Stephen Parise: Atheism vs. Atheism?

Human beings love to divide everything up and categorize them. That's not such a bad thing, when you think about it, because this tendency can make it easier to understand our surroundings. In principle, every object in the universe is unique and should be treated as different from everything else; in practice, that's just not possible for our poor limited minds. We have to categorize and generalize just to get by in life.

This strategy, however justified, can be taken too far. It's the method of thinking which lies behind prejudicial stereotypes and ultimately dehumanization. Great care should be taken when we find ourselves trying to categorize people because there is such a tendency to imbue those categories, even justified ones, with value-laden judgments that spring more from our own personal prejudices than from reality.

Stephen Parise, lecturer in philosophy and religion, claims that "there are at least two types of atheistic writers" today:

One that understands religious belief (as opposed to secular, or atheistic, belief), and then rejects it. And one that rejects religious belief, and then seeks to justify that rejection. ...The later is obssesed with, and full of hate for, religious believers and conservatives. The former disagrees with, but can empathize with, religious believers - and some of them are conservatives. The later group is shrill and angry. The former group is calm and rational.

There are probably as many types of atheistic writers as there are atheists — there's nothing about atheism itself which unites all atheists in any way. It's curious, though, how Parise is able to determine that atheists fall into (at least) these two nice, neat groups and that one group has all the good qualities while the second has all the bad qualities. Is it just a coincidence that the second group isn't just opposed to "religion" but also "conservatives"? I doubt it. Is there any chance that this is what the real problem is: criticism of conservatism and conservative religious beliefs? Perhaps.

Is there any chance that Parise started out with a conception of what he didn't like about some atheists and then worked backwards to find a way to categorize them in a manner that vindicate the atheists he liked while denouncing the ones he didn't? That sounds like a strong possibility.

We should always be suspicious whenever a person finds a way to categorize others in a manner that concentrates all or most of the good in one group and all or most of the bad in another group. Human beings themselves are rarely all good or all bad, so it's very unlikely that such a diverse group as atheists could be so neatly and cleanly split between good and bad as Parise manages. It's theoretically possible, I suppose, but there's no way that the claim should be accepted on his say-so alone.

Isn't it interesting that Stephen Parise doesn't think it necessary to actually support his case with examples? It's not just that he doesn't offer specific examples which clearly demonstrate the validity of his argument, but he doesn't offer even weak examples. Had he tested his alleged categories against a sufficiently large series of real-world examples, and found that his categories worked well, then he should have all kinds of evidence to support his argument.

If I claimed that there were two types of Christian writers today, those who understand and reject secular atheism and those who are full of hate for secular atheism, would anyone buy what I'm selling without a really strong, example-filled argument? I would hope not, but that's basically what Parise is offering here.

Stephen Parise cites, of all people, Keith Burgess-Jackson as an authority on the matter:

I find it disturbing that some of my fellow atheists dismiss theism as merely a matter of faith or emotion. This begs all the interesting and important philosophical questions, such as what faith is, what emotion is, whether faith is compatible with reason, how emotion is related to reason, whether belief in God is properly basic (i.e., such that it requires no justification), and whether there is any evidence for theism.

Well, perhaps it's appropriate that Stephen Parise cites Burgess-Jackson as an authority on the matter, since the latter is making all the same mistakes as the former: nebulous assertions about vague errors made by conveniently unnamed atheists. Would it really kill Keith Burgess-Jackson to actually cite the existence of his "fellow atheists" doing this, and even better that enough atheists do it to constitute a problem worth being "disturbed" about?

Yes, I suppose it might. It doesn't take long to find other examples of Burgess-Jackson doing the same thing: attributing some view to some group without citations. This is the same Keith Burgess-Jackson who thinks that gay marriage is incoherent for the same reason that dogs can't vote, the same Keith Burgess-Jackson who claims that teaching Intelligent Design in public schools is ultimately a question of morality and thus outside the area of expertise for philosophers of biology, and the same Keith Burgess-Jackson who thinks that "conservatism" means beliefs — any beliefs — should be deemed innocent until proven guilty and thus need no defense.

When is a philosopher not a philosopher? When they assume the title "philosopher" without being able to muster serious, sound arguments in defense of a position that they only ever adopted because of their personal prejudices in the first place. The best philosophers will adopt positions based upon arguments and evidence, regardless of their personal prejudices. Decent philosophers who are clever rhetoricians will find good arguments in defense of positions they adopted for other reasons entirely.

Then there are people who misuse philosophy as a mask for their personal prejudices.