Angry Atheists Revisited

A while ago I posted a few thoughts on the oft leveled accusation that atheists are angry trying to make the point that our perceived anger is a result of the way we are treated.

Recently a study was published that indicates I was correct about the fact that perceptions of anger in atheists are a direct result of their social ostracism.  The study indicated that atheists don't suffer any more emotional disturbance than other people when they are accepted socially.  Here is a link to a brief article describing the study in a more digestible form on one of my favorite websites "Epiphenom".  If you haven't visited Epiphenom, you really should.  Bookmark it while you are there.  It is one of the most informative sites on the web.

The Epiphenom article contained a link to an article concerning a study about the relationship between religion and happiness.  That study showed that there was not a direct correlation between the two as is often assumed.  Rather, the correlation varied with the certainty with which the person viewed his or her beliefs.  The same was true even if that "belief" system was atheism. 

Here is a quotation from the abstract of the article:

"A curvilinear relationship was found such that those with higher belief certainty (both confidently religious and atheists) have greater well-being relative to those with low certainty (unsure and agnostics). Multiple regressions controlling for social and demographic variables reduced, but did not eliminate this curvilinear relationship. Mechanisms of well-being may involve a confident worldview rather than religious beliefs themselves."

These studies taken together confirm something that I have maintained for a long time:  What people need isn't religion; they need social acceptance, social structure, and a confident worldview.

The studies also indicate that religion isn't necessary to provide these things.  One often hears or reads of debates concerning what might replace religion in this regard.  Many atheists offer science as a substitute.  Those who argue against this point out that science is unable to answer the big questions in life.

I think a slightly different system should be offered:  The philosophy of science.  That philosophy provides confidence and reassurance regarding even those questions that science cannot currently answer--and may never answer.  What matters is that sense of confidence because it gives us the sense of control for which we feel an emotional need.  The religious use their beliefs to quiet their unease over their sense of not being in control but those beliefs are delusions and come at a steep price--the loss of an accurate worldview.

Religion and Morality VI

The other day I posted a comment about Chris Hedge's book "I Don't Believe In Atheists" pointing out how he engaged in a combined "straw man" and "ad hominem" argument by accusing the "new atheists" of believing that religion was the source of all evil and that a utopian society can be created through violence.

Although I like Hedges' other work, this particular book is such a perfect example of bad reasoning based on religious thinking and, more important, the emotion and egotism that is behind religion that it is useful to return to the subject.

First, it is a classic example of what happens when an atheist bests a believer in debate.  The believer reacts in a way that clearly shows his ego is wounded, which also reveals that it is his ego that drove him to engage in the debate and to believe in the obviously incorrect viewpoint that he tried to support. This blog post on "The Bad Idea Blog" entitled "Newfound Anti-Atheist Chris Hedges Doesn't Believe in Coherent Arguments" does an excellent job of pointing out the ample evidence that Hedges' book is obviously an incoherent diatribe driven completely by his emotions.

As such, Hedges book is simply a highbrow version of the type of reaction I and many other atheists have experienced many times and which I have previously mentioned.

In his unseemly haste to argue that religion is the source of morality and that the "new atheists" are somehow evil he accuses them and the enlightenment of having "dropped the wisdom of 'original sin'".  (I will put aside for now the many comments bubbling up about the idea that the notion of "original sin" was in any way wise or good and focus instead on what the "new atheists" actually think.)

Harris and Hitchens both advance the view that morality comes from within us and not from any invisible man in the sky.  They are arguing, correctly, I think, that religion causes people to behave badly.  They are not arguing that religion is the source of all human evil and that people don't do bad things without the outside influence of religion.  Hedges seems to deliberately misunderstand their point.  Their point is not that people are "basically good", but that our notions of kindness and good behavior are logical and to some extent inherent--not dictated to us by god.

In my experience, some people insist on seeing humans as "basically good" while others insist on seeing them as "inherently evil".  I have heard both of these viewpoints espoused by atheists and by devout believers.  In other words, neither is necessarily tied to a particular viewpoint on the existence of god.

I think that the truth (and the viewpoint of the "new atheists") is more nuanced than either extreme on the "is man good or evil" spectrum.  Scientific observation and experiments indicate that there is a sort of "inherent morality" that appears to be, in a sense, instinctual.  This instinctual morality appears (though perhaps not as strongly) even in animals that we consider to be "lower" than us.

