I read an article on Salon, about a woman who gave birth to a premature baby that didn’t survive. The point of her article was tell everyone how much she hates when people tell her her baby is in Heaven.
But actually her point is more than that. Her point really is to make sure you know that she is atheist. And to tell you, that you are dumb for not being one. Because this is what good atheists do. They talk about how the “great thinkers” like DeGrasse Tyson and Sagan give her comfort, when they reassure her that you are just a tiny speck in a much bigger universe (that has no purpose).
So her belief is that we are just specks of dust. So I wonder if she would get more comfort, if her friends reminded her, when she talked about the grief of losing a baby she never even knew, that it doesn’t matter, she was only a speck of random DNA dust anyway, so any incidental feeling of connection or purpose to that speck, is just a sorry illusion. nevermind it.”
Because, afterall, isn’t this what the Dawkins and the Penn Jillettes, and the Steve Novellas are hear to constantly remind everyone else? Is that how her friends should respond in the future, so she then doesn’t have to write any more blogs talking about how sad she is losing her speck of dna?
The atheists say we are nothing. They say life is meaningless, and you are just an accidental robot. Heck, they even don’t think we should grieve over abortions, so why does this woman want to remind us that she is grieving over a baby that lived eight hours?
Basically, atheists are hypocrites really. But as Penn Jillettte likes to says, he doesn’t think there is anything the slightest bit wrong with hypocrisy.
I think the article should be, please stop telling me your are sad about a speck of meaningless DNA. Its an illusion.
OR, perhaps atheists should stop trying to tell others that their beliefs are wrong. That would be novel.
The correct question would be, “why does Salon hire assholes to represent the atheist perspective?”
What would be novel is getting atheists who aren’t assholes to write for liberal websites.
When my Christian friends tell me that they are going to pray for me, I thank them and tell them that I appreciate it. And that’s because I understand that praying for me is how they express their care and concern for me. Sure, I could tell them, “don’t talk to your imaginary friend on my behalf!”, but then I’d be an asshole. And why would I want to do that?
Well, I did ask! 😉
Is there a reciprocal understanding from your Christian friends? If there is, then you have good friends. “Live and let live” is my motto. An appreciation that we all have a personal space for own thoughts that, in a civilized society, is inviolable should always be a two-way street.
KN,
I expected no better from phoodoo, but your attitude here is appalling.
Why do you think that the author of that Salon article is an “asshole”? Quotes, please.
Read the article that phoodoo links to. I can empathise with the writer’s anger at those insensitive pillocks uttering meaningless platitudes.
Good job Phoodoo. You misrepresented pretty much everything Ms. Blossom said about her deep grief over her lost baby and why having religious people try to comfort her by proselytizing doesn’t help. Did you even read the article or just skim the title and add your own atheist-bashing bullshit?
Looks to me like the only asshole here is the Christian trying to attack all atheists my misrepresenting the actions of one.
Kantian Naturalist,
Yes, that’s a fair enough answer. I wish the author of the Salon article was self-aware enough to have had a similar reaction.
Clearly there are plenty of decent atheist people. But I am really talking about the atheist movement. The people who believe atheism is something to be preached. Something to convince others of. Something to brag about. Because this is the group that is overwhelmingly represented in mainstream science and culture these days. Skeptic groups, activists scientists, propagandists, loudmouth academics, the list of these individuals is rather long and vocal.
So yea, it doesn’t necessarily go with the territory, but the world is now awash in these preachers and you would be pretty hard pressed to find many aspects of rational scientific or philosophic thought in the public aspect sphere of tv, internet, podcasts, etc, that isn’t actually part of the codespeak of this movement. From Bill Nye, Tyson, Scientific America, Discovery, Seth Shostack, Novella, Lawrence Krauss, Brian Greene, the BBC, National Geographic, NASA, and the list goes on and on. In this day and age, if you want science news of the world, that is not part of this codespeak bullshit, that is next to impossible. You pretty much forced to go to the exact opposite side of the philosophical spectrum, to have any chance at all of getting a balanced perspective. Its like, if you don’t listen to the kooks, there is no one else out there for you.
