Metamagician and the Hellfire Club

Ecklund on Singer

2012-01-27T09:59:00.005+11:00

One of the more annoying passages in Science vs. Religion by Elaine Howard Ecklund presents the view of one scientist that universities are turning off the general public by funding meretricious and alienating pseudo-scholarship. Ecklund presents this at such length, and in such a context, that the irresistible conclusion is that she endorses this scientist's views, or is at least sympathetic to them.

What this shows me is that neither the scientist nor Ecklund properly understands what universities are all about. An important component of the role of universities is the creation of a space where what seem like commonsense ideas - handed down through socialisation and tradition - can be held up to the light and challenged. One thing that we want from academics, especially in fields such as philosophy, is the capacity and courage to attack popular ideas, including popular ideas of morality. This kind of intellectual critique, which may involve the development of unpopular critiques of how ordinary people think, is one way that we make progress as a society.

Accommodationist thinkers in the style of Ecklund or, say, Chris Mooney, want to reverse this. The idea is to market a product, such as science, by showing how it is safe for people to consume without it challenging their existing worldviews (which may be based on religion or traditional morality). People with various existing worldviews are taken as demographics, and the idea is to market science to them.

But science and scholarship are dangerous - not necessarily in the sense of creating physical risks, but in the sense that they can lead to ideas that undermine received wisdom. Universities are places where dangerous ideas, in this sense, are created, refined, and tested in debate. To suggest otherwise, and adopt the marketing strategy favoured by accommodationists, is profoundly ignorant and anti-intellectual.

The example given by the scientist in Ecklund's passage is Peter Singer:

Mentioning perhaps Singer's most extreme view, he said that Singer has "been saying infanticide is acceptable under some circumstances. I mean maybe an academic can justify that, because he can write that in a fancy paragraph. But to any level-headed human being, it doesn't matter what kind of paragraph you write. It's simply wrong and that's the end of it."

I have to laugh at an academic, of all people, complaining about someone writing "a fancy paragraph" - I wonder what someone who thinks in such an anti-intellectual way is even doing in the academy.

But setting that aside ... there goes the entire sub-discipline of moral philosophy. If we are not allowed to challenge what "any level-headed human being" supposedly knows, we might as well go out of business. Ecklund doesn't even notice what a stupid understanding of the role of universities this scientist has, which makes me wonder about her own understanding of it. Does Ecklund "get" academia at all?

Ah haz a radio interview...

2012-01-27T09:14:00.002+11:00

... in a couple of hours - with this organisation, Think Atheist. I'm not sure where you have to live to receive this broadcast, but if anyone has a chance to listen in, well, please do so.

Edit (now that the interview is over): I gather this wasn't actually live to air. Anyway, it'll be on their site and I'll provide the link at a later stage. We spoke for nearly an hour, and I understand that we'll end up with a version slightly edited down to about 45 minutes.

Emrys Westacott on the philosophy of everyday living

2012-01-27T00:26:00.001+11:00

This interview at The Browser may be of interest - philosopher Emrys Westacott chooses and discusses five books that relate to how we should live our lives.

His choices are not works of analytic philosophy (they consist of a book about the Stoics, a classic English novel, a work of academic psychology and one of anthropology, and Niezsche's The Gay Science), but they are interesting suggestions, and he discusses them engagingly. I have no idea what his own book, The Virtues of Our Vices, is like. If it's written like this, it might be worth a look - but make up your own mind about that if you read the interview.

The secular state has no mandate to enforce religious morality

2012-01-25T21:34:00.003+11:00

Or to enforce any all-things-considered moral system. It has a more limited remit than that.

The piece linked to was discussed in a radio conversation between Scott Stephens and Waleed Aly earlier this evening (the topic apparently related to the role of the state in enforcing morality, or something along those lines). I haven't yet had a chance to listen to it, but I expect it will soon be available on the Radio National website.

I hear that it was pretty favourable publicity. Considering both broadcasters are religious believers, that's heartening and interesting. Did anyone else manage to catch it on the Drive program on Radio National?

Another obtuse article gets published about #MTRsues

2012-01-25T15:48:00.003+11:00

In The Sydney Morning Herald we see an article by Cathy Sherry, an academic from the University of New Wales, writing in defence of Melinda Tankard Reist.

By now, I am sick of this issue - much as it has raised many interesting questions that need more debate. There are other things that I'd rather be posting about, but I can't forebear commenting on this particular piece, as it so totally wrongheaded and dangerous. You'd think, to read it, that Melinda Tankard Reist was the one being bullied and silenced.

In fact, she is by far the more powerful person in the dispute she is having with Jennifer Wilson. One is a public figure with enormous political and media support behind her and easy access to the mainstream media. The other - i.e. Wilson - is a relatively unknown blogger and occasional writer of online op.ed pieces. If this is a David and Goliath situation, Melinda Tankard Reist is no Daniel, and Wilson is far from looking like Goliath.

And let's not forget that Tankard Reist is the one who invoked defamation law to try to control what her opponent can say. There are many other ways she could have handled things. These included simply ignoring the obscure blog post that she objected to. Alternatively, she could have used her ample access to the media to reply to Wilson's views on their merits ... or she could have allowed her various cronies to do so.

There's not much doubt who is the bully in this case, and who is the underdog being bullied. Nor is there much doubt that people like Cathy Sherry enable bullying by rushing to the defence of the bully (it's remarkable how often this happens!). Sherry doesn't even mention that the dispute blew up in public when Tankard Reist's lawyers sent Wilson a letter of demand, with a threat of a defamation action, over content that their client objected to on Wilson's blog.

Perhaps I could find something to agree with in Sherry's article if it were not so fundamentally wrong about the key issues and the power differential that's involved. Yes ... I, too, don't like orthodoxies. I, too, dislike debate that takes the form of crude personal attacks (I'm sure that Tankard Reist has received some of these, but of course so has Wilson). There are interesting discussions to be had about how people should conduct themselves in public debate. But sending a letter of demand with a threat of suing for defamation is, at best, a heavyhanded response, and the kind of thing that we should avoid. Except in extreme situations, the civil courts are not the place to settle such disputes between people taking part in public debate on matters of government policy.

It doesn't look like this issue is going away any time soon. I wish Tankard Reist would simply withdraw any threat of taking legal action, and the immediate issue would be resolved. But there's no sign, at the moment, of any such resolution. I guess we must stay tuned and be prepared to help Wilson if we can, should the legal side of it proceed that far.

Science vs. Religion: What Scientists Really Think - on the Galileo affair

2012-01-24T21:27:00.002+11:00

I'm currently reading this volume by Elaine Howard Ecklund. It's not quite what I expected, in that it's much more upfront than I thought it would be about the fact that scientists in the US are more likely - far more likely - than the general population to be atheists, not to be religious or spiritual in orientation, etc.

Ecklund is candid about that much, and indeed emphasises it repeatedly, but she wants to argue that scientists should be more publicly supportive of religion. Scientists who are believers should communicate more about why they find religion and science compatible. Those who are non-believers should learn more about religious systems and speak of them with respect. Or so she seems to think.

In any event, there are many individual things in the book that are getting my hackles up. Here is just one:

Many of the scientists I talked with gave Galileo's torture at the hands of the Inquisition as a central piece of evidence that religion and science are in entrenched conflict. But really, Galileo was never tortured; that's a myth. Misconceptions about religion and science abound.

Oh come off it! This is extraordinary. It's well known that Galileo was not physically tortured, but only threatened with torture - and perhaps shown the actual torture instruments. That was enough to get him to recant.

Perhaps the scientists whom she spoke to were a bit hazy on this point, but so what? Does Ecklund really think that the Inquisition was not prepared to go through with its threat to torture Galileo if he had held out further with his insistence on the truth of the heliocentric theory? If so, where is her evidence that showing him the torture instruments was merely a bluff or a sham?

And how is the Inquisition less culpable if it was merely prepared to torture Galileo - but did not actually need to do so to obtain a recantation from him? Indeed, if we are going to be technical, is it really so clear that threatening a prisoner with these fiendish instruments of pain ... is not a form of torture in itself? Even if, as is widely believed by historians, he was actually shown them to make the point? Even if you don't classify this as torture, exactly, it seems pretty damn coercive, doesn't it?

If physically torturing Galileo would stand as evidence of entrenched conflict between science and religion, how does "merely" threatening to do so, and apparently being prepared to do so, not provide similarly strong evidence? And how is similarly strong evidence not provided by the fact that Galileo was effectively gagged from speaking any more about heliocentrism, was placed under house arrest for the remainder of his life, and had all his scientific works works banned from publication? Are we supposed to ignore the whole dreadful sequence of events merely because Galileo was never actually physically tortured?

Even if it is argued that the Inquisition showed some mercy to Galileo - yes, mercy by its atrocious standards - how does its behaviour in bullying him, suppressing his speech, threatening him with torture, placing him under permanent house arrest, and continuing to suppress his views not attract Ecklund's condemnation?

She dismisses the story - in its distorted "Galileo was tortured" form - as a myth, but does not tell us what really happened. To be fair, she does have an endnote in which she mentions a book chapter by Maurice A. Finocchiaro, and in the same endnote she quotes at length from Arthur Koestler's tendentious and downright nasty discussion of Galileo in The Sleepwalkers. However, she provides nothing further in the main text. The quote from Koestler provides no detail at all about the Galileo affair, but merely makes fun of a mythologised portrait of Galileo that some people may or may not believe in (the total narrative is evidently Koestler's synthesis).

Nor does Ecklund tell us how the Inquisitors' actions merit anything other than the severest censure, or how the actual events are any less evidence of a rift between science and religion than if the torture instruments had been physically applied to the scientist's fragile human body.

Really, this is deplorable. It never ceases to amaze me how religious apologists and accommodationists can just blow off atrocious actions by the Church as if they are insignificant. Ecklund's handling of the issue could not be much more intellectually and morally obtuse.

Perhaps there is something to be said as to why the Galileo affair, by itself, is indecisive in the case for an incompatibility between religion and science. In this particular post, I don't even want to get into that, one way or the other. But whatever we should ultimately say about the Galileo affair, it is not conveyed in the callous whitewash that Ecklund has offered for our non-edification.

One Law for All organises day of action for freedom of expression

2012-01-24T11:42:00.000+11:00

You might like to sign on to this endorsements page (I am one of the original endorsers).

Freedom of speech and expression - especially, but not solely, the freedom to criticise and satirise religion - is under constant, ongoing attack. We need to say, "Enough is enough!" and push back against it. Signing this page is one small thing you can do.

(It hardly needs repeating, does it, that I have a long chapter on this very issue in Freedom of Religion and the Secular State, complete with discussion of "Islamophobia", etc.)

Skepticlawyer on the limits and purposes of the law

2012-01-24T11:08:00.007+11:00

This post by Skepticlawyer should be compulsory reading! Note that it is not about the issue of defamation law and its abuse, which I still consider the most urgent issue raised by the particular dispute.

Nor is it about the question of how much we are under some kind of obligation to reveal our comprehensive views of the world when we engage in debate on matters of public policy - which, in my opinion, breaks up into further issues about how much we are obliged to do this in an ideal world, and how far we are obliged to do it in various situations that arise in the messy real world where influence on public policy so often depends on emotion, public image, appeals to lobbies, etc.

Rather, the post is a valuable contribution to underlying issues about the purposes and limits of the law, and how these relate to the substantive questions in dispute between Melinda Tankard Reist and her opponents.

There's a lot to think about, and I'm not sure whether I agree with it all. That's not because there's anything that I especially disagree with, but only because I need to digest some of the distinctions made, the way Skepticlawyer makes them. But in any event, there is some great stuff in her post. She hammers the point that if you want to enact a law in order to produce some utilitarian benefit, such as reducing some widely experienced harm, you need to do a lot better than arguing that you dislike whatever the practice is that you want banned or regulated, or even that you find it harmful in some sense, or that some other people do.

Assuming the conduct you are targeting is not directly harmful conduct that has a clear victim - someone who is not consenting to it and may be resisting it if they have the opportunity and ability - you'd better do some actual research. You need to show not only what harm the practice does, but also that the best way to obviate the harm will be through enacting a legal ban - and that the net effect of a legal ban will not be even worse than leaving things alone!

For example, Skepticlawyer suggests that the actual research to date tends to show that beauty pageants for small children, at least the way they are currently run, do harm to the children involved. And we might add more explicitly that state paternalism towards actual children is a lot more appropriate than state paternalism towards adults or even more mature children and teenagers. So, an empirically-based case can be developed to support banning these pageants, or at least regulating them to an extent where they would have to take some very different form (and may lose whatever characteristics made them attractive to parents in the first place ... don't ask me what those characteristics are, as it's mysterious to me). Perhaps there's a good case for legal intervention here.

At the other end of the scale, consider someone who wants to ban abortion on the ground that it ends up harming (causing grief, psychological trauma, etc., to) the women who choose to have abortions. This is going to be much more difficult. Sure, you can find women who regret having abortions, just as you can find people of both sexes who regret doing all sorts of things. But you're going to have to do a helluva lot better than that if you want to make out this sort of paternalistic argument for banning or heavily regulating abortions. Among other things, you need to be confident (which means you need to do some research) that banning abortion won't produce harms of its own and perhaps make things worse.

As it happens, anti-abortion advocates often claim that abortion leads to "post-abortion syndrome" - a state of mind involving depression and feelings of loss - but there has already been a fair bit of research on how women actually feel after having abortions. Some do feel guilt (but surely this is a self-serving argument, given the source of some of that guilt in social condemnation!), but the most common feelings involve such things as relief. The "post-abortion syndrome" meme is best seen as a form of scaremongering and bullying.

More generally, these words from Skepticlawyer are worth taking to heart - I'll quote her at length:

When campaigners think there oughtta be a law, how do they go about it?

Very often, by not thinking very hard. This sounds cruel to Melinda Tankard Reist, but is not meant to be, for the thoughtlessness afflicts activists across the political spectrum. As someone with wonkish interests and experience, the process of campaigning seems to go like this:

1. An intuitive sense that a given activity is bad, for a variety of inchoate and unclear reasons. It is at this point — although much philosophy depends on intuitions — that the stupidity usually kicks in, becoming like a mistake made in the first two lines of a complex algebra equation: magnified, typically, at every step. When the hypothesis is poorly formed, then observations enlisted in its support can be seriously awry.

The intuition problem stems in part from a failure to appreciate that other people may not react to the activity in question in the same way, with the campaigner having great difficulty imagining him or herself into someone else’s head. When it comes to the objectification of adult women, for example (one of Wilson’s ‘categories’), we may be dealing with normal statistical differences both between men and women, and also statistical variation within the set, ‘women’. Many women dislike male attention, being ogled, say, or chatted up. They dislike porn and find it degrading of women. By contrast, many women like and want male attention. They have no problem with porn. There are also intermediate positions between the two.

The campaigner’s response, of course, is the one Wilson has already flagged: to argue that women who like porn or pole-dancing or whatever are victims of a form of false consciousness: that is, they are unable to see things, especially exploitation, oppression, and social relations, as they really are. It should be very obvious that this is an enormous claim, for embedded within it is one express argument: the pole-dancing and porn-loving woman’s mind is (a) unable to produce a sophisticated awareness of how it is developed and shaped by circumstances; and one implied argument (b) that the campaigner knows better than the pole-dancing, porn loving woman, and should decide for her. That’s where the law comes in, of course.

2. Realising that ‘I don’t like being objectified, so there ought to be a law against it’ won’t cut the mustard with policymakers, advertisers, politicians, business and legal drafters, the campaigner goes looking for a link between objectification and other harms.

This is the stage where the great bulk of the research cited by participants on all sides of this debate is at right now. The evidence points in fifty different directions. Much of it is very bad. Some of it has clearly been written by people who need desperately to read a statistics textbook. Tankard Reist’s book on grief after abortion, for example, is based on only 18 case studies. N=18, ladies and gentlemen or, the plural of ‘anecdote’ is not ‘data’. Others have no causality tests, or lack controls, or no regression analysis.

