Talk:Militant atheism

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This article was militantly merged into antitheism by User:Merzul, please discuss Talk:Antitheism#Dumped a lot of material. --Merzul 15:37, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Much needed ...

There are 60,000 ghits for this term, it needs its own article. NBeale 09:20, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Suggested outline structure for this article

Hi Ttiotsw (and anyone else reading). It's great that we have another editor (from a different PoV) working on this article. I think we can make something fun and interesting and useful together. My thoughts on how this article might be structured are that we could roughly group them into:

  • 1700-1815 (French Revolution and its precursors)
  • 1815-1917 (inc Russian Revolution and its precursors)
  • 1917-1989 (era of communism)
  • 1989-present

What do people think? NBeale 13:16, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

The problem is that though it seems innocuous by presenting a historical framework for enthusiastic sceptical or atheistic views I feel that the purpose is to introduce communism (via Society of the Godless) as a political ideology that goes hand-in hand with so-called militant atheists. But the so-called militant atheists presented so far are not organised in that way. There is no overarching administration, such as say the Holy See or Anglican Communion or a common creed, such as Islam, in which more or less there is a clear identity that people can aspire to or be part of. The "militant atheists" are independent and thus it would be unreasonable to group them in a timeline as we would other organisations. Ttiotsw 17:09, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
Well obviously they re not entirely independent of each other since they tend to quote/cite/influence each other. Of course they aren't a church, but nor are painters or scientists and we need to group them somehow! If we can't do it by timeline then maybe we could group them into:
  • Anglosphere
  • Francosphere
  • Germanic
  • Russian
  • Others

NBeale 19:46, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

  • I am very concerned about the methods that are to be used for gathering material for this article. Who is a militant atheist, and who is the judge of membership of the group? It seems to me that the focus of an article like this must be the term "militant atheism/atheist". The term itself. Those precise words only, plus minor variations like "atheistical militancy". We cannot go down the route of discussing people who (in our various judgements) are or have been atheists of the more "militant" kind, taking in a broad sweep of history from the French Revolution onwards etc. To do this would condemn the artcle to irretrievable original research and point-of-view-pushing, and turn it into a battleground. The article can only safely deal with (a) origins of the term, (b) its use as a pejorative label, (c) its use by those who self-identify as "militant atheists". It's a very loaded term, and must be treated with great respect. The article must tread very carefully. Snalwibma 20:52, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
Hi Snalwimba. I note - though I confess I don't fully understand - the sensitivities. We can only report that people are described by relaible sources as MAs, noting that this may be controversial (and in some cases used perjoratively) unless there are reliable sources that the person self-describes as a MA. However how do we decide whether the term is being used as a perjorative label without doing OR? The reason I started this article by looking at the uses of this term by reliable sources was precisely to avoid this POV stuff, and I think provided we are disciplined and stick to the sources we can do a good job, esp now that we have people from a variety of viewpoints working together on it. NBeale 21:14, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Lead in

I don't think there is evidence to say that this is usually used as a perjorative term (and I def wouldn't regard a citation by Mark Steyn as proof!) and in any case it's OR to say so. Lenin and Carmen Argibay and Joseph McCabe certainly don't use it in that sense. And no-one uses it to mean "people who are more outspoken than the general population on subjects which implicitly promote atheism". Can we stick to the neutral formulation in the lead-in please, and if you want to discuss the perjorative/descriptive aspect perhaps you could make a properly refed section?NBeale 19:52, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

  • You want proof that it's pejorative? Just look at the citations given in that list of "Commentators who use the term" - there is all the evidence you need! Alternatively, look up "militant" in the dictionary. Snalwibma 20:13, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
So Lenin was using it in a perjorative sense?? Also the definition you offer "people who are more outspoken than the general population on the subject of atheism" makes no sense to me at all. I am more outspoken than the general population on the subject of atheism. So am I a "militant atheist"? Furthermore no concievable content by Steyn could substantiate the assertion being made (since it is a subscription only article I can't see what he says, what are you quoting specifically?) we need to stick with the term as actually used by reliable sources, not what we think some people might mean by the term NBeale 21:03, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
I've adjusted this a bit, although perhaps we should go all the way and follow Eskow who is quite specific about what he means and I think his sense is in conformity with all the other commentators(?) NBeale 06:21, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
Excellent! That lead is much better. I had indeed twisted it a bit in doing it rather hastily. In my defence, I did feel it was important to reflect the fact that it can be (a) pejorative or (b) a "badge of honour" (though I'm not altogether happy with that formulation). Your rewrite is a great improvement. But I think the main issue we need to address here is whether the article is needed at all - see below. Snalwibma 06:54, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Oh dear, oh dear ...

