Like it or not, serious rationality tends to erode religious belief, just as it tends to erode belief in astrology. It tends to erode blind obedience to other authorities too. If "word spreads and authorities find out", enthusiastic participation in any sort of rationalist community is liable to mean trouble in repressively religious communities, whether Eliezer is a raging bitter passionate atheist or not.
In any case, I'm having trouble imagining what the LW community could actually do to "try to distance ourselves from atheism and anti-religiousness as such" even if we wanted to, that would have any appreciable impact on the safety of being a serious rationalist in the sorts of countries you're talking about. Go back through the LW archives and delete every post that says unkind things about religion? Forbid discussion of religious topics? It seems absurd to respond to the threat of oppression by meekly oppressing ourselves; and besides, I bet it wouldn't work. There's too much other stuff on LW that would be offensive to those regimes.
What it comes down to is this: A rationalist in a sufficiently repressive irrationalist regime is going to have to pretend not to be a rationalist. That's very bad, but having rationalists everywhere else pretend half-heartedly not to be rationalists about everything won't solve the problem.
We probably could distance ourselves from atheism very easily. We just have someone who is high status post about how "religious/anti-religious discussion is the mindkiller" and encourage people not to talk about it.
We've already done this with a topic. At risk of breaking the taboo (I'll try to stay meta), I would like to remind people that that for the vast majority of LW readers there are at least two major political parties they can support and choose from. These parties do not base their platforms on reality equally nor do their platforms give equal expected utility towards LWers should they be voted into power. A sequence saying " political party is the rational choice and this is why" could be done, yet we choose not to. Not only that, but we actively prevent discussion on it.
We could do it for religion as well if we really wanted to. I don't think the trade-off would be worth it and I think our current system of 'not talk about politics, talk about athiesm' is fine. However, we shouldn't pretend it's something immutable. These things are within our control. We choose the trade-offs we make, and we accept this trade-off.
You pick the people you want to influence, and you make yourself like them in all ways EXCEPT a carefully chosen few that are your most important targets of change. You might seriously consider publicly espousing a moderate version of Islam no matter what you believe if you are committed to the Islamic people of Morocco. You could even do it pretty honestly I think, isn't the essence of Islam submission to the will of Allah (as opposed to a believe in Allah)? If you made this choice couldn't you honestly say "I have deliberately and rationally chosen to submit myself to the will of Allah as do so many others in my country. And I will work tirelessly to advance science and freedom in Morocco as I am told by Allah to do so."
Whether it is admitted or not, This is what successful politicians must be doing. It is implausible that people so well informed as politicians, and some of them are incredibly intelligent, could truly back so many stupid policies as they do. They pick their battles and happily admit defeat on the battles they have not picked.
It could well be that given your values, this is the rational way for you to go.
More importantly, concerning Less Wrong itself, should we try to distance ourselves from atheism and anti-religiousness as such? Is this baggage too inconvenient, or is it too much a part of what we stand for?
I think it would be a mistake to distance ourselves from these. A tool the religious use is to pretend disagreement with them is crazy. Countering this idea is CENTRAL to rationality. Being afraid of being sent to hell for eternity is no more "evidence" that god exists than is being afraid of tigers evidence that there is one in your back yard. A central reason why the scientific method has succeeded so remarkably is that it automatically enforces the rule that just because you want something to be true doesn't make it true, and indeed is not even evidence for its truth. If anything, it is evidence that you need to be more skeptical of the idea if you want to get it right to counteract your own bias.
In my opinion, the best advantages rationality can gain is a totally reasonable intelligent well spoken blond woman wearing sleeveless dresses smiling and explaining with devastating clarity just how much sense atheism makes. The reason this makes the mullahs want to spit at her and kill her is because it is a threat to what they are selling, which is precisely why rationalists should keep doing it.
I am a "typical" american grew up in New York. When I was 18 and my sister was 17, my sister and I visited my father for a few weeks who was working in Esfahan. The shah was still in charge, it was the late 1970s.
My sister was a beautiful young woman with blond hair. Despite being warned by other non-Iranians that when we went in to see Esfahan she should dress modestly, she went out in a sleeveless dress because it was warm and sunny. Angry old men spat at her (at least one anyway) and the young men brushed up against her and copped feels.