You are regressing…

Regression works by artificially holding constant every variable except the two the researcher wants to focus on, and then showing how those two co-vary.

Imagine you have 10,000 girls, 5,000 of whom have participated in child beauty pageants and 5,000 who haven’t. You want to see if there’s any meaningful difference between the two groups — in say, school test scores, or ability to delay gratification (the famous ‘marshmellow test‘), and whether any difference (there may not be one) is attributable to participation in child beauty pageants for the first 5,000. Regression analysis converts each of those 10,000 children into a circuit board with an identical number of switches. Each switch represents a single category of the child’s data: her year one maths score, her year-three reading score, her mother’s education level, her father’s income, whether she comes from an intact family, the relevant affluence of her suburb, and so on. The statistician lines up all the children who share many characteristics–all the circuit boards that have their switches flipped in the same direction–and then pinpoints the single characteristic they don’t share. This is how the effect of that switch and, eventually, of every switch, becomes clear.

Be careful with that Leviathan, Citizens!

This, as you may appreciate, is a long, slow process. Many activists don’t have the patience. So they revert to item 1, and spend a great deal of time arguing that their choices are better than other people’s while getting entangled in complex debates over freedom of expression. If they catch the ear of lawmakers, of course, they may even get their much desired law.

And if the law is bad enough, we, the people, all suffer — likely from both crimes and laws.

Indeed! And we need to talk more about these issues. What justifies our attempts to control people's behaviour through the coercive power of the law and the state? The test will be much harder to meet than many lobbyists are prepared to concede.

Tim Dean on Kitcher's The Ethical Project

2012-01-23T19:23:00.001+11:00

Without offering you a lot of commentary at this stage, I present you Tim Dean's review (actually the first of two parts) of Philip Kitcher's The Ethical Project.

You can (once again) find my own review here if you want to compare notes.

I do agree that the pragmatic/functionalist approach to morality is the way to go, although one point that I'd want to make about this is that J.L. Mackie made the same points pretty strongly in Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (without, however, Kitcher's elaborate conjectures about evolutionary and cultural history). I suppose my other point is just that I wonder how this relates to moral semantics. I agree with Kitcher that morality can be seen as something we invented (with a bit of help from our prior evolution) to serve what can be loosely regarded as a function (there's a lot to say about the "loosely regarded" bit). This may be the most fruitful way to see morality, and it may be at least approximately right as an account of how morality actually came to be.

But the implication seems to be that moral norms are norms that they historically served the function and are now socially entrenched. Even if some moral statements are true in some sense (on a pragmatic conception of truth), they may not be true in the sense that the folk imagine they are, and if the folk are taken as asserting their truth in a sense in which they are not true ... well that's interesting, is it not? Error theory keeps lurking around, it seems to me, unless we are going to offer some very fancy moral semantics. I'd have liked to have seen Kitcher address this, and more generally to have addressed Mackie's views - and to have offered a bit more in the way of moral semantics. Given the considerable strengths of The Ethical Project this might have been a helpful and fruitful tack.

Sunday supervillainy - Save Louie the Fly!

2012-01-22T19:45:00.001+11:00

Oh noes! Mortein is threatening to kill Louie the Fly once and for all, and as part of its ~~evil, unscrupulous~~ ... um, beware of defamation actions ... capitalist promotional activities is demanding that you vote to save his life.

Louie the Fly is, perhaps, not a supervillain, strictly speaking, but he's an Australian icon. This can't be allowed to happen!

The GetUp survey

2012-01-22T18:43:00.002+11:00

I imagine that many of my readers in Australia are members of GetUp, in which case they will have written to you about their current survey. That survey gives you a chance to nominate issues of your own that you'd like to see them focus on, apart from their list that they ask you to prioritise.

If you "do" the survey, please consider proposing something about the defence of freedom of speech. Your concern might be the power of defamation law to chill public debate, or the vulnerability of the arts and the media to censorship on a whole range of bases, or some other aspect. You may be especially worried about the new online media and the free speech of bloggers.

Whatever your specific concerns might be, I do respectfully ask that you keep free speech issues in mind as you fill in the survey form - and pass this on to others.

Cheers for Hari Kunzru, Amitava Kumar, Jeet Thayil and Ruchir Joshi

2012-01-21T21:43:00.000+11:00

Authors Hari Kunzru, Amitava Kumar, Jeet Thayil and Ruchir Joshi read some passages from 'The Satanic Verses' on the first day of the festival, after Salman Rushdie pulled out of the event citing death threats.

What I hadn't realised - though it makes sense - is that The Satanic Verses is currently banned in India. Shame on India. How can it pretend to be a liberal democracy when it fails, in such a flagrant way, to protect freedom of speech? Shame on the organisers of the conference for (apparently) halting the readings. Shame on the parliamentarians in India who have protested at the readings and called for arrests of the readers.

This whole episode is yet another disgraceful example of bullying to shut people up. We need to protest against these events at every possible level. Add your voice however you can.

Lawrence Krauss does a guest blog post for Readings

2012-01-20T23:29:00.001+11:00

This is the first, I believe, in a series of guest blog posts that Readings are doing in connection with the forthcoming Global Atheist Convention in Melbourne. It is basically about Krauss's new book, A Universe From Nothing.

More on Jennifer Wilson's substantive views

2012-01-20T21:11:00.003+11:00

Wilson says this:

Tankard Reist is a Baptist. Their belief system includes the second coming of Christ, end times, evangelism, and the belief most relevant to this post and a central tenet of the Baptist faith: the Virgin Birth.

Tankard Reist believes that the woman chosen to bring the boy god Jesus into the world was a virgin. Mary did not conceive the baby Jesus through sexual intercourse. The boy god required a fresh, unsullied virgin to inhabit throughout his gestation.

Why? Because the followers of the doctrine of the virgin birth believe that sex filthies the human female, and renders her impure. The inherent impurity of female sexuality can be tempered by the sacrament of Christian marriage, wherein sex is a means of reproduction, and offers relief for the male. It is better to marry than to burn, advised St Paul, demonstrating how little he thought of female sexuality.

The boy god needed a pure vessel, unfilthied by sexual experience. In this sense Mary was the most famous objectified woman in the history of the world, for to dehumanize a woman to the extent that you perceive her sexuality as filthy is objectifying indeed.

The Virgin Mary was in fact co-opted as a dehumanized life support system for a foetus.

It is from this fundamental position that Melinda Tankard Reist advises women and girls on sexual matters.

Again, why not debate this rather than threatening to sue? If Tankard Reist is not a Baptist, then she can simply say so, perhaps with some plausible corroborating detail about where she does stand theologically. It doesn't have to be a lot of detail, just enough to deal with the general issue.

In my opinion, the issue of whether or not she is, specifically, a Baptist is something of a red herring. In my experience of Baptists (which is considerable), they vary quite a bit in their theological positions, and they don't actually put a huge emphasis on the doctrine of the Virgin Birth (though they do formally subscribe to it). It's more a Catholic thing to put a huge emphasis on the Virgin Birth, the importance of Mary as an iconic figure, and the great moral significance of chastity and purity.

That said, conservative Christianity in general does tend to be permeated by ancient ideas of the shamefulness of sex and the body. Those ideas can be found in the writings of St. Paul, Augustine (in particular), and (to a lesser extent) Aquinas, and they go very deep in Christian approaches to sexuality and gender roles. That's the point that Wilson really needed to make, and it is really, in essence, what she is relying on.

Tankard Reist's best reply is to explain at least something about her theological position, to assert clearly that her social and political views are not, in fact, influenced by theological ideas of the shamefulness of sex and the body, and to try to show how those views can be justified in entirely secular terms.

Of course, we might be sceptical about this, even if she said it - after all, her overall set of concerns and policy views is very typical of a theologically conservative Christian, and ideas of sex and the body being shameful can be picked up unconsciously. They are deeply embedded in our moral traditions and are continually reproduced in numerous ways.

But there are ways that Tankard Reist could debate all this without having to spell out the entirety of her theological position (I agree that this would be burdensome and unnecessary).

As I said in a comment just now, on another post, the one thing she should not be doing is threatening to sue opponents for defamation. At least, not over something like this.

Another post about #MTRsues

2012-01-20T10:34:00.001+11:00

This post at Black Dog asks where the money is coming from - how does Melinda Tankard Reist finance her activities, including getting an expensive lawyer to write to a critic and threaten her with legal proceedings? Who is backing her? What financial interests does she have in all this, beyond whatever she is paid for her books and articles?

These are pretty good questions. Unfortunately, with an issue like this some things get a bit murky. At one level, I don't care about Tankard Reist's theological views. As long as she puts purely secular arguments about alleged harms to women and children, it might even be said that she's doing the right thing. I.e., the electorate and the legislators can consider those arguments (and the counter arguments) on their merits, and, at one level, everyone is happy. The political system is operating on the basis of secular considerations, and all's right with the world.

In practice, of course, it gets murkier. Some of the arguments are only going to make sense on the basis of moral attitudes that are entangled with religion, we're going to find people who are swayed for religious reasons in any event, and as I said the other day high-profile activists like Tankard Reist do not merely put the secular arguments in a detached way - they appeal to emotion, attempt to cultivate a certain attractive public image, and so on. So inevitably, people are going to ask whether her viewpoint makes sense on a purely secular basis, whether she is actually biased by theological considerations, how sincere she is, whether her conclusions fit into some larger agenda, and on and on.

That's not really how I'd like it to operate in an ideal world. If Tankard Reist were merely writing books and academic articles, I wouldn't see much merit in probing beneath the surface of her alleged facts and the arguments that she uses. We don't all have to disclose a whole lot of personal background every time we put an intellectual argument.

But in the murky world in which we live, interrogating the ideological backgrounds and worldviews of outspoken, high-profile public figures is a fact of life, and is often necessary. I can even see how Tankard Reist might think that it's unfair, if she genuinely believes that she's been confining herself to secular arguments - I can't say how far she actually has done that, because I'm not very familiar with her work, and I certainly don't know what she subjectively thinks.

But what I do know is that she crossed an important line when she threatened to sue an opponent for speech that is pretty normal in public debate in the world that we actually live in. Even if - per impossibile - I agreed with her on everything else, I could not agree to that line being crossed. At this point, freedom of speech issues come into play.

If Tankard Reist is offended, or thinks she's being treated unfairly, because she thinks she's used nothing but secular arguments ... or whatever ... well, let her make her point and try to substantiate it. After all, she has no problem getting a public platform.

Admittedly, responding in that way to a relatively obscure blogger like Jennifer Wilson might have been counterproductive. But there you go - sometimes it's better to hold your peace if you're not really taking damage.

Tankard Reist now has the worst of both worlds - she's seen as an opponent of free speech, someone who is prepared to use the law to shut up a critic. At the same time, she's given the critic a much higher profile than she had to begin with (before this week, I for one hadn't heard of Jennifer Wilson). And she's drawn attention to the possibility that she might have strong biases, that her analyses might be distorted as a result, that there is now additional reason to scrutinise them, that they (and she) may suddenly look different when various dots are connected, and so on.

All in all, it wasn't a smart move. She should withdraw the threat to sue, and move on.

Petitions

2012-01-19T19:20:00.001+11:00

You might like to sign this petition about the #MTRsues issue.

OTOH, you might not. I did, in this case, but I expressed a reservation in my comment.

I've discussed before - though I'm too lazy to dig it out - my frequent discomfort about petitions, manifestoes, etc., which often contain more points than I think are strictly necessary, and often contain specific points that I don't entirely agree with or am not sure about, and which go beyond whatever has me signing the petition in the first place.

In this case, the main point is that intimidatory use of defamation law to stifle debate on matters of public interest is a Bad Thing. A Very Bad Thing. It's not necessary to go further and say whether defamation law should itself be reformed (and the petition doesn't talk about that) or whether public figures should or should not come clean about their religious views (the petition does get into that, but I don't see it as necessary ... and my views as to what disclosures people should make would probably be both complicated and tentative).

Whether or not a public figure has come clean about her religious views, someone who joins the dots and makes comment should not be vulnerable to a defamation action. In the case of Ms Tankard Reist, you don't have to be Sherlock Holmes to work out that her particular parcel of issues and views looks like those of someone who has been influenced by conservative Christian theology of some kind. Whatever her theological position may actually be, that's how it looks from here.

Anyway, if you agree with it, or agree with it in substance, do by all means sign the petition.

Jennifer Wilson's substantive views

2012-01-18T20:50:00.005+11:00

For a moment, forget any allegations that Jennifer Wilson has made about Melinda Tankard Reist's religious background, etc., etc., and whether or not the latter has been evasive about it.

Wilson's substantive views, in opposition to those of Tankard Reist, are also worth considering and discussing, so let's pass some of them on for consideration and discussion:

While I don’t like seeing little girls dressed as sexy adults anymore than MTR, what concerns me is that in campaigning as she does against the “sexualisation” and “pornification” of women she’s preaching her religion’s belief that there is something inherently wrong with female sexual expression.

I am also suspicious of her conflation of girls and women, when the two situations are entirely different and should be treated as such. Exploiting the sexuality of children (and children are sexual beings) is a whole other matter from the so-called epidemic of “sexualisation” and “pornification” of adults. I would like to see a journalist question Tankard Reist on her persistent conflation of the two. I believe it is deliberate.

We are sexual beings. Many of us, male and female, like to express our sexuality. It’s a big part of our identity. The ways in which we’ve chosen to do this have varied according to the style of the time. The ways some of us choose to do it in 2012 are, I would argue, no more or less scandalous than at other periods of human history. Yet a new sexual dysfunction called “sexualization” has entered the social discourse, driven initially in this country by Tankard Reist. She then gathered around her a motley crew of radical feminists and middle class moralists who tacitly ignore their considerable differences in the interests of the greater goal of fighting the twin evils they claim are destroying our society: sexualization and pornification.

I am unaware how many of her supporters are religious, but I would argue that they have in common an inclination towards zealotry, and an ethic of purity, both of which are to be found in non believers.

Are Tankard Reist and her supporters in reality pathologizing all expressions of female sexuality? Genuine sexualization we may well get upset about, as a particular form of dehumanization, but are they using that word to obliterate the perfectly normal concept of female sexiness?

Does Tankard Reist believe that being sexy and feeling sexy is pathological behaviour outside of the marital bedchamber? And why does nobody ask her this question?

“Sexualization” and “pornification” are done to women, according to Reist. Women don’t choose to dress, work and play in ways that fit these pathological categories. They’ve been forced into them by men for male gratification. If you think you choose to wear high heels and a short skirt and learn pole dancing, you’re wrong. The patriarchy made you do it. If you think you like to show off your legs and breasts because it feels like sexy fun to do that, you didn’t make that choice, you know. You are actually so brainwashed that the whole concept of choice passed you by long ago. You are a victim.

If you want to look sexy because you’d like to have sex, if you earn your living as a sex worker or perform in porn, in short, if you express your sexuality in any way at all outside of marriage, you are dysfunctional, immoral or both.

Somebody needs to ask Tankard Reist just what she considers an acceptable public expression of female sexuality. I suspect the reality is, she doesn’t have one. For religious fundamentalists, there is no such thing. A woman must be modest and pure, but definitely not sexy and enjoying it.

What kind of a lesson is this to teach our girls about their sexuality?

Having thus far failed to take control of the sexy and eradicate it’s [sic] expression through the invocation of morality, defining it as a pathological disorder is the next step in the reactionary battle for control of female sexuality.

This is worth thinking about in its own right. And there's more! The post that Ms Tankard Reist took exception to has many interesting observations that are worth airing, considering, discussing, debating, etc. Even if you disagree with them, they are timely - and should not be suppressed in any way.

