During the summer I wrote an article about how the concept of the Overton Window can help explain the process radicals use in their task of cultural degredation. Over at Big Think, atheist Adam Lee explains (in much the same way that I did) just how atheists can use this approach:
So, how do you shift the Overton window? The answer is simple: You have to stand outside it and pull. Social change always begins with a few brave people who dare to advocate something previously unthinkable. And most of those first-generation advocates, to be perfectly honest, suffer scorn, ridicule and opprobrium, are often even targets of persecution and violence. But by their mere existence, by their willingness to stand fast on their principles and refusal to compromise, they stretch the boundaries of what the majority considers possible and redefine what counts as the “moderate” position.
With this metaphor in mind, we can more clearly see what the atheism debate is all about. The moderates and accommodationists giving us advice – what they’re really asking is to leave the Overton window where it is, for us to target only the people whom wider society already agrees are wrong. The New Atheists, meanwhile, have a different goal in mind: we believe that as long as religious faith is the accepted and unquestioned default, atheism will never be socially acceptable. By criticizing all faith, we want to shift the Overton window in our direction and make atheism more familiar, more accepted, and therefore more influential. In the long run, that will win us more converts and allies than a strategy of just being nice.
December 13th, 2011 | 9:19 am
Is it better to be a believer of any kind than an atheist? Do theists count as being on “their side” other theists who execute sorcerers, punish women for being raped, shout “God hates f@gs” at military funerals (and win the right to do so in the Supreme Court), murder people for publishing cartoons, shout “God is good!” before detonating the explosives strapped to their bodies, force conversions, fight holy wars, and so on? Are atheists the big threat some seem to regard them as?
December 13th, 2011 | 9:57 am
“Theist” and “atheist” are categories with limited relevance, not least because atheism ascribes to human reason characteristics that fit the normal category of god-likeness. If we are going to use those two categories, we’d be better off calling them “hetero-theists” and “auto-theists:” those who believe god is other vs. those who believe god is self.
Better categories yet are Incarnationalist and Anti-Incarnationalist. Did God become Man? That’s the real question, right? Auto-theists believe instead that man became god, so they’re out, so are the practitioners of all other non-Christian religions.
Anti-Incarnationalists aren’t on “my side,” whether they’re Auto- or Hetero-Theistic.
December 13th, 2011 | 10:02 am
The idea that the mono-theistic religions can make common cause is an embarrassment. They can’t do anything of the sort, not even when their stories overlap. We Christians have only ourselves to blame for perpetuating this nonsense. Atheists get it from us.
December 13th, 2011 | 10:48 am
The fact that people get used to frequently-repeated notions and ideas can be applied by activists of all persuasions.
December 13th, 2011 | 10:51 am
I’ll believe they’re really using this strategy when I stop seeing moral arguments used to support atheism, which seems to be a large part of the anti-apologetic that’s in vogue these days. Moral arguments don’t help you fend off bloodthirsty war gods, or gods of deceit and trickery, or what have you. They’re only aimed at gods who claim to embody good, but fail to do so according to certain assumptions.
Besides what Matt said.
December 13th, 2011 | 11:05 am
“Are atheists the big threat some seem to regard them as?” asks David Nichol
This calls to mind a great debate that took place about a century ago, between the New Thomists and the founders of the Nouvelle Théologie.
The New Thomists, following Suarez’s interpretation of St Thomas had allowed the political sphere a wide degree of autonomy, with its own “natural end” Thus, the Jesuit Professor Pedro Descoqs argued that the political views of Charles Maurras, an avowed atheist, were independent of his views on religion and that they coincided with Catholic social teaching, so that with proper precautions Catholics could associate themselves with his movement. Maurras’s mistake about the supernatural did not prevent his analysis of the natural from being quite accurate.
The Oratorian, Laberthonnière had retaliated by accusing Descoqs of being influenced by “a false theological notion of some state of pure nature and therefore imagined the state could be self-sufficient in the sense that it could be properly independent of any specifically Christian sense of justice.”
Maurice Blondel agreed with Descoqs only on the point that the basic issue was the relationship between nature and the supernatural. In Descoqs’s conclusion, he saw a perfect illustration of the theological extrinsicalism which made the supernatural simply a superficial addition to the natural order, leaving the latter essentially untouched and related to the supernatural only by an external decree of God. For Blondel, nature was made for the supernatural, and a failure to recognize that sublime destiny could not leave one’s analysis of the natural laws of society unaffected. He called himself an “integralist” precisely because religion is comprehensively, inclusively pertinent to the human condition in all its aspects.
