Since I moved to the Freethought Blogs network, I have a bunch of new readers who aren’t familiar with my greatest hits from my old, pre-FTB blog. So I’m linking to some of them, about one a day, to introduce them to the new folks.
A nifty pull quote:
What would you think if someone made this argument to a person of a different faith? “Sure, you believe in Judaism now — but when your plane is going down, you’ll turn to your Lord and Savior Jesus Christ”? Would you think that was an appropriate thing to say?
Or would you think it was religious bigotry, pure and simple? Regardless of what you personally believe about Jesus Christ and his ability to comfort people during plane crashes… would you renounce this argument as insensitive and tone-deaf at best, callous and inhumane at worst?
So how it is any different to make this argument to atheists?
And the “You’ll change your tune when you’re looking death in the face” trope has a Schadenfreude quality to it that is truly ugly. It takes a sadistic, “I told you so” glee in the potential suffering of others. There’s an almost hopeful quality to it that’s deeply unsettling. “Someday, you’ll be sick and dying with a terrible illness, or you’ll be in a terrifying accident, or the person you love most in the world will be gone from your life forever… and then I’ll be proven right! Then you’ll know the glory and majesty of the Lord! In your face!”
Tell me that’s not an actual book…
Alas, Katherine, it’s real all right. Apparently, McLaughlin is not only a chaplain, but a naval chaplain. Speaking as a former infantryman (and a lifelong atheist), my gut reaction to any chaplain who claims there are no atheists in foxholes is “what the fuck do you know about foxholes, asshole?” For a naval chaplain, doubly so.
Hm, I appear to have messed up that link; let’s try again.
No Atheists in Foxholes by Chaplain Patrick McLaughlin
“So how it is any different to make this argument to atheists?”
This is an interesting point which had never occurred to me before. It’s that familiar thing that people think their particular religion is the one, true path … but, at a pinch, any religion will do.
My response in the past to the ‘foxhole’ line before has always been to say ‘oh … come on, I know *most* wars are sectarian religious violence, but I think you’re being harsh on believers, there, not every soldier is a religious zealot, like you’re suggesting’.
But I like Greta’s “Sure, you believe in Judaism now — but when your plane is going down, you’ll turn to your Lord and Savior Jesus Christ?” line … the problem with it is, yes, that is what a lot of Christians think: that everyone’s secretly a Christian deep down, and we’re just being obtuse when we say we’re not.
Can I suggest a variation on this. If someone says it, throw it back at them with their own religion. Like this: ‘So are you saying that all religions are interchangeable, or do you mean “there are no non-Lutherans in foxholes”?’.
Goddists in foxholes do cry out to Jebus, Vishnu and/or Huitzilopochtli. It’s considered more macho or manly than crying out to Mommy.
Actually, by all accounts, when the fear of death looms really large, all soldiers do cry out to their mothers. At that point, even the theists acknowledge that their mothers actually exist and did infinitely more for them than the Invisible Sky-Daddy.
Hmmmm … I don’t mean to criticize the individuals, and I agree with the sentiments, but those last two posts made me feel uncomfortable. Talking about what people think and say in a moment of utter desperation … it’s cruel.
And that, I think is the really unpleasant thing about the ‘no atheists in foxholes’ line. Not that it’s, well, wrong (many atheists were born on the battlefields of the World Wars, many moments of horror have made people conclude there’s no God), or even that it’s sadistic. Just that it’s … intrusive. I doubt I’ll ever end up in a foxhole, but I’ve been in a hospital and seen a husband praying for his dying wife, I had no urge whatsoever to run up to him and explain that there’s probably no God, so why not just get on with his life. The *need* some religious folk have to intrude is … nasty.
Sitting at a laptop licking your lips as you dwell on the thought processes of people at the extreme end of human suffering, magically inferring that what they think *has* to coincide with your own prejudices … what sort of person would do that?
The issue for me isn’t atheists in foxholes, it’s asshole fucks in theism.
Actually, I’m not “magically inferring” a damn thing; I’m basing myself on my own experiences as an infantryman and on historical accounts of battlefield experiences. And if I may say so, your remarks about “licking [one’s] lips” and “what sort of person would do that?” seem rather at odds with your initial claim that you “don’t mean to criticize the individuals.”
Jurjen, I’m sorry – I’m not criticizing you, or singling you out, I understand why it looks like I am.
The whole area, whether it’s my side doing it or – as is more usually the case, the other side – just seems distasteful to me. When Christians do it, it seems to be as some kind of sadistic gotcha, rather than as some piece of empirical evidence.
My favourite counter to this “argument” is a slight inversion of the “wishful thinking” response you mention in your post.
“So, what you’re saying is that, when people are under a great deal of stress, and thinking less clearly and rationally than normal, then they’re more likely to believe in religion? And you think this is an argument in favour of religion … why?”
I have been minutes from death, and I didn’t cry out to any gods. I didn’t hear anyone but the doctors and nurses, didn’t sense anything supernatural.
Lies, lies, lies.
I’m not sure the quote was *meant* as an affirmation of faith originally, either (there seems to be some dispute as to who said it first).
Apart from the sadism, apart from the vicarious prurience, apart from the kicking a man when he’s down, I think the thing that really gets my goat is that it’s anti-intellectual, anti-rational. At heart, aren’t the people who champion it saying “you’ll forget all that fancypants book-learnin’ about the problem of evil when you’re about to die”? With a side order of “you’ll be wanting real men to do yer fighting, not those namby-pamby godless guys”.
It depends on what exactly the accusation is. If it sounds: (a) “no one – literally no one – remains an atheist when looking death in the face”, then I agree: it’s simply and plainly false. To falsify such a strong claim, just a single counterexample is clearly enough.
I’m not sure if the believers really take it that way. Perhaps when pressed, they would say (b) “Oh no, don’t be so literal – what we wanted to say is that typically atheists do not remain atheists when looking death in the face”. I have no idea whether such a claim is true or false (a handful of examples is clearly not enough neither to verify nor to falsify it). On the other hand, the believers who are making it also don’t have anything to support their claim apart from some anecdotal stuff (at least that’s what I presume). So you could safely respond that their accusation is groundless, and that’s it. (Unless you have yourself some good, non-anecdotal justification for your claim that “deathbed/ foxhole conversions to religion are really pretty rare”?)
Now, your main point seems to be that the whole argument is “callous and insensitive”. That’s a rather weak criticism, because even if you are right about it (and I’m not completely sure you are), it might be possible to reformulate it, to present it in a way which is not “callous and insensitive” any more, without Schadenfreude, but still with the same content and the same force as before. In short: I think that “callous and insensitive” is more about the form than about the content. A reformulated accusation could be: “on average, atheism is an ideology of the rich and the safe. Offering it to the world as a proposed norm is a misguided idea, because (again on average) it’s bound to fail and do more damage than good – people after all won’t be safe and rich forever. So why be engaged in a such a futile endeavor?”
(I’m offering the above very tentatively; it’s probably just a result of my unfortunate habit (fetish?) of trying to make bad arguments look a bit better. Of course it’s still not good enough because I’m not aware of any decent arguments for (b).)
“A reformulated accusation could be: “on average, atheism is an ideology of the rich and the safe. Offering it to the world as a proposed norm is a misguided idea”
How about we just strive to make the world rich and safe as an end in itself, and see what happens to the ideologies that thrive on the poor and vulnerable?