Edit: link corrected.

The world has far too much morality

2012-01-18T13:23:00.000+11:00

Quote from Steven Pinker (p. 622 of The Better Angels of Our Nature): "The world has far too much morality. If you added up all the homicides committed in pursuit of self-help justice, the casualties of religious and revolutionary wars, the people executed for victimless crimes and misdemeanors, and the targets of ideological genocides, they would surely outnumber the fatalities from amoral predation and conquest. The human moral sense can excuse any atrocity in the minds of those who commit it, and it furnishes them with motives for acts of violence that bring them no tangible benefit. The torture of heretics and conversos, the burning of witches, the imprisonment of homosexuals, and the honor of killing unchaste sisters and daughters are just a few examples. The incalculable suffering that has been visited upon the world by people motivated by a moral cause is enough to make one sympathize with comedian George Carlin when he said, "I think motivation is overrated. You show me some lazy prick who's lying around all day watching game shows and stroking his penis, and I'll show you someone who's not causing any fucking trouble!'"

Jennifer Wilson offers more thoughts on being sued

2012-01-17T21:17:00.001+11:00

She offers them here. What all this is showing is how defamation law can be used to chill legitimate debate on matters of public interest. This is an atrocious situation that is out of whack with liberal/democratic values.

At the moment, ordinary people who are sued by others who are wealthier and more powerful can easily be driven into financial ruin - such is the cost of defending a defamation claim.

It's time for a thorough and decisive overhaul of our defamation laws to deter these sorts of actions - not just to rationalise them between states. We need a community campaign for freedom of speech, with the aim of paring back the multitude of laws that restrict what we can say to the very minimum of what is needed to protect people from the social death of serious damage to reputation (such as being falsely accused of pedophilia) or very serious embarrassment (as when the media snoop into your bedroom).

Criticising the motivations of public figures, or calling on them to be more candid about their motivations, should not be actionable. If you're a public figure, you should be open to criticism of that kind. It comes with the territory, and it should be put beyond doubt that this sort of thing is legally acceptable.

Pass it on.

Again, there may need to be some sort of community mobilisation to raise money for Wilson's legal costs if she defends the action. We'll wait and see. I'm not flush with loot, but if push comes to shove I'll give at least something. Further, if I can help in some other way, by giving some time and effort to her gratis, I'll do that.

You might like to start thinking about what you could do.

The attacks on freedom of speech have to stop. It's time to draw a line in the sand over this. This could be Australia's equivalent of the Simon Singh case.

Freedom of Religion and the Secular State now published

2012-01-17T11:18:00.000+11:00

I say just a leetle bit more about it over here at Talking Philosophy.

Michael Brull on abuse of defamation law

2012-01-17T09:31:00.002+11:00

Michael Brull has an interesting post over at The Drum, in which he criticises the abuse of defamation law and calls for law reform. He concludes (and I certainly agree with this bit):

However, whilst the law remains as it is, there is also the weapon of public opinion. We should regard with scorn any public commentator who wishes to shield him or herself from public criticism. A journalist – or editor of a media outlet – who wishes to criticise others, and advocate controversial political views – but wishes to prevent others from speaking back – deserves derision and mockery. Such behaviour, in my view, is utterly unacceptable bullying. Australians have to start defending the rights of people to disagree with each other, and to say things that other people don't like.

Leslie Cannold on disclosure

2012-01-17T08:38:00.001+11:00

A timely article by Leslie Cannold. It's something to reflect on as Melinda Tankard Reist seems to be doing her best to avoid discussion of her religious background and motivations in campaigning against pornography, abortion, etc. How far are we obligated (in some sense or other) to reveal our background worldviews when taking part in public debate on these heavily-moralised issues? Should a public figure who is deeply involved in such debates, and who attempts to hide her religious views be seen as evasive, duplicitous, or some such thing?

There's an argument, of course, that arguments on these issues should simply stand or fall on their merits. I see some attraction in this, especially if we're talking about papers in, say, academic journals. But in practice, political debate is rather different - isn't it? Public figures involved in these debates typically attempt to persuade through creation of an attractive public image. What if that image is disconnected from what might reasonably and responsibility be taken to be their true motivations?

Personally, I don't want to have to dredge out my full motivations every time I talk on public issues. Then again, I don't cultivate a cuddly public image. You pretty much get me warts and all, though what you don't tend to get is a lot of blather about my personal life experience (as opposed to my view of the world).

Furthermore, if someone who has read what I have to say about a variety of subjects wants to join the dots - even if they get it wrong - I'm most unlikely to sue them for defamation. And this is from someone who is far less a public figure than Ms Tankard Reist.

OMG, I win a kitteh contest!!

2012-01-16T18:48:00.000+11:00

Here. Love those kittehs!

More from No Place for Sheep

2012-01-15T14:29:00.002+11:00

An update and comment from No Place for Sheep on Reist Tankard's legal threats, etc.

I get scam mail

2012-01-15T14:06:00.000+11:00

Some of these "Nigerian scams" are hilarious. Does anyone ever fall for them?

Head, Planning, Research and
Review Department of ICPC.
http://www.icpc.gov.ng/

Dear Sir/Madam.

This is to inform you that the united state government authority (USA) in collaboration with the Nigerian government and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has been alleged to monitor all transaction. I am here by instructing you to stop whatever transactions you are having in regards of your fund.

This information is reaching you because from our investigation we discovered you have been involved in a transaction with an internet fraudster. Note we have deposited a check of Eight hundred thousand dollars through the appointed bank for easy transfer of your fund, (Barclays Bank London or Citi Bank of London) will remit this to you as soon as possible with the sum of Eight hundred thousand dollars (US$800,000.00) for your compensation to avoid giving our country bad name.

All that is required from you is to send your current home address, your full name and your phone number for effective communication.

Hon. Jerry Ego.
Head, Planning, Research and
Review Department of ICPC.
http://www.icpc.gov.ng/

Skepticlawyer on Melinda Tankard Reist's legal threat

2012-01-15T11:32:00.000+11:00

A long and useful post by Skepticlawyer.

Melinda Tankard Reist threatens to sue No Place for Sheep

2012-01-14T23:07:00.004+11:00

The Christian anti-porn campaigner Melinda Tankard Reist has apparently threatened a defamation action or something of the kind against the blog No Place for Sheep (NPS).

NPS is the blog of Jennifer Wilson, an Australian academic, psychotherapist, and writer. It suggests that Ms Tankard Reist's threat relates to true claims that she is a Baptist who attends the church in Belconnen - what this really amounts to, I think, is that the blog suggests she is motivated in her anti-porn campaign by her adherence to a conservative Christian belief system.

There may be more to it than that. I don't claim to have researched all the claims made by the blog about Ms Tankard Reist. Perhaps some genuinely defamatory imputation can be found there somewhere ... or not.

In any event, she is a public figure and a forthright campaigner for her cause, one who makes plenty of robust statements of her own (I'm wording this carefully, as I'm not especially interested in being slapped with a letter of demand or a defamation suit myself).

I submit that legal threats by public figures that attempt to silence opponents' speech about matters relating to social and political policy are abusive of the court system. We need to reform defamation law to make it much harder for this kind of chilling action to take place. I suggest that it should be easier for courts to strike out intimidatory and facially unmeritorious claims by public figures at a very early stage - and that in such cases legal costs should automatically be assessed against the plaintiff on an indemnity basis. That would provide some real disincentive to one class of attempts to use the court system to stifle debate on matters of public interest. Come to think of it, this could be extended beyond defamation actions to cover other actions where freedom of speech is at stake. Policy should lean against the use of the civil courts to silence speech, unless the speech concerned meets some very tight criteria (I'm not going to propose them here, but it's something we can return to).

If Melinda Tankard Reist does go ahead and pursue any sort of legal action against No Place for Sheep - or anyone else whose speech she disapproves of - I expect that there will be some kind of appeal for money to cover the costs of defending the case, which could be very large (some of you will be aware of the Simon Singh case in the UK as an example of the sums that can be involved in defending unmeritorious defamation cases). At that stage, it would be worthwhile having a closer look at exactly what is involved. It's still early days, but this just could turn into a case where important freedoms are at stake and something needs to be done collectively to defend them.

I'll await developments, but please keep this one in the back of your minds.

Currently reading - Plantinga v. Dennett

2012-01-14T01:07:00.002+11:00

Yes, I've been reading this little book by Alvin Plantinga and Daniel Dennett, which includes and expands upon their debate at an American Philosophical Association conference a couple of years ago.

Plantinga has a new book coming out in which, apparently, he expands further on his views. I'll need to look at this, though he's already expressed the same views in various other places.

As far as I can make out, the debate is about two theses that Plantinga wants to argue for. Although they're ostensibly arguing about whether religion and science are compatible, they end up arguing different points, because Dennett actually agrees that religion and science are compatible in the sense defined by Plantinga. I probably do, too, given the very weak thesis that Plantinga puts forward.

It's difficult getting a handle on what, exactly, the first thesis is. Irrespective of how he words it, the idea seems to be just that evolutionary theory does not logically rule out the existence of God and some role played by God in the process. As far as Plantinga is concerned, evolutionary theory and religion are "compatible" even if the former renders the latter less plausible, as long as it doesn't logically rule it out.

Based on that understanding of "compatible" ... sure. If you are prepared to do enough work you can prevent almost any small set of claims from being ruled out, logically, by pretty much any findings whatsoever, whether those findings come from the sciences or the humanities.

First, you should define your claims as narrowly as required to make them a small target. You can also do other things. You can defend claims about historical events where the historical record is patchy, but jettison any claims where it is not and where the evidence is strongly against them. You can introduce ad hoc hypotheses to explain any results that seem to falsify your claims. If sufficiently desperate, you can even engage in selective forms of radical scepticism, refusing to accept even very plausible propositions that seem to be evidence against you.

If you're prepared to do all these things, you may end up with a bizarre view of the world, but you'll be able to avoid any outright logical inconsistency between your claims and whatever scientific or historical, etc., facts you are prepared to acknowledge as well established.

Thus, great resources are available to people to avoid their religious beliefs - or at least a core of them that they consider most important - ever being logically ruled out. Therefore, it's not surprising that Plantinga is able to demonstrate to his own satisfaction that there is no inconsistency in his view of the world ... even while holding on to a Christian worldview and some of the basics of evolutionary theory. The main point that Dennett seems to be making in response is, "So what? None of this shows that religion is at all plausible in the light of our modern, scientifically informed knowledge of the world." Indeed, he suggests, many ridiculous ideas could be "compatible" with science in the weak sense that science cannot logically rule them out once and for all to the satisfaction of somebody who is committed to defending them.

Religious believers may have sufficient resources - such as those I've sketched above - to avoid their main claims being logically ruled out by evolutionary theory or anything else. And yet, what you end up with as you conduct the defence of religious claims may be a system of beliefs sufficiently ad hoc and just plain weird that you can no longer, in good faith, believe in it as a whole ... while it is completely implausible to a well-informed outsider. If you want to describe this situation as "science and religion are compatible" then go for it. But don't be surprised if many people think that such "compatibility" is beside the point.

In fairness to Plantinga, he does seem to understand that the plausibility of religion is on the line - it increasingly becomes a focus of the debate - and he makes an attempt to defend it.

Let me also add that many statements that "science and religion are compatible" involve an attempt to insulate them from each other entirely, such as by claiming that religion makes claims only about a supernatural world, while science makes claims only about the natural world. Accordingly, they can never conflict.

Or they are insulated from each other by a theory that religion is restricted to matters of morality and meaning, and the like, while science has no authority in these areas. According to this argument, no scientific finding can ever make a legitimate religious claim less plausible.

These are much stronger claims about "compatibility" than anything Plantinga defends, and I think they are pretty clearly false.

That leaves me with Plantinga's other thesis to comment on. More about that later.

A progressive statement by Tennis Australia, re Margaret Court

2012-01-12T21:17:00.001+11:00

Tennis Australia has issued a statement distancing itself from Margaret Court's widely-publicised homophobic views. This is a good gesture, and let's praise the organisation for it.

I won't be able to get along to the Australian Open, in Melbourne, this year (I did last year, even though I now live 600 miles away, but I can't see it happening often). Hopefully it will be a great tournament.

I've been enjoying the warm-up event - which is actually a star-studded tournament on the women's side - in Sydney. Nah, not driving down for it, but at least watching a fair bit of it on TV, when I'm not thinking about Plantinga's views on evolution and the historical record of human atrocities. Those are my favourite topics right now.

H/T Jason Ball.

Just a reminder to people in Melbourne...

2012-01-12T21:05:00.001+11:00

This gig at Embiggen Books in Melbourne is kind of sneaking up now - it's three weeks away at this point - so you might think of booking a seat if you're planning to go along.

"In his new book, Freedom of Religion and the Secular State, Russell Blackford argues that religious freedom is more than a crude quid pro quo arrangement – 'We won’t persecute you if you don’t persecute us.' Instead, it goes to the heart of what we think state power is really for. Do we think it’s to give citizens spiritual guidance, or is the state an essentially secular institution? That question lies at the heart of many intransigent hot-button issues that cause so much angst in current societies. What, if anything, should we do about the burqa? Should anti-religious satire be allowed? Should our laws enforce religious notions of morality – as with abortion restrictions, attacks on gay rights, and opposition to stem-cell research? Dr. Blackford proposes a way ahead that should be acceptable to most religious people, as well as to non-believers.

"Embiggen Books is proud to be launching this important new book by one of Australia’s most important philosophers and commentators. Please RSVP to events (at) embiggenbooks (dot) com or call 9662 2062 or even drop in to the shop in person."

A review of The Better Angels of Our Nature in Foreign Affairs

2012-01-11T21:47:00.000+11:00

This review by Timothy Snyder contains food for thought, though some of the points that it makes are, as far as I can see, nit-picks. After all, Snyder seems to think that Steven Pinker is correct overall in his view that the violence of human societies has tended to decline.

The main point seems to be that Pinker underestimates the contribution that has been made to the decline of violence by the rise of the welfare state. Snyder then blames this failure on what he sees as Pinker's tendency towards political libertarianism.

I'm going to re-read large amounts of The Better Angels of Our Nature over the next few days, as I've promised a review for the ABC Religion and Ethics Portal. I'll watch out for the points that Snyder makes. How far does Pinker ignore the rise of the welfare state? How plausible is it, in any event that the rise of the welfare state has had an effect in reducing the violence of human societies? My gut feeling is that it has had some effect (and, for the record, I favour the welfare state) ... but how well does attributing a large or even decisisve effect fit the data sets that we have? And how far does Pinker really seem to be showing political libertarian biases?

Moreover, could Snyder himself be showing certain biases in his interpretation of Pinker, and of the historical record? We shall see.

Some Australian schools are dropping chaplains

2012-01-10T20:49:00.001+11:00

With changes to the federally funded school chaplaincy scheme, to allow schools to employ welfare workers rather than chaplains, some schools are now dropping chaplains. According to the Canberra Times:

The schools are taking advantage of changes to the Federal Government's $222 million chaplaincy scheme, which previously stipulated that a welfare worker could only be appointed if there was proof that no chaplain was available.

Government figures show that of 2512 schools that have reapplied for funding under the scheme, 208 - or 8per cent - have proposed to employ a welfare worker.

Most of the others - 2236 or 89 per cent - indicated they wanted to stick with a chaplain or religious pastoral care worker, while 3 per cent said they had not decided which they wanted.

H/T Cary Lenahan

Anwar Ibrahim acquitted of sodomy charge

2012-01-10T14:07:00.002+11:00

The Malaysian criminal justice system has acquitted Anwar Ibrahim of the latest sodomy charge against him (a conviction on an earlier charge was quashed some years ago).