So far as I know, this exchange, which appeared in Blondel’s periodical, L’Annales de philosophie chrétienne, has never appeared in English, which is astonishing, as it was what united such disparate thinkers as Blondel, Maréchal, the Dominicans, Chenu and Congar and the Jesuits, Lubac and Daniélou. It was a fundamental moment for the Nouvelle Théologie, much as Keble’s Assize Sermon had been for the Oxford Movement.
December 13th, 2011 | 12:45 pm
pentamom –
Atheists don’t tend to spend much time arguing against unicorns or trolls under bridges, either. On the other hand, there isn’t an “Office of Unicorn-Based Programs” in the White House, and none of the political arguments about maintaining our infrastructure revolve around caring for the needs of trolls.
You appear to be faulting atheists for prioritizing…
December 13th, 2011 | 1:48 pm
But Ray, if the project is really to undermine the *concept* of theism, then my point applies. Your point applies if the project is to undermine *theists.*
Moral arguments provide absolutely no reason not to believe in some sort of deistical being. They only service to undermine specific people’s beliefs. Is that really what atheists are trying to do? Is their purpose really to take something from people, or is it to prove a point that they believe is demonstrable?
December 13th, 2011 | 3:04 pm
pentamom –
What general argument would undermine the entire concept of theism? Can you come up with an example? Bear in mind just how many possible conceptions there are.
Most atheists say that they don’t believe in God(s) because the positive cases for God(s) don’t work, like the positive cases made for Bigfoot. (To take a not-so-random-example, see here.)
Addressing the most common positive cases first makes the most sense. For example, I’m not surprised that the Catholic Church spends a lot of time addressing secularism these days, and not so much on Montanism.
December 13th, 2011 | 3:12 pm
But how does an argument that only works with certain cases of theism, but leaves others untouched (even if they’re rare today, despite having been near universal 2000 years ago) really do much for getting rid of the “positive case for theism?”
“For example, I’m not surprised that the Catholic Church spends a lot of time addressing secularism these days, and not so much on Montanism.”
But now I think you’re proving my point. The Catholic Church has a duty to protect its flock. Its goal is not to get everyone to stop disbelieving in other things; its goal is to get people to believe *in something,* and in particular, the true things (from the church’s perspective) versus the false ones. But atheism has no such goal. So they’re acting a lot more like they have a duty to de-religionize people even while allowing them to maintain false beliefs from their perspective (like “it would be plausible to believe in God if the stories about Him were different”).How does that serve their cause, rather than merely hurt the cause of others?
December 13th, 2011 | 3:38 pm
Addressing the most common positive cases first makes the most sense. For example, I’m not surprised that the Catholic Church spends a lot of time addressing secularism these days, and not so much on Montanism.
Perhaps Ray has stumbled upon it. The Catholic Church is engaging in a generations long conspiracy to shift the ‘Overton’ window in order to respark a craze for Montanism! The whole discussion about secularism is just stage one of this diabolically insideous and subtle plan!
More seriously, the problem with the “Overton Window” idea is that it neglects mortality. A person thinks about an issue and comes to a conclusion about what the ‘right answer’ is. He wants to see others accept his answer and pat him on the back for being right. He’d rather see this today than generations from now.
That plus cartoon villians and Marxist theory aside, society is hardly predictable. A seemingly tiny attempt to move ‘the window’ may generate a counter-reaction in the opposite direction. Or, quite often, the ‘window’ is hardly on a one dimensional spectrum. Several hundred years ago, the ‘window’ might be about whether or not a country should have a monarchy and how much power the monarch should have. Today monarchy isn’t even a subject of debate but historical analysis.
You can use the window as an analytical device to see how public opinions shift over time, I suppose. Using it as anything else, though, simply leads to the false impression that the people you disagree with:
1. Don’t honestly hold the opinions they are expressing, its all part of their ‘secret plan’ to enact some other agenda….hence you need not really give any consideration or credit to their arguments.
2. Are masterminds of manipulation who are at war with your values, therefore you are justified in using any and every tool you can grab for self defense. If your arguments are dishonest, deceptive, incoherent, or illogical, there is nothing wrong with that if you think they might work. All’s fair in love and war so to speak. You have unlimited justification to use all available means to win your case.