I see trouble ahead! POV wars here we come, unless we are extremely careful. This article could so easily become a name-calling roll-call. Admittedly it is only a stub, but the present structure is woeful - just a list of articles in newspapers in which the term has been bandied about, and those who have been described as "militant atheists", almost always pejoratively. It badly needs some historical background, some context, some explanation. I am therefore restoring something of the lead section which mentions the pejorative nature of the term. Also - what on earth is "See also anti-intellectualism" doing there? I will delete this weaselish link! Snalwibma 20:13, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

I'll own up to the anti-intellectualism link. If we were to have the Charles Moore quote denigrating how clever Dawkins et al are then read the Anti-intellectualism#Religious_fundamentalism paragraph and you'll find that the path is well lit by others before Moore. Ttiotsw 20:28, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
OK, now I get it! But on its own, as a solitary "see also" link, it looked as if it was making some kind of point about the intellectual validity of "militant" atheism. Maybe we just need a rather longer list of "see also"s. Snalwibma 20:34, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Talking about "see also"... here are some:

Perhaps some of these could even be merged. --Merzul 20:46, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

  • Hmmm. Looks like a good case for a merge! In particular, atheistic evangelism looks like exactly the same subject. On reflection, I see no justification for two separate articles. Snalwibma 20:56, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
There are 628 ghits for "atheistic evangelism" and over 60,000 for Militant Atheist. And no-one as far as I know self-describes as an "atheistic evangelist". NBeale 21:06, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Title of article

I suggest moving it to Militant atheism (—ism rather than —ist), following Atheism, Theism, Monotheism etc. That way, it is also less likely to start looking like an exercise in name-calling! ;-P Snalwibma 20:40, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Merge?

  1. I think there is a good case for a merger with atheistic evangelism. Maybe that article should in fact be renamed militant atheism, and some content be merged from here. I'm not convinvced of the need for two articles, whatever it's called.
  2. On the other hand... As NBeale says above, it is important to "stick to the sources", and I think that means sticking to the term "militant atheism" itself. And, come to think of it, this tends to push in favour of keeping a separate article on this specific topic, and not merging with atheistic evangelism or anything else! Is there a justification for a slim separate article which covers very precisely the uses of the specific term? Would such a venture in fact be a good way of avoiding the POV and OR pitfalls? Snalwibma 07:06, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Renaming and merging will not so much avoid any POV pitfalls, but it would allow commentary on essentially the same phenomenon to be treated together. These terms are used interchangingly by both sides, so for example Kurtz's editorial equally applies to "militant atheism". I would prefer to see these two articles "militant atheism" and "evangelical atheism" redirect to perhaps big subsections within antitheism, where the historical context can be expanded. I mean, let's not be fooled by what people call themselves, I think the following are just as militant as other outspoken atheists:

It basically depends on what we want here, if we are going to focus very deeply on the usage of each term, then merging is inappropriate, but I don't really care about how these terms are exactly used, I think we can leave that kind of research to lexicographers, and instead focus on the more broader concept of people actively campaigning against theism. This would require some restructuring of the antitheism article, but I think it would end up a far more comprehensive entry for all three terms rather than having separate entries listing their usage. Anyway, now I'm really going off on a wikibreak! :) --Merzul 09:31, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

There are 60k ghits for "Militant Atheist", 32k ghits for "Militant Atheism" and only 632 for "Atheistic Evangelism". So I think the re-titling is questionable and the merge to this scacely-used term would be quite wrong. NBeale 06:19, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

  • I strongly disagree that the move to —ism is "questionable" (well, I would, wouldn't I?). Number of ghits is quite irrelevant. Apart from adherence to normal WP naming conventions, if it's called —ist then it looks like an invitation to let it degenerate into a list of "here are some people who have been labelled militant atheists". If it's called —ism then it more clearly expresses an intention to develop it into an article about the concept, how and when and by whom the term has been used, etc, bringing in some secondary sources and commentators. The problem at the moment is that it is mostly just a list of people who are alleged to be "militant atheists". The "commentators" for the most part are not commentators in any meaningful sense at all, just people who happen to have used the term, in many cases quite casually. If the article is to stay we need some good sources about the concept. I propose to do something about this, but I'd still like to see what others think before jumping in. As for the merge - maybe it's a merge from, not a merge to the scarcely used term. Or maybe not. Let's wait and see what develops by way of discussion (if anything!). Snalwibma 07:29, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] All the terms...

