This does not seem like an accurate reading of the post. "Aware and disdainful of the specific arguments against it"? The woman in the story is portrayed as unfamiliar with atheism and atheists, not familiar-yet-hostile.
First, the term was disdainful, not hostile. And my point only required that she was aware of people seriously believing they found contradictions in holy texts and people holding evolution-related beliefs in contradiction of creationists accounts, both of which she deemed insufficient. That's familiar enough for the point I made.
So I take it that you've been to Cairo or other modern middle-eastern cities, or read extensively about them?
Read.
I also factored in his past tendency to embellish facts.
What past tendency? Do you have links?
Of course. I didn't list them the first time around because I (and most well-adjusted people) don't feel the need to list every piece of evidence influencing every belief they express, especially when it would come off as a "let's list all of __'s past misdeeds!" party.
But since you ask, here you go:
In this article, it's apparent he's been made incompletely aware of factoids and takes licence to hype them up to the extreme without checking them, especially the All Sex is Rape line. (Yes, I though the attribution was close enough not to matter, but I would have presented the more nuanced view, which I spelled out in comments.)
Here he took his knowledge of Eliezer Yudkowsky's and Adam Frank's views on religion and extrapolated them in ways that neither would approve of. (He originally called the characters Colonels Yudkowsky and Frank, then changed them to Colonels Y and F after this was pointed out.)
Here Yvain sees an ambiguous letter-to-the-editor from a woman with a plausible, non-stupid interpretation and then proceeds to characterize her as the worst possible example of the fallacy he was demonstrating. (Link is to my comment on that article, showing what's wrong with his interpretation.)
I don't mean this to be a general indictment of Yvain; he's contributed excellent material to Less Wrong, has earned a heck of a lot more karma than me, and would truly be irreplaceable if he left. But, like everyone else, he has the occasional bad habit, and lots of red flags went up when I saw the claim I've just questioned.
And my point only required that she was aware of people seriously believing they found contradictions in holy texts and people holding evolution-related beliefs in contradiction of creationists accounts, both of which she deemed insufficient. That's familiar enough for the point I made.
But there are lots of religious people who are aware of the existence of such atheists, yet who do not follow all the most stringent cultural practices of their religion. You know, like self-identified Jews who nevertheless think nothing of flipping a lightswitch on a Saturday.
I particularly remember one scene from Bill Maher's "Religulous". I can't find the exact quote, but I will try to sum up his argument as best I remember.
I have read of the absurdity heuristic. I know that it is not carte blanche to go around rejecting beliefs that seem silly. But I was still sympathetic to the talking snake argument. After all...a talking snake?
I changed my mind in a Cairo cafe, talking to a young Muslim woman. I let it slip during the conversation that I was an atheist, and she seemed genuinely curious why. You've all probably been in such a situation, and you probably know how hard it is to choose just one reason, but I'd been reading about Biblical contradictions at the time and I mentioned the myriad errors and atrocities and contradictions in all the Holy Books.
Her response? "Oh, thank goodness it's that. I was afraid you were one of those crazies who believed that monkeys transformed into humans."
I admitted that um, well, maybe I sorta kinda might in fact believe that.
It is hard for me to describe exactly the look of shock on her face, but I have no doubt that her horror was genuine. I may have been the first flesh-and-blood evolutionist she ever met. "But..." she looked at me as if I was an idiot. "Monkeys don't change into humans. What on Earth makes you think monkeys can change into humans?"
I admitted that the whole process was rather complicated. I suggested that it wasn't exactly a Optimus Prime-style transformation so much as a gradual change over eons and eons. I recommended a few books on evolution that might explain it better than I could.
She said that she respected me as a person but that quite frankly I could save my breath because there was no way any book could possibly convince her that monkeys have human babies or whatever sort of balderdash I was preaching. She accused me and other evolution believers of being too willing to accept absurdities, motivated by our atheism and our fear of the self-esteem hit we'd take by accepting Allah was greater than ourselves.
It is not clear to me that this woman did anything differently than Bill Maher. Both heard statements that sounded so crazy as to not even merit further argument. Both recognized that there was a large group of people who found these statements plausible and had written extensive literature justifying them. Both decided that the statements were so absurd as to not merit examining that literature more closely. Both came up with reasons why they could discount the large number of believers because those believers must be biased.
I post this as a cautionary tale as we discuss the logic or illogic of theism. I propose taking from it the following lessons:
- The absurdity heuristic doesn't work very well.
- Even on things that sound really, really absurd.
- If a large number of intelligent people believe something, it deserves your attention. After you've studied it on its own terms, then you have a right to reject it. You could still be wrong, though.
- Even if you can think of a good reason why people might be biased towards the silly idea, thus explaining it away, your good reason may still be false.
- If someone cannot explain why something is not stupid to you over twenty minutes at a cafe, that doesn't mean it's stupid. It just means it's complicated, or they're not very good at explaining things.
- There is no royal road.
(special note to those prone to fundamental attribution errors: I do not accept theism. I think theism is wrong. I think it can be demonstrated to be wrong on logical grounds. I think the nonexistence of talking snakes is evidence against theism and can be worked into a general argument against theism. I just don't think it's as easy as saying "talking snakes are silly, therefore theism is false." And I find it embarrassing when atheists say things like that, and then get called on it by intelligent religious people.)