December 13th, 2011 | 3:42 pm
we believe that as long as religious faith is the accepted and unquestioned default, atheism will never be socially acceptable.
In other words, they see this as zero-sum, not as a situation where Christianity and atheism can “coexist”.
They demand the right to do unto Christians what they claim Christians do unto them. Because Christians are bad, because Christians don’t “coexist”.
Of course, the real problem is that Christians have done too much “coexisting”, not too little.
December 13th, 2011 | 3:47 pm
Atheists are a minority, yet want nothing less than to be the “default”.
Of course, some of them want to banish all other belief systems altogether. But whether they’re capable of tolerating the existence of Christians – or whether they’re too full of rage at Christianity and Christians to be able to do so – either way, they rely on being the “default” because their arguments all have that hole in the middle: their arguments only make sense if you accept their faith-based assumptions as true. That means they need to be the default, or else they can’t present themselves as logical (rather than as being just as faith-based as the ones they contrast themselves against).
That, and they resent and covet the fact that Christianity has a majority, and that Christianity has the history and the traditions they wish they had, and that Christianity has the cool holidays.
December 13th, 2011 | 9:28 pm
In other words, they see this as zero-sum, not as a situation where Christianity and atheism can “coexist”.
Curious how you get that from a desire to see religion not accepted as ‘the default’. Certainly religion can be ‘not the default’ yet still exist. In fact, if that was the case the quality of religion would no doubt be higher since those who were religious would really be religious and not merely ‘accepting the default’.
But anyway an argument is by definition ‘zero-sum’. If someone doesn’t think God exists then he is either right or wrong. He may co-exist with someone who thinks God does exist just as the winning football team co-exists with the losing team but the fact is the argument is quite zero sum. Either God exists or he doesn’t.
Of course, the real problem is that Christians have done too much “coexisting”, not too little.
Ahhh yes, cheesey threats. Tell us who’d you like to cease co-existing with, please.
Atheists are a minority, yet want nothing less than to be the “default”.
Technically agnosticism would be a ‘default’ that is neither atheism nor religion….and is probably more of a real majority in the US.
But again that is kind of the idea of an argument. A person believes something to be true and desires to convince others that he or she is right. Should atheists not want to convince a majority that they are right? Do Christians not want to convince non-Christians that they are right? It would be very hard to have much respect for either if the answer was ‘no’.
That, and they resent and covet the fact that Christianity has a majority, and that Christianity has the history and the traditions they wish they had, and that Christianity has the cool holidays.
I think this reveals less about atheists than about the poverty of your type of superficial Christianity. Does Christopher Hitchens really want to have a ‘cool holiday’? I suspect he, like many atheists is perfectly happey with Christmas trees and exchanging gifts with family and friends in December. Did the very first Christians have lots of history and traditions? History, traditions, and cool holidays are all well and good but come in a distant second place to the questions of fundamental truth. At least to non-silly people.
December 13th, 2011 | 9:31 pm
Boonton — it’s an atheist poster himself who is recommending the conscious use of the Overton Window by atheists, not to analyze, but as a tactic. So I don’t think this is about using to analyze what someone else is doing, in order to prejudicially characterize them.
December 13th, 2011 | 11:42 pm
I think Joe’s use of the Overton Window here is inconsistent.
The atheist process he describes below is basically in the form of “Society believes X, small group believes Y”. The ‘Overton Window’ is just a fancy way of saying the small group will stick to their beliefs and hope, in a tug of war, to move the rest of society (or at least more of society) away from X and towards Y. In this case, Joe’s insight is that people who disagree with each other will attempt to convince each other that they are right. Not exacty news there.
His original use of the Overton Window was more creative, but much less plausible. In that use, a ‘radical’ seeking to move the window will take on a position he doesn’t actually favor in order to make his real position more socially acceptable.
The example Joe tries and wants to use here is SSM. In his vision, a ‘radical’ hates marriage and would like to replace it with something else (say some type of hippie free-love system). The radical, knowing that society won’t consider this, doesn’t propose it directly. Instead he proposes some other idea, such as ‘let gays marry each other’. The radical’s strategy here is premised on the assumption that society will be more willing to entertain this idea than the True Idea that the radical wants. So the radical may pose not as someone who disputes, say, monogamy but someone who supports it. He may say something like “monogamy is great, SSM will encourage gays to be more monogamous too!”. His plan is, of course, that society will adopt SSM and at some point he will be able to say “look monogamy, marriage all this ain’t working….we need to try something like hippie free-love!” At this point, of course, society will say “yes let’s do that, great idea!” because the magical ‘Overton Window’ has been shifted by our crafty and sly radical friend.