All the various terms used:

Each of these terms have been used in reference to Richard Dawkins. I would prefer a merge of them all into antitheism, which states "An alternative term for this stance is militant atheism but not in a violent militaristic way." On the other hand, have look at feminism... perhaps we should even have cyborg atheism. --Merzul 13:49, 11 April 2007 (UTC) (I have taken the liberty of adding one to your list! Snalwibma)

Excellent, thanks Snalwibma, and I added one more, but still no Cyborg Atheism... --Merzul 18:52, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "Commentators" section

I'd like to wait and see what hapens to these suggestions of renaming and/or merging before doing much to this article. But I am concerned about the section on "commentators". Most of this is a selection of stuff from the popular press which seems to amount to little more than name-calling by atheist and anti-atheist journalists. I don't think much of it meets the criteria for inclusion in a serious encyclopedia. So what if a London psychiatrist who has made a bit of a name for himself in the media applies the label to Richard Dawkins? So what if a Washington journalist writes a blog (and it is, as far as I can see, a blog) in which he uses the term "militant atheist" and possibly (though not very clearly) applies this label to another journalist called Polly Toynbee? Most of this stuff, IMHO, should be shown the door. If the article stays, we need a serious discussion about the use of the term in more noteworthy contexts, not a collection of "oh look, here's another one" selections from the ephemeral press! Snalwibma 12:46, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

This is a serious problem right now, what we need are secondary sources about the term. We need sources that define and discuss the term, not just use the term. This is an important distinction, see further Wikipedia:Avoid neologisms. For us to track usage of terms is of course original research, we need meta-level sources about the term. --Merzul 15:32, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Synthesis

I have tagged this article with the wonderfully brilliant synthesis template. I think I created it specifically for this article, or perhaps it was for self-refuting idea :P But the point is again the same. We need sources who actually say things like "here are a few commentators that use the term", because it is not our job to pick such references ourselves. Once we have a few general sources on militant atheism, its history and usage, I think nobody will object to fleshing it out with a few little extras here and there, but what is disturbing is that this article doesn't have a single reference that would serve to discuss this at secondary level of analysis. --Merzul 02:01, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Hi Merzul. I'm afraid this is a confusion. The tag says "Please help Wikipedia by adding sources whose main topic is "Militant atheism"." Well the article (which was originally about militant atheists) started from a piece called "Militant atheists: too clever for their own good" and also cites "15 Questions Militant Atheists Should Ask Before Trying to "Destroy Religion" so there are 2 already in the article. You seem to think that before we can have an article which uses sources about X we have to have a reliable source which discusses "sources about X" - this is not WP policy and could not be because it leads to an infinit regress. NBeale 07:00, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Merzul, you are absolutely right. I have spent some time looking for the existence of the concept of "militant atheism", and can find nothing other than the phrase (or "militant atheist") being bandied about either as an insult or as a badge of honour. I'd be very interested to hear what others (especially NBeale) have to say about this. Where does the concept exist as a subject, a theme, a social/religious/political commentary? We must have some of this stuff in the article, or it's just empty extracts from non-notable journalistic sounding-off. Snalwibma 07:04, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
(edit clash)Merzul has a good point. At the moment this article is just a name calling list which quite frankly should be deleted. By changing it from ist to ism there is a chance to make this something worth reading. It is a well established term and I would like to see the history of its usage which will of course include examples of how it is used but these will then be in context.
NBeale - try to look at it with fresh eyes - this phrase was not coined to describe Dawkins but the number of examples with his name in them would make the casual reader think so. Sophia 07:12, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
(Comment) - if you look up "militant atheism/ist" on google you do in fact get a lot of Dawkins-related hits! I guess, therefore, that the present slant of the list is a fair reflection of the google-view of the world - but we need to go on from there and ask whether that google-view is the best view for this article to reflect! Snalwibma 07:28, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
  • I am trying to make something of this article, and I sincerely hope we can do so by a process of cooperation. The concept of "militant atheist/ism" is interesting. Who coined it? When? What are its connotations? Who now uses it? Is it ever a neutral term, or is it always loaded one way or the other? Lots of good questions about it - but I can find no answers! I could easily go and do google searches and find lots more examples to add to the list of people who have used the term or had it used about them - but I don't think this is the right way to go. Can anyone come up with a source for the concept as such? I must confess I'm struggling! Snalwibma 07:20, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
  • I have sorted the list of examples into what I hope is a more logical and helpful order. I haven't cut any - though I think much of it could in fact be cut! When you actually follow up the references you find that it's nearly all journalistic and ephemeral fluff with no real substance. It's quite interesting to have a link to Charles Bradlaugh, but when you ask who it was who called him "the first militant atheist in the history of Western civilization" you find that it's actually from some anonymous and blog-like website, not from anything remotely like a reliable source. And the reference to Paul Foot turns out to be just a chance use of the words "militant atheist" in a newspaper obituary. We must do better than this, if the article is to have any future. But where is the material? Snalwibma 09:24, 11 April 2007 (UTC)