Alan,
I did. What I can’t figure out is why KN thinks the author is an “asshole”. I would be curious to see him provide quotes from the article to back up his assessment.
Alan Fox,
Do you posses the same outrage over the Dawkins and Tysons of the world, who demand that the woman lost her baby believe that their is no Heaven, and that she is a fool for believing so?
Is it so much more acceptable from them, because they simply say it out in public, instead of telling the woman directly?
Will atheists ever manage to reach the high standards set by phoodoo?
Nothing like stereotyping and attempting to disparage all opponents via selective outrage to make me wish to be a theist like phoodoo. How to be a hateful bigot and feel good about it,
Glen Davidson
The problem stems from the idea of religious authority, inerrancy and infallibility. Religious thought needs to be more flexible and to adapt to new discoveries and developments. People can much more easily check facts for themselves these days.
Adapa,
Do you grieve for aborted babies? Would you have a problem with a father, who wanted to force his girlfriend to give him the remains of the aborted fetus, to create a permanent memorial (complete with the parents names) and have a prayer service for its death-because he was opposed to the abortion, but she did it anyway?
I hope everyone reads the article and see its author doesn’t say anything close to what Phoodoo attributes to her.
Some Christians just have to play the persecuted victim no matter what anyone says or does. They seem to be so insecure they take any statement by a non-religious person to be a direct personal attack on their beliefs.
Alan Fox,
I disagree with you completely. If one wants to know the facts about evolution for instance, that is free from the spin of the atheist-materialists worldview where does one go, that they can be confidant this bias does not infect the entire process of information?
That has nothing to do with the gross misrepresentation you made of the article – claiming the author was an asshole who said people are dumb for not being atheists. Her actual thoughts were “more power to you if your religion comforts you” but it doesn’t help her at all.
GlenDavidson,
She wants other woman to believe that their babies are just meaningless specks of dust in a much bigger, uncaring universe.
Where is her sensitivity to their feelings?
This is hyperbole. I have lost close family recently. I am comforted to think their suffering in final illnesses ceased and that they live on in the fond memories of those who miss and remember them.
Thankfully, not living in such a religiously pervaded environment as the mid-western US, I did not have to listen to meaningless platitudes. I agree that it would be needlessly offensive to tell a deeply religious bereaved person, in the midst of their grief, that their beliefs are mistaken. However, I note that the loss of a loved one can be the trigger for questioning faith.
She didn’t say that or imply that anywhere in the article. You are projecting your own prejudices big time here Phoodoo.
Adapa,
So then would it be better if people just told her, “So what if your baby is dead, she was just a bunch of DNA that you never knew anyway?” Would that be an Ok reply?
Is it Ok when Dawkins says this? When Sagan and Tyson say this? Because that is precisely what they represent.
Is an aborted baby meaningful? Is that a hard question for you to answer?
Many atheists do not say that. And here you are insulting them.
Adapa,
Of course she implied that! What do you think atheism implies??
Is it so hard for you to come to grips with the implications of your own philosophy?
Neil Rickert,
Why is that an insult to say that is what atheism means?
Atheists always want to obfuscate, when they are forced to admit what their philosophy says.
What’s wrong with them just acknowledging her grief and comforting her on the loss without trying to push their personal religious beliefs? That was the point of the article, not the made up anti-atheist bullshit you are offering.
The article isn’t about abortion. Quit projecting your misplaced anger.
Alan Fox,
You didn’t answer the question. Why is it not insensitive for Tyson and Dawkins to spread their beliefs, to others who may be grieving, just because they do it in the public sphere, and not in person?
More meaningless projection of your own misunderstanding and anger over things that were nowhere in the article.
Adapa,
Her baby is more important than an aborted one because it lived for eight hours, and she never knew it?
I am showing your sides hypocrisy.
I’m an atheist because I find the current set of religious explanations on offer unconvincing. If a more convincing explanation for life, the universe and everything appears, I hope I will be open to that explanation. Until then, I can live with not knowing.