Does that mean we are born "good"?  Of course not.  This instinctual morality has inherent limitations that require us to use our greatest gift, our minds, to recognize and correct.  It suffers from three major limitations:  1. it is incomplete (especially in our new and more complex world); 2. it generally is felt to apply only within the individual's "group"; and 3. it is not fully present in all individuals.  Because of these limitations some mistakenly conclude that it is nonexistent.

This natural framework of basic morality gives us a basis on which to build a true morality.  And, in fact, we are doing so--piecemeal and in fits and starts, as anyone who has studied history knows.  Usually, religion does not help this process but hinders it by attempting repeatedly to prevent any changes in the "received" morality that was passed to us by the immediately preceding generations.

Religion also hinders this process by denying that it even exists.  Self-examination and self-improvement are necessary for any person or society to grow and improve.  Religion always acts as a roadblock by stating that we don't need to do anything of that sort.  Religion tells us that it's all written down for us already and that all we need to do is slavishly follow the rules from the past and all will be well.  That is why it took centuries for the idea that slavery is immoral to take root and change what was morally acceptable in our society.

By hindering the development of a healthy morality based on facts in our society, religion poisons the third great source of morality (aside from logic and empathy):  community standards.  Because our basic moral sensibilities are not complete and not fully present in every person and because we do not all have the logical abilities, empathy, and experience to develop it fully, we must rely to some extent on community standards to flesh out our morality

As I pointed out before, religion seeks to keep people locked in the lowest state of moral development, where fear of punishment is the only basis for morality.  This, essentially, keeps individual believers in a state of morality that is difficult to distinguish from that of a psychopath.  If the growth of community standards is similarly stunted by religious dogmatism, then individuals will be deprived of an essential tool for cultivating their own morality.

(Religion does the same thing in other fields as well, which is why physicians were still bleeding people nearly 2,000 years after Galen was dead.  Galen, unfortunately was THE medical authority at the time of the rise of the Christian church and his methods were never examined until the Enlightenment--simultaneous with the examination of the church and many of the idiotic ideas it had perpetuated for centuries.)

Even more devastating to morality than its hindrance on the development of moral thought is the way religion affects human societies.  What moral sense we do possess instinctively seems to be applicable only to those within the individual's group.  In fact, our natural tendency is to feel actively hostile to those from other groups.

Religion makes our moral sensibilities almost worthless by dividing us artificially into mutually hostile groups.  This nullifying effect applies to both instinctive and learned morality.  The hostility is guaranteed by religion as well because these artificial groups each believe mutually incompatible things and feel very strongly about them.  These beliefs become part of their identities and cause the person to feel that his or her ego is threatened by those who disagree.  Because these viewpoints are adopted by rejecting reason (faith), there is no way to resolve the conflicts that arise as a result except by force.

Humans instinctively feel a moral duty only to those within their group and only toward those within the group who conform.  If you want to increase moral behavior, the solution is simple:  increase the size of the group--preferably to include all of humanity--and make it easier for everyone to belong.  (That is the essence of humanism, by the way.)

In addition to stunting our moral growth, individually and as a group, then pointlessly dividing us into irreconcilable groups, religion makes our moral sense worthless in another way by trying to force everyone to conform to often unreasonable expectations within the group.  It does this by convincing people that their sense of moral outrage should be triggered in circumstances in which there may be no real harm.  Usually, this is done to empower the leaders of the religion in some fashion.

A graphic hypothetical from the wonderful article linked above by Stephen Pinker, which appeared in the New York Times a couple of years ago, illustrates this perversion of morality to empower religious leaders:

"Consider this moral dilemma: A runaway trolley is about to kill a schoolteacher. You can divert the trolley onto a sidetrack, but the trolley would trip a switch sending a signal to a class of 6-year-olds, giving them permission to name a teddy bear Muhammad. Is it permissible to pull the lever?

This is no joke. Last month a British woman teaching in a private school in Sudan allowed her class to name a teddy bear after the most popular boy in the class, who bore the name of the founder of Islam. She was jailed for blasphemy and threatened with a public flogging, while a mob outside the prison demanded her death. To the protesters, the woman’s life clearly had less value than maximizing the dignity of their religion, and their judgment on whether it is right to divert the hypothetical trolley would have differed from ours. Whatever grammar guides people’s moral judgments can’t be all that universal. Anyone who stayed awake through Anthropology 101 can offer many other examples."