This is a good outcome, but it would be a lot better if Malaysia - which is attempting to be a modern country - did not have a law against homosexual conduct in the first place. The acquittal seems to be based on a very high level of judicial scepticism about DNA evidence (and about evidence in sex crime cases more generally). It's easy to imagine cases where that sort of judicial attitude could lead to perpretators of truly harmful sexual crimes getting off unscathed. That, in turn, raises doubts about the ability of the Malaysian criminal justice system to protect victims of sex crimes.

In this case, even if Anwar did what was alleged against him ... there was simply no victim. What he allegedly did should not have been criminalised. As so often, the most important thing is to reform the substantive law to remove victimless crimes from the statute books and the common law. There is also - I freely acknowledge - some point to ensuring that accused persons are not confronted with unfair tactics by police and prosecutors, but not to an extent that can leave genuine victims unprotected. Notoriously, rape victims can find themselves treated badly in criminal courts.

Getting the balance right in giving an accused person some reasonable procedural protections, without leaving victims unprotected, is ... well, a difficult balancing act. But above all we need to think hard about what should be illegal in the first place. Having consensual sex with a 23-y.o. person of the same sex as yourself is pretty much a paradigm example of something that should not be illegal.

Michael Ruse on moral philosophy

2012-01-09T21:47:00.004+11:00

When I posted about this the other day, it was in a very preliminary manner, since I had not even read Michael Ruse's post in response to an earlier one by me.

Ruse puts a view that seems to me to have some points in its favour, and he concedes that it may, formally, make him a moral error theorist. I can't quite see how his view allows (as he thinks it does) for absolute (in some sense) moral truths that cannot be discovered through science but only in some other way. And exactly what this way might be has been left mysterious - is it some sort of process of conceptual analysis? Is it openness to the insights to be found in myth and literature? Or what? Still, the general view is one that at least seems to be arguable on its merits.

I've made a couple of comments on the thread, and I do have a bit more to say on the thread when I get a moment. I continue to have some problems with the overall theory, at least in the form that Ruse has developed so far. But I'm not so out of sympathy with his approach as to think that discussion and clarification is useless. (OTOH, I wonder whether he is planning to engage his commenters at all ... since he hasn't as yet. Oh well.)

On thing that does strike me as strange is that Ruse seems, if I follow him, to think that there are moral absolutes for us, though not absolutes simpliciter. As far as I can work out, these absolutes are bedrock psychological features that human beings all share, and which are basically non-negotiable (even if some rational but non-human creature did not share them, and was not making a mistake about the world in not doing so). Okay, that's possible, I suppose, if we bracket off a small class of exceptions such as psychopaths ... but how plausible is, it given the wide variety of moral views that we actually see if we study the historical and anthropological record? It looks from here as if any evolved human psychology that we all share is going to be, to say the least, rather "thin" or minimalist.

And even if I'm wrong on this - even if there is some more substantial and rich evolved human psychology, how do we know this? The humanities might be of some help, I suppose - e.g. scouring for information about old or strange cultures might reveal clues about a transcultural human nature - but isn't this sort of question primarily a matter for science, in particular psychology? In which case, how are moral truths a good example of the epistemic power of science being limited? That was, remember, Ruse's initial claim.

I don't see how Ruse can go on using supposed moral absolutes, or objective moral truths, as an example - or at least as a clear-cut one - of things that the humanities can find out but the sciences can't. At best (and I'm happy to accept this scenario) it's a situation where scientists, humanist scholars, and philosophers who have some comfort with both the wider humanities and the sciences, should cooperate to get a clearer picture of human nature and of how it feeds into human moral systems.

Sunday supervillainy - currently reading The Great Big Book of Horrible Things

2012-01-08T22:06:00.000+11:00

You can't get much more villainous than the stuff of history described in this book. Author Matthew White takes us in historical order through the hundred most horrific events in human history, as estimated by him based on the bodycounts and rationales of more orthodox historians. Occasionally he gives us small digressions in the form of essays on such topics as genocide. The writing is clear, rather journalistic, with a certain kind of wincing humour that doesn't prevent him from getting into reflections about the sheer awfulness of it all.

Much of this may be familiar to you - quite a bit of it is to me - but it's (morbidly) fascinating, and certainly illuminating, to see it all in one place, with the likely facts and historical interpretations filtered through a single sensibility, that of a person who clearly knows this stuff backwards.

Santorum opposes contraception

2012-01-07T18:34:00.002+11:00

Rick Santorum says that the US state legislatures should be free to ban contraceptives. Needless to say, this means that he wants these legislatures to be able to interfere in very intimate matters relating to people's private lives.

But as you can see if you follow the link, this is not just a theoretical point in constitutional law - he actually dislikes contraception and makes pretty clear that he wishes the legislatures would actually ban it.

Note this line:

“One of the things I will talk about, that no president has talked about before, is I think the dangers of contraception in this country,” the former Pennsylvania senator explained. “It’s not okay. It’s a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.”

Hmm ... "are supposed to be, eh?" Hmm ... are supposed to be according to what authority? It's one thing to blather about the supposed "dangers" of contraception, whatever they are, because at least that sounds like the government acting to address some real or imagined civil or secular interest. But when you start talking about "how things are supposed to be" you are moving beyond the role of government in protecting people's civil interests into protecting some kind of divine purpose or some teleological concept of how the universe functions, or some such thing. This is well beyond what the state should get involved in.

Then again, I'm not the first to mention that all of the Republican candidates this year appear to be (a) to greater or lesser extents, theocrats; and (b) nutjobs. If heaven did exist, we'd have to pray for it to help the USA if one of these people became its next president. *Shudder.*

Hawke slows down...

2012-01-07T11:10:00.002+11:00

... but not by all that much - I love Bob Hawke's performance here.

Kazez on Santorum on Polygamy

2012-01-07T09:57:00.000+11:00

Good post by Jean Kazez. I'm somewhat more cynical about the role of the state in the marriage business (as I discuss in a comment there). Still, some irrational arguments are used against same-sex marriage, and the post brings this out well.

I'm happy if we send the discussion over there, but by all means comment here if you prefer.

Malik replies to Greenpeace's reply to Malik

2012-01-06T23:46:00.000+11:00

Over yonder. I get that Greenpeace had to use whatever arguments were likely to be successful in court, but this is not a good look for it. It has publicly argued on exactly the basis that Malik describes and is now stuck with that as its position.

This is all a bit obscure, I suppose, but if you're not up with the detail of what is being talked about in his post, go here. The post I just linked to, my first one at Talking Philosophy, copped some criticism for getting too deep into the legal technicalities, but this stuff is important, and it's important to try to get it right.

Guest blog post at Printasia - Religion under Scrutiny

2012-01-06T21:31:00.002+11:00

Here! Pssst, pass it on?

"We should go on putting the strong arguments for secular government — I most certainly will. But religion itself also merits our scrutiny. There are now many people who do not believe in any God or gods, or in the truth of any doctrines involving supernatural entities and forces, and are prepared to say so in public. Many have interesting reasons for their views, and it’s valuable for all of them — for all of us, I should say — to speak up. We should tell our stories and offer our arguments.

"This is a good time for atheists and religious skeptics to join the public debates. There’s no time like now to voice our disbelief."

My top twelve atheists of 2011

2012-01-06T21:00:00.005+11:00

This list of a dozen atheists who made powerful contributions in 2011 will actually be a baker's dozen for reasons that will become obvious when you reach number 5. Let's hand out some tributes.

Note that the contributions don't have to be specifically for the cause of atheism if they are more generally in support of a science-and-reason based, naturalistic view of reality.

Those listed below are not in any order - well, except for the first name on the list. There was only one atheist of the year for 2011, though sadly he is no longer with us. Of course, it's...

1. Christopher Hitchens - for his courage, energy, and dignity right up to the end, as death approached.

2. Leo Igwe - for his strong and courageous campaigning on one of the most crucial issues of religious oppression in the world right now: the witch hunting of women and children in Africa. I hope to meet up with him in 2012.

3. Maryam Namazie - for her tireless campaigning for the the rights and freedoms of women in the face of political Islam.

4. Steven Pinker - particularly for The Better Angels of Our Nature, which is my "book of the year" and a monumental contribution to our understanding of history and ourselves, and more generally to the cause of reason.

5. Michael Nugent and Grania Spingies - for their efforts in running the major atheist convention in Dublin, by all accounts one of the biggest and best freethought gatherings ever.

6. Leslie Cannold - she continues to hold down her position as one of Australia's most prominent and outspoken intellectuals. Her new book, The Book of Rachael, is an important contribution of its kind.

7. Richard Dawkins - you can't ignore his words and actions last year or any year. Always a huge presence as one of the major public intellectuals in the world, and with an important new book, The Magic of Reality, explaining science to children and young adults.

8. Cristina Rad - she was suddenly everywhere in 2011. To be honest ... she has a bit to learn, as shown in a TV appearance in Australia where she got talked over by her opposition, but 2011 was a breakout year for her.

9. Tanya Smith - deserves all credit for her work with Atheist Alliance International, for which she is currently President and General Manager.

10. Geoffrey Robertson - agree with it or not, we mustn't overlook his campaign to bring the pope and the Vatican to face international justice (continuing in the wake of the publication of The Case of the Pope in late 2010).

11. Jane Caro - this list is a bit Aussie heavy, but attribute it to the fact that we Aussies have been punching above our weight. She was a huge media presence in Australia last year, and has been outspoken (and effectively so) as an atheist. Arguably the star of the Intelligence Squared debate on atheism.

12. Udo Schuklenk - chaired the Royal Society of Canada panel that recommended legalising physician-assisted suicide. Whatever ultimately comes of this, it is the kind of towering intellectual, yet practical, contribution that merits recognition and honour.

Obviously there are many others who deserve to be on such a list. For example, I'm conscious of being somewhat out of touch with many current events in the world. For example, a more considered list would have to take account of what the likes of Prabir Ghosh have been doing lately. Much is happening throughout the world, all the time, and it would be a difficult job continually keeping tabs. My apologies in advance for any glaring or stupid omissions.

There are also people who would have been on a similar list for, say, 2010, but who appeared (to me at least) to have relatively quiet years in 2011. That probably means that they were hard at work, and that we'll see the fruits of their work later. Daniel Dennett comes to mind in this category. So does Taslima Nasrin. But perhaps their most recent activities have simply gone under my radar.

In any event, my listed 12 (or 13) all made particularly noteworthy contributions in 2011, even if there are others whom I've missed and who are equally deserving. Loud cheers for them all, please! And now let's astonish the world as we defend reason, freedom, and science in 2012.

Edit: And as so often happens, I want to make an addition. A.C. Grayling should have been on the list somewhere. I was thinking that his The Good Book came out in 2010 and that 2011 was a quiet year for him by his usual standards. But that book actually came out in early 2011, apparently, so my mistake.

More on free will from Jerry Coyne

2012-01-06T13:21:00.005+11:00

Here, Jerry Coyne replies to his commenters at USA Today. The most important thing from my viewpoint is his response to Tom Clark, whose views probably aren't too far from mine. Jerry is actually quite conciliatory towards Tom.

In part, it probably is a matter of semantics. Jerry Coyne, Tom Clark, and I all agree that determinism probably prevails to a very large extent at the level of the brain. We probably all agree that if the brain has some indeterministic element to it - that even if its outputs are somehow affected by quantum level events that are "caused" only in the sense that they had some probability of occurring - then this does not, in itself, make us more "free". We all think that the processes by which human beings make choices are purely naturalistic and that a lot of the process (perhaps a hell of a lot of it) is unconscious.

The issue is how to interpret this in terms of the historical language of free will, etc. Should we simply say that human beings do not have free will? To me, that runs the risk of conveying something that is not intended and is not actually true. It can easily convey something fuzzy that is in the direction of fatalism. Of course, it's also possible that when compatibilists say to the folk, "You have free will," that something is conveyed that may not be intended and is not actually true.

It becomes, I think, a question of trying to understand the situation as clearly as we can, while also working out how best to convey it to others without misleading them. That does, inevitably, get us involved in efforts in clarifying concepts, making distinctions, grappling with the existing philosophical literature, and so on. Given some of the issues that are stake in the contemporary debates among academic philosophers, it can involve grappling with other difficult concepts, such as responsibility, desert, and fairness - and the relationships among them.

I only get upset when the efforts of people like Daniel Dennett, Tom Clark, and by extension me are dismissed as "changing the subject" or as being some kind of sophistry analogous to the efforts of theologians, which do seem to me to be sophistry - not always, since some useful work gets done under the broad rubric of "theology", but very often. A lot of stuff that I've been reading in the process of researching 50 Great Myths About Atheism seems to me to be sophistry, but I'd never say this of Daniel Dennett, even when he leaves me unconvinced.

New issue of The Philosophers' Magazine

2012-01-06T10:51:00.000+11:00

Go here for the new issue of The Philosophers' Magazine. Some - but I'm not sure if all - of the content is available online. The available content includes the reviews, and these, in turn, include my review of Philip Kitcher's new book, The Ethical Project.

(If you read the whole review, you'll see that I'm more impressed by the book's main line of argument than the editorial matter suggests ... but it's true that some aspects left me rather unconvinced, especially when Kitcher starts trying to apply the theory to actual moral questions such as abortion and cloning.)

Michael Ruse replies to me

2012-01-05T22:55:00.000+11:00

To be honest, I haven't even had a chance to read this yet, as I've had a bit to do today ... but Michael Ruse has replied to me over at Talking Philosophy. Something for me to check out tomorrow! But hey, you can check it out while I'm sleeping.

At a glance, it looks like his response is mainly setting out his current metaethical position, which might be interesting. There are other topics in the ongoing debates about scientism, the power of science, etc., some of which I'm taking taking up in slightly more depth, all going well, in a forthcoming issue of Free Inquiry. Meanwhile, let's see how this argument about moral facts, etc., plays out.

So much for free speech in Austria

2012-01-05T21:07:00.001+11:00

Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, who appears to be a right-wing Austrian politician, has lost her appeal against an earlier conviction for denigration of the teachings of a recognised religion. According to Furious Purpose, her crime was to make the following comments at seminars for young members of her (far-right?) party: "er habe gerne mit Kindern ein bisschen was gehabt" (something like "he had a thing for little girls") and "er habe einen grossen Frauenverschleiss gehabt" (which Furious Purpose translates idiomatically as "he went through plenty of women").

The comments refer to the historical narrative that Muhammad took a child bride, Aisha (with whom he had first had sex when she was nine), and that he had three wives in total. We don't know a great deal about Muhammad that we can be very sure about, but these claims are well entrenched in the traditional accounts of his life.

So, here we have a Western liberal democracy enacting a law controlling what you can and cannot say about a long-dead, semi-legendary religious founder, someone who is clearly not around today to suffer from any damage to his reputation. This is a gross incursion on freedom of speech.

I know nothing about Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff beyond what I read on the internet. She may well be the sort of person we would not want to be associated with - she may be racist, for all I know, and she may certainly have extreme political views. Perhaps those views should be confronted. There is much to say about how to deal with the speech of unpleasant people such as, fairly or otherwise, I imagine her to be. There is also much to said about how we can defend their freedom of speech - and perhaps even agree with them on some points - while distancing ourselves from them and not adding to whatever damage they cause. I'm sure we'll go on talking about this, as we have in the past, and in various forums.

Sabaditsch-Wolff should not, however, be shut up by the state, at least not for these sorts of comments. More particularly, there should not be an offence of denigrating religious teachings. This is fundamentally illiberal and it should be opposed. What's more, the opposition should not just come from her allies on the political right. All of us have a stake in the freedom to denigrate religions and their founders, and more generally to speak our mind on matters that concern us.

More humour - #lessambitiousfilms

2012-01-04T23:45:00.000+11:00

Some are funny; some are less so; some are obscure. Whatever!

My best contribution, I think, is Star Wars: The Empire Goes on Strike.