You may notice some flaws in this master plan. For example, won’t someone likely notice that the radical was originally singing the praises of mongamy? Won’t this make it more difficult for him to sell a hippie-free love plan? Won’t people who also want hippie-free love want to dispute the radical in the present? How will the radical ‘let them in on the secret plan’ without it being exposed? Or how about the Hudsucker Proxy possibility? Namely that it works, gays love the idea of monogamy and whether or not SSM is successful the idea of monogamy becomes even more popular thereby making it even harder for the radical to ‘spring’ his real idea (The Hudsucker Proxy, BTW, is a delightful movie…Paul Newman plays an evil member of the board of directors of a very successful company. when the beloved President kills himself, he hatches a plot to take over the company. He will ensure a complete idiot is installed as President. As the company’s stock value sinks, he and his allies will buy up the shares cheap, oust the President and control the company. The guy they find, Tim Robbins, has a crazy idea for a toy called the ‘hula hoop’. Instead of bombing, the company becomes even more proftable pushing its stock price up instead of down.)
If Joe really understood the Overton Window concept, he’d understand why its hawked by cranks like Glen Beck. The Overton idea really means that someone is pushing something not because they want that thing, but they want something else. For example, it’s like saying Karl Rove isn’t a disgusting right winger because, he’s well a scumbag who happens to be rightwing. He’s a right wing scumbag because he wants to make the right so repulsive that the ‘Overton Window’ shifts to the left to benefit Obama and the Occupy Wall Street Crowd. Or its like saying Blake opposes SSM because he’s a covert gay rights advocate who seeks to discredit anti-gay rights advocates by making them appear incoherent and illogical. Pushing the Overton Window idea means, if you’re serious about it, entering a conspiracy ridden world where nothing is really how it seems and society instead of being really complex is in fact really simple, manipulated by master players who can move simple pieces around like they were playing some very abstract game of chess.
But then I don’t think that’s what Overton Window types really want to use the concept for. They want to use the concept to dismiss those they disagree with. To say to the person advocating atheism that they aren’t really advocating atheism, their real agenda is something else and atheism is just a stepping stone to get there…therefore they need not bother addressing any atheist arguments…they aren’t ‘real arguments’ anyway. In other words, its basically a cop out to deploy when you’re arguments have become tired and run down and you’re unwilling to re-examine them.
December 14th, 2011 | 5:55 am
Pentamom
Boonton — it’s an atheist poster himself who is recommending the conscious use of the Overton Window by atheists, not to analyze, but as a tactic.
If you read carefully, the ‘tactic’ described is basically “I believe X, therefore I shall try to convince people who believe ‘not X’ that X is right”. The ‘Overton Window’ aspect of this used by the atheist poster is simply the observation that if more people believe X, X will become more popular and acceptable.
December 14th, 2011 | 6:28 am
Pentamom, thinking about your comment on the other thread about fashion increasing its range of diversity over the last few decades that leads me to note another Overton issue.
The concept would be more useful if there was good reason to think the size of the window was fixed but I can’t come up with any reason for this. A ‘fixed window’ would mean that if you advocate the idea “atheists aren’t bad” you’re going to ‘pull the window over’ which means that for every person you get to buy the notion that “atheists aren’t bad” you’re going to get one person to adopt the notion “theists are bad”….
But there seems to be no particular reason this is so. It seems just as likely that ‘pulling the window’ on one side will just stretch it open leading the range of ‘acceptable opinions’ to increase rather than simply shift.
December 14th, 2011 | 8:46 am
pentamom –
Here you miss my point. The problem is positive case for theisms, plural. Let’s face it – Buddhist theism has significant differences from Hindu theism, and both are quite different from any of the several forms of Western monotheism. And then there are odd ducks like Mormonism and so forth.
I ask you again – what would a general argument that covered all those theisms look like? Can you give me an example?
There’s two aspects to this. It’s possible to be sure that something is wrong without being sure what exactly is right. C.f. pretty much all of science. It’s far easier to disprove something than to make a positive case. One solid observation can be enough.
For example, I don’t know how to cure cancer. But we can be sure at this point that remote intercessory prayer and coffee enemas don’t cure cancer. I can also be pretty sure about “antineoplaston therapy”.
