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It’s the Content, Stupid! February 16, 2007

Posted by ocmpoma in : atheism , trackback

A main line of assault in the “mean atheist” wars is the accusation of arrogance. Usually, a battle fought over this particular territory begins with the non-mean-atheists stating that a particular mean atheist is arrogant. The mean atheists then point out that it is not the accused who is arrogant, but rather those who are doing the accusing, especially theists.

As an example, PZ Myers over at Pharyngula has been so accused, and has recently made the counter-accusation. And Kevin Beck carries the battle forward as well. Kevin’s post has two points of main interest for me. The first is an admonition to “[c]onsider the word at face value.”

Very well:

ar-ro-gance
-noun: offensive display of superiority or self-importance; overbearing pride

Now, here’s the thing: I think that, at times, us mean atheists certainly are arrogant. I’m arrogant. In fact, I’m arrogant enough that I’ve got a tag-line about my arrogance (feel free to hijack it, but you damn well better attribute it to me, because it’s my line and I came up with it and I’m more important than your over-inflated sense of self-worth):

“I’m not arrogant, I’m just superior.”

So we are arrogant (at least sometimes). But that brings me to the really big point in Kevin’s post: so what?

I explain that someone wearing a Peter Gibbons-esque cheerful smile and having nothing but kind words for anyone will always be wrong if he says 2 + 2 = 5, and that if I call him a douchebag on wheels and use terms like “donkey punch” in the course of correcting him (thereby mimicking a post about the Discovery Institute’s affably inane Casey Luskin by any number of irritated interlocutors), it doesn’t change who is right; it just changes the input into the popularity contest.

I think the thing that really pisses people off about mean atheists is this: when we’re right, we know we’re right, and we aren’t afraid to let others know that we’re right. We don’t engage in ‘I’m okay, you’re okay’ or ‘live and let live’ — we don’t tolerate idiotic ideas by shrugging them off as an opinion which somehow each of us is entitled to. Instead, we point out the utter absurdity of such ideas, and we do it no holds barred.

I’ve mentioned this kind of thing before, and it’s come up on the forums quite often (most often when a certain AJF tried to point this out to a certain sniveler who insisted that the tone of an argument contributes to its validity). But, it’s worth saying it again, especially since what I say is more important than just about everything else:

It’s the content, not the context, and if you don’t like that, well, boo-fucking-hoo.

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