Atheists and free speech?

[historia]

Every year, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) does a survey to gauge the climate of free speech on American college campuses. The raw data and the report for 2023 were recently released.

Consider the responses to this question, broken down by religious affiliation:



Question for debate: Why do you think that atheist and agnostic college students are the most likely (and considerably higher than Christians) to think it is okay to shout down speakers they disagree with?

[1213]

...Question for debate: Why do you think that atheist and agnostic college students are the most likely (and considerably higher than Christians) to think it is okay to shout down speakers they disagree with?

I believe one reason can be that people need security. For a Christian that comes from God and that is why a Christian can more easily accept freedom. Atheists have no God and therefore not the same feeling of security, which is why they probably want a strong earthly authority to limit and control everything.

[Data]

Question for debate: Why do you think that atheist and agnostic college students are the most likely (and considerably higher than Christians) to think it is okay to shout down speakers they disagree with?

I don't like charts like that and surveys and percentages. They are, in my opinion, used in a way which is more deceiving than not. In over the last 30 years I've read and discussed the opinions of atheists and find them to be far more likely to support free speech than theists. I think politics has more to do with the conclusion that might be reflected by the chart you gave. In the 1960s the hippies were developing their counterculture and utopian socialism which was heavily influenced by Marxism. Those people are now professors and administrators in universities. Their atheistic ideology is what you see in the mainstream media and campuses. Seeing it often doesn't mean it is nearly as prevalent as it seems, much the same as it's predecessor hippie counterculture movement.

It's just a lot of noise. A distraction.

[The Nice Centurion]

Allegedly atheists hate god,.while agnostics always support fellow agnostic Bart Ehrman, therefore hate his critic Richard Carrier.

Therefore them all must be constantly angry, which exclaims why they cant withold themselves from screaming people down!

[TRANSPONDER]

...Question for debate: Why do you think that atheist and agnostic college students are the most likely (and considerably higher than Christians) to think it is okay to shout down speakers they disagree with?

I believe one reason can be that people need security. For a Christian that comes from God and that is why a Christian can more easily accept freedom. Atheists have no God and therefore not the same feeling of security, which is why they probably want a strong earthly authority to limit and control everything.

Sorry. I misread the data. I can only say that I would be with the ones that do not approve of shouting down free speech.If you could produce these atheists that approve of it, I would undertake to persuade then that it is counter productive.

Mind in some online debates, one side insists on droning on wit a Gishgallop of unvalidated claims and the other side keeps trying to interrupt. It's annoying but the fact is that you cannot allow someone to construct a chain of invalid links to get to where they want to go. But the way I'd do it is note the claims and dispute each of them. There is also the Cause attached to atheism. You Know what I'm talking about. Claiming to be 'atheist' they buss in a phalanx of screaming bigots to howl the speaker down in a way that makes me reject them as atheists or anything else. This is connected with the whole link of free speech = permissible hate speech (1) So there are question to be asked, aside from where the survey came from. Even if I was only too happy to use it if it went the Other way. I'd like to know the source, though.

I can only too easily see how you view it. A secularist authoritarianism to stifle any questioning of the dogma. Problem is, I see much more of that in religious fundamentalist countries than in secularist ones. Don't you?

(1) never mind any disagreement with Christian dogma should be excluded. Consider a demand that teaching Creationism in college is presented as Free Speech, refusing to teach religion as science could be put down as 'atheists opposed to free speech'.

[Purple Knight]

Question for debate: Why do you think that atheist and agnostic college students are the most likely (and considerably higher than Christians) to think it is okay to shout down speakers they disagree with?

As an atheist I'll freely admit that not having any moral absolutes can be a serious negative of atheism. What I notice is glaring is the massive difference between everyone else and atheists/agnostics selecting the never response. It's harder for us to give a never because we have no solid, purely moral reason to give a never.

