Unwilling to Tolerate Critical Analysis?
Last night I deleted a comment placed on the Manhattan Declaration thread The commenter subsequently complained to me by email, including this:
Obviously you’re not a ‘thinking Christian’. You’re a stereotypical Christian, afraid of differing opinions, and more interested in following the herd than in critical analysis.
Thanks for confirming what I already knew.
I believe this was a first-time commenter, by the way.
I wrote this back to him this morning. There are references in here to portions of the comment I deleted or to other portions of the person’s email to me. I think you can get the picture without me filling in every detail.
–name withheld for privacy–,
I understand you are disappointed that I deleted your comment, but you have mis-analyzed the situation. I am not “afraid of differing opinions.” For ample and easily accessible evidence of that, please see the Discussion Grounds blog, especially What Makes Discussion Grounds Different. See also the discussions I initiated with Tom Clark, director of the Center for Naturalism and a strongly articulate atheist. He was actually the first person I invited to debate with me at Discussion Grounds. There have been over 100,000 comments posted on this blog, at least one-third of which have come from people who disagree with me. They’re not hard to find.
My server logs indicate that you visited the discussion on ID and creationism (the communication question). Surely you read enough there to see that I welcome debate. My server logs also indicate that you did not visit the Discussion Policy page. There’s a link to it just above the combox and a request that you read it before commenting.
Every blog has its own personality. I welcome disagreement, but I am determined that discussion on my blog will be civil. That’s just the way I intend this blog to be, and I think in a world that celebrates diversity, there ought to be room among that diversity for a blog that chooses this approach. There are other blogs for people who want other kinds of blogs.
So I don’t welcome the kind of name calling (“a bunch of reactionary bigots”) with which you began that comment, or the clear prejudice of your last line: “If they were prolife they’d be shrieking about infant mortality. But those are just dead babies. They have nothing to do with women and sex, so can be safely ignored.”
There are two extremely huge differences between abortion and infant mortality: one is that our nation is already trying to reduce the latter, not to promote it; and the other is that abortion is a moral choice, not an unavoidable medical tragedy (mostly related to premature births, by the way). These two facts are so utterly obvious that I did not regard your comment as an “analysis of [my] position.” I took it as invective.
It is especially ironic that you called me bigoted while at the same time you explicitly applied a stereotype to me and to other Christians. You used the word “stereotypical” yourself! Stereotyping is classic bigotry, is it not?
I have summarily deleted only a few dozen or so of the 100,000-plus comments sent to this blog. Yours was one of the few.
Obviously you and I have some strong disagreements on policy and beliefs, but I want you to at least know that your “analysis” in your email is incorrect. I am confident of my beliefs in God and in Jesus Christ, and I have no qualms about putting them to the test of critical analysis and impassioned debate. That’s why I have this blog in the first place.
Regards,
Tom Gilson
There is one further point of irony I want to point out as a general principle. I have no reason to think this point applies to last night’s commenter, but it has been the case with others with whom I have had similar exchanges. Some of them have been involved in the debate over Intelligent Design, and the person has been one who says that ID ignores evidence and is therefore unscientific. The same person, though, takes the “evidence” of my deleting one comment out of every two to three thousand as proving that I won’t tolerate debate, discussion, or disagreement. How scientific is that?
Tom:
While I welcome your clarification to the commenter, I’m not sure it was necessary to dignify his emotional drivel with a separate post. Any critical thinker understands (1) the clarity and goal of your blog, (2) the honesty by which you meet any and all challenges, (3) the charity underlying your moderation of the blog and which you rightly demand of all who participate (4) your unrelenting commitment to truth, (5) the fortitude by which the Gospel message is proclaimed, (6) and the venue your blog provides to expose–over and over and over–the straw men, fallacious reasoning, bias, human dignity degrading, pseudo-philosophical unscientific nonsense, subjective opinions, and ideological presuppositions brought in by those opposed to faith. In brief, “Thinking Christian” stands far above and apart from unthinking atheism.
Thank you, Holopupenko. Frankly I had a dual purpose for this post. I had one like it in the works already, because of the past circumstances I mentioned in the last paragraph. I want to have something like this on record for the future.
I also want to put it on record that this is a case of intolerance toward Christians, in the form of complaining intolerantly about Christians’ supposed intolerance.
I don’t absolve all of Christianity from judgmentalism and errors in our use of science and logic. I’ve been guilty of these things, and we all have. But there is the view out there that Christianity is inherently judgmental, and that secularism is inherently tolerant. This is one strong counter-example to that belief.
Tom Gilson wrote:
If you want to fight that straw man, well, that’s your choice, Tom. Neither of these reflects my perspective, just to take one unscientific poll.
