Aristotelian logic or something else?) then atheism implies absolutely nothing other than a commitment to a negative epistemic or metaphysical claim, depending on how one interprets the meaning of the a-word.

But what I meant was that there is much more room for disagreement among atheists (and secularists more broadly) about all sorts of socio-political issues, and for substantial secular reasons. Which is why we have other types of secular movements (humanists, ethical culturists) who have articulated a specific, progressive, political agenda, which is coupled with their atheism.

Christina uses a reductio ad absurdum argument against me, saying that — on strict logical grounds — there is no connection between atheism and church-state separation or the rights of unbelievers either. And she is right, if one adopts formal logical entailment as a criterion. But I didn’t. It seems to me that it is much easier to rally atheists to fight those fights than to embrace pretty much any other political cause, and for good reasons. Remember that this is in the context of David Silverman daring to go to a conservative political convention to make the argument that atheism isn’t necessarily a liberal issue. And it isn’t, and Dave was right in making the move. Humanism, however, is a liberal movement, and I would feel pretty uncomfortable if Debbie Allen, the President of the AHA were to make the same move.

Look at it from the point of view of a parallel between atheism and gay rights. The gay rights movement has rightly focused on the issues that are closest and most specific to it: the legal rights of gay people. It’s likely that a majority of gays also endorses other political positions (mostly liberal?), but since there are progressive gays and conservative gays and libertarian gays, it was wise to stick to the basics. And it worked, beautifully (though clearly the fight is not over yet). Moreover, the leaders of the gay movement also could have made Christina’s case for their issues being ones of separation of church and state, since most of the opposition to gay marriage, for instance, is religiously motivated. But they didn’t. On the contrary, they sought allegiances with progressive religious institutions, just like other minorities had done before them. And again, in my opinion this was the wise and effective thing to do.

We finally get to what really seems to be bothering Christina:

> What you’re saying is that the people who have traditionally been running organized atheism, the people who have been setting the agenda of organized atheism for decades, are the people who should continue to set the agenda. What you’re saying is that the old guard should get to keep running the show. <

And I assume she thinks I’m one of those people who have been “running the show.” She hasn’t done her homework. I’m not a formal member of any atheist organization (I do have a life membership with AA, but it was given to me as an honorary title, I didn’t join), nor have I ever served on the board of any atheist organization (except, briefly, NYC Atheists, and look how that ended!).

> You don’t get to help decide what we work on. … And you don’t get to set the agenda for all of us. <

And where, exactly, did I ever say that I “get to decide”? I have no power, and if I did I would simply nudge the agenda in my preferred direction (based on my disputable but nonetheless articulated reasons), just like anyone else (including Christina herself) does.

> At best, at the most charitable interpretation of your words, you’re making the argument from tradition — one of the worst, least rational arguments around. At an only slightly less charitable interpretation, you’re making the argument from privilege. You’re making the argument that the people currently running things should continue to run things. In fact, the argument from tradition is an argument from privilege. <

Tradition? Privilege? I don’t recall making any argument at all that was based on something along the lines of “this is what atheists have done in the past, therefore…” And what privilege, exactly? As I said above, I have no position of power within the movement, and I’ve always refused to be involved in political disputes internal to any atheist organization.

But does that mean that I, as a somewhat rational human being who has been thinking and writing about atheism, secularism and related issues, get no say (“you don’t get to help”) in what I think is the best way for atheists to engage in the public square? Why? Is it because I’m old? White? Male? A university professor? A fan of AS Roma soccer club?

And isn’t Christina forgetting that American Atheists itself was founded by a woman? And was run for 13 years by another woman? Were they, too, the Old Guard who isn’t entitled to help in the debate?

I have a pretty established record of critically engaging both the New Atheists and American Atheists, including David Silverman himself. And of course I’ve had bones to pick with Greta Christina too (after which I invited her to promote her new book on my podcast with Julia Galef). That’s what constructive debate within a movement looks like. We are supposed to engage each other, not to shut the opponent down by accusing him of wanting to keep his alleged and factually entirely non-existent privilege. Christina wants to steer atheism toward new directions? More power to her. But I do have a right to point out that in my opinion she is largely reinventing the wheel of secular humanism. We can have a lively discussion (as we did on the RS podcast) and then we can go have a beer together for some more back and forth. The ability to enter into vigorous yet thoughtful debate (and to drink beer) is what truly separates us from the religious fundamentalists. Let’s try to keep it that way.

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Postscript to the postscript: apparently, "friendly atheist" Hemant Mehta is also in trouble now, according to a statement released by Secular Woman. It is interesting that the statement makes the same confusion that Christina incurred in, mixing up the idea that there are secular arguments showing that some abortions are morally problematic with the idea that women's rights to control their bodies should be curbed. Once more: they are not the same thing!

According to SW: "Entertaining anti-choice arguments delegitimizes women’s humanity and bodily autonomy," which essentially amounts to an exceedingly anti-freethought stand, seems to me. And here is more hyperbolic rhetoric from SW: "What seems to be lost on Silverman, Mehta and others is that debating women’s humanity is not an academic exercise." Debating women's humanity? Seriously? I'm appalled.