Clearly such moral insanity can only occur when religion is allowed to control the majority of minds in a community.

Another example of the perversion of morality to serve the priesthood is the way in which Christianity has declared us all to be sinful simply for being human.  This is the "wisdom of original sin" that Hedges alluded to above.  That "wisdom" is the insane notion that all humans are evil and destined for Hell because our remote ancestors allegedly disobeyed god and ate an apple. 

While it is true that we do have evil impulses, the notion that we are so evil as to be deserving of a trip to Hell seems bizarre rather than wise.  Once this notion of our inherent "sinfulness" is coupled with the notion that our sexuality is sinful and "dirty" makes us all seem like hopeless cases in desperate need of priestly intervention with the one entity that, allegedly, can keep us from our "just" desserts.

To understand this, as with so many other seeming conundrums, one need only ask:  Cui bono?  Who does it benefit?  Clearly, all these things add up to benefit the leaders of the religion.  This stunted, controlled, and perverted morality results in a captive, cohesive, obedient flock firmly in the control of the clergy and other leaders in the church.  This captive flock is ready to do their bidding even when it is objectively immoral to do so.

Religion and Morality V

      “The greatest contribution of atheism is the provision of a
    firm basis for ethical conduct. Atheism explains that morality
    is a social obligation but not a passport to heaven and salvation.
    The theistic belief in divine retribution sidetracked moral
    behavior. Believers were more prone to please the god of
    their imagination by prayer and ritual than to conform to rules
    of moral conduct. Consequently immorality and anti-social
    activities spread wild wherever people were absorbed in the
    worship of god and in the propitiation of fate. Atheism brings
    about radical changes in the outlook of people in this context.
    Truth, tolerance, love and equality are the basic needs of
    social harmony.”
— Gora, Note on Atheism

Worldwide atheism would not be a panacea for inherent human evil.  I think, however, that it would have a salubrious effect.  It would remove a major stumbling block to rational decision making in the minds of many people, including many with power:  Religion's stunted and twisted views on morality. 

Every moral worth having is based on rationality and empathy.  Religion interferes with both.  

Moral values such as not engaging in violence or theft simply make sense.  It would not be good for anyone for such notions to be ignored.  Human society couldn't function and wouldn't exist unless its members were confident that there were rules that applied to their dealings with each other.  What actually enforces such rules is not fear of god but fear or each other--or, rather, of how others would react.  We instinctively fear a disruption in the social fabric and the probability that those who break those rules would end up paying a high price either socially, economically, or otherwise.

Without that expectation every individual would have to put a great deal of effort into simply protecting himself from others.  There would be no human society.  If we existed at all in such a state, it would be only as armed hermits.  Humanity implicitly rejected such a fate long ago, before we were even human.

Religion replaces this rational morality with morality based solely on authority--ostensibly the authority of god, but in reality the authority of those who claim to speak for god.  An obvious effect of this is that the religious often don't know what is truly immoral.  They may commit immoral acts simply because they don't realize what they are doing.  More obvious is that they don't recognize evil when they see it--especially when it is being perpetrated by their fellow believers allegedly in the name of their religion or the behest of their leaders.

This not only makes it easier for those spokesmen to order immoral actions, it makes the rules inflexible in the minds of believers.  They apply their rules rigidly on to those situations where the clergy have told them they should.  Because the religious do not see the rules as their own internal rules and do not understand or care about the underlying principles, they feel no inclination to generalize their application.  They feel that they are supposed to simply obey rather than think about what the rules mean and how they could or should be applied in other situations.

If a person feels empathy for others, then he doesn't harm others for the simple reason that he can imagine what it would feel like to be that other person.   Religion blocks the formation of morality based on empathy towards one's fellow man in many ways.  Religions (especially the Abrahamic ones) teach "moral" and other lessons that are not just devoid of any sign of empathy but are actually antithetical to notions of empathy.  Christianity, for example, teaches that anyone who hears of Christ's message but doesn't choose the right church will suffer an eternity of torture.  (Similarly, the holy writings of Judaism and Islam contain horrific examples of gross injustices perpetrated or threatened by god.)