I will certainly believe you on that, olegt. I did not say that the view characterized all secularists; I just said “there is the view out there….” I’ve had several cases of it on my blog, but certainly too few to extrapolate to the whole secular world; in fact if I were to extrapolate from data on my blog, I would have to conclude that this version of secularist intolerance is decidedly a minority position. My point was that it does exist, in whatever numbers or proportions I wouldn’t presume to say, and that where it does exist it often exhibits the irony I spoke of here.
Olegt, those may not be your positions but that hardly makes them straw men. Judgmental and intolerant are frequently used accusatory words.
heh…
Well if a personal, subjective opinion is rightly characterized as “one unscientific poll,” then why should it even be considered?
And the value-judgment “science makes God irrelevant in some cases” is “tolerant”… let alone intellectually coherent?
I should have added hypocrisy and intolerance to my list as empirically characteristic of what millions-of-body-count atheism truly brings to these discussions. Call a spade a spade.
William and Tom,
Let me run a parallel with politics here. If I wanted to make a case against conservatism and chose to focus on Ann Coulter as a representative of that movement, what would you think of that?
Holopupenko,
I’m frankly no longer interested in conversations with you. Your sentences are elaborately constructed but content-empty.
olegt, I could answer your question about Ann Coulter, but I don’t accept the premise of the question. You ask if it would be fair to focus on her as representative of conservatism. I ask, why are you asking about focusing on anyone as representative of anything? I certainly haven’t done that!
Ann Coulter is representative of those conservatives who have personalities and beliefs like hers, and not representative of conservatives who differ in those ways. Intolerant secularists are representative of secularists who are intolerant (and there are people like that). They are not representative of secularists who are not intolerant (and there are many people like that). I think in my last comment I made my view on that more than abundantly clear already. Please quit trying to make it seem as if I’m over-generalizing when I’m not.
Tom said:
olegt responded:
Bummer… I also should have added “selectively inattentive” and “baselessly generalizing” to my list…
Olegt:
My response would be to point out that she is one of many voices. To the extent that her views are shared by me I would defend those POVs. She is one of many high profile representatives.
Tom,
I don’t think you’re painting with a broad brush and if my comments read that way I apologize. Let me rephrase the question a bit: is it worth for me to even pay attention to people like Ann Coulter?
I don’t know. That’s entirely up to you.
Tom Gilson wrote:
So I don’t. Militant fringe will always exist but it is mostly irrelevant. Don’t waste your time on it.
olegt, If your point is, why did I consider it worth it to pay attention to this commenter, there are two reasons:
1. If you knew where to look, you could find a half-dozen to a dozen similar accusations presented against me in comments on this blog. I think it will happen again, most likely, and I decided today to post a general answer in case it happens again.
2. You can easily ignore Ann Coulter if you want to—but you might receive it differently if she sent you a personal email.
I’ll take your 11:01 advice, which you posted while I was writing my 11:02 comment, as much as I think I can do so responsibly. I accept that it’s generally a much better way of dealing with it, and I recognize the wisdom in what you say.
I usually do disregard the fringe, but for reasons already stated I decided not to this time.
Olegt:
No it is not. That’s the lesson of history. Militant fringes have ways of gaining positions of authority when ignored. That was a dramatic lesson of 20th century European history.
Usually, when people speak against intolerance, they are referring to unjustified intolerance — i.e., the sort of intolerance peddled by most Christians. Intolerance towards Christianity, however, is justified, since Christianity is full of “straw men, fallacious reasoning, bias, human dignity degrading, pseudo-philosophical unscientific nonsense, subjective opinions, and ideological presuppositions,” and it stands far below and apart from thinking atheism.
Hooray for civility, right Tom?
Yes, William. That is why I used the qualifier mostly.
You might still agree with me that the good old US of A is in not in danger of being overtaken by military atheists any time soon.
Neither is it in any danger from the DI. That does not short circuit commentary.
Jordan, thanks for the blatent display of bigotry.
William wrote:
The irony is thick. Jason merely used Holopupenko’s exact words. Maybe you should have a word with H.
William, thank you for proving my point. The reason I put my “bigoted” words in quotes is because they were not my own. I cut & pasted from one of Holopupenko’s posts, merely altering the target of his scorn.
olegt,
I guess it’s only bigotry when they disagree with it.
Jordan, have you followed the trail of exchanges leading to Holopupenko’s post or are you quote mining?
Olegt, exhibit A in support of Holopupenko’s point is the contrast between this blog and the swamp. The behavioral contrast is stark.
William,
I don’t know how well you know Holopupenko, but he has a history of making inflammatory (and, as olegt noted, looooong winded) posts on this blog. But it’s ok, since he’s attacking atheism, right?
I think all of Holopupenko’s points are supportable and have been supported here.
Note that none of them are evaluations of personal character, but rather of argumentation. He didn’t call anyone intolerant or a bigot. He stated his summary assessment of the quality of their positions in debate. I think we have seen a lot of those styles of argumentation here.
