Bumped into a random asshole atheist today.

[conuly]

I hate asshole atheists more than any other assholes, because I want atheists to be better than that.

This one went a step further than "sky daddy" and "imaginary friend" straight into "witch doctors" and "shamans". Yay bonus racism :(

(He now is doubling down into "totes not racism!!!" territory, but he knows what he did. Asshole.)

Comments

[siderea]

I don't understand what's hilarious or disagreeable or whatever about that? Is it that you find the idea of atheists having ritual incongruous?

[firecat]

There's nothing disagreeable about it, and I'm fine with atheists having rituals. But if they specifically recreate religious rituals with minor changes and their attitude is "ha ha, we showed those religious types" (which seemed to be the attitude, based on what I heard from the guy who told me about it) it seems to me like they're not thinking it through very far. I feel the same way about pagan rituals that feature sermons, if the pagans in question are particularly anti-church. OK you're anti-church, but don't you see that you're doing the same thing that's done in church. Wearing antlers with your robes doesn't make as much of a difference as you think it does.

I'm open to hearing that I'm mistaken.

[conuly]

Well, "a moment of noise" sounds less "hah, let's stick it to them" and more fun.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, I only got the "ha let's stick it to them" interpretation from the guy who told me about it.

[siderea]

You're mistaken. :) But the thing you're mistaken about is not the obvious thing. You're not wrong that sometimes other religions or other cultural movements do indeed choose to do exactly the same thing as Christians do in their worship.

Why shouldn't they?

After all, nobody (I trust) thinks using music in worship or more generally in ceremonies is specifically and exclusively a characteric of Christian worship – even though (she says with her music historian hat on) Christianity has a truly vast and rich musical heritage. But Christianity doesn't own singing devotional works. Nobody suggests that by having music in worship other faiths are mimicking Christianity (even when they are) and nobody suggest that using perfectly secular music in perfectly secular circumstances is some how just "doing church".

Well, in exactly the same way, giving sermons is not somehow owned by Christianity (if nothing else, Judaism has been doing it longer). Nor is having fancy buildings and altars and devotional objects and incense. Or having weekly get-togethers at a regular time. Or having holidays, or funerals or weddings or coming-of-age rites. Or moral philosophy.

Now, there are plenty of Christians who will claim Christianity does, in fact, own those things, and none of those things exist outside of Christianity except by people aping Christianity. That is simply factually wrong, and even the least acquaintance with comparative religion reveals. It is also really offensive: that's white supremacism in action. It's one of the core contentions of white supremacism that the culture, including Christianity, developed by white people is the best of all cultures and nobody else has ever developed as good a culture, certainly never developed any of the same cultural elements independently, and that consequently, if you see something good in another culture, it can be automatically assumed they got it from European Christians. Call it the "if they wear shoes, they must have learned about it from us" assumption. That's an extremely rude and prejudicial assumption for them to make.

That said, sometimes peoples look at Christianity and say, "Hey, that's really cool! We should do that too!"

And I don't see any reason they shouldn't. In fact, I think it's practically a moral responsibility. As I've been telling my fellow atheists for a couple of decades now, just because I don't believe in Zeus doesn't mean I refuse to use electricity. We definitely should be inspecting any bathwater for babies. It is arguably incumbent upon us to do so.

There's a point of confusion: there are plenty of atheists, typically but not exclusively those who are recently "deverted" from Christianity, who furiously reject any trappings of, well, anything that reminds them too much of the worship of their childhoods. (I sometimes get this from my sweetie, who will say of music I'm listening to, "That sounds like churchy music", and I'll be like, "Well, yes, it was originally written for a Catholic mass by Catholic clergy, but the version playing now is the one with the lyrics about 'I have the hots for the sexiest woman in Paris and I will die if we don't get it on'.")

They can be pretty vocal about how atheism is great because it doesn't have any of that churchy nonsense. And they're not wrong that atheism absolutely does mean you don't have to have anything to do with anything you don't like about church worship. But it also means you are completely welcome to adopt any of those things you do like. Atheism doesn't require that we eschew those things.

You know what does? Christianity. (And Judaism. Maybe Islam too.) Historically it was a really big deal in Christianity that Christians not appear to be engaging in other relgions' religious practices. For instance, I'm reliably told that this made the use of music in worship in the very early Church extremely controverial, because pagan worship used music heavily. (Judaism is even more hardcore about this, having explicit rules against ever doing anything that would seem to third parties like participating in another religion, but that didn't pass into the general culture.) The other really obvious place it shows up is that syncretism thing, where as Christianity spread across Europe, local pagan shrines and observances were "converted" into saints. This served the very pragmatic purpose of allowing converts to continue to engage in devotional activities they cherished from their previous religion without appearing to endorse a religion other than Christianity. It allowed Christianity to continue to insist that its members not appear to follow other religions.

To this day, it's a largely unspoken but still very present part of Christianity that it's important not to look like one is following another religion. And that – especially in conjunction with the white supremacy I describe above – discourages adopting others' cultural practices as "unchristian".

A lot of people (not just Christians) just accept without really thinking that, well, of course, it's super important to make sure one's religion look totally distinct from others, and project that on all religions. Nope, that's specific to certain religions, not all of them, and certainly not to all philosophical traditions. There's nothing essential about religion or theism more broadly that requires one have that concern.

[firecat]

I agree with everything you say about religious rituals. I like your points about Christianity trying to look unique when it's not.

I also think you're applying what I said way more broadly than I intended it to be applied.

I think atheists doing a ritual moment of noise is hilarious.

I think hostilely rejecting Christian practices and then using those same practices in your rituals is ironic.

I don't think: religions shouldn't copy each other's rituals. "A moment of noise" is the same as music. Christianity is the only religion with sermons. Etc.

[conuly]

I think specifically having a "moment of noise" is hilarious - in a very self-aware way.

Simply having rituals isn't funny in and of itself, of course.