This is, of course, a literally horrific injustice--if it were true, as believers think it is.  An eternity of torture because a person chose to remain in the religion taught to him by his parents rather than convert?  Or because he was too honest to apply different intellectual standards to competing supernatural claims?  Anyone with the slightest sense of decency has to be aware that this is a monstrous notion and could only be the the product of (or harbored by, for that matter) a monstrous mind.

One of the most important notions in any system of justice worth the name is the notion of proportionality:  The punishment should fit the crime or an injustice has been done.  Religions tend to introduce the opposite concept:  Any transgression against the authority is punished with as much disproportionate viciousness as possible.  Such excessive punishment would be considered intolerable were it visited upon the religious person who is so ready to see it visited on others.  This reveals a clear lack of empathy on the part of believers and a violation of the "golden rule".  This sort of thinking about justice is taught to believers as children--deliberately perverting whatever natural sense of justice they might have developed.

One of worst ways in which religion interferes with rational thought and empathy is by replacing a worldview based on facts with a worldview based on fantasy.  Instead of using their minds to figure out how to behave in the real world, believers think about the "more important reality" of eternal life after death.

If one believes that this life is but a very small part of one's total existence, then issues related to the "rest" of one's existence (i.e., that fantasy afterlife) become much more important.  If you believe that competing religious viewpoints represent a threat to the eternal life of your children and others, then killing everyone who belongs to those competing religions and refuses to convert makes moral sense.  You would think you were protecting your children from an extremely harmful influence.

This belief also makes killing seem less serious by making it seem impermanent--not an ending but merely a transition.  Only someone who believes such a thing flies an airplane into a building to protest a country's foreign policy or says "Kill them all; god will know his own" when asked how to distinguish "good" Catholics from heretics.

(Furthermore, as I have pointed out before, when different groups are formed, the members are encouraged to indulge their natural tendency to care only about the feelings of those related to them.  Those not of their group are not really seen as people but two dimensional constructs without real feelings (or, worse, as potential prey).)

Merely lacking a belief in life after death makes atheists more peaceful by making death and killing far less acceptable.  And, in fact, to the best of my knowledge, there has never been a homicide motivated solely by atheism. There have been quite a large number, however, solely in the name of religion.  Lacking a belief in religion allows us to develop a true morality based on reason and empathy toward our fellow man.  When you aren't concerned about mythical, magical men, then your mind is uncluttered with twisted notions of authority and retribution and can focus on the real people around you.

Spies

If you are a known atheist or a member of an atheist group, then you will occasionally find yourself dealing with religious spies.  That is, religious people who will either pretend to be your friend or join your group in order to observe you.  Calling them spies may sound paranoid and it may give their activities more dignity than they deserve but that is essentially what such people are and serves as a useful description.

If they are honest, they might even admit, in a way, why they are there.  "Just curious" they might say.  In many cases, however, you can expect no such decent act of openness.

In either case, that person will be probably be there to confirm his or her prejudices and gain ammunition to use against atheists, or maybe even you in particular if he or she (or a friend) has a personal ax to grind.  Don't forget this little horror story and how religion and the religious can be used as a weapon.

There are more than enough resources in libraries and on the internet these days for anyone who is "just curious" about atheism to learn all he or she needs to know.  If the person wishes to observe actual flesh and blood atheists in their casual and relatively unguarded interactions, then the person is probably still harboring bigotry about atheists.  That person probably wants to see if we are as evil as she has been told.

Consequently, the first thing to remember is that a religious spy will give anything you say or do a bad interpretation, so minimize your contact with that person and be careful when in his or her presence.

The best approach is to shift the focus onto that person, to put him on the defensive and thus focused on himself and not you.  This will also give you a chance to determine just what the person is up to.  Ask questions about his opinions and why he is there.  Observe his demeanor.  If you see nervousness or evasiveness or an obvious attempt to cover it up, then you will know why he is there.  Come right out and "jokingly" accuse him of being there just to confirm his prejudices and look for dirt to use against atheists and see how he reacts.  But, say it with a smile, so as not to seem hostile and let him know that his activities are obvious, silly and barely worth your concern.

Often they are there to gather information on atheists' thinking and the arguments that we use against religion.  I wouldn't worry too much about whether they hear our arguments.  Our position is logically valid and sound; their position isn't.  See this post for a summary.  There is nothing they can know in advance that will change that fact.  The best they can hope for is to camouflage one of their old arguments sufficiently that we appear flustered when presented with it.

