LINK The necessity of secularist small dissent
Overview:
Secularists should not remain silent when religious people offer opinions but should rejoin with small, pleasant disagreement.
Secularists often say nothing when they should really speak up.
Sometimes taciturnity is merely manners, perhaps thought of as good manners. There is no need to mar a dinner party with a sharp and disagreeable remark, right? No need to set the table on a roar with a cutting witticism offered at a guest’s or a host’s expense.
But how many opportunities are lost for the secularist to offer small dissent? A small dissent would be a polite, short, and apt rejoinder to some overt religious bias.
We’re not talking about a diatribe here. This is not the occasion for a loud, piercing scream. The tone and timbre are to be serene, delivered where possible with a smile. It’s not an argument.
Polite, short, apt, and therefore educative in this way: small dissent lets everyone within hearing know that not everyone agrees with what was said, and not everyone is a fellow traveler with the speaker.
Here’s an example:
Suppose a well-spoken, learned and lively Catholic priest attends a dinner party and slips up at one point and speaks disparagingly of the ‘superstitions’ of Hinduism. All the secularists at the dinner party will see in the priest’s remark an obvious case of the crow chiding blackness, of the pot calling the kettle black.
Mannerly secularists might bite the tips of their tongues, taste blood at this moment, and say nothing. But what is really called for is small dissent. Otherwise, the priest and the other guests will think the whole table is in agreement. Otherwise, the secularist’s perspective is silenced.
Remember the criteria for small dissent: polite, short, apt (and therefore educative).
What is to be said in rejoinder to this priest? Perhaps something along these lines, delivered with a smile:
“Geography determines local superstitions. People at one spot on the globe easily espy other people’s superstitions at another spot on the globe while local custom blinds people from seeing the superstitions of their own spot on the globe. One man’s religion is another man’s superstition. A Hindu might think transubstantiation is a tad superstitious.”
The point is to say something. Don’t let these moments pass. Disagree with peoples’ odd opinions, even if your disagreement is modest and mildly put. Never let the necessity of dissent pass you by.
We’re not talking about a diatribe here. This is not the occasion for a loud, piercing scream. The tone and timbre is to be serene, delivered where possible with a smile. It’s not an argument
Further examples:
At an office gathering people speak of a recent airline crash and someone notes, “The sole survivor had his prayers answered,” and small dissent responds, ”How about the prayers of a hundred dead passengers?”
A hairdresser says, “Everyone needs religion,” and small dissent says, “There are a billion people who apparently don’t.”
At a family gathering uncle Olaf says, “Without religion society would collapse into chaos,” and small dissent returns, “It’s funny that some of the most irreligious societies on the planet are among the most civil and safe and stable (like Scandanavia), while some of the most religious societies are the most un-civil and un-safe and un-stable (like Honduras).”
At school, a coach says, “The golden rule of Jesus is the height of morality,” and small dissent replies, “Actually, Confucius taught the golden rule 500 years before Jesus: Do not do to others what you do not want them to do to you.”
A colleague says, “My ancient holy book predicted certain features of 20th-century science,” and small dissent quickly adds, “Where does your holy book predict 25th-century science? Point out those passages to me.”
A faith healer you meet through a mutual acquaintance says, “The hall was filled with discarded crutches last night at the faith healing,” and small dissent rejoins, “Discarded prosthetic limbs might be more to the point.”
And so on.
Silence is not always golden. A secularist’s voice with a soft and pithy response can offer a sudden remedy to the careless public sharing of uninformed and biased religious opinions.
J. H. MCKENNA
J. H. McKenna Ph.D. has taught the history of religious ideas since 1999 at the University of California, where he has won teaching awards. He has published in academic journals and also in popular venues...
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6 comments
Feel free to reply to any comment by clicking the "Reply" button.If someone is bringing up religion in a public space, business setting, or large private gathering, I have no qualms about offering a swift, sarcastic statement as I will not allow ignorant myths to go unchallenged in my presence.
Killtheskyfairy
Level 9
Mar 31, 2022
1
Excellent advice. I wish I believed people would consider non-religious logic once the religious claim has been made. Such claims insult the intelligence, but disregarding the nonsense is often the safe path. Remember that people commonly regard atheists very poorly. Religious assholes are intolerant and prone to violence.
racocn8
Level 9
Mar 31, 2022
1
I remember years ago at a dinner party in Australia. There were quite a few high ranking military people. Someone said something about the impending Iraqi war when I piped up and said that we should not join in at at all, well for a moment one could hear a pin drop, then a high ranking military person said that they had so called evidence of weapons of mass destruction. Of course I had to ask for the evidence and he couldn’t oblige.
Jolanta
Level 9
Mar 31, 2022
1
Of course not, it was likely classified, and you had no clearance. They have to be careful what they divulge, that could have unpleasant repercussions. But that also gets them out of tons of discussions with civilians. Having been in the military and had a high security clearance I know they don't and can't tell you all they truly know.
@HippieChick58 Well they knew bugger all as there were no weapons of mass destruction.
