We can agree to disagree, so long as we don't think the other is an "ignorant moron who just believes in obscurantist and unscientific bullshit".

But that's the thing: the provincian atheist doesn't think like that. He just thinks we are retards who are engaged in wishful thinking and/or fail to grasp basic fallacies in "unscientific arguments". Aristotle, Aquinas and Leibniz were idiots who can be refuted in 5 sentences or less. That's how they think.

Haha. But Miguel, your comments on here are peppered with references to some of the views you're agreeing to disagree with as (for example) “absurd bullshit”, and obvious similar suggestions about the people who hold them. You're one of our most polemical, table pounding posters. It's one of the things I actually sort of like about you.

Another one of you wrote that the best use for Kant's books, once read, is as a doorstop. (I don't want this to be taken the wrong way. He's literally one of my four favorite posters, perhaps because we share fluency in two languages.) 

My earliest comments in this thread were, in part, asking for a bit of self-awareness.

Miguel wrote:

I don't act as if atheists were all Dawkins-type and I am well aware of the Oppys, Maitzens and Mackies of the world.

Just pointing out: all three of those philosophers believe in brute facts (as well as the likes of Davids Lewis and Armstrong and most of the brilliant metaphysicians I mentioned a few posts ago), which also fell into your list. 

I guess it'd be hard to go on, but I really have a feeling there is something of sociological interest here. I think there really is a particular provincianism and anti-intellectualism that is rampant among contemporary atheist circles and it even spreads into academia sometimes. As much as it would be nice to say theists are just as guilty of it too, I do think it's disproportionately present among modern atheists - perhaps because of the scientism that has dominated anti-religious rhetoric in recent years...

I think it probably is somewhat worse among atheists. This is in part because they're not a philosophical movement. They're a popular movement. Theists, at the popular lay-level, can get pretty down and dirty too, it seems to me especially protestants.

Part of it is also because left liberalism (which includes atheism) is, for better or worse, the de facto "religion" of the academy, and so atheists have the confidence that comes with being fashionable and theists have to be correspondingly careful. (It's not unheard of for people to lose their jobs for going against academic orthodoxy.)

And part of it is a difference in values. I'm not sure the current orthodoxy values humility, charity, and so on the way Christians do. They would no doubt retort that they value other values that are much more important and lead them to (I don't know, just for example) squash racism. Now, the deep philosophical question, of course, is which set of values we should prefer. I say there is no way for us to answer that question.

Miguel wrote:

I guess it'd be hard to go on, but I really have a feeling there is something of sociological interest here. I think there really is a particular provincianism and anti-intellectualism that is rampant among contemporary atheist circles and it even spreads into academia sometimes. As much as it would be nice to say theists are just as guilty of it too, I do think it's disproportionately present among modern atheists - perhaps because of the scientism that has dominated anti-religious rhetoric in recent years...

There are two things at work.

1. Most people do not think its possible to the answers to what Kant would have called the ultimate questions e.g. God, Free Will and the soul, and assume that if it is it will be done to the sciences. This includes many religious people. Connected with this people will often respond in a more defensive way if you say it is possible to have answers to such questions - even more so if the answers are positive e.g. one can prove the existence of an immaterial soul. Again this includes many religious people.

2. Politics, politics, politics - the worm which has devoured Man's heart and enslaved his soul. People often display knee-jerk behavioristic reactions to metaphysical questions because of the most contingent parochial Culture WarsTM association.

Miguel wrote:

True. I do think that about some views (particularly logical revisionism, eliminativism, reductivism, and so on) but I like to think it's different from the provincianism I criticize, because at least I generally try to interact with the literature, and I don't reduce my opposition to the particular views I find completely ridiculous.

The problem with atheist provincianism isn't the attitude of dismissing Aquinas, Craig and the rest strictly speaking. If Aquinas, Craig and all the others really did have poor arguments in their favour, really did have only the straw-man version of cosmological arguments to bring to the debate, and really were of such a bad quality as to be refutable in a few sentences, then the provincianism would be understandable and the dismissive attitude justified.

The big problem with atheist provincianism is that all of this is false. Aquinas, Craig and the others do not have poor argmuents, they do not claim everything has a cause, they are not refutable in 5 sentence time spans, and as such the dismissive attitude is clearly unjustified. The fact that this attitude continues uncorrected is what contributes to it's obnoxiousness and it's foolishness. And the inability and unwillingness to be corrected especially as well.

Miguel wrote:

I guess it'd be hard to go on, but I really have a feeling there is something of sociological interest here. I think there really is a particular provincianism and anti-intellectualism that is rampant among contemporary atheist circles and it even spreads into academia sometimes. As much as it would be nice to say theists are just as guilty of it too, I do think it's disproportionately present among modern atheists - perhaps because of the scientism that has dominated anti-religious rhetoric in recent years...

You are completely correct. If you look back to the 1990's, you'll see that this attitude of provincianism almost didn't exist at all, and it was only Madalyn Murray O'Hair style atheists that had such an attitude, along with Communists ideologues. The vast majority of atheists either didn't really care and/or didn't really know, or did care somewhat but were respectful and nice about it (that would be the ordinary non-philsoophical folk who have a mild interest in the debate) , or did actually know what the whole theism/atheism thing was about - but that group of people was and is restricted to the Oppy, Rowe camp of philosopher atheists.

The whole provincianism thing got started after 9/11, specifically after Harris had published his first book, and it then picked up quick steam from Dawkins and Hitchens, and all of the above got mass media coverage which explains the provincianist attitude spreading like wildfire all across the Internet and all across the West.

And you'll easily see that this specific provincianist attitude was simply non-existent amongst theists, who either didn't really care about the debate, or cared but actually engaged the opposition when they came across professional arguments for theism.
 

Last edited by aftermathemat (5/07/2018 10:53 am)

John West wrote:

Miguel wrote:

I don't act as if atheists were all Dawkins-type and I am well aware of the Oppys, Maitzens and Mackies of the world.

Just pointing out: all three of those philosophers believe in brute facts (as well as the likes of Davids Lewis and Armstrong and most of the brilliant metaphysicians I mentioned a few posts ago), which also fell into your list. 

Unfornately, but at least their case is better than Dawkins's and generally deserving of response, is what I meant.