Snalwibma, the questions you are asking are precisely what an entry on "Militant atheism" must cover and the direction you are taking the article is very good, I'm not against having this a separate article, if we can answer the questions you are asking and find the material you are looking for. Otherwise, merging doesn't mean we must lose much of the material, but to put it somewhere were such questions can be answered.

Responding to NBeale above. Policy isn't very clear on this issue, it does say "most articles should rely predominantly on secondary sources", but the guideline of neologisms is much clearer, especially this part with some added emphasis by myself:

The second reason is that articles on neologisms frequently attempt to track the emergence and use of the term as observed in communities of interest or on the internet — without attributing these claims to reliable secondary sources. If the article is not verifiable (see Reliable sources for neologisms, below) then it constitutes analysis, synthesis and original research and consequently cannot be accepted by Wikipedia. This is true even though there may be many examples of the term in use.

In any case, this is the appropriate way to do things, and it is not an infinite regress, the distinction is easy. Take the example with "new prog":

  1. Reviewer X calls band Y a "new prog" group in a review published some famous magazine.
  2. The times has a piece saying "And lo! The sound of 2006 will be called — in fact, already has been called — new prog, prog moderne, or crazy prog, which is a funny title, but not terribly descriptive." <--- secondary level of analysis!!!
  3. Wikipedia, being a tertiary source, draws mainly on such secondary level analysis.

Naturally, this is a rough division, it is not always easy to say what is a primary or secondary source. Except some simple cases, e.g. The Bible is always a primary source. And we can naturally also draw from other tertiary sources like the Britannica, but we should not rely too much on creating a narrative by stringing together an original presentation based on such primary level usages of a term. --Merzul 09:36, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Not a Neologism!

However we look at it, a term used by Lenin in 1923 cannot be described as a neologism! NBeale 11:05, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Like "evangelise" (or "gay" I suppose) the context in which it is used also needs to be considered. Older UK-based commentators will be influenced by the antics of the UK Labour militants. Moore's anti-intellectual tirade, though honest, highlights the silo mentality that a system of faith mandates. The same accusation can be levelled at science; interdisciplinary scientists are far and few between and are valuable (is Dawkins such a person ?, is this the cause of the invective i.e. he pops his head, waving his arms, out of his silo ?) but the differences between the silos lie in the self-correction mechanisms. With theistic faith the mechanism functions at a glacial pace in the order of centuries whereas Science adapts as rapidly as new evidence appears. Though Moore found the atheists more believable his approach was to not examine the evidence as presented but to revert to oblique and asymmetrical ad hominem attacks on the atheists. Oblique because they avoided the subject at hand and asymmetrical as they ignored the other side of the debate panel. Moore was doomed by his faith and we should not simply publish any commentator who is simply presenting what is an inevitable side effect of their worldview. To spike this accusation of neologism once and for all we would ideally need a meta-analysis published from a suitable source of how commentators use the term in the context of today. I don't think this has been done. Ttiotsw 12:08, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
Well, of course it's not literally a neologism, but the issues it throws up are very like those covered by the WP policy on neologisms - and those issues are what we need to address if we are to make progress. Snalwibma 12:17, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
Exactly, the idea here is that the various guidelines try to capture different aspects of the very same simple idea: we want to write a quality encyclopedia, and not publish original thought. The spirit of this endeavour is to try to follow analyses that has already been published. This doesn't mean there is no room for creativity, but the issue is to find sources that discuss Lenin's use of the term and puts it in context, perhaps even giving some insight as to why the term is gaining popularity now and what is the present context per Ttiotsw's discussion. --Merzul 12:56, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Secondary level sources

Well, it is hard to find, so let's post here if you do find something:

[edit] List of sources


[edit] Discussion

Ah, well, there might be hope for this. One source about the term's modern usage, but it is quite polemical. --Merzul 13:05, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Seems to be a few sources, I would still very much prefer a merge, as I said above, people are using these terms completely interchangingly to refer to the same phenomenon, I don't see what is the purpose of keeping separate articles for essentially the same issues. This are fringe articles anyway, will remain rather stubby, as opposed to a proper treatment at one place so editor effort isn't dispersed, we don't have so much redundant information. Quality over quantity in short, and we have even section redirects so each term could be redirected to the appropriate section if need be. --Merzul 14:05, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

I have added an article and a book about Soviet militant atheism (neither of which I have seen). Snalwibma 14:36, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Feuerbach?