You want them to lie? Or would you be happy enough if they just didn’t speak at all?
Where did Tyson or Dawkins ever speak directly to a grieving Christian mother and tell her the nonsense you claim? You’re pulling this stuff straight from your ass.
You don’t know me or my “side”. You’re projecting the usual anti-atheist bullshit because you like being the Christian victim.
Adapa,
What does it matter if it is direct or indirect?
Alan Fox,
Isn’t that what the author is asking people to do?
Alan Fox,
I guess you have no problem at all with Pat Robertson telling all gays that they are sinners and will burn in hell for their immorality, as long as he just says it on Tv?
Yeah Right. Hypocrites.
Actually, you are showing your own blatant hypocrisy.
Nope, She’s asking for a little sensitivity from believers who think they have answers for her grief. She’s not asking them to stop believing; she’s asking them to stop proselytizing.
The claim “all gay sinners will burn in hell” is pretty laughable. It’s the physical intimidation and discrimination that follows from such rabble-rousing that I object to. Sagan didn’t indulge in it. Tyson doesn’t indulge in it. Is it wrong to speak as you believe? It certainly can be when that speech is an incitement to hatred of some minority. Are you claiming Christians are becoming a persecuted minority? I rather think people are voting with their feet and abandoning the more fundamentalist and reactionary sects.
Who are?
OR, perhaps atheists should stop trying to tell others that their beliefs are wrong.
Perhaps if Christians hadn’t spent the last couple thousand years telling others that their beliefs are wrong, and at least the last 1500 years fining, beating, imprisoning, or murdering those who’s beliefs differed from theirs, they’d have something worth complaining about.
Yeah, too novel for phoodoo, who’d never stop telling others their beliefs are wrong, even when he just makes them up.
That said, I do think the Salon article is kind of whining about little, while they’re being hypocritical. The dead baby is baptized because the husband will feel better that way, but how dare Christians try to comfort them in the way that they understand life and death? I’ll grant that it would probably get annoying, but I’m not sure why she would tell people that she doesn’t think the baby is in heaven. I don’t know the context–maybe it got to the point where it had to be said–but most people will just thank them for their support and let it be–if they can, anyway.
“Asshole” is too strong (at least from what we know/don’t know), but I can’t say that I feel all that badly for her that people were being nice, even if not necessarily correct.
Glen Davidson
When my mom dies — not that we expect it anytime soon — I’m going to have to skip the funeral to avoid the rest of the family when they sing hymns and have a priest who never knew her talk bullshit about how she’s in heaven. It will be an insult to the reality of her life, her humanism, her activism, her reasoned adult atheism, her pride, to pretend that pie-in-the-sky somehow makes it all better.
I really will lose it. If any of my christian friends say something like “I’ll pray for you” to me, I will never forgive them. I would take it as the grossest insult that they care so little for my feelings that they would slime all over me with their helpless little prayers. Telling someone whom you know is non-religious that you’ll “pray for them” is the opposite of caring. . It’s thoughtless, lazy, manipulative, coercive, selfish, not caring.
I mean, I’m happy for you that you can take christian friends announced praying for you as “caring”, and I’m definitely not saying that you should turn into an asshole.
But, honestly, it doesn’t make an atheist an asshole just because one refuses to go along with the sanctimonious (mostly USAian) premise that anyone must be allowed to drizzle christianity all over everything, Just like it doesn’t make one an asshole for refusing to laugh along with sexist or racist jokes.
If they want to be insensitive, prejudiced in favor of their own kind, they should do it out of my hearing.
From the author:
“The thing is, though, if you tell someone of faith that you don’t believe your child is in heaven, you’re met with confusion, or sad looks, or sometimes even a bit of anger. People don’t understand how or why you wouldn’t want to believe that your child is in a better place. Quite often, they take it as a personal attack on their belief when it’s really more about being honest about your own grief. It’s funny how inconvenient my lack of faith as a bereaved mother can be for those on the outside. (Actually, it’s not funny at all.)”