I would like to say never because that's the world I want to live in, but I also recognise my desire as a selfish and amoral one. If people have strong moral reasons to restrict speech, then that trumps my selfish wants. It's not different than the idea that I might want to steal, but people have said it's immoral so I must accommodate them and not steal.

In the case of theft I happen to agree that a world without stealing (with the massive caveat that nobody starves because of it) is better than a world with stealing, but that's not why I just have to kowtow and obey. If I disagreed I'd still have to obey because I can't just break moral taboos an entire society agrees upon.

What not having moral absolutes also does, is frees atheists from the bad never. This is the exact equal side of the coin. If society is good, we will look evil because we won't give a never when we ought to. But if society is evil, demanding a never for something like, "When will you refuse to kill a homosexual," we will also be more likely to hold back our nevers there, even if society insists that killing homosexuals is moral, and that's the time when we shine and look more progressive and righteous.

[Purple Knight]

I don't like charts like that and surveys and percentages. They are, in my opinion, used in a way which is more deceiving than not. In over the last 30 years I've read and discussed the opinions of atheists and find them to be far more likely to support free speech than theists. I think politics has more to do with the conclusion that might be reflected by the chart you gave. In the 1960s the hippies were developing their counterculture and utopian socialism which was heavily influenced by Marxism. Those people are now professors and administrators in universities. Their atheistic ideology is what you see in the mainstream media and campuses. Seeing it often doesn't mean it is nearly as prevalent as it seems, much the same as it's predecessor hippie counterculture movement.

It's just a lot of noise. A distraction.

This is actually a really, really good point. What if it was just one side of the political spectrum that were more likely to be against unmitigated free speech, and atheists simply being more likely to be on that side?

You could say, well then atheists are more likely to be free-speech-shutter-downers.

...But that's not absolutely the case. Imagine if 80% of the general Left was against unmitigated free speech, but only 60% of the atheist Left was against it. And let's say 80% of the general Right is for free speech, it was 100% of the atheist Right, but this represents such a vast minority of atheists that they are still more against free speech than the general population. It starts to look like it's not being atheist at all that's the problem here (if you consider being against unmitigated free speech a problem).

I lean toward saying being atheist probably does make you more likely to be against unmitigated free speech even when you control for other factors, but we can't know until we see a chart like this, but broken down by political spectrum, too.

[Clownboat]

Every year, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) does a survey to gauge the climate of free speech on American college campuses. The raw data and the report for 2023 were recently released.

Consider the responses to this question, broken down by religious affiliation:



Question for debate: Why do you think that atheist and agnostic college students are the most likely (and considerably higher than Christians) to think it is okay to shout down speakers they disagree with?

Many humans desire to belong to a group as we are social animals.

For humans that desire this, but cannot swallow any of the available god concepts, they would be more likely to then ascribe to some other group to belong to. When they are picking political groups to belong to in place of a religion, this could come with political baggage that could manifest as shouting down those that they disagree with and thereby would increase the number (for atheists) on the chart.

100's of years ago, most people had a religious group to belong to. Now that religious claims are believed less and less, we have more humans picking another group to identify with (often political). It seems pretty simple. Just humans doing what humans do. Religion or the lack there of has little to do with it IMO.

[TRANSPONDER]

I had a look at FIRE and could see nothing problematical. I remain surprised and alarmed at the apparent higher approval by atheists of shouting people down. Listening to and countering ideas we disagree with should be the method, not howling them down.

I would like to assemble a bunch of these atheists and ask them just what their rationale is for shouting speakers down. I may be missing something. Even if 'Free Speech' means spreading a lot of misinformation, I have to defend the right of people to say it, But then they have to sit quiet when they get debunked.

[1213]

...
I can only too easily see how you view it. A secularist authoritarianism to stifle any questioning of the dogma. Problem is, I see much more of that in religious fundamentalist countries than in secularist ones. Don't you?

I don't know any Christian fundamentalist country.