The idea that you can manage the strong sexual and social urges men feel in the presence of attractive women by keeping the women uneducated, locked away, and covered when they are out is ludicrous, wasteful of more than half of the human resources a society has, plus pretty crappy for the women. Providing even the slightest respect towards this call for "modesty" is a strategic mistake. Well, maybe the slightest respect, an attractive dress wtih a moderate amount of cleavage showing is a better idea than a thong and a push-up bra for our rationality spokesmodel.
Plus I enjoy being oddly specific. It feels livelier to me than stilted generalities.
Speaking in long term terms, what is the mechanism by which societies secularize themselves, and are there ways to trigger it? For instance, the Jews too have a very explicit, canonic policy of stoning proselytizing apostates to death. When did they stop doing that, and why?
I don't think that question's going to give you the information you want - when in the last couple thousand of years, if Jews had wanted to stone apostates to death, would they have been able to do it? The diasporan condition doesn't really allow it. I think Christianity really is the canonical example of the withering away of religiosity - and that happened through a succession of internal revolutions ("In Praise of Folly", Lutheranism, the English reformation etc.) which themselves happened for a variety of reasons, not all pure or based in rationality (Henry VIII's split with Rome, for example) but had the effect of demystifying the church and thereby shrinking the domain of its influence. I think. Although it's hard to interpret the Englightenment as a movement internal to Christianity, so this only gets you so far, I suppose.
More importantly, concerning Less Wrong itself, should we try to distance ourselves from atheism and anti-religiousness as such? Is this baggage too inconvenient, or is it too much a part of what we stand for?
No. It is indeed too much a part of it.
As for the hotheaded young rationalist, the only general advice I can think of for the hypothetical case is, consider the situation around you and do what you think will actually work.
Hotheadedly running out into the street screaming "Stop being irrational!" is unlikely to be it, even in places where it won't get you shot. If their well-considered decision gets them killed, well, shit happens. I expect Richard Dawkins gets death threats, and Salman Rushdie certainly does, but they carry on anyway.
I think the analogy with treason is good but not in the way you mean, the fear of apostasy is not really that of a single unbeliever but that it might spread. Even if we ignore the group cohesion and self interest reasons for not wanting this, there are good altruistic reasons.
Imagine there is a drug that is pleasant in the short term but causes extreme suffering in later life, because individuals don't rationally calculate the effect of it at the time your society has banned it. If you know an individual is using it you might try and persuade them to sto...
So I have been checking laws around the world regarding Apostasy... the approach Muslims take ... will get you killed.
Laws are extremely weak evidence about what will happen to you. I strongly advise you to avoid looking at laws, and not just for this project.
Many countries have laws which are widely broken and selectively enforced, or which are easy to frame people for. In those cases, whether you are targeted and punished is a judgment call made by certain people in power, which in practice means that it depends mainly on not pissing off or threatening the wrong people, and on how effectively you would be expected to defend yourself (ie wealth and connections).
Possibly of interest: The Young Atheist's Handbook-- an account of becoming an atheist by a man who grew up in a Bangladeshi neighborhood in London.
I agree that getting out is the best option for someone who lives under a violently religious government, but that getting out may not be feasible or may be a long term project. I assume we're going to have some martyrs.
So, let's take this hypothetical (harrumph) youth. They see irrationality around them, obvious and immense, they see the waste and the pain it causes. They'd like to do something about it. How would you advise them to go about it?
Donate to CFAR. There's no good reason to demand a local increase in rationality.
[...]should we try to distance ourselves from atheism and anti-religiousness as such? Is this baggage too inconvenient, or is it too much a part of what we stand for?
We don't stand for atheism; we stand by atheism, prepared to walk away at any ...
So, let's take this hypothetical (harrumph) youth. They see irrationality around them, obvious and immense, they see the waste and the pain it causes. They'd like to do something about it. How would you advise them to go about it?
I think math, science, and engineering education is likely very corrosive to religious belief. Seeing that things behave the way they do regardless of what anyone important thinks, and that you can figure it out, is likely a huge blow to religious thought (and intellectual authority in general). The world is no longer run by ...
It seems to me the best way to market any idea is to associate with people who support the idea and enhance their success. It is NOT to stay in an environment where that idea is rejected as evil and you risk your life. So for example, the west has primarily promulgated its brands of economic freedom and intellectual freedom by being an example to the rest of the world. It may be that a Saudi does more to liberalize Saudi Arabia by moving to the west and just simply having regular contacts with her family and friends back in Saudi Arabia than she could a...