In my experience, the religious only have a handful of arguments and that's all they ever had.  They have been making them for centuries.  They just keep re-phrasing them and dressing them up differently.  The key to debating theists is to listen to what they are saying and compare it with past experience until you recognize which pig wearing a new shade of lipstick is being presented to you.  Then treat it like the pig it is.

Chris Hedges Doesn't Believe in Atheists

I have mentioned author Chris Hedges before.  I love his work--for the most part.  Three years ago, however, he debated Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris about the merits of religion and didn't fare well--primarily because he was on the wrong side of the argument.  But, rather than recognize this fact, he expressed his feelings by writing a book in which he engaged in a combined "straw man" and "ad hominem" counterargument.

The debates, of course, weren't about the actual existence of god.  Chris Hedges knows better than to go there. Like so many intelligent religious people, he bases his convictions on the usefulness of religion.  This was the focus of the debates but, unfortunately, was not the focus of his book.

Instead, Hedges engaged in a mis-characterization of what Harris and Hitchens had to say and then focused his attention on that.  He said that the new atheists externalize evil and don't accept that it comes from within us and that a utopian society can be created through violence. 

First, with regard to the sources of evil, I don't recall any atheist, new or otherwise, ever saying something so simple minded as the idea that people are good and that all evil comes from religion.  Yet, that appears to be what Chris Hedges thought he heard.  I think the reason he heard it was his unwillingness to hear what they were actually saying:  Religion is a bad thing because it makes people behave worse than they would without it.

Hedges believes that all evil comes from within us, apparently.  Unfortunately, he fails to see that this includes religion because it come from within us as well.  And, as I have taken pains to say before, it comes from a dark place within us.

Hedges also thinks that humans will simply find other excuses to do bad things if religion is eliminated from our society.  That may be partly true but it's hardly a good reason for ignoring a source of evil that is currently a favorite of evildoers.  The obvious response to that argument is that we will fight against those new excuses when they do arise.  Let's get rid of the biggest, baddest, and oldest of the excuses for human evil, religion, first.  Hedges' argument is analogous to saying there is no reason to fight a deadly disease because its victims will just die of something else if we save them.

Not only is religion the current problem, its age and entrenchment in society make it uniquely evil--as do the centuries of polish and finesse that the religious have brought to its methods for causing evil.

Newer reasons for doing evil should be easier to fight because they will be less familiar and less well packaged and thus easier to spot and defend against.  Furthermore, establishing the precedent that irrational mind memes can and should be eliminated will make it easier to do so.

Our current attitude toward rationalizations for evil is a large part of the problem itself.  It will certainly be the case that people will find new reasons to do evil so long as we allow the standards for sanity to be based on something other than objective facts and pretend that popular forms of irrationality are not insanity and must be respected.

People already have a natural tendency to see those who aren't members of their group as less than human.  Any philosophy that divides people into groups artificially and encourages them to see others as immoral or evil simply for not being a member of their group is itself an evil philosophy.  How do we know about this natural tendency?  Through scientific observation and analysis--not from some holy book written by scientific illiterates.

People do have a tendency to do such things and to rationalize them and to delude themselves.  They probably always will because the seeds of those negative behaviors were planted by nature's formation of our brains through accretion of increasingly higher functioning layers without jettisoning the earlier ones.

Should we for that reason accept the idea that we are just "bad" and do nothing about it?  Of course not.

Should we not strive to make ourselves better?  Should we not strive to create a society that is more like a utopia, even though we know we can never actually create a utopia?

Of course we should.

Does Everybody Believe in God?

Sometimes one hears theists make the statement that "everyone believes in god".  Those who say this kind of thing will maintain that this is true even if you stand right in front of them and tell them you think god is a fairy tale.  Obviously, the only way they can think this is to believe that everyone somehow "knows" that god exists, but some people perversely deny it for emotional reasons.

Any theist who says this sort of thing has a closed mind and is almost certainly fanatical.  There is little hope of reasoning with such a person at all.  On the other hand, the position is so extreme and intolerant that it lends itself to easy ridicule and attack.  One of your best quick and simple replies is to say:

"You think everyone has to be just like you?"

This response is probably best if you don't want to get into any sort of debate with such a person, which is probably a good idea.  Point out the inherent idiocy at the core of the statement and then drop the subject.

