fpb | About the effects of really, really bad education (from an answer to a friend)

Most British are not Christian and have been socialized to hate and fear what they call "organized religion". This does not make all of them atheist: but the number of ranting, proselytzing, fanatical atheists is remarkably high. Two out of three of the Sorry Trinity, Hitchens and Dawkins, are British. What it does do is make them amazingly wayward in their thinking and profoundly incompetent in their arguing. Their ideas about religion are not only fanatical but astonishingly ignorant and stupid. It is only in British blogs dedicated to Christianity, for instance, that you find rabid, unreasoning vulgar Calvinists, with their idea of their own sect drawn not from the Institutio or from Jonathan Edwards but from base summaries in school textbooks, delivering religious opinions that a child would blush at. Religion discussion threads on British blogs, as compared to American and Italian, are of a very low intellectual level, because they come from people unusued to debate on that issue. (The same people may often turn out to be a lot more intelligent on politics, sports, economy or even science.) At the same time, you cannot make them shut up about it. If you take an American or Italian blog on religious issues, you may be sure that nearly every one of the commenters will be in sympathy with the blog's basic religious stance: Catholic blogs will draw Catholics or people interested in Catholicism, Jewish blogs will draw Jews or people interested in Hebraism, Evangelical blogs.... you get it. Trolls do exist, but are relatively rare as compared to constructive posters, and tend to get banned. And this has an interesting effect: because of the general constructive atmosphere and relative shortage of trolls, an outsider coming in will often feel a general sense of constructive engagement that may draw him/her in even if s/he does not share the local views, or at least give a picture of why and how this attitude can be felt to be reasonable and make sense. I have been on Evangelical or Jewish blogs where I agreed with 90% of what was said and felt able to criticize the rest without anger. On the other hand, take a British Catholic or Anglican blog - and I have the examples to prove it. From a half to two thirds of all interventions will be made by trolls. They will be mostly atheist (although I mentioned the occasional Jack T.Chick Calvinist or ranting Orthodox): always the same people, obsessional, sickening, coming back comment after comment with the same everlasting dreary hate-ridden jingle, hijacking the thread no matter what it was on - religion is superstition - you ought all to follow reason - your minds are diseased - etc. etc.

Such are the fruits of bad education. It is impossible to understand what these people get out of days, weeks, months of sabotaging other people's discussions and repeating without imagination, insight or interest their sorry message of ignorance and hate, except for one thing: that religion is something that affects them so intensely that they simply cannot leave it alone, they must come back again and again. They would say it is in the hope that someone will be converted to their way of thinking, but surely that is the most inefficient possible way to go about it. It cannot even be pleasant for them, all that bile - at least, I hope they know the difference. The truth is that the mere existence of Christians sickens them so intensely that they cannot keep away: they can neither cope with it, or keep away from them. And this, I assure you, is a widespread phenomenon in the United Kingdom.

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I know those kinds of obsessive atheists. I was badgered by one on a friend's lj, and he was a born-and-bred American. Seems to me there's a difference between atheists and anti-theists and they are all over.

I don't know if it's due to "bad education" or just the need to find something fulfilling in life. Like fundies who are so obsessed over their Jesus that they need to harass other Christians over various points of doctrine.

My guess: What they get out of repeating without imagination days weeks and months of the same tired non-arguments is self-congratulations. They think they are Paladins of Reason slaying the Dragon or Superstition.

I have said in many places that one reason why, back when I was a proselytizing atheist, I began to develop a sympathy for my hated enemies, the Christians, is that I looked to my left and my right, and I saw the intellectual caliber of my fellow (ahem) Soldiers For Truth with whom I was standing shoulder to shoulder, and I realized, to my shock, that they were intellectual midgets. They were about as deep as, let us say, the philosophical musings of your average STAR TREK episode.

I kept noticing my fellow Sons of Sweet Reason would make weak and unreasonable arguments against their foes rather than strong, straw man arguments, or gross historical errors. If you have bullets, why shoot blanks?

Then I would read a sentence by someone like J.R.R. Tolkien, a member (so I thought at the time) of the most primitive brand of the primitive superstition, that showed gravity, depth, and maturity: "I am a Christian, and indeed a Roman Catholic," Tolkien once wrote to a friend, "so that I do not expect ’history’ to be anything but a ’long defeat’ — though it contains (and in a legend may contain more clearly and movingly) some samples or glimpses of final victory."

An atheist has to overcome his own ego, that most fearsome of enemies, before he will look at the issue of Man and God squarely. He has to have some respect for wisdom, even the wisdom of people with whom he has bitter disagreements, before the difference between the secular view of life and death, and the mystic vision of life beyond life, that promises joy beyond the walls of the world, can appear to his wondering eye.

All of that I grant you. But you have to remember that you were at least capable enough to be able to recognize a sound argument from a fake one. Thanks to the bad education in Britain, especially where religion is concerned, we have a generation of people who cannot tell the difference.

Y'know... I never even thought about what theology Jack Chick came from?

Honestly, I took him to be such a bad example of ANY belief system that I didn't even consider it-- despite having an aunt who loves his little booklets.

Now I'll have to look into his theological underpinnings....

Not sure if I should curse you or thank you....

About the effects of really, really bad education (from an answer to a friend)

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repeating without imagination

Re: repeating without imagination

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