So, let's take this hypothetical (harrumph) youth. They see irrationality around them, obvious and immense, they see the waste and the pain it causes. They'd like to do something about it. How would you advise them to go about it?
My advice would be, roughly: "When you infer opportunities to reduce waste and pain, and the expected cost of taking those opportunities is one you are willing to pay, and the expected value of those opportunities is positive, take them."
Which is also the advice I would give to pretty much everyone else who wants to...
My advice in the case of Morocco specifically would be to work towards the instrumental goal of getting those laws changed, rather than the final goal of promoting rationality. Morocco is a semi-democratic country but with extremely low levels of political participation by the citizens. That means one could have a disproportionate effect even by registering to vote (most Moroccans aren't registered), let alone by joining a political party. I'd suggest joining Movement Populaire or Union Constitutionelle, after a few minutes' googling. There's just about en...
Oh. So it does work, the propaganda.. Morocco is only a consitutional monarchy on paper. The power resides in the Palace, and it is absolute. Parties have been proven, time and again, to be utterly impotent before the King. That is why people don't even bother to vote. That is why you will often spot people sleeping during parliament sessions: those simply don't matter.
People have picked up on this. Now, when they make protests, they address the King directly, ignoring the Ministers. Their tone is very deferential, but that's one fuse that's burned out.
And the most popular contenders, were the regime to change, are the Islamists...
There are good arguments for why a rationalist should distance him or herself from anti-religiousness (distinct from atheism), but the irrationality of others isn't one of them.
Even if you start from the presumption that religion is a social evil, it doesn't necessarily follow that you should be anti-religious. If you start from the presumption that religion is a social evil, you should operate on the mechanisms that abolish religion, rather than the mechanisms which signal your opposition to religion. This may mean encouraging critical thought; it doesn...
My advice would be to look for a really good charity and donate as much as you can to it. This is always my advice.
So I have been checking laws around the world regarding Apostasy. And I have found extremely troubling data on the approach Muslims take to dealing with apostates. In most cases, publicly stating that you do not, in fact, love Big Brother (specifically, that you do not believe in God, the Prophet, or Islam), after having professed the Profession of Faith being adult and sane (otherwise, you were never a Muslim in the first place), will get you killed.
Yes, killed. It's one of the only three things traditional Islamic tribunals hand out death penalties for, the others being murder and adultery.
However, interestingly enough, you are often given three days of detainment to "think it over" and "accept the faith".
Some other countries, though, are more forgiving: you are allowed to be a public apostate. But you are still not allowed to proselytize: that remains a crime (in Morocco it's 15 years of prison, and a flogging). Though proselytism is also a crime if you are not a Muslim. I leave to your imagination how precarious the situation of religious minorities is, in this context.
How little sense all of this makes, from a theological perspective. Forcing someone to "accept the faith" at knife point? Forbidding you from arguing against the Lord's (reputedly) absolutely self-evident and miraculously beautiful Word?
No. These are the patterns of sedition and treason laws. The crime of the Apostate is not one against the Lord (He can take care of Himself, and He certainly can take care of the Apostate) but against the State (existence of a human lord contingent on political regime).
And the lesswronger asks himself: "How is that my concern? Please, get to the point." The point is that the promotion of rationalism faces a terrible obstacle there. We're not talking "God Hates You" placards, or getting fired from your job. We're talking fire range and electric chair.
"Sure," you say, "but rationalism is not about atheism." And you'd be right. It isn't. It's just a very likely conclusion for the rationalist mind to reach, and, also, our cult leader (:P) is a raging, bitter, passionate atheist. That is enough. If word spreads and authorities find out, just peddling HPMOR might get people jailed. And that's not accounting for the hypothetical (cough) case of a young adult reading the Sequences and getting all hotheaded about it and doing something stupid. Like trying to promote our brand of rationality in such hostile terrain.
So, let's take this hypothetical (harrumph) youth. They see irrationality around them, obvious and immense, they see the waste and the pain it causes. They'd like to do something about it. How would you advise them to go about it? Would you advise them to, in fact, do nothing at all?
More importantly, concerning Less Wrong itself, should we try to distance ourselves from atheism and anti-religiousness as such? Is this baggage too inconvenient, or is it too much a part of what we stand for?