It's not mine, but I did like Snacks on a Plane.

Currently reading - I Don't Believe in Atheists

2012-01-04T16:53:00.001+11:00

All right, the less said about this one the better. Just for once, I think Sam Harris is absolutely right: Hedges appears to be a nutjob. Take a bow, Sam.

The only mystery is how did a book as comprehensively bad and, let's face it, stupid, as this ever find a publisher - and a pretty good one at that (Free Press)? I suppose irrational vitriol sells...

*sigh*

What you can do to support this site...

2012-01-04T15:46:00.002+11:00

... or other sites where I post (given that I'm now posting a lot of my lengthier thoughts at Talking Philosophy these days).

I'm very loath to do anything to commercialise this site and to make you put up with advertisements. Yech! Also, I am loath to ask for monetary contributions from readers. There's no "Donate" button here and there never will be. Given the relatively unimpressive amounts of money that I actually make from writing and editing, I wouldn't feel too much compunction about asking for donations to support my work, but fuck that. It's too much trouble all round.

Here's a couple of things you can do. 1) If you have any influence at all on publishers, get them to send me review copies of books that I would probably want to read and review. This definitely applies to authors who read this site.

That doesn't mean barraging me with books that are self-published or from vanity presses. Sorry, I probably won't be able to get to them. But I'd love to receive review copies of the important new books that come out in the fields that I'm interested in, and help shape the relevant debates. E.g., the new Sam Harris book on free will or the latest book by Richard Dawkins or A.C. Grayling or, on the other hand, Alvin Plantinga. My local (council and university) libraries are unlikely to want to get in all the stuff that I want to read, which means that I end up buying most of it myself, which becomes quite a big expense even if I were to get everything on Kindle.

Anything that is sent to me as a review copy is likely to receive a thoughtful review ... and probably somewhere with a bigger profile than this blog.

2) If you do read one of my books - any of them, whether it's 50 Voices of Disbelief, Freedom of Religion and the Secular State, or Kong Reborn, or something else - and you enjoy it, please consider saying so and spreading the word. One good place to say so is on Amazon, where you can write a review and give a ranking. But anywhere on the internet really helps.

I do have an academic research position, but it's an honorary one. I basically live on some very modest investments, plus whatever I can make from writing and editing. This generates some actual money but nowhere near enough to live on (to be blunt, we're talking about maybe thousands of dollars per year from my writing and editing work, but not tens of thousands, except for one year nearly a decade ago now, let alone hundreds of thousands).

So ... I can brush up my skills and go back into legal practice or alternatively I can do a lot more university teaching (I've avoided doing any for the last two and a bit years, but I'm competent at it). Or I can sell enough copies of these books to make something more like a real income!

Please note that I haven't asked you to buy the books if you weren't going to, anyway. People can afford what they can afford, and everyone has financial priorities - and times are pretty tough for lots of people (much tougher for a lot of you, I'm sure, than they are for me). But the above will make some real difference to the viability of this site and my activities more generally, without me pestering anyone for donations.

Please consider.

Some humour - #lessambitiousbooks

2012-01-04T14:25:00.000+11:00

I like some of these. Among them, I had a few contributions of my own, such as The Pretty Good Comedy, by Dante, and The Not Very Nice Verses, by Salman Rushdie. Also, The Impressive Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Catch-21, by Joseph Heller.

Forthcoming gig in Melbourne

2012-01-03T18:28:00.002+11:00

Be there - if you live in that part of the world - or get eaten by a bear!

Jenny haz revamped her website

2012-01-03T12:35:00.002+11:00

Over yonder.

Kindle edition of The Australian Book of Atheism now available

2012-01-03T11:43:00.002+11:00

Here, if you're interested. Features contributions by many luminaries - Leslie Cannold, Jane Caro, John Wilkins, myself, and on and on.

Free will fest

2012-01-03T11:36:00.001+11:00

I have a new post at Talking Philosophy on the subject of free will.

This follows from a post by Jerry Coyne, which follows up Jerry's more detailed piece in USA Today.

Since writing my Talking Philosophy piece, I have seen (and briefly commented on) a response to Jerry by Jean Kazez. The latter is interesting, in part because it seems to me to make the same mistake that Jerry is making. I.e. it runs together two distinguishable issues: first, have we been shaped by our pasts (including, but not limited to, genetic potential and early upbringing) to have certain desires, beliefs, etc., with the result that we will, in fact, act in certain ways in certain circumstances?

Second, when we act do we thereby, at least sometimes, produce the results that we want? The answers to both questions appear to be, with some qualifications, "Yes." It's not a matter that if the answer to one question is "Yes" the answer to the other must be "No." A positive answer to the first does not entail a negative answer to the second.

I guess it's up to you - or maybe it's fated for you - which of these questions bugs you the most.

Washington Post story on blogging philosophers

2012-01-02T22:48:00.000+11:00

I doubt that I'm ever going to make much (or any!) money out of blogging, but apparently it's one way for philosophers to get a few pennies. Well, at least if you're Andrew Sullivan. Story here.

Ah haz a new post at Talking Philosophy

2012-01-02T21:15:00.002+11:00

Over here ... where I have some discussion of Michael Ruse, scientism, and moral error theory.

Ah haz updated my Author Central page at Amazon

2012-01-02T13:04:00.001+11:00

I'm not sure how much good this does for promotional purposes, but maybe it's worthwhile. Do people look at these author pages? Anyway, feel free to check it out and if you direct any traffic that way it will be welcome.

I guess I'll add a few more bells and whistles to the page over time.

Edit: Ah haz taken the good advice below to add a photograph.

Sunday supervillainy - Top X-Men moments of the year (as voted by CBR)

2012-01-01T17:10:00.002+11:00

Here's the top 12 X-Men moments of the year, as voted by CBR commenters. How can we not look back on them as 2012 begins?

Happy New Year, y'all!!

2012-01-01T12:09:00.002+11:00

Have you all made lots of amazing resolutions for 2012?

Tone trolling

2011-12-31T17:33:00.012+11:00

As per my comments here, I'm not generally a fan of the concept of tone trolling. I stand by those comments, and I don't think that intellectual progress is made in an atmosphere that is full of name calling, insults, and deliberate provocation. No one deserves to be dismissed as a tone troll just for complaining about personal insults and the like from whoever they are talking to online.

What's more, it's not just in the atheist blogosphere that we see some low standards. I do get sick of atheists being singled out for being especially bad in this way. Alas, the internet, for all its great benefits, often brings out the worst in people, and we see too much of this sort of thing in forums on all manner of subjects. I'm sometimes guilty of it myself. Yes - I, too, can fall short of the best standards of online interaction when something has annoyed me.

We're most likely to make some intellectual progress if we try to maintain civility; try to be tough on arguments rather than on our interlocutors as people; try to avoid ascribing ulterior motives, or a sinister psychological make-up; and so on. We're most likely to make some intellectual progress if people feel free to put arguments in support of a reasonable range of positions without being subjected to personal attacks (the word "reasonable" is important here, though - I'm not interested in allowing people to comment with neo-Nazi, pro-rape, Holocaust denialist, Young Earth Creationist, etc., etc., positions; some positions are not going to be taken seriously here, except insofar as they may show what we're up against, and any comments espousing such positions will most likely be deleted).

Civility really, truly does have its uses. It had to be learned a few centuries ago, when controversy via warring pamphlets was carried out in atrociously personal and uncivil ways when judged by twentieth-century standards. It seems that it has to be learned all over again for online controversy in the twenty-first century. This is a respect in which, for the moment, we've regressed.

But... You knew there was a "but" coming, didn't you? All of this is mainly to clear my throat. Although I'm not a fan of the concept of tone trolling, I'm not going to deny that there are some actual cases of it.

We see the real thing when, for example, someone turns up to give a long, sanctimonious lecture about the need for civility partway through what was already a fairly civil discussion. Or when someone starts carrying on at length about how absolutely frakking horrible everyone else has been, after receiving some relatively mildly worded criticism for their contribution (almost as if they deliberately provoked the criticism just so they could use it as an excuse to go all sanctimonious and act all hurt).

So, folks, if you want some glorious examples of what tone trolling looks like - of the real thing out there in the wild - go here and enjoy. I suggest you merely watch the trolls, rather than providing them with unnecessary sustenance. The comments by "David Hay" and "Nelson Rose" are particularly fine specimens.

Oh, and here's a related point. Sure, let's all try to be nice to each other. No one likes a big meanie who acts like a bully and spoils the fun.

But here's a thought. If you write a nasty, dismissive little post about someone who has just frakking died, that's fine as far as it goes. You have that right in a liberal democratic society. There may be occasions in the future when I will do it, too. Just a word to the wise, though, as they say: don't act all shocked and hurt if a friend of that person is then snarky about you in response. Sheesh!

(Hey, it's also a good idea not to accuse someone of "losing their cool" in a post that sounds much more like an angry rant than the alleged rant you're complaining about. Just sayin'. Y'know?)

Otherwise ... Happy New Year, everybody!

2011 coming to an end

2011-12-30T16:25:00.013+11:00

At the end of 2008 I wrote that it had been - for both good and ill - one of the biggest years of my life. Given that I don't have exceptional (just normal) energy, I'm surprised that I somehow managed to survive that year. During 2008, Jenny and I also sold our house in Melbourne, though we rented it back from the new owners through until almost the end of 2009.

2009 itself was a pretty big year. It involved a lot of travel, especially in the second half. We bought a house in Newcastle - near Sydney, and 600 miles away from Melbourne - and we moved here at the end of the year. There was a fair bit of teaching involved during 2009, and quite a lot of speaking gigs. The year was, alas, somewhat marred by ill health. The highlight of the year was undoubtedly the publication of 50 Voices of Disbelief in October.

2010 was relatively quiet at my end, which is not to say I wasn't busy. Moving to a new house, interstate, created its problems and stresses, but we've never regretted it, and I had a much healthier year (in fact my health over the last two years has generally been excellent). While there were highlights such as the Global Atheist Convention, for which I popped down to Melbourne for a week, I spent most of the year researching and writing the first draft of Freedom of Religion and the Secular State.

What about the year that has just gone by? 2011 involved three overseas trips, though all were relatively short. I think it may have been my most busy year yet, and it went incredibly fast.

Whether all the work that I've been doing over the past tweleve months will see the light of day remains to be seen. In particular, somewhere amongst it all I rewrote my PhD thesis to make it more suitable for publication in book form for a reasonably broad audience. But I still need to find a publisher.

I also reworked Freedom of Religion and the Secular State, in light of comments on the first version that came back from the publisher, and I've since taken the book through to publication, with all that that involves. Meanwhile, Udo and I have been working on yet another book, 50 Great Myths About Atheism, and I've been working with Linda MacDonald Glenn on a special issue of The Journal of Evolution and Technology that is gradually taking form and has turned into the equivalent of another co-edited book. The JET special issue has occupied me almost around the clock for the past two months. And with Freedom of Religion and the Secular State about to appear, I've been doing a lot of associated work in an effort to promote the book. Other stuff, too...

Anyway, the upshot is that I end 2011 in good health, happy at how a lot of things have turned out, but (to be honest) feeling mentally and physically exhausted ... and with no sign of any respite in early 2012. Still, I have to say that it's been a good year for me - the highlight, perhaps, was the Intelligence Squared debate in Sydney back in September, when Jane Caro, Tamas Pataki, and I showed our stuff on national television, and in front of a live audience of 1200 people, in opposition to a group of well-known theologians.

Sooo, one more day of 2011, with my share of bubbly to drink before the year is out. Then into 2012, which will be another biggie.

Currently reading - Speech Matters: Getting Free Speech Right by Katharine Gelber

2011-12-29T11:15:00.008+11:00

This study of freedom of speech in Australia is something of a wolf in sheep's clothing. It makes much of being a free speech advocacy book - but when you actually read it, Gelber is not much of a free speech advocate after all. She is very keen to protect speech that she approves of, which is basically anti-establishment/left-wing political speech, but not so keen on protecting speech that she dislikes. This is justified by her deplorably uncritical discussion of international conventions (Gelber never seems to have met a UN instrument that she didn't like) and some hackneyed disparagement of the more "absolutist" US approach, which she hastens to assure us is an international outlier.

That said, I am sympathetic to most of her examples. Like Gelber, I'm not a fan of SLAPP lawsuits - unmeritorious actions initiated by corporations to silence their critics. Then again, Gelber never seems to have met a corporation that she actually liked ... or to have doubted that any lawsuit by a corporation was merely vexatious. (For the record, I am generally opposed to corporations being able to sue for defamation, and am glad that their right to do so is severely restricted in Australia.)

Again, like Gelber I don't want to see anti-war artworks suppressed by the police or by meddling local councils. Like her, I'm concerned at the breadth and multi-pronged nature of free speech restrictions in anti-terrorism legislation. And again, like her, I don't want to see red tape, officiousness, and police hostility hindering peaceful protests against government policy or corporate activity.

Fine, but Gelber's strong biases let her down. It would be more impressive if she showed the same scepticism about hate speech laws as she does about anti-terrorism legislation. In the latter case, she acknowledges the need for some limits on speech, at least when it comes to direct incitement of violence, but her whole emphasis is on the overreaching and problematic drafting of the laws. When we turn to hate speech, the tone of the discussion changes - these are "nice" restrictions on freedom of speech, it seems, so she handles them with kid gloves. There is no mention of important cases such as Kazak and Catch the Fire Ministries, where zealous tribunals made a mess of things and had to be corrected on appeal.

Though there is much about art, the entire emphasis is on left-wing political art (fine ... I want to protect this, too). But where is her discussion of, say, the Bill Henson affair, or violent videogames, or controversial movies like Salo?

I'd have been much more impressed by the book if its author had managed to say something about the censorship of erotic art and the difficulties of drawing the line between that and outright pornography (if even this should be banned or regulated, which I don't necessarily oppose). This important and difficult issue, however, is not mentioned at all.

I'd have been even more impressed if she'd defended our right to satirise religious organisations, leaders, and ideas, even if she also discussed the dangers that we are talking about in my earlier thread on shutting up. Unfortunately, Gelber seems to lump religion in with race - as so often happens in legal instruments - when the differences are more important than the similarities (for more, see my chapter on freedom of speech in The Australian Book of Atheism, edited by Warren Bonett, or the very different, though complementary, chapter on freedom of speech in Freedom of Religion and the Secular State).

I suppose the excuse could be that Gelber is really only writing about political speech. The title is misleading - as titles often are - because the book is not about free speech, broadly construed, at all. It is about free speech for people who want to engage in political advocacy, preferably of an anti-establishment or broadly left-wing kind (talk of "left-wing" and "right-wing" is not that useful, really, but it is pretty obvious that Gelber's main sympathies are with what she sees as oppressed identity groups and with speech that attacks corporations or conservative governments).

Again, I'm all in favour of protecting the speech of left-wing activists, but I also want free speech for my opponents. Furthermore, the rationale for free speech is far more complex and multi-layered than Gelber suggests. Yes, it is partly to ensure that people can discuss political ideas and engage in political protest, but that is only one of the well-known rationales for freedom of speech. Gelber pretty much ignores the others, which enables her to avoid standing up in defence of a whole range of much-censored speech.

All in all, the book is disappointing. I was expecting something more comprehensive ... and a much stronger commitment to freedom of speech across the board than the author actually displays.

That's not to say Getting Free Speech Right is without merit. For one thing, it has the great virtue of actually being well written - the prose is clear and vivid, and the chapters are structured to maintain our interest. Gelber can write effectively, which is a big plus these days when so much unreadable dreck by academics somehow gets published.

Better still, despite its narrow remit the book contains a lot of useful information. Within that remit - restrictions on vaguely anti-establishment or left-wing political speech - the book provides us with plenty of facts about how the law works in Australia. It also offers much information about how Australians think about freedom of speech: it seems that we are happy to give lip service to the idea, and can be swayed once it is argued that freedom of speech is at stake in a particular situation, but we are all too prone to support freedom for speech that we like and to countenance restrictions as soon as we encounter speech that we don't like (or find the least bit offensive or inconvenient).

