Today, Andrew Sullivan responded to a dig at his change of tune on treatment of prisoners. It actually hasn't been the most serious dig he's taken for chilling to the Bush administration, but it made me think, not for the first time, "Why do humans feel a need to punish apostates, religious, political, and otherwise?" More hated than the person who's always had an opposing position is a former ally who's taken it. In politics, it can be explained as another facet of treating debate as a sports match, where winning as opposed to understanding is the goal; in such a climate, someone who makes a rational change of mind is as crazy as a soccer players who's begun intentionally scoring own goals. Atheists even go after apostates sometimes, as in the response to prominent-atheist-turned-deist Anthony Flew's endorsement of Intelligent Design. Maybe the responses were needed to remind people of the flaws of some old arguments, but as I read the one above, I couldn't shake the feeling that the reason anyone went to the trouble was the urge to punish apostates.
As for my question of why, all I can think of is it's some kind of tribal instinct, though that doesn't satisfy my wonder at such spectacles.
1 comment:
How about it's some of the same reaction that bible literalists have to evolution--the "conversion" of someone you formerly agreed with shakes your own conviction more, and also makes you wonder about other things you believe in and maybe thought the other believed in as well. Esp. if you don't know a person well, I think there's a tendency to assume that agreement in one area implies agreement in many; the more important the area you know about, the broader/deeper the identification. At the extreme, if somebody always disagreed with you, you always knew they were an idiot and didn't deserve respect; but when conversion happens, somebody you did respect disagrees and it's scary. So attack.
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