“I met and befriended so many women who had been through nearly the exact same thing I had been through: mothers who also lost their babies at 22 weeks; mothers who also went into pre-term labor, with no explanations; mothers who were grieving their entire futures who did not believe in god and instead found comfort in things like the First Law of Thermodynamics or in the words of great thinkers like Carl Sagan and Neil deGrasse Tyson about how we are just a tiny speck in the universe, that there is something so much bigger out there that we are only beginning to understand. Believe it or not, this is extremely comforting to those of us who don’t believe in a god. These are the things you can say to a non-believer who is mourning a loss”
“Agnostics and atheists understand why people have faith. We understand it brings them comfort. At times, I wish I could believe that my daughter is watching over me right now while enjoying a beautiful and eternal afterlife. But that’s just not what I believe. Instead, I imagine her in all sorts of places. Maybe her energy shot out into the stars. Perhaps some molecule of her is dancing around on Jupiter. Other times, I think about much of her remaining in my heart, as science tells us part of every child’s DNA remains forever with her mother, a fact that does bring me great peace.”
Let’s see, a woman who loses a child asks for understanding of her beliefs is being an asshole, nice move Phodoo.
In your lifetime of saying dumb things this may be the dumbest.
Picture this: I’m sitting here at my desk flexing my fists and growling about asshole christians who should not insult atheists.
Now picture this: I’m standing right in front of you flexing my fists and growling about asshole phoodoo who should not insult me personally.
Of course, you’d have to pay me millions of dollars to willingly subject myself to your physical presence, so it’s never going to happen in reality.
But I bet even you are smart enough to picture it. I bet you could tell then what it matters if speech is indirect or direct.
How is it manipulative and coercive?
phoodoo,
Do you know any atheists personally? Putting their belief, or lack of it, to one side, what are they like, as people, friends, parents? How do they compare to theists of your acquaintance?
phoodoo,
Uncommon Descent?
Well, it’s not coercive in the same way that telling someone “do this or I’ll hurt you” is coercive, but in the same way that a man telling a woman passing by “Smile” (or oh god, “Give me a smile”) is coercive. The function of the words is to get the emotional result the initiator wants, regardless of the autonomous desire of the recipient. “I’ll pray for you” performs the same social coercion as “Smile” does: it forces the non-believer (or the non-cheery woman) to respond “appropriately”, nicely, smilingly, or else be called an asshole. Literally be called an asshole in the atheist case — as phoodoo has demonstrated for us.
And it’s manipulative in another way, too. It manipulates the (mostly USAian) social consensus into retaining the belief that christians are the right kind of people, by tying everyone’s normal human empathy to a specifically christian utterance. What kind of empathetic failures are the non-believers who can’t even bring themselves to utter the ceremonial deism “I’ll pray for you”? Well, I don’t want my speech manipulated by others’ ceremonial expectations! I’ll use my own words, thank you very much!
Bless your heart, phoodoo.
I say that in the most sincere southern tradition.
I think I can understand why someone might feel that their life is pointless if they are just a speck in a God-free universe. Everything is kind of “for nought.”
The thing is, I can also understand why someone might feel that their life is just as pointless if they are a soul in a God-involved universe. They’re still specks in a gigantic universe, no? Maybe they believe they’ll live forever–but why would that make their lives more meaningful? They’d just last longer in their pointlessness, wouldn’t they?
In some religions, it’s thought that God loves you, and if it’s important to you to be loved forever, I guess you might feel less pointless if you practice such a religion. In other religions, God doesn’t love you, so I don’t think theism–without more–would help such people here. It’s just the pointlessness of atheism, plus a God watching.
Anyhow, I take it that for those who think their religion makes their lives (which they think would otherwise be pointless) NOT pointless, it’s having God love them forever that does the trick. That’s kind of sad, I think. So God loves you. He loves everybody, right? Meh.
Phoodoo, I think you’ll find that the reason these people are so “out” about their atheism is as a response to the privilege and power theism still has, primarily in the US.