This attitude is a variation of the "no atheists in foxholes" argument--but with a twist.  Both are based on the assumption that a person's emotions completely determine what he or she believes.  The "no atheists in foxholes" argument is an implicit admission that religion is a delusion.  This version is an implicit admission of how theists think:  They "feel" and then rationalize their feelings, therefore they are quite sure that everyone else does the same.

While it is true that everyone's thinking is effected by emotion, the extent of this effect will vary from individual to individual just like any other trait.  Many people, especially non-believers, know this and therefore actively try to prevent their emotions from having primacy in their reasoning.   They know that allowing emotions to determine their reasoning can interfere with the accuracy of their thinking.  For a theist, however, their emotions always have primacy in their reasoning, and they apparently can't imagine that anyone could be different.  (They even think that this is a good thing because they can't distinguish between emotions and values--but that will be the subject of another post.)

One of the things you can say is to first make this explicit:

"You think atheists are just in denial?  Why are they in denial?  They just don't want to admit it for emotional reasons?"

Once you get an explicit admission of the assumption that everyone is controlled by their emotions, you can ask:

"You think everyone's thinking is controlled by their emotions?"

As an argument for the existence of god, this is an appeal to "groupthink"--the idea that truth is determined solely by what everyone believes to be true.  This is very popular with believers.  I have dealt with it elsewhere.  It is also an implicit insult to the intellect, maturity, and integrity of non-believers.  Thus, you can add:

"To say that no one can think objectively is an insult to the intellectual integrity of the entire human race."

Like most of the "groupthink" statements made by believers, it is also an indication of their insecurity and need for reinforcement of their beliefs by others.  They need that reinforcement so much that they will simply imagine that others believe the same as they do if they have to.  Thus, at the appropriate juncture, you can say something like:

"You have told me that your thinking is controlled by your emotions.  Therefore I can only conclude that you have an emotional need to believe that everyone secretly agrees with you."

or

"I think you have an emotional need to believe that, just like you have an emotional need to believe in god."

Finally, this sort of "thinking" also shows a distinct lack of empathy because one can't think that this is true unless one is unable to see that others have different inherent personalities, characteristics, and formative experiences.  Therefore, like many "groupthink" notions, this "thinking" is a precursor of intolerance--especially in light of the implied rejection of the notion that anyone can actually think differently.  If you want, you can add:

"I guess no one is allowed to even think differently from you."

or

"So, the way you see it, you are always right and people who don't agree with you are just liars."

Greta Christina's Recent Article in Alternet

Yesterday, Greta Christina posted an article in Alternet entitled "Why Religious Believers Are So Desperate for the Atheist Seal of Approval".

I really like Greta's writing and this article in particular, but I want to add a couple of thoughts that she may have left out on purpose (because, after all, not every article is meant to be an exhaustive treatment of its topic--those are called "books").

Greta's point, I think, was that the way some believers seek out atheists' approval for "their" religion is tantamount to an admission that, deep down, they know their religion is just as much nonsense as any other and they want an "objective" observer to tell them that this isn't true.

Greta says that this particular type of believer does this because he or she cares about the truth.  I think she is wrong about that.  I think they do this because they think that "groupthink" trumps any objective truth.

In addition, I would like to add that this is related to their way of thinking.  They don't think for themselves--their gold standard is "what everybody else thinks".  In the same vein, this is directly related to their need for group reinforcement (which is why they are so insistent on school prayer and invocations at government events) because they need to maintain the illusion that "everyone" believes this nonsense (and that those who don't are just crazy cranks).  This is necessary for their self-delusion--it quiets that voice of reason whispering to them--and for their egos--it quiets their insecurities and makes them feel like they're part of THE power structure. 

Finally, it is important to understand that this is the first step in the path to intolerance.  Greta came close to this point by describing how upset they get.  When they realize that someone simply will not reinforce their cherished delusion, they will try to force that person to do so using means of ever-increasing severity until they simply lose it and try to "get rid" of that person for being "evil" and "crazy".

I think this point was implicit in her conclusion where she told believers what to expect from us (and why) and that they should accept it, but I like to make the point that the threats are there and they are real.  Many atheists are in denial with regard to this.  It is important for us all to recognize that a monster is lurking:  the Mob.  It is important for us to see this so that we can protect ourselves and so that we can fight against it.