That's an important lesson to take from the book, and you might be interested in the detail. Unfortunately, the author herself seems much like other Australians - freedom of speech by all means, but not for "nasty" speech please.

We need a broader debate about freedom of speech, here in Australia, and, to be fair to Gelber, she has made a useful contribution to it. As I said, the book has its merits ... but it could have been so much better.

Currently writing ...

2011-12-28T20:45:00.000+11:00

... a piece about scientism that is getting too long. Although I think the situation with allegations of scientism is simple enough in principle, I see so much confusion around that it's hard even to know where to start in trying to clear it up.

Oh well, this thread over at Jason Rosenhouse's place is interesting, intellectually rich, very long, sometimes, heated, and still continuing. I find myself nodding along at Richard Wein's comments in particular, but a lot of people are making strong arguments for their various corners.

And so, again, although my approach to this is fairly simple (you don't have to believe anything contrived or overreaching about the nature of science to conclude that spooky ways of knowing are unreliable, and to realise that both the sciences and the humanities tend to undermine religion), sorting out all the issues could take a book. Unfortunately, books on that subject tend to get written mainly by religious apologists and accommodationists.

Ah haz mah authors' copies!

2011-12-28T12:07:00.000+11:00

Yay! Five copies of the hardcover, and fifteen copies of the paperback, of Freedom of Religion and the Secular State just turned up in the mail, so there will be a couple of my close friends getting additional pressies this year and a few copies being sent around locally for promotional purposes. It looks very, very arty.

An announcement! Re Free Inquiry

2011-12-27T16:51:00.002+11:00

I'm sure I told y'all that I had some big announcements coming up. Here's one of them. I think I can now announce this one. *Looks around furtively.*

I'm pleased to announce that in 2012 I will be joining Free Inquiry as one of its columnists. This puts me in the company of, for example, Richard Dawkins and leading bioethicist Arthur Caplan; if not for his recent death, it would also have put me in the company of Christopher Hitchens, but sadly that has not come to be. The list of columnists is pretty damn impressive, actually, so I am now sufficiently humbled, daunted, etc., to feel the need to prove my worth to the team.

Off I go to work on my first contribution in my new role...

Bombs away!

2011-12-27T14:48:00.000+11:00

A couple of pieces sent off to the ABC portal over the last few days. I still owe one piece there, viz. a proper review of The Better Angels of Our Nature. Meanwhile, I see a review (sort of ... a brief discussion anyway) of it over at Talking Philosophy, and Jean Kazez has further observations on it at her place.

When should we tell each other to shut up?

2011-12-26T15:03:00.004+11:00

And how should we respond if someone tells us to? Over at Talking Philosophy, Jeremy Stangroom has a post in which he raises these questions, using the example of a book that he may or may not write about the evils (as he sees them) of multiculturalism in the UK.

While British multiculturalism may have its evils, and there may be better policy options, might this be an inopportune time to say so? Might that claim be misunderstood, even subconsciously, in ways that will exacerbate social tensions and strengthen the hands of political extremists (some, perhaps, driven by cultural xenophobia or outright racism)? Would the book be misused and its message distorted by those extremists? Might the eventual outcome be a contribution to the very forces in society that the author opposes?

If so, might it be wise not to go ahead with the book? But what if another person advised you not to go ahead? Should you be angry, or grateful for the advice, or what? What if someone says publicly that such books should not be written - perhaps while you are immersed in writing the book, or, perhaps worse, after it has already been published? Should you be angry, grateful, detached and reflective, or what?

He concludes:

Well, at least one answer, which in my more pious moments I’m inclined to favour, is that one should ask whether their request – or even demand – has any merit. Are their concerns legitimate – can you see what they’re worrying about? Is their position held in good faith (since even if you think they’re mistaken, this is a relevant datum in terms of how one should view their character, etc)? Does their position have at least some evidential merit? In other words, one should react in a spirit of rational enquiry – after all, it’s possible they’ve got a point, and it’s possible that a lot is riding on getting things right.

How one should not react is simply to assume that they are beyond the moral pale because they make the request or demand. Sometimes, shutting up is the best option. And sometimes telling people to shut up is morally justified (and perhaps even obligated).

Now, that may be right. But telling people to shut up may not be the best option in a class of cases (perhaps even a very large one) where it's a tempting option. Does it matter how clear-cut the case is? What if the case for shutting up depends, in part, on claims that are obviously bullshit (perhaps showing the person who is calling for the shutting up to have poor judgment and/or a strong bias)? Doubtless there are many different scenarios to consider.

There's a good thread going over there at TP, and I've made a couple of comments so far. As I say there, I'm certainly not an absolutist about it. I wouldn't claim, in all cases, that a person calling for others to shut up is of vicious character. Still, I do think that as a general rule we should try to avoid getting into meta-level debates about whether certain things should be said at all, as opposed to whether those things are likely to be true. (I don't see any horrible paradox in this; it's usually possible to distinguish between a debate about, say, the merits of a government policy and a debate about the propriety of expressing a particular view on the policy.)

Notwithstanding the example used in the post, I'm sure we could think of other salient examples where arguments about some topic or other have quickly "gone meta". I'm not especially interested in discussing the merits of these examples - see, folks, another paradox! I'm not interested in discussing them in this place, at this time, because I want to discuss with you the general merits of shuttuppery and when it's appropriate ... and how we should respond to it.

So if we do use examples from the "Exhibit A" debate, or Elevatorgate, or Chris Mooney's response to "Seeing And Believing" (and the backlash that he copped), or any other recently-heated topic in the blogosphere, let's use some good sense and discretion. I don't actually ask you to shut up on those topics in your wider lives - by all means go and write a book about "Exhibit A" - just that you not try to settle the merits of those topics here. That's not the purpose of the thread.

It may be better to stick with the multiculturalism example or with made-up examples, but I'm not going to jump up and down about what examples are used unless they are used in the wrong spirit. As judged by me.

"Science is about explanation. Religion is about meaning"?

2011-12-26T14:27:00.001+11:00

So says Alister McGrath.

Really? I reckon you could drive a truck through this. Discuss.

(H/T Tim Dean.)

Sunday supervillainy - "Enjoy your human holiday!"

2011-12-25T16:15:00.000+11:00

This from the mutants on Utopia and the X-office staff at Marvel. Gotta love it!

Merry Christmas to all!

2011-12-25T09:08:00.000+11:00

Or your preferred expression of good wishes for this time of year. For me, "Merry Christmas!" is fine.

I get that Barnaby Joyce is trying to be funny... ho! ho! ho! ...

2011-12-24T23:19:00.000+11:00

... but would anyone think it was so funny if a leading federal politician, here in Australia, wrote like this about any other group?

You can hear yourself muttering under your breath, ''I wish you would go drown yourself, you pseudo-intellectual Gucci flea.'' They write letters to complain about the incorrectness of carols at the school and picket the Christmas tree. To not insult their religion, you must no longer follow yours. They yearn for the fallacy of a vacuum and they demand that you join them in that philosophical void.

We can, of course, have debates about the rights and wrongs of singing Christmas carols in public schools. Is it a pernicious state endorsement of religion? Well, there's an argument for that. Or is it a bit of harmless tradition that no one need get too fussed about? Richard Dawkins, for one, might tend to think the latter. In any event, I'm not too worried about kids singing traditional songs ... not in the Australian context, at any rate.

But whatever you think, is it really a great idea for a senior politician to be going around publicly fantasising about a group of people whom he dislikes drowning themselves?

richarddawkins.net and Freedom of Religion and the Secular State

2011-12-24T15:45:00.005+11:00

It's nice of richarddawkins.net to promote the book in this post. I'm grateful for this, and I thank Mike Cornwell and/or Richard if he was involved personally and/or whoever else was responsible (it wasn't prompted by me).

I've got to say that some of the comments on the thread are discouraging, beginning with the very first one. This is just one case where the sorts of comments made in that forum don't seem, to me, to reflect the thoughtfulness, seriousness, and fairness of Richard Dawkins himself.

Okay, okay, I get that we don't think religious doctrine should influence the law or politics. That's pretty much what the book argues. But we do get an intersection of these three things in practice, and this is important enough to merit examination and critique. Religion, law, and politics interact all the time, constantly in dialogue and influencing each other. If we don't think that should happen, or if we want to limit or structure how it should happen, we need a theory as to why. And it's no good simply saying that religious doctrines are all false. We're in real trouble if atheists are the only people who'll accept some kind of functional separation, or distance, of religion from law making and politics. That separation can't await the mass deconversion of, say, the United States of America. Furthermore, such separation as does exist is under constant challenge.

In fact, I think that there are good reasons for a functional separation of religion and political power ... and once they are explained they should be attractive not only to atheists but also to many (perhaps most) religious people. But they need to be articulated in a clear, modern, accessible way. I don't know of any book that has done this really well: too often, highly controversial ideas in political philosophy are relied on; or else the argument is only accessible to law professors; or else it's rather crude and unconvincing; or else it just doesn't deliver what it claims (too often, only a very weak separation is really argued for, and the most important aspects of separation may not be the ones that actually get advocated).

I've made an attempt to do this job ... to fill the identifiable gap.

And I try to work through the implications, examining the relationship between secular government and the classic liberal views of people like John Stuart Mill. That takes me to the implications for hot-button topics relating to freedom of religion - such as the burqa - and to large topics in liberal thought, such as freedom of speech.

Whether or not I've done a good job of this remains to be seen. It's not up to me to judge, and maybe the book will end up being a failure. Perhaps, for all I know, it will encounter powerful criticisms. At the least, it will encounter controversy.

For all that, I'm proud of my work at this point. It's nice that the book will see publication next month. But knee-jerk dismissal of such an exercise as either unimportant or easy doesn't exactly inspire me. The job is neither unimportant nor easy.

This Washington Times op.ed. piece is a bit more on the mark

2011-12-24T14:25:00.000+11:00

Quote from here:

Please, America's Christians, please humble yourselves, discard the ego, stash the attitude, and look at the issue of public religiosity from any non-Christian perspective. If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem, and that is something you need to start taking responsibility for.

Indifference in the face of adversity is a position of ignorance. Can we get you to stand up for what is just, please? We don't want to pick a fight, we want peace. Please help make that a possibility.

The separation of Church and state is of more importance than you think it is, and it is not an atheistic agenda. The separation of church and state is the equalizing factor for all religions. If we afford one religion privilege, it is not fair not to do so for all others, and how do we afford all other religions privilege without going to absurd lengths? The only viable answer is separation.

Pretty much right. There are deeper arguments than this for a functional separation of church and state, and I think that they are pretty convincing from most perspectives. But the above will do. You can't, in all fairness, have the state favouring a particular religion over other religions and over non-belief.

Time magazine provides us with some myths about atheism

2011-12-24T13:48:00.002+11:00

As I've mentioned now and then, Udo Schuklenk and I are working on a book called 50 Great Myths About Atheism - to be published in 2013, I hope, if all goes as well as it might.

Documenting that these myths really are out there is one of the more difficult tasks, since we can't always recall the provenance of something that we know very well and certainly have no reason to doubt. Accordingly, it's kind of Time magazine to provide us with an article that is full of such myths.

Jerry Coyne has already done a good hatchet job on the article, which really is pretty terrible. It's full of tired, cliched thoughts.

I especially like: "It's a fairly widely accepted maxim that atheist fundamentalists, as I call them, can be just as intolerant as religious fundamentalists." Right, that so-called "maxim" might be "widely accepted" in the sense that there are a lot of idiots around who think such a thing. Even smart people might accept it if they told often enough that's true and haven't got the time or energy to check for themselves. None of us can stop and check out everything we're told. Nonetheless, the "maxim" is drivel.

It's unworthy of the author to write such rubbish as this article, and of a supposedly high quality magazine to publish it.

Tim Minchin comedy song cut from British TV show

2011-12-23T22:51:00.002+11:00

But what the hey - you can go and see it here. Minchin sings a satirical song about the traditional Christian narrative of Jesus' life.

Seems kind of counterproductive to cut something that might have been offensive to (some people in) the UK TV audience, when this just makes it a bigger story in the UK and raises its profile internationally.

Tim Dean on Christmas

2011-12-23T21:57:00.002+11:00

I like this post by Tim Dean at The Drum. Sample quote:

Certainly for some, Christmas is a deeply religious occasion, and a time of reflection on the birth of their saviour. Some might even consider the hedonistic lunching, the frenzy of gift shopping and the gaudy blinking lights and tinsel-covered trees a distraction from the true meaning of Christmas. They're wrong.

For most of us, Christmas is precisely about all those silly customs and rituals we perform each year. This is because, ultimately, Christmas is about tradition, it's about family, and it's about taking time out to share a feast with the most important people in our lives.

And like many traditions, the purported justification for its existence is far less interesting and far less important than the function the tradition plays in our lives. And once you divorce the religious justification from the practice, you can get an insight into what Christmas is really about.

Yup, pretty much right. Christmas has long lost its religious rationale for many of us, but it is still a valuable occasion. Whether on Christmas Day itself or throughout the week or two leading into the New Year, we get a chance to catch up with many of the most important people in our lives. Those who are absent (perhaps interstate or overseas) are in our thoughts, and we at least do something to renew contact ... by sending cards or making phone calls or whatever best works. This time of year is, above all, a celebration of our relationships with the people whom we care about and who care about us.

Sure, some alternative that had no religious roots at all might be good, but the religious side of it is pretty much irrelevant to the way Christmas actually functions for many of us in today's society. It's a time in the year that's well worth keeping because of what it's really become.

My magnificent 7 posts of the year

2011-12-23T11:37:00.005+11:00

These are not necessarily my own favourite posts of the year. But they are the ones that have scored the greatest number of views (and will doubtless now score even more, lol). Still, they give an idea of the mix of this blog and the mix of what people seem to want:

1. Interpreting Deuteronomy - with sophisticated theology. How (some) theologians try to rehabilitate an offensive text.

2. Islam and "Islamophobia" - a little manifesto. This issue of what you can say about Islam, and what counts as Islamophobia, is obviously on a lot of people's minds, since the post sent my views through the roof (by this blog's very modest standards of what counts as the roof).

3. Coyne vs. Haught - advantage, Coyne. This was a long post on the kerfuffle related to the Coyne/Haught live debate (or whatever it was). Haught was out of line here, and rather precious. Jerry and I have different concepts of science, free will, and "fact" - but we don't get involved in fights about it. Perhaps it's true that our main disagreements are semantic, but, really, people are entitled to disagree. Haught seems to be someone who doesn't like being disagreed with and quickly makes it personal. I get the same flavour from his books.

I'll say it again: Jerry Coyne did nothing wrong in the discussion that Haught got so upset about ... and by getting so damn upset Haught made things worse for himself.

4. A very short introduction to non-overlapping magisteria. A perennial topic on this blog. I guess I'll go on criticising the surprising influential - but in my view utterly meretricious - concept of non-overlapping magisteria.

5. IQ2 debate on "Atheists are wrong" - the results (Lions defeat Christians). My initial report on this debate, which was a big thing in my life back in September. It was subsequently televised on ABC 1 and made available on video on the internet.

6. Jean Kazez on Gnude Clothes and shutting up. This issue is ancient history by now, and yet it still rankles. I need to say a bit about it.

I guess Jean and I are going to have to agree to disagree about some of this, though I wish I could persuade her, especially as my respect for her has risen immensely as the year has gone on. The way she handled herself over the issue that we don't talk about here was exemplary - if you want to see some actually useful discussion of, sigh, Elevatorgate, track down the relevant threads on her blog.