My small dissent is that even though 16% of our species today may not be aware of the evolutionary function of religion, or that they benefit from it at the expense of those who practice it, or that they themselves practice in unbranded ways, or that there is no scholarly consensus as to what precisely constitutes a religion, or that the religious function can be met without a belief in ideas that are not true, or indeed that the truer the belief the better it functions, or that the same study that gave us this number of one billion unaffiliated also found that the U.S. has more unaffiliated than Norway or Denmark and projected the unaffiliated percentage of world population to diminish over the next half century, or that correlation of religious and un-safe does not indicate causation, or that the criterion of “unaffiliated” did not screen out those whose worldviews were still highly superstitious… still, current related scientific disciplines are increasingly coalescing around the idea that religious behavior of some description has been a critical component in the outrageous success of our species, and will continue to be into the foreseeable future if we are to avoid extinction due to the lack of a cultural counterbalance to evolutionary mismatch.
I do hope this doesn’t set the table on a roar, and here is my smile 
to indicate that I’m not being argumentative.
skado
Level 9
Mar 31, 2022
3
I don’t believe that religious behavior helped civilization to advance. I believe it held humans back by teaching them to believe myths/lies. 
I believe we would have advanced quicker without it.
@Redheadedgammy There's at least a 50/50 chance of that. I tend to agree with you BTW
It's an understandable belief, but I prefer to go by the science than by belief. What I might believe about it doesn't change the facts.
I think, @skado, SHOULD you ACTUALLY do YOUR own research, etc, then you may well, IF imo you can open your mind up far enough that is, find that throughout the centuries and millenia RELIGION has sought to SUPPRESS the advancement of human knowledge, etc, etc, rather than to PROMOTE it.
Have you either WILLFULLY managed to FORGET or MERELY decided to SKIP over and ignore that centuries of religious oppression wrought upon Human Kind by the Catholic Church in particular?
Or the Persecutions, executions, etc, etc, of those who did NOT follow the Doctrines of the Christian Belief systems, for example, try reading about Hypatia and the Newly Formed and rising Messianic ( read Christian) Cult of Alexandria, Egypt and what she and ALL the other students, etc, were subjected to by those wonderful, peace-loving, brotherly love spouting Christians.
Christianity has MURDERED and Slaughtered MILLIONS in the 1,600 + years since the Councils of Nicaea ratified it as an Accepted Religion within the then Roman Empire and there are even RECORDS kept by the Followers, usually the R.C.C. btw, of the EXACT numbers of the victims.
But hey, you stick with and to your" understandable belief" because, after all and imo, as the saying goes, " The Bigger the baby, the larger the Pacifier that it needs to soothe it."
I always make sure to ask people who go on and on about god, “which god are you referring to”. I always get a blank stare in return. 
Redheadedgammy
Level 9
Mar 31, 2022
5
In monotheism, there is, by definition, only one.
@skado Yes, I know. Everyone who believes in a god thinks their god is the only one, or the “one true god”.
@Redheadedgammy
Yep, and they are all correct. We call factually accurate knowledge "truth" and the French call it "vérité" but it is still the same knowledge. No need to argue over cultural perspective. And yes, I know that many less-educated people do... but that doesn't mean I have to.
@skado I don’t know how belief in something that is not true, “a god” is factually correct, if that’s what you are saying.
@Redheadedgammy
That’s not what I’m saying.
I’m saying that if you personify reality in English you call it God, and if you personify reality in Arabic it’s Allah, but it’s the same reality in either case. There is only one reality no matter how different cultures perceive it or name it.
And people, of any culture, who take their personifications to be literal persons are perhaps less educated, but the evolutionary benefits for the species are very real in either case.
@skado @ words here and I know FULL WELL that you WILL not respond because you lack the intestinal fortitude to do so imo,
PROVE IT.
After all, and an old saying goes, " Just because the hen clucks the loudest does MEAN that it has lain an egg."
And you Sir, imo, are the loudest hen in the coop but also the least productive as well.
@skado Ah BUT when a person BEGINS a Discussion/Debate, etc, etc, IT IS, by Rule and Expected that the Originator shall and will remain available and WILL answer/respond to ANY and ALL responses, etc, etc.
That is HOW it is done in THE REAL World @skado, NOT in the Hillbilly, backwater world of Alabama.
And on Agnostic.com YOU ARE in the WIDE Open and REAL WORLD, not the moonshine dens of Alabama.
@skado well their reality is a lie. No matter the language.
It's a lie only if you take it to be intended as a literal truth to begin with, as so many fundamentalists obviously do. But I don't take my bearings from fundamentalists, as so many atheists do. I take the stories, as anthropologists do, to be metaphorical truths. The fox who declared the grapes he couldn't reach to be sour... never existed, in any literal sense - foxes obviously can't talk or reason. But the story is not a lie. It reflects a perennial truth about human nature, in a highly memorable and transmissible form.
@skado I am obviously not intelligent enough to follow your thinking.
I seriously doubt that. There's no part of it that requires any high intelligence. There are just a lot of parts to become familiar with. It took me 67 years to get my mind around it just as a hobbyist. I have no scholarly credentials. It's just a matter of whether one finds it interesting.
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