Who? If this person deserves to be added to the list, we at least need to know who he or she is. The wikilink leads to a disambig page with four or five people listed. Which one is the person in question? And where does he/she fit in to the story? The name is just chucked in, and it doesn't even make syntactical sense. Please (someone who knows) enlighten us and sort it out! Please don't just dump ill-formatted stuff and leave it for others to sort out. Snalwibma 21:42, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

(BTW - I do know who Feuerbach was, so there's no need to tell me here! Just trying to make a point... Snalwibma 06:30, 12 April 2007 (UTC))

And now someone called Charles Baker, from the 1920s but just tacked on at the end of the list, with no consideration for how (or whether) he fits in. Until NBeale comes here and discusses what is best for the article, I will start deleting all these pointless additions. Snalwibma 21:53, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] What's best for the article

Well it's Start Class so that's something at least. The reason I added Baker was because of the "definition" given. I was actually looking for the call by Engels that Lenin cites, but it seems no refs for that are available. I think however that we have essentially the same definition from 1923 and 2007 so we can regard it as an established term. I'd still suggest a structure that went:

  1. Meaning of the term (cite Lenin and Eskow)
  2. MA an exemplified by MAs of the 18thC (defining C by date of death)
  3. 19thC
  4. 20thC
  5. Contemporaies

This would give a logical and NPoV structure from which the article could grow organically. What do people think? NBeale 20:26, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

  • Thanks! Seems very reasonable, if it can be achieved, and if there is actually anything there to grasp hold of. As you will see, I have had a bash at redoing the lead section. Doing my best to give an accurate account. But I'm still stumped by the Big Question: What does the term militant atheism actually mean? Apart from Lenin, it seems to me it has had a shifting meaning, and it is nearly always used in a very Humpty-Dumptyish way. Lots of connotations, no clear denotation, almost universally a loaded term, used as a loaded weapon, to attack or defend rather than to state or define in a neutral manner. Ingrained POV, which the article about it must be careful to avoid absorbing. Snalwibma 21:07, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
Part of that historic outline is already under anti-theism, I don't understand why we need redundant low quality articles, when we could focus efforts on writing a good encyclopaedia. This is ridiculous, we have a secondary source Julian Baggini who say antitheism is sometimes called "militant atheism"... let's merge and write quality articles instead of having to struggle with original research. Repeat after me: Wikipedia is not a publisher of original thought! I am going to merge the relevant information from here into that article, it will begin as a subsection, but perhaps it can be better integrated. --Merzul 15:17, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Anyway, I reached consensus with myself that merging all of this into antitheism is the best way forward. They will all get their subsection to discuss whatever specific material about any particular term, but the above historic outline should be developed for all of them collectively. So there is still a lot of work, but now there is some hope for a quality article, please discuss how to integrate all this material here. Also, if this was too militant, then reverting is very easy, no need to scream at me for being bold, I think this was a genuinely good move, and it is not suppressing any information, it will all be there for everyone to see, but the history can now draw on a lot more sources. --Merzul 15:40, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

  • Comment on the move to Antitheism#Militant atheism - Hi Merzul - you are clearly having a fruitful wikibreak! I was a bit taken aback to find it done, just like that, but on reflection I think it's a good move, and may indeed solve the problems inherent in an article called Militant atheism. The trouble with "militant atheism" is that it's only one way of describing a belief/attitude/set of attitudes which can also be given various other labels, and it has more connotation than denotation. As a standalone it says "there is a thing called MA", and because there really isn't it will end up as a name-calling list. As part of a larger article on Antitheism it says "one label applied in these circumstances is MA", and I think that is a far more accurate reflection of the truth. Same goes for atheistic evangelism etc. Not that I know - I'm only a biologist who stumbled into this stuff by mistake! Snalwibma 06:28, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
Agreed - good move. The term is now in its proper context so the POV name calling issues have gone. It also avoids the undue weight of this minor term having its own article. Sophia 17:03, 15 April 2007 (UTC)