I suspect that we're not in total disagreement about the Mooneygate issues, etc. Like Jean, I do prefer civility, and I dislike personal attacks, pile-ons, and witch hunts. I'm happy to admit that I said some things that I regret in the thick of the battles over Chris Mooney, etc., etc., and I probably even owe Mooney an apology for some of it.

But please note this important point. Much of the anger against Mooney was based on his claim that some views should not be expressed in the public square even in a civil way. That may not be telling someone, directly in the second person, "Shut up!" But it is saying that someone should shut up because their views, even though they are arguable and civilly expressed, are politically inexpedient. I can't accept that.

For me, the argument has never been about whether we should normally try to be civil. Generally speaking, I think we should be. It's better for intellectual progress if a wide range of ideas can be discussed in a civil manner without people losing their tempers, provoking each other to lose their tempers, typecasting and dismissing each other as not worth listening to on the basis of their ideas, and so on. There is a place for satire and mockery of absurd ideas, but there's also an important place for listening to each others' viewpoints and welcoming thoughtful critiques of our own views.

What annoyed me so much about Mooney in the first place was the suggestion that we should not express certain ideas - at least in more public places like The New Republic - even in a thoughtful and civil manner (which is what Jerry Coyne did in the book review that Mooney objected to). Anyway... let's move on...

7. Some Saturday supervillainy: Zeus vs the Hulk. This brief post about heroism and villainy in pop culture attracts a significant number of readers month after month. It's obviously a hot topic for a demographic that I tapped into. And, hey, why not? It does less to raise my blood pressure than worrying about Chris Mooney or Wally Smith or ~~Elevatorgate~~ some of the other rubbish we encounter in the blogosphere. That has to be a plus.

My top 12 books of the year

2011-12-23T10:07:00.007+11:00

I'm unlikely to read many more books before the year is out, and the ones that I really must read for professional purposes don't look as if they are going to make any list of mine of favourite or top or "best" books.

So here is a short list of my best books of the year, the ones that I found especially illuminating or enjoyable. It's my top 12 for 2011.

Few of them actually appeared for the first time in 2011 - in fact, I think only the first one did. My reading is seldom that up to date. However, they are all books that I read for the first time in 2011. Thus, you won't see Moby Dick on the list, even though I actually did read it in 2011, because I'd read it before.

Here goes, in a rough order:

1. The Better Angels of Our Nature - Steven Pinker. This was the real stand out. A huge book crammed with interesting information and reflections. Superbly written, and simply a must read for anyone with interests remotely similar to mine. I've written about the book sporadically in a couple of earlier posts, and I'll be writing a proper review of it for the ABC Religion and Ethics Portal.

2. The Emotional Construction of Morals - Jesse Prinz. One of the best works on moral philosophy that I have ever read, and certainly the best case that I have ever seen for moral relativism (of a very sophisticated kind that avoids the obvious problems with cruder forms). This book was enough to shake me up and make me think that some sort of moral relativism might be the best theory after all. I'm still thinking about it.

3. The Slap - Chris Tsiolkas. This is my work of fiction of the year. I've only just read it, after watching the TV version religiously over the eight weeks that it played and then being lent the novel by a friend. There's a lot to say about the book, and maybe I'll find an opportunity to say more elsewhere, but this is a splendid portrait of how we live now.

4. Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell - Susanne Clark. To my shame, I only got around to reading this extraordinary fantasy novel in 2011. You'll need to do nothing but read it for a full week, unless you're a much faster reader than I am, but it's worth it. An immersive experience.

5. Collected Stories - Saul Bellow. This might deserve an even higher ranking, but a large proportion of it is one of my favourite stories by anyone, ever, Bellow's novella A Theft. I'd already read this several times. Bellow's fiction requires a certain level of concentration - don't read these stories while distracted - but the pay-off is worth it. Beautiful, compelling depictions of character in action.

6. Atheism: A Philosophical Justification - Michael Martin. I'd never actually read this from cover to cover, though I'd certainly dipped into it quite a bit. It really is a masterwork of modern philosophy.

7. Against the Day - Thomas Pynchon. Another book that will take you a week of doing nothing else. To be honest, I wish I could rank this a bit higher, but Pynchon is always a mixture of enjoyable and frustrating. I had to read Against the Day, at last (since it was published a few years ago now), in order to give a talk on Pynchon early in the year. I probably need to read it again so it makes more sense the second time, but when am I going to find another week? Pynchon's works do repay re-reading and re-re-reading.

8. Beyond Humanity? - Allen Buchanan. This book on the philosophy of enhancement technology is by one of the authors of From Chance to Choice, still probably the one must-read book in the field. The earlier book notwithstanding, Buchanan has some new, provocative, and important things to say.

9. Diamond Eyes - A.A. Bell. This won the Norma K. Hemming Award, for which I was on the jury. It's simply a page-turning thriller with a mix of science-fiction and fantasy elements. Not necessarily something I'd read again, but I loved it.

9. Power and Majesty - Tansy Rayner Roberts. I loved this as well. It would also have been a worthy winner of the same award, and it gained other honours (an Aurealis Award, for a start). Roberts is at the top of her game right now.

11. The Complete Maus - Art Spiegelman. Again, a book that I'm ashamed not to have read before. It's as compelling, moving, and complex as they say.

12. The Weight of Things - Jean Kazez. Jean and I have had our quarrels and continue to have some disagreements. I must say, though, that she writes beautifully and thoughtfully. This relatively little book about the problem of "the good life" is thoroughly enjoyable, even if you find stuff to disagree with.

Some honorable mentions. First, Paul Cliteur's The Secular Outlook. I'd previously read the manuscript when it was sent to me to see if I might give it a back-cover endorsement (I did so enthusiastically). I was pleased to read it again this year in the form of the published book. It was good to have it in time to draw on it for my own work this year. It's an important contribution to secular thought, and you might like to seek it out. The only reason it's not on my list is that I'd read the manuscript.

Second, Mike Carey's X-Men story Age of X, which is now available in trade. The edgier reinterpretations of the X-characters are a joy to behold. It's almost a pity that they had to be brought back, at the end of the story, to the "normal" reality of the franchise. But Age of X did pay off for the on-going X-Men myth-cum-soap-opera.

Third, and now I realise that I'm being unfair to Philip Kitcher's big new book on moral philosophy, The Ethical Project. I've written a review of this for The Philosophers' Magazine, and have praised it quite highly. I think I need some time for my thoughts about it to bed down, before I can decide just how important a contribution to the field it is. But it probably belongs on the top 12 list somewhere, in which case I'd have to look at the last couple of items on the list and decide which to throw out. Just take it that the book is deserving of a place there.

A victory in the United Nations

2011-12-22T13:32:00.002+11:00

For the first time in years now, the United Nations General Assembly has broken with what had become something of a tradition - passing an annual resolution condemning so-called "defamation of religion".

It is one thing for the UN to condemn actions to provoke inter-religious hatred. No one wants to see the world's societies riven with hatred, though it is worth remembering that much of the hatred comes from religious conservatives who refuse to tolerate sexual freedom (especially that of women), female emancipation, and any expressions of erotic love outside of heterosexual monogamy. Even in Western societies we see this in the emotive opposition to abortion rights and same-sex marriage. It's another thing to become so focused on this issue that important kinds of speech are stigmatised and even prohibited. There is a public interest in scrutiny of religion, and it should be a fair target for criticism, denunciation, or satire.

At any rate, we should always err, if err we must, on the side of freedom of speech. Whatever lines are drawn in the area should allow bold speech that might offend - and this includes various forms of anti-religious criticism and satire. Such a liberal attitude to speech might permit some ugly speech, but the long-term effect would be to reinforce a valuable lesson: ideologically opposed groups of whatever kind - religious, political, or philosophical - must make their own way, enduring criticism, and even satire, from their opponents, without asking the state to interfere.

(For further elaboration of these sentiments, you can see my chapter on free speech in Freedom of Religion and the Secular State. This is a theme of the book, and I discuss some of the important case law in detail.)

Religion and science (an issue that won't go away!)

2011-12-21T19:16:00.000+11:00

The discussion over at Talking Philosophy has become rather recondite, which is the nature of that forum (which is frequented by philosophers!).

Still, do feel free to join in. I think it's a good discussion, though criteria for this may vary! :)

Atheists Are Wrong debate now on the IQ2 site

2011-12-21T00:30:00.000+11:00

You can relive the moment by watching the debate here.

Speakers

For:
■The Most Rev Peter Jensen is Archbishop of the Anglican Church, Diocese of Sydney and Metropolitan of the Province of New South Wales (since 2001). A former lecturer and Principal of Moore Theological College, he earned a D Phil from Oxford for his research on Elizabethan Protestantism. His book At the Heart of the Universe is used around the world as an introductory text on Christian Doctrine. His 2005 Boyer Lecture series for the ABC has been published as a book, The future of Jesus.
■Dr Tracey Rowland is the Dean of the John Paul II Institute, Melbourne and a Permanent Fellow in Political Philosophy and Continental Theology. She is also an Adjunct Professor of the Centre for Faith, Ethics and Society of the University of Notre Dame, Sydney. Dr Rowland holds a doctorate from the Divinity School of Cambridge University and has published widely including two books on the theology of Benedict XVI.
■Scott Stephens is the Religion & Ethics editor for ABC Online. Before joining the ABC he taught theology and theological ethics for many years. He has written extensively about the intersections among philosophy, theology and politics, the work of Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek, the political theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and John Paul II, the moral problem of secularism and why atheism stems from the theological revolution of Christianity.

Against:
■Russell Blackford is a philosopher, literary critic and creative writer. His qualifications include separate PhDs in English literature and philosophy . He is Editor-in-Chief of The Journal of Evolution and Technology and the author of many books, articles, essays and short stories. His books include 50 Voices of Disbelief: Why We Are Atheists (2009) co-edited with Udo Schuklenk. His new book, Freedom of Religion and the Secular State, will be published shortly. Dr Blackford is a Conjoint Lecturer in the School of Humanities and Social Science, University of Newcastle.
■Jane Caro runs her own communications consultancy and lectures in Advertising Creative at UWS. She is author of three books and is currently writing about atheism. Caro appears regularly in the media, is a panellist on the ABC’s top rating The Gruen Transfer and an occasional radio host.
■Dr Tamas Pataki is honorary Senior Fellow at the University of Melbourne (School of historical and philosophical studies) and honorary Fellow of Deakin University. He studied philosophy at the University of Melbourne and psychoanalysis at University College, London University. Dr Pataki has been a lecturer in philosophy at RMIT, University of Tasmania and University of Melbourne. He co-edited, with Michael Levine, Racism in Mind (Cornell 2004) and is the author of Against Religion (Scribe, 2007) as well as of articles and book chapters on the philosophy of mind and numerous popular pieces and reviews.

Fred Nile is a mean-spirited opportunist who can't spell the word "Hitchens"

2011-12-21T00:17:00.001+11:00

For some amusement, have a look at this media release from Fred Nile, which relates to the death of Christopher Hitchens. Leaving aside the mean-spirited and opportunistic content, Nile can't even spell the name of the person he's writing about:

The Rev Fred Nile MLC, Leader of the Christian Democratic Party, has expressed his condolences and sympathy over the suffering and finally the death, from cancer, of Christopher Hitchins.

"However, whatever his beliefs in those last minutes as a proud atheist, Mr Hitchins is no longer an atheist" said Rev Nile.

Edit: Added link to the original release.

Media reports on the "protect Assange" letter

2011-12-20T20:01:00.002+11:00

The letter that I referred to yesterday is getting a fair bit of coverage, including in The Sydney Morning Herald and ABC News.

Once again, I am not necessarily opposed to Assange's extradition from the UK to Sweden to face allegations of some sort of coercive sexual conduct when he was in the latter country, and I do deprecate the widespread character assassination of the women concerned. Although I've read certain reports and opinion pieces, I have not formed any opinion on what he did or didn't do - I'm not a great lover of trial by media - let alone the rights and wrongs of it all. Perhaps I'll say more when I have a better grasp of the facts as the legal process continues (see below).

Important though this is, the larger issue in my mind is how he can be protected from having to submit to US criminal jurisdiction for separate issues relating to conduct committed when he was not in the US (and given that he is not an American citizen). In principle this could turn into another Hicks debacle.

At the moment, Assange has leave to appeal to the highest British court against his extradition to Sweden. I'll watch developments with interest.

Kenan Malik wins 3quarksdaily prize

2011-12-19T23:38:00.001+11:00

Kenan Malik has gained first place in the 3quarksdaily Politics and Social Science Prize.

Congratulations, Kenan!

I look forward to reading his prize-winning essay - "Rethinking the Idea of 'Christian Europe'" - which was published on his Pandaemonium blog back in August.

The "protect Assange" open letter in Overland

2011-12-19T11:29:00.002+11:00

Hey, I was not asked to sign this - phew! I would have had a couple of reservations to make me hesitate. However, I do have a lot of respect for some of the people who actually did sign on (and I'm on friendly terms with a number of them).

My first worry is not a huge issue in the scheme of things, but let's look at this paragraph:

Further, the chances of Mr Assange receiving a fair trial in the United States appear remote. A number of prominent political figures have called for him to be assassinated, and the Vice-President has called him a "high-tech terrorist". Given the atmosphere of hostility in relation to Mr Assange, we hold serious concerns about his safety once in US custody. We note that Mr Assange is an Australian citizen, whose journalistic activities were undertaken entirely outside of US territory.

I agree with it all except the bolded sentence. I'm not in a position to say that the odds of the trial itself being conducted fairly are, or even "appear", remote. I don't think that's the point.

The last sentence is one I strongly agree with, though it is a bit obscure just what it's getting at. The real problem here is America's peculiar propensity for extraterritorial criminal legislation. The actual trial might be conducted fairly, but people who are not US citizens should not be tried under US law for activities outside of the US. If Assange did something that was illegal in whatever country he was in at the time, it should be up to the authorities of that country to decide whether it wants to prosecute. American law should have nothing to do with it, and no country should ever agree to the extradition of a person who is not a US citizen to face charges for conduct entirely outside the US. Although I wouldn't put it this way in such a letter, America's arrogance in this regard is appalling.

My second worry is just this: surely something could have been said to help distance the signatories from the widely-expressed view that the pending charges against Assange are absurd and trumped up, and that the women concerned are somehow disreputable or of no account. I realise that it wasn't strictly necessary to go into the issue, but I'm uncomfortable that nothing at all was said to make clear that the letter is neutral on the merits of Assange's conduct in Sweden.

I'm open to argument on this. I do realise that there's a risk in opening a can of worms here, and I'm not sure what additional wording, or tweaking of the current wording, I'd have wanted. Perhaps I'd have signed up if asked, after due reflection, but I'm not in a hurry to bounce up in the comments on the site saying, "Me, too!"

As to Assange's bedroom conduct, perhaps we'll find out more about what really happened if the case ever goes to trial ... or we'll understand more clearly. We can then make up our individual minds about how morally vicious or otherwise it was; whether it was the sort of thing that should have been criminalised; if so, to what degree; and so on. I have no opinion to express on any of that at the moment.

Jerry Coyne's latest on accommodationism

2011-12-19T10:46:00.003+11:00

This is a lucid and persuasive statement of Jerry's position. I agree with almost all of it (anything I disagreed with would merely be a matter of quibbling).

Just two things to add. First, it's probably my philosophical training (and partly also temperament) that inclines me to make fine distinctions, strain to find whatever merit I can in opponents' positions, interpret opponents and their position statements as charitably as possible, etc. I'd like to see more of this in blogosphere debates, but it's also possible to get too hung up about it all. Jerry sometimes does a better job than I do in skewering accommodationism simply because he's not so hung up about it.

But ... second, read what Jerry actually says. This is damn sure not a crude position that he's putting. He's making subtle, incisive points about the fraught relationship between religion and science. That's his basis for pointing out the misleading nature of the accommodationist positions that he attacks.