Subjects that are constantly part of the national debate in the US, such as abortion and same-sex marriage, are constantly being fought over by religious people who want to deny the rights to these things even to people who aren’t religious or who don’t share their particular religious views. Naturally you’ll find people who get fed up with it and want to fight back.
Take a very recent example with the disgusting lie-filled propaganda video that was released by a fundamentalist anti-abortion christian group, about the Planned Parenthood organization that provides abortion services. The video that attempted to show that body parts from aborted fetuses are sold for profit (and shit-for-brains Barry Arringshit fell for the lie hook line and sinker), as in for monetary gain, for the planned parenthood organization. The implication in that disgusting lie-video was that Planned Parenthood has some kind of financial incentive to make women get abortions. Turns out that the premise of the entire video was a fucking lie and there’s no profit, Planned Parenthood earns no money from abortions or fetal tissues. Nevertheless, it sparked national outrage and was used as an excuse to try to further cut the Planned Parenthood budget at the federal level. Shit like this is why people feel the need to push back against religion and the power it has in society.
If the religious had their way, abortion would be illegal for everyone even those who are not religious. If they had their way, homosexual partnership, whether marriage or not, would be illegial. If the religious had their way, even sex outside of marriage, would be illegal. History teaches us that this is how religion behaves when it has the power to do so: It infringes on everyone’s rights.
Notice the imbalance. Nobody is forcing religious people to have abortions, and nobody is forcing religious people to get married to someone they don’t want to. Nevertheless, they want to infringe everyone else’s rights. That’s why you see pushback, that’s why you see people who are “out and proud” about their nonbelief. They are taking a stance against people who want to infringe on their rights, and some times it takes brave people to fight for others who are not in a position to do so. That is what those “famous” people are doing. There’s nothing wrong with it, stop being a butthurt child because you don’t get to bully people into submission. Religion is slowly losing it’s grip and it hurts those who want it back the most. Too bad, get over it. (Yes, I’m one of those asshole atheists) Go fuck yourself.
The moral of my post above is that if one is looking for meaning, I don’t think God helps much. But it’s ok. Because, fortunately, people are very good at making things meaningful all by themselves. God-seekers don’t understand that they don’t need God for that at all. In fact, that this God business is so important to them is just them making something meaningful or important.
Parents love their kids. They don’t need God for that. They want to succeed, be popular, get laid, etc. Again, no need for God. They want to be pain free, healthy, live long, prosper, have children, all on their own. God doesn’t add anything at all here.
In sum, if life seems meaningless, God doesn’t really help. And if life seems meaningful, God is unnecessary.
You think atheists seem like assholes. I think xtians are often needy, immature, and a little pathetic . That’s about all there is too it, phoodoo.
First of all, I entirely agree with those who say that the writer is not being an asshole. Phoodoo, I think you are reading things into the piece that simply are not there. She is saying, and it needs saying, that when you lose a baby (or anyone) it is not necessarily helpful for others to console you that your baby is in heaven. In fact it can be actually unhelpful, because you can end up feeling very cut off from people – to avoid hurt you don’t say what has happened, at a time when support would be extremely welcome.
I say this as someone who lost many many pregnancies before the one that produced my healthy son. Although, at that time, I did believe that there was some kind of after-existence, it made no sense to me to think of those part-formed beings as being “in heaven” – or of it somehow being a good thing that they were there. What I grieved was not a person – because there had been no person, or no person I knew in any sense that one knows a person – but a person who would now no longer be.
But the grief was no less – the loss of hopes and dreams no less.
Which brings me to this:
How can a feeling be an illusion? Do you honestly thing that the grief an atheist or agnostic mother feels for the loss of a baby is somehow “illusory” simply because she does not believe that the baby still has some kind of existence outside her and her partner’s hopes and dreams?
Why?
Indeed.
Theists so often conflate “my life was created for someone else’s purpose” with “my life has purpose”.
I’ve pointed out before that we can breed animals for our own purposes, but it doesn’t stop the animals having perfectly good purposes of their own, which may well be at odds with ours. A wild-born animal has as much purpose in its life as domesticated one.