Where you sort of have a point is on the psychological level. Again we can look to science, where even a lot of very solid observations doesn’t always convince people to abandon incorrect ideas. C.f. Kuhn and paradigms. In some areas, people need, or at least want, a concrete alternative to turn to before they’ll give up on a disproven scheme.
It might surprise you to know that various atheists disagree over these topics, too.
December 14th, 2011 | 10:22 am
Ray
The problem is positive case for theisms, plural. Let’s face it – Buddhist theism has significant differences from Hindu theism, and both are quite different from any of the several forms of Western monotheism. And then there are odd ducks like Mormonism and so forth.
Logically this is possible if all or most theisms share some common element and that a positive case could be made for that element. That wouldn’t tell you *which* theism but it would tell *a* theism was better than atheism.
Let’s use a slightly different example. Suppose it is absolutely proven true that Jesus was in fact cruicified and did in fact rise from the tomb after death. Suppose only that is proven true beyond a doubt. That would be a pretty strong case for ‘a Christianity’ but wouldn’t tell you ‘which Christianity’ was true. Moments after such a ‘proof’ is demonstrated, Roman Catholics, Baptists, Anglicans, Gnostics, Mormons, Eastern Orthodox and other Christians of all types will say “yes yes we told you so” and continue to disagree between each other on doctrine.
Of course whether you can find some common element that applies to ‘all theisms’ that could also be demonstrated true is another story.
December 14th, 2011 | 11:10 am
“I ask you again – what would a general argument that covered all those theisms look like? Can you give me an example?”
Any argument that made the case that the concept of any higher deity is unreasonable, would work. In fact, atheists use arguments that apply to the general case of theism *all the time.* I just think it’s self-defeating of them to also use those that only apply to specific versions of it, because that actually does nothing to defeat the concept of deity, which is what I would think an atheist would be interested in doing. They haven’t really persuaded people to “believe in” atheism if they haven’t actually demolished the concept of deity, rather than merely demolishing an individual’s ability to believe their specific, previously held version. And I dunno, it just seems to me that if the project of atheism is all about believing that which is intellectually sound, they’d want to get people to the purported intellectually sound view that deity is unreasonable, not merely that your version doesn’t work, but some other conceivably could.
December 14th, 2011 | 11:23 am
pentamom – So, I take it that your advice to someone who wanted to promote “evidence-based medicine” would be, “Don’t spend any time specifically debunking homeopathy, no matter how many people buy into it?”
December 14th, 2011 | 6:32 pm
I think this reveals less about atheists than about the poverty of your type of superficial Christianity. Does Christopher Hitchens really want to have a ‘cool holiday’?
I don’t know, I’ve never talked to Christopher Hitchens, but dying tends to change one’s perspective.
However, I’ve talked to lots of atheists who aren’t shy about admitting that it really enrages them that our historical tradition & Christianity are so entwined. I have heard atheists talk about ways to steal what rightfully belongs to Christianity, and I have heard the various ways in which they justify their hatefulness.
Of course I was not speaking of my own view of the holidays, impoverished or not – not unless we’re talking about holidays as I saw them when I was still hanging out with those people. Someday, most of the atheists I know and knew will hopefully grow up, resolve their parent-authority issues, and stop having to project those issues onto the big bad Christians…until then, atheists will continue to be stuck with the reality that Christmas does mean something, but it’s like the fabled magic penny: when you try to grab (steal) it, it disappears.
December 15th, 2011 | 10:48 pm
Whether or not Hitchens changes his mind about religion is irrelevant. Hitchens has a body of work arguing for atheism and whatver you can say about it, I don’t think ‘cool holiday envy’ is in anyway the gist of it.
If atheists become more and more numerous in a society, I would suspect the ‘cool holidays’ would be preserved because, well ‘cool holidays’ work on their own. Today Halloween and New Years Eve/Day are essentially secular ‘cool holidays’ with no religious overtones of any sort for most people (although you’ll find a few who celebrate the first as All Saint’s Day as well as the second….and of course there are religious types). This is essentially not all that different than what Christians did, adopting and retooling pagan holidays as their own. Stealing is a pretty harsh word for it since I’m sure you’d find even original pagan holidays were by no means stable. Besides, how exactly do you ‘steal a day’? Whether you celebrate Dec 25th as the birth of Christ or as a day to swap gifts or as a day you became an atheist, it will remain nestled on the calendar between the 24th and 26th, totally unstolen.
Links
Blogs
Find Us
Contact