Jean Kazez on Douthat on Hitchens

2011-12-19T10:22:00.002+11:00

This piece by Jean Kazez is very good - have a look for yourself, and follow her links.

Among other things, the post raises the important question of whether we'd really want a world totally without religion. Unlike the others of the "four horsemen", Hitchens didn't. I recall watching the video discussion among the four of them that Jean refers to, and it's interesting seeing some of the conversation transcribed.

I actually have mixed feelings on this. My aim is not to eliminate religion from the world: my big thing is not atheism or anti-religion, but secular government. On the other hand, I do think that it's important to go on criticising religion, and I don't think it makes sense to criticise religious influence on political power without someone engaging in criticism of religion itself. The two go well in tandem. And I can't say that I'd be particularly sorry if no one, anywhere, took religion seriously any more.

On the gripping hand, I think I understand why Hitchens wanted ongoing argument, rather than a world where only one side speaks. There are good Millian reasons for that kind of impulse. As Mill said in On Liberty, it's better to have people around who disagree with you, forcing you to engage in self-criticism and refinement of your arguments. If that's what Hitchens means in the video, when he worries about "one hand clapping", I see his point.

Embiggen Books haz Freedom of Religion and the Secular State

2011-12-19T09:34:00.000+11:00

Or, more accurately, it has a page for the book. Freedom of Religion and the Secular State is currently showing as "out of stock", but that will just be because copies haven't physically arrrived yet (publication is mid-January).

As I've said often, Embiggen Books is a wonderful bookshop - formerly based on the Sunshine Coast, but now in Melbourne. It stocks an extensive range of material related to reason and science. If you're here in Australia and looking for books as Christmas pressies (or looking for books for any other reason), check out its website. Ordering from Embiggen Books might be a good idea for you. You'll find some great possibilities, and you'll be supporting a business that stands strongly for a rational, science-based view of the world.

David Nicholls on Hitchens' death

2011-12-18T20:58:00.001+11:00

David Nicholls, organiser of the forthcoming Global Atheist Convention, for which Christopher Hitchens was going to be a star attraction, writes an obituary here.

He concludes:

We can expect detractors to exit from the woodwork over the next months. There will be half-true and untrue rumours and stories of a hateful nature, which will only go to reinforce the greatness of this one human who once trod the earth in a dignified manner. The intensity of his life and bravery to the end were examples of the finest of human qualities. If but everyone could emulate them.

The death of Christopher Hitchens has special significance for the Atheist Foundation of Australia. He was booked to appear at the 2012 Global Atheist Convention – 'A Celebration of Reason' in April next year along with the other acclaimed Four Horsemen of the Anti-Apocalypse: Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and Sam Harris. Christopher knew, as did we, that this was a gamble with time. If pneumonia had not stepped into the scene, the Four Horsemen would have been together at a public forum for the first time.

I know I can speak for the audience and everyone involved with this convention in saying that we are all deeply and profoundly sad that one of the four chairs on centre stage will be empty.

Sunday supervillainy - "Here, hold my Annihilus."

2011-12-18T16:59:00.000+11:00

Go to Scans Daily to check out the significance of the above.

McEwan on Hitchens ... and some reflections on death

2011-12-17T23:46:00.015+11:00

This New York Times article by Ian McEwan is a beautiful and moving piece about Christopher Hitchens' last days, in a hospital in Houston, as the end approached for him. In a way, no doubt, it's sad - all that intellectual energy, and all that love of life and books, destined to be snuffed out, with so many thoughts never to be articulated. And Hitchens' passing is a huge loss to the world in many, many ways.

But that energy and love are so admirable, and the lucidity that McEwan reveals in the man, right up to the edge of the dark, is almost ... well almost enviable. Almost enviable in that it's hard for me to imagine reaching this sort of level when the grim, final days eventually come round. It's a standard to aspire to.

I'm not going to say a lot about this, except maybe in just this one post, but I've had frequent occasion to think about death over the last few years - not because of any great problems with my own health, and not because I'm anywhere near approaching my own life expectancy, but because of a series of events over that time. Chief among them was the death of my mother, just coming up to four years ago now.

As things turned out, she died on my watch at her hospital bedside: it was just me and a nurse there that January morning, when she took her last, spaced apart, unconscious breaths. My father and sister missed the moment, having both stayed up all night while I'd taken a shift of getting some sleep. The final breaths came after I'd returned to the ward, and while Dad and my sister were finally snatching a short bit of rest.

There have been other things. Most recently, I've had two friends from the past - they were people I was more-or-less out of touch with, but I'd known both of them quite well at earlier stages of my life - die in just the last month. Both were much too young, as, indeed was Hitchens if it comes to that, though they were quite a bit younger still.

As it turned out, when I first heard of Christopher Hitchens' death yesterday afternoon (Australian time), I'd just come home from the funeral service for Anne. I remember her as a kind, cheerful, and beautiful young woman from my university days (when she married one of my closest friends from high school ... in a marriage that didn't last, alas, though it produced a batch of children who are now, themselves, fine young adults).

So, may the evil hour be quite a few decades away for me, all going well, but events like this do make you think ... or at least they do in my case. The thoughts, in my case, are not of any spooky synchronicity, and they are not of an afterlife, though I do want to leave some kind of worthwhile legacy behind, which may or may not count as ersatz life extension. Nor do I feel morbid or depressed, or anything of the kind. But I do reflect, and an article like McEwan's provides another occasion for it.

Most importantly, all the events of the past four years and more - the many months of severe illness that preceded Mum's loss to us belong in the accounting, too - bring home thoughts about what is most important at the end.

I admire Hitchens' mental energy in his final days and weeks: all the things that I mentioned several paragraphs up the screen, and which McEwan conveys so adroitly and sensitively. Those things, perhaps, are much to be wished for when the end approaches, if it comes slowly enough to make them even relevant. But above all, in my case, I always want the people whom I most love - that very short list of individuals whom I can count in a moment - to be in no doubt as to how I feel about them.

No doubts at the end, I hope, for those on that list who end up outliving me, and preferably none at any time in the quite-a-few-decades to come (the decades I'm hoping for, if all goes well). That's my most important ambition in how I live my life.

These are just some reflections prompted by a week when death has been an especially conspicuous presence. Take them for what they're worth. At least I know what death means to me, or something of what it means - not something spooky, not necessarily something terrifying (though I don't expect to be especially brave about it), but mainly a presence that can focus us on what really matters. From where I sit, I reckon nothing matters more than the people we most care for.

Re the hardcover of 50 Voices of Disbelief

2011-12-17T20:00:00.001+11:00

I see that Amazon is selling some copies of the hardcover of VoD at a good price.

Just to be clear, I'm unlikely to make much money from a small number of people picking up some or all of these. We're talking, at most, about the price of a middling bottle of wine. However, the hardcover edition is a thing of beauty, so if anyone would happen to like one - or if you think your local library or educational institution might like one, or that it would make a good present for somebody - just consider this deal drawn to your attention. Like I say, this isn't about Russell getting rich, just that I'd love to see those lovely hardcover copies go to good homes if there are good homes anyone can think of for them.

New post at Talking Philosophy ... and some summary thoughts right here

2011-12-17T09:12:00.003+11:00

Back to that topic that won't go away - religion and science. Are they compatible? Whatever that means. Once again, there is no reasonable way that you can completely insulate the factual claims made by religion from the knowledge that we gain from empirical investigation (whether or not we use the word "science" to cover the entirety of empirical investigation ... none of this turns on the semantic point about what we mean by a particualr word). Accordingly, many religious leaders and organisations will thin out their factual claims to avoid conflicts with what we know about the world through empirical investigation. Where religion fails to do that, it usually ends up being stuck with those conflicts.

It didn't have to be like that. A thousand years ago, say, it might have turned out that one religion is correct in all its claims. In that case, scientists and whoever else is doing empirical investigation would have found themselves confirming (but perhaps finding more detail about) what was already known through religious "ways of knowing", such as visions and mystical experiences.

That, however is not the world we find ourselves in, and in those circumstances, it is glib and at best misleading to say, "Religion and science are compatible."

To be sure, there are various ways that religion can avoid empirical refutation. For one, it can thin out its factual claims. For another, it can introduce various ad hoc moves (e.g. claiming that the earth was created only 6000 years ago but in a pre-aged state with "fossils" of creatures that never actually existed). For yet another, it can deny ordinary canons of reason as far as necessary to deny inconvenient truths about the world. There are doubtless others. In the first chapter of Freedom of Religion and the Secular State (which you can read online for free), I acknowledge that these resources are available to the religious, and I have never claimed that I can disprove the existence of supernatural beings once and for all to the satisfaction of all comers.

But to describe the situation as one of compatibility between religion and science is more a political choice than a natural choice of words that conveys the reality. The reality is that empirical investigation of the world, including investigation using the techniques distinctive of science, has put great pressure on religion to date, and it continues to do so. It has caused new problems for religion and worsened old ones. More generally, it has undermined the credibility of distinctive religious "ways of knowing".

As with so many things, it is very difficult, perhaps impossible, to demonstrate the falsity of religious claims to all comers, irrespective of their starting positions. Some believers will find themselves in walled gardens of beliefs, insulated from the reality by taking steps that others of us regard with incredulity and view as unreasonable. Other believers will find that what they are forced to believe if they are to maintain consistency is just too absurd for continuing belief.

People who are not believers, and do not start with a special trust in religious ways of knowing or a strong intuitive acceptance of religious doctrine, may find themselves even less willing to become religious when they see the intellectual cost.

This is situation has its complexities. I prefer to hammer the point that it is glib and misleading to say, simply, "Religion and science are compatible," rather to make my own simple announcement, "Religion and science are incompatible." The latter is, I think, closer to the truth, but it needs to be spelled out what it really means.

All that said, the record of empirical investigation over the past few hundred years has been one of putting pressure on religion, forcing retreats, undermining doctrines and theological systems, making it more difficult to be a believer, making it easier to be an intellectually comfortable and satisfied non-believer. Against that backdrop, glib claims about the compatibility of science and religion are absurd ... and transparently political when they come from science organisations.

Okay, the above is a summary of where I stand on this issue. The piece at Talking Philosophy is rather different, but it will probably make more sense in the context of this summary. So you might want to read both.

Death of Christopher Hitchens

2011-12-16T17:18:00.000+11:00

We all knew this was coming, but now it's happened - Christopher Hitchens has died, at the age of 62, of esophageal cancer. That's a huge, saddening loss to the world. Hitchens was a man of wit, brilliance, and courage; he was a provocateur, an orator, and an intellectual powerhouse. He made a mighty contribution to our culture, and to the never-ending struggle in defence of freedom and reason. He'll be sorely missed.

For now, the best I can do is link to this piece by Juli Weiner in Vanity Fair.

Atheists not trusted

2011-12-16T14:59:00.000+11:00

I must find the actual academic article on which this news story is based. It's disheartening that atheists are still so widely distrusted, and apparently for the same reasons that were put forward by John Locke back in 1689 (and doubtless by others before him. I.e. for reasons that should be well and truly exploded by now.

“Outward displays of belief in God may be viewed as a proxy for trustworthiness, particularly by religious believers who think that people behave better if they feel that God is watching them,” Norenzayan said in the news release. “While atheists may see their disbelief as a private matter on a metaphysical issue, believers may consider atheists’ absence of belief as a public threat to cooperation and honesty.”

Atheists also tend to trust religious people more than they trust other atheists.

“Those people who did not identify with a religion still tended to find believers to be more trustworthy,” said the third co-author, Azim Shariff of the University of Oregon.

That’s because people trust “those who fear supernatural punishment,” Shariff added, and because atheists aren’t especially vocal, powerful or connected.

Michael Ruse on Alvin Plantinga

2011-12-16T14:12:00.002+11:00

I haven't read Plantinga's new book, obviously, so I can't comment on whether the relevant chapter gives tacit-cum-explicit support to Intelligent Design theory. Given what I have read by Plantinga in the past, however, I'd be surprised if he didn't give some support to ID beyond the vague claim that God created and designed the universe as a whole. Plantinga has always argued that the cognitive powers of human beings could not arise from a merely naturalistic process, which must surely mean that there has been supernatural intervention in the detail of what cognitive powers we have ended up having. How is that not a form of Intelligent Design?

Anyway, the debate goes on. Michael Ruse has something nasty to say about everyone, but he does seem to score points against Plantinga here.

Jean Kazez reviews The Better Angels of Our Nature

2011-12-16T09:03:00.005+11:00

Jean Kazez reviews Pinker's book over here on her In Living Color blog. Although she is a lot less taken with The Better Angels of Our Nature than I was, she has produced a useful and fair review - one that you might want to read to balance the more starry-eyed accounts you're getting from me and others.

A couple of quick comments. I think she's right in her comment about the "syllabular" nature of the book. It is not overtly thesis driven, and Pinker does not develop a simple argument for why human beings have, by and large, become less violent and bloodthirsty over the centuries. He identifies factors, certainly, but they are complex, and much of the book simply teaches us the facts from numerous data sets.

Although I agree with this, I don't think it's a great problem. Pinker has given us something that we need - overwhelming evidence that the idea of increasing bloodthirstiness, culminating in a horrifically violent twentieth century, is a myth. He sets the record straight, while not flinching from the horrors of the world wars and the historically recent democides in Germany, Russia, China, and elsewhere. That is, itself, an enormous service, and the book is so well written that it is entertaining in event.

Furthermore, if the reasons just are complicated we can hardly blame the author for not insisting on a simple thesis. It's not as if he has nothing at all to say about the causes of the relative decline of human nastiness; it's just that what he has to say matches up to the messy reality.

Jean does have some convincing points about why the fall-off in cruelty to animals may be exaggerated by Pinker, and why the problem continues to be a serious one. This, of course, raises the question as to whether Pinker may be wrong, or over-embellishing, on other issues. Despite the book's huge size, each topic could be explored in even more depth, and the picture might then change. Clearly enough, Pinker hasn't written the last word on any of these issues.

I'm not so taken with the point that the absolute amount of suffering in, say, a genocidal event increases if the population of societies and the world increases. While that is true, and many of the events of last century were horrible partly because of the sheer size of the populations involved, I don't think it is a criticism of Pinker's main point.

Sure, we ought to oppose acts of genocide, manufactured famines, and all the other monstrous events perpetrated by crazy governments. Yes, the scale of these will be greater, making them even more horrible, in a sense, as relevant populations increase. Nonetheless, consider a very large society where few people, relative to the overall size of the population, settle their differences in violent ways. It's quite meaningful to say that this is a less violent society than a much smaller society in which a large proportion of the population is resorting to violence. That is so even if the large society suffers a greater absolute number of murders than the much smaller one.

In the smaller society the average person is more likely to have a violent disposition. The likelihood that any given person routinely dishes out violence is greater. Your chances of being murdered if you live there are greater. The general ambience that you experience will be more pervaded by cruelty and viciousness. The smaller society is going to be brutal and brutalising. It is the one that urgently needs a better government and gentler mores, etc.

If modern societies are getting more like the large society where most people are peaceful, and less like the smaller one where, let's say, folks resort to killing and injuring each other at the drop of a hat ... well, that is worth knowing, and I think it's perfectly legitimate to call it a decline of violence. It's not misleading. No one is being tricked into thinking that, for example, more people were killed in the Albigensian Crusade (of the order of hundreds of thousands, maybe approaching a million on some counts) than in the Nazi Holocaust (between five and six million Jews murdered).

I'll be reviewing the book myself - for the ABC Religion and Ethics Portal - so stay tuned for that. I understand that Pinker himself will have a piece there fairly soon, so you might like to look out for it.

You make that sound like a BAD thing...

2011-12-15T19:44:00.004+11:00

Some of the claims this book apparently argues for are true, in a sense, though expