That Ol’ Dan Rivers
He don’t plant taters, and he don’t plant cotton
But he do imply that atheists have no moral compass
I saw a report on CNN earlier today, in which Dan Rivers was interviewing Abu Abdullah, a British muslim who is very outspoken in his belief that the west deserves to be attacked by terrorists. In a voice-over, Rivers tells us of Abdullah
His extremist views may be repugnant to the vast majority of muslims — in fact, anyone who believes in God.
Well gee, Dan. Thanks for reminding us that atheists are never repulsed when someone advocates religious violence against people. No, we live for it, watching you lot slaughter each other because God told you to. What fun!
This sort of statement, which I’m sure wasn’t meant to imply that atheists are amoral, but does the job quite nicely just the same, reminds me of a case about ten years ago, here in The ‘Ville. A kid who was about fifteen years old had a crush on a friend’s mother. He worked up the courage to tell her, and when he was rebuffed, he killed her.
This led to a controversy regarding whether he should be tried as an adult. Somebody wrote a letter to the editor of the Boston Globe stating that he should be tried as an adult because he’d been given every chance to develop into a decent, upstanding member of society, but failed to do so. What did “every chance” entail? Family, school and church. He’d been raised Catholic.
So I wrote in a response stating that the writer of the first letter was implying that an upbringing that didn’t include religious training was an excuse for murder, and that that was (I don’t think I used these exact words) a load of crap. My letter didn’t get printed. What a shock.
You see this all the time. Theists feel perfectly free to pronouce atheists as utterly amoral, just because we don’t live in constant fear of eternal damnation. But go to a prison and I bet you’ll find that a disproportionate number of the convicts are religious.
For some reason, at least here in the United States of Jehovah, this sort of bigotry is not just commonplace; it’s not even pointed out when people spout it.
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Category: Eye of Hell, Media, Religion
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Comments (36)
Blue Gal on 21 Aug 2006 at 2:15 am #
Welcome to the fukking party and it’s about time you got here. xoxoxo
Anonymous on 21 Aug 2006 at 4:52 pm #
Us atheists are one of the few groups left in America that are freely discriminated against… and if you complain, you’re attacked for raining on other peoples’ parades!
Unfortunately, it seems that the majority of homo sapiens is simply wired to believe in magic and mysticism and religious ideas. The few of us who, for whatever reason, are not, usually live lives of frustration and dismay, wondering how so many people can feel so strongly about things that just don’t make sense.
Anonymous on 21 Aug 2006 at 4:58 pm #
Since when is a moral compass only given to those who believe in god. Religion, and church have nothing to do with the morals I live by. My humble opinion is that religion is as responsible for murder as any other group of people you can name, in fact they use gods name in the process of those murders. Just look at gods work per the works of the fundamentalist christians and the fundamentalist Islamists, both sides use the same rhetoric and if the christians attained a theocratic state here in America they would commit similar atrocities at some point. Stay away from religion it’s bad for your health, as for moral compasses one only needs to realize that treating each other with respect and dignity wiil suffice the rest will follow.
egoebel on 21 Aug 2006 at 5:05 pm #
I always thought it was the Theists that had no moral compass - they only behave the way they do because they think someone is watching and keeping score.
Tony on 21 Aug 2006 at 5:13 pm #
See, that’s one of the Rich Delicious Ironies of having atheistic tendencies: one-way bigotry. At least for me, my respect for other people’s beliefs in Angry Bearded Deities somehow always manages to get trampled by other people’s need to write me off as a Godless Heathen. I’m still wrestling with ways to deal with this. Ugh.
Anonymous on 21 Aug 2006 at 5:23 pm #
Well, no the quotation you cite asserts that anyone who believes in God should object to the statements of Abu Abdullah. It doesn’t state or even imply that atheists, as a Group, would condone his beliefs.
There’s a difference between saying that murder is inconsistant with a belief in God, and saying that objecting to murder is impossible without a belief in God.
I agree that there’s pervasive and unjustified anti-atheist sentiment to be found among religious persons; however you still seem to uncharitably misread this particular statement.
qwerty on 21 Aug 2006 at 5:28 pm #
No, it doesn’t assert that atheists are ok with his views. It merely states that it’s likely that “anyone who believes in God” would find his views “repugnant”.
I’m not claiming that Rivers is consciously espousing the opinion that without a deity one can’t find such views repugnant. I’m saying that his choice of words indicates the sort of prejudice people don’t get called on often enough. Had he said “His extremist views may be repugnant to the vast majority of Europeans — in fact, any white person” he’d have been fired, even though he would not have been openly asserting that non-whites lack morality.
Anonymous on 21 Aug 2006 at 5:55 pm #
But only if you believe in God can you delegate to Him the task of being your conscience, and then, because lightning didn’t strike, you can be pretty sure he was otherwise distracted when you got a little carried away with righteous indignation and did that thing with the tire iron and had to burn that shirt your blessed mother gave you for Christmas ’cause it was all, like, well, bloody…
Bubbaloo on 21 Aug 2006 at 6:10 pm #
It never seems to amaze me, the level of hypocricy and insane reasoning by the religious nut jobs. When was the last time anyone heard of a serial-killer atheist or gay person? Have there been any wars declared or fought and wonton blood spilled in the name of atheism? To the best of my knowledge, never. Yet, to hear the jeebus lovers tell it, you would think that it is the non-believers and gays who are turning humanity on its head.
My advice is: Dare to think for yourselves and reject organized religion of any kind. Unqualified peace and love for all people and living things is the only way to achieve real harmony and balance with the world.
Black Jack Shellac on 21 Aug 2006 at 6:14 pm #
Who gives a shit what the religios think, we know that they are deluded, it is our job to try to convince them otherwise. And it is an important mission, because if we don’t stop this jehovahisation of America (and the world) then we are truly fux0rd. Stop whinging, and get out there and convince the believers that they are wrong, and dangerously so. The alternative is round two of the dark ages. And if they won’t listen, maybe it’s time we went inquisition on their asses. Payback time, baby.
Slaughter on 21 Aug 2006 at 6:15 pm #
Thank you, qwerty. I was about to make the same point, that if Rivers had spoken of some racial matter — a senatorial candidate calling a dark-skinned person “macaca,” for example — said “It would be repugnant to any white people,” he would cause a huge ruckus. That never happens when atheists get discounted. It’s one of the media failures that doubts about religion aren’t discussed in matters about the Middle East — or terrorism, for that matter. It’s high time atheists challenged it, too.
brendan on 21 Aug 2006 at 6:18 pm #
Because it’s an everyday occurence, of course, the mass random murder of innocents by roving gangs of militant armed atheists!
qwerty on 21 Aug 2006 at 6:27 pm #
Stop whinging, and get out there and convince the believers that they are wrong, and dangerously so.
I used to do that, Black Jack Shellac (woo hoo! The President of France commenting on my blog!) but I pretty much gave it up when the guy I was trying to teach to think for himself responded to the questions I’d made him consider by transferring into a Jeez-based college.
Nowadays, I feel free to give my opinion, but I don’t see myself as being on a mission to wean people from Big Daddy.
Anonymous on 21 Aug 2006 at 7:42 pm #
Sorry, Bubaloo -
There were several gay serial-killers. Jeffrey Dahmer ring a bell? John Wayne Gacy?
As an atheist homo myself, I’m happy to say they are still the minority.
Tink
danielg on 21 Aug 2006 at 7:42 pm #
And I thought this was going to be about the good Reb Gellman.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12498143/site/newsweek/
Trying to Understand Angry Atheists
Why do nonbelievers seem to be threatened by the idea of God?
qwerty on 21 Aug 2006 at 8:22 pm #
We’re only angry when certain generalizations are made about us. For example:
This must sound condescending and a large generalization, and I don’t mean it that way, but I am tempted to believe that behind atheist anger there are oftentimes uncomfortable personal histories.
Yup, it does sound that way, Rabbi.
I can humbly ask whether my atheist brothers and sisters really believe that their lives are better, richer and more hopeful by clinging to Camus’s existential despair: “The purpose of life is that it ends.”
We’re not all existentialists. Some of us believe that we can give purpose to our lives by performing good works.
I know that Jim believes way more in Darwin than in Deuteronomy, but he also believes that at Cold Spring Labs the most important thing is not whether you are a man or a woman, not whether you believe in God. The most important thing, as he says, is “to get something done.” Now there’s an atheist I can believe in.
I can get behind that.
OK, I admit it. I am “against” religion. But that’s not the case with all of us. After all, “atheism” doesn’t mean that you subscribe to any particular set of beliefs. It simply means that you do not have a belief in a deity.
Anonymous on 21 Aug 2006 at 8:42 pm #
I can understand the fact that there are prejudices against atheists in Western society, and there are certainly religious people who genuinely believe there can be no moral framework without a deity. My father is one such person, and I am a religious person who thinks he’s full of crap on that point.
However, I really think you’re reading a lot into the comment. (You even acknowledge that he meant no such discrimination in your opening.) I would suggest that the repugnance to which he refers is actually irrelevant to atheists, invalidating your point entirely. The extremist’s views are attributing to his god a character that is antithetical to the mainstream beliefs of his religion, thus impugning the very foundation of Islam. Such a slander of the IslamoJudeoChristian God should very well be repugnant to most people who believe in the God revealed in the Torah, the Koran, and the Bible. It seems to me that atheists wouldn’t give two hoots what attributes were associated with this “god”, since they think it’s a bunch of hogwash in the first place.
In this context, the racial example is also moot, unless you re-frame it to somehow address something that is fundamental to being a “white person”.
So while I understand the offense taken at the assumption that atheism = amorality, I think this quote is not a particularly good example of that undercurrent. As a jumping-off point, though, more power to ya.
Cheers.
Jonathan in Texas
Anonymous on 21 Aug 2006 at 8:46 pm #
danielg, we don’t feel threatened by the idea of a God, we feel threatened by the ideas of God’s followers.
qwerty on 21 Aug 2006 at 9:29 pm #
I see your point, Jonathan, but I disagree.
The sentence before the one I quote in the voiceover indicates that Abu Abdullah “calls himself a cleric,” but I don’t think that means that the views he’s just espoused can’t be separated from religion. Yes, he says that every good Muslim should have been pleased by the attacks, but then he gets into the idea that the 3000 killed is a drop in the ocean compared to the millions of Muslims who’ve been killed.
He’s saying that America deserved it, but I don’t hear him saying that his god agrees or told him to feel that way. The “every good Muslim” statement could certainly be taken to mean that Muslims should be happy because this was an act of revenge against those who have sought to harm them.
While his opinion is influenced heavily by his religion, I don’t see it as a religious opinion. It’s not about his god or anyone else’s. It’s about how he feels about the treatment of a group of people (of which he’s a member) and how he defines revenge for that treatment.
In that context, I’m quite capable of finding it repugnant.
Rob on 21 Aug 2006 at 9:32 pm #
It’s a sad state of affairs. I know what you meant by “amoral” but I wish more people were attuned to the destinction between morality and ethics. I’m amoral, because morality is more a culturally determined set of rules governing behavior than anything arrived at through reason. And it’s never aware of its presuppositions or the behavior of other mammals, especially primates, which have an innate sense of fairness, in the wider world. And yet for some reason chimpanzees and rhesus monkeys don’t kill each other without reason. Makes you wonder why those pesky evangelicals don’t preach the gospel to apes.
Anonymous on 21 Aug 2006 at 9:50 pm #
Had I read the interview for context of his comment, I might have come to the same conclusion that it was not a religious opinion. (Sorry, at work and really shouldn’t be reading blogs at all. :-)
However, the comment by the reporter could still have been addressing it as a religious comment. I don’t know if Occam’s razor can apply to an author’s intentions, but that seems a more likely explanation to me of the comment’s intent than a subconscious conviction that atheists don’t have a moral compass or share the capacity for outrage.
Again, I’m not denying your overall point that such bias exists, just that I don’t see this as a particularly good example. Seems a bit of a stretch to me.
Cheers,
Jonathan
qwerty on 21 Aug 2006 at 10:10 pm #
I can agree to disagree. Rivers may have intended to just refer to religious people, and I sincerely doubt he intended to label atheists in any way, but it really does piss me off when I hear stuff like that.
Remember election night, either 1980 or ‘84, when Nancy Reagan stepped up to the microphone and said something like, “I’m so happy to see all your smiling white faces”? Of course, it was just a Freudian slip, and there may even have been one or two people in the room who didn’t have smiling white faces. I have no doubt that had Nan seen those smiling non-white faces, she’d have been happy about that too.
Hm… was there a point to that, or did I just feel like throwing it out there? I’m not sure.
But it does seem like as good a time as any to point out that, since Blue Gal told Crooks and Liars to tell all their readers about me (thank you very much), you should know that this is not a lefty political blog. Yes, I’m a lefty, and I’m pretty political, but don’t be surprised when you come back (pleeeeease come back) and find that I’ve written about how Delaware doesn’t exist or some equally essential information.
pmercer on 21 Aug 2006 at 10:27 pm #
Its times like this I thank god I’m an atheist.
qwerty on 21 Aug 2006 at 10:35 pm #
OK, OK…
What’s the worst thing about having sex with an atheist?
It’s when they scream out, “Oh, my nonexistent supreme being!”
Anonymous on 21 Aug 2006 at 10:35 pm #
First they want to get it out into public, then they want to use the mob to intimidate you. Organized religion is all about power and how to coerce people, even your opponents, to do your bidding.
aarrgghh on 22 Aug 2006 at 12:27 am #
“no, i don’t know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. this is one nation under god.”
(presidential candidate george h.w. bush, 1987)
it might be a good idea to periodically check one’s citizenship status, cuz, you never know …
smchris on 22 Aug 2006 at 1:15 am #
What do you expect? We’re still fighting Darwinism. It’s like the second half of the 19th century and all of 20th century philosophical thought never happened here. Culturally, the average American is like a native with a bone through his nose. “And the white man dancing” as Leonard Cohen sings. Even his Idol is American.
Yes, I have heard a commentator on the local NPR affiliate muse, “Is it possible for an atheist to have a morality?” And on another occasion a guest state that the president of North Korea is an atheist “and that is reason enough to hate him right there.” The different commentator on that program carried on like he had said nothing unusual.
Religion has always been tribal and the Neocons feed them a new group to hate every week so that religion in America has metastasized into something hideously cancerous. Which I’m sure causes them to project the ugliness from themselves onto others even more venomously.
qwerty on 22 Aug 2006 at 1:34 am #
What do you expect? We’re still fighting Darwinism. It’s like the second half of the 19th century and all of 20th century philosophical thought never happened here.
I don’t know. Maybe it’s just because I was raised in the Northeast, but it always seemed to me that the US got into the 20th century just fine. Evolution was completely accepted by everyone but the most loony of the loons when I was a kid.
It wasn’t until the rise of the Moral Majority around the late 70s that I started to notice people denying what I’d always considered to be fact. Was your experience different?
Anonymous on 22 Aug 2006 at 1:41 am #
You guys are paranoid.
As has been pointed out, neither comment literally implies anything about atheists. You’re taking a negative implication that doesn’t exist and certainly wasn’t intended and making as ass of yourself.
I used to think that religion dulled the mind and made people angry; then I started running across bloggers and their fans like you.
I can’t believe crooks and liars linked to this shit…
kelley b. on 22 Aug 2006 at 1:45 am #
Theists are convinced that they can manipulate God by belief.
You don’t see much religion devoted to a distant impersonal Deity who frankly doesn’t give a damn.
There’s no comfort and no percentage in it, all evidence to the contrary.
What’s a God that can’t or won’t lay down some of that Holy MoJo? Possibly one that fits existing data.
800 pound gorilla on 22 Aug 2006 at 2:29 am #
Judge not lest you be judged. Theists tend to have “official” scriptures that tend to be very specific. Atheists tend to rely on good common sense and the golden rule. It’s logical to be moral. It’s just illogical to give control over your life to scriptural authority. It’s insane to cede control to someone or group who selectively chooses which scriptures to follow - and then second guesses everyone who chooses differently.
Anonymous on 22 Aug 2006 at 9:18 am #
Faith is believing in something that you know isn’t true…..
Anonymous on 22 Aug 2006 at 6:11 pm #
I totally agree with you. Well said. Bravo!
Steve in CO on 22 Aug 2006 at 11:07 pm #
“Calling Atheism a religion is like calling bald a hair color.” - Author Unknown.
I’m really surprised I’ve not seen some fundie claiming such an inane thing. Guess this isn’t quite a Yahoo! message board. ;-P
Peace
qwerty on 23 Aug 2006 at 2:07 am #
Nobody’s mentioned the “no atheists in a fox hole” crap either… at least not here. Colbert brought it up last night, suggesting there ought to be more atheists in fox holes so the nice christian boys can all come home.
TomPaine on 23 Aug 2006 at 3:25 pm #
What I hate most about religion in the news is how they talk abou Islamo-fascists who supposedly hate us because of our freedoms. But they say nothing of the Christo-fascists who hate us for the same reason and are working very dilligently to take those freedoms away one by one. Each act of censorship and everytime MAGIC is taught in place of SCIENCE the Christo-fascists win and the enemy within destroys America a little more. Radical religion is a mental disease, a sociopathy, that needs a cure.