Penn Jillette, on why he appreciates when people try to proselytize him. (Penn, of course, is an atheist. You knew that, right?)
This was a point of contention between myself and one of my professors during college. He insisted that he deeply respected everyone’s religious practice so long as it never advocated proselytism. I argued that his two positions were incoherent; you can’t hold deep respect for a practitioner of a religion while telling them that you won’t tolerate the straightforward outworkings of their faith. You might as well tell an Orthodox Jew that you were okay with whatever dietary laws they wanted to obey so long as it didn’t stop them from eating bacon. The most basic form of respect for religion is taking its truth claims seriously—even if that means rejecting them.
I rag on Dawkins, Hitch, et al. for being lightweights compared to the old guys, but I’m deeply appreciate that they treat religious truth claims as legitimate. I hope this hearkens the painful death of that banal line of liberal arts atheism: “God almost certainly doesn’t exist, it’s fine for you to believe it if it helps you make it though your life.” That’s not respectful; that’s patronizing. I don’t care if you’re talking to a guy in a diner wearing a trucker hat who thinks Benny Hinn cured his plantar warts, you just don’t say that. If this guy is believing something that’s utterly and perniciously false, teaching it to his children, and squandering his brief life on a lie, saying it’s fine isn’t polite. It’s just a smarmy “fuck you.” And trucker hat or not, that guy probably realizes it.
Atheists, Penn’s advice is a sword that cuts both ways. How much do you have to hate a religionist not to try to proselytize them?
If you know me, you’ve heard me say this before: over the past century, religion and irreligion have both become brain-dead. The New Atheists, despite being an improvement over the silly “tolerant atheists,” are look like sarcastic 8th graders next to Hume or Diderot. The old leaders made arguments, and the new leaders make quips. Why? Because there are no smart atheists left? No, because intelligent argument is no longer marketable. We don’t need a way to deepen conversations; we already killed them all. All we need are some good drive-by slogans to prevent any new ones from starting. Religion is in the same situation; guys like N.T. Wright are writing brilliant stuff, but the market’s answer is, “Yes, how interesting. If I find myself forced to talk to someone who disagrees with me, perhaps I can read this book loudly to keep from having to hear him talk.”
What this world needs is a lot more serious interaction between people who violently disagree. If someone wants call it disrespectful or, gods forbid, some kind of proselytism, let ‘em. We’re trying to have a conversation here.
3 years ago