William’s 11:55 point is well illustrated here, by the way (see the 11/18, 1:48 am word from “Registered User”). On that one, I did take the advice olegt gave at11:01. But, you know, it does demonstrate a point. I wasn’t involved in that thread there when I received that assessment. Nobody here has ever gotten that kind of treatment. (His comments about me in an earlier thread were even less complimentary, by the way.)
“Don’t waste your time in it”.
Irony tastes so good in the morning, thanks professor Olegt.
William,
You can’t have it both ways. Either those words are bigotry or they aren’t, whoever makes generalizations like that.
Further on my 12:18 comment:
Holo certainly was generalizing and summarizing. Now, if he were saying those argumentation errors were true of every atheist or of every non-believer’s comment, that would be wrong and stereotyped. There is a danger in making generalizations. His comment here could be taken either way, and could stand to be qualified somewhat. For my part I think his overall assessment is true of very many but certainly not all arguments brought here from skeptics and atheists.
Again, though, I note that his generalization was not about the atheists or skeptics, but about their arguments. A person certainly can be bigoted toward another person, but I don’t know how one could be bigoted toward an argument.
Ok, I get it. So it’s alright for me to say that I think the argumentation of Christians is stupid and immoral?
I knew that was coming…
His overall assessment was not only pointed toward the argumentation, it was also rather technical (though still in summary form). Terms like “straw men, fallacious reasoning, bias, … subjective opinions, and ideological presuppositions” are certainly allowed in argumentation. He also used, “human dignity degrading, pseudo-philosophical unscientific nonsense.” Those have to do with the conclusions atheists and skeptics have drawn from their arguments, and it’s certainly arguable (I would certainly argue it!) that philosophical materialism degrades human dignity, and that scientism (if that’s what he was referring to) is pseudo-philosophy and nonsense.
If you say Christians’ argumentation is immoral, I would ask you to back that up with facts and argument, because it’s too general to be of much help in debate. If it’s a point in conversation where a generalization fits, though, I wouldn’t fault you for generalizing, I would probably just disagree. Note that Holopupenko was responding to a generalization that this anonymous commenter made about me, so I think it was one of those rare circumstances where generalizing can be appropriate (though it’s still risky).
If you say Christians’ argumentation is stupid, I would say that’s true of some Christians as it is of some members of every group, but what’s the point? Where does that get you in an argument? Again, it’s a generalization. It’s rare that a generalization is useful in argumentation.
If you say my argumentation is stupid, I would say that’s rather a blunt weapon to use for fine argumentation and I would laugh it off, unless you were really snarky about it. It’s not that hard to tell the difference (this unnamed commenter was being pretty offensive). If you say it’s immoral I would want you to explain, and chances are we wouldn’t agree, but I wouldn’t be offended at you for suggesting it. That happens all the time here.
So in summary, the answer to your question is “Sometimes yes, sometimes no; it depends on how it fits in the argument and how obviously snarky you’re intending to be with it.”
More to the current point, though, note again that Holopupenko used words that typically apply to arguments. The words you’ve suggested (“stupid” and “immoral”) generally apply to people. If you say, “I think the argumentation of Christians is stupid and immoral,” it’s going to take some work on your part to demonstrate that it’s really the argumentation you’re talking about—and that you’re not just trying to sneak in some offensiveness under cover.
How’s this: Christianity is immoral because it degrades human dignity, and it’s stupid because it’s pseudo-philosophical unscientific nonsense.
Am I being civil and tolerant?
No, you’re being snarky. It’s out of context. In the right context I could see that being said without being uncivil: as the prelude to an extended argument, for example. But here you’re just trying to push buttons.
Tom Gilson wrote:
Right. When arguments are characterized as “emotional drivel,” biased, degrading human dignity and nonsensical, that’s not a judgment of people making those arguments. And what about “subjective opinions, and ideological presuppositions brought in by those opposed to faith?” That does not characterize anyone, right?
Actually it identifies the group of arguments of which he is speaking; and furthermore it is relevant to the sweeping generalization made in comment I was responding to in the original post.
What do you mean? Holopupenko said that atheism degrades human dignity and is pseudo-philosophical unscientific nonsense, did he not? And don’t you agree that is it immoral do degrade human dignity, and that pseudo-philosophical unscientific nonsense is, by definition, stupid?
Let me give some perspective to this whole discussion. I wrote a post to comment on the error and irony of someone saying I am unwilling to take criticism, and that all Christians are like that, and that we are bigoted herd-followers.
The discussion now has become about whether Holopupenko’s comment was appropriate. I think he could have been more careful about his generalizations, as I already said, but I also think there are instances of each thing he mentioned that could be found on most threads here, and that he was rather careful to focus on arguments rather than personalities. You may feel free to disagree. But I can’t see how this is making your day or mine any more productive, so I’m going to call a halt to it now.
If you think this represents some pathological unwillingness on my part to face disagreement, please scroll to the top of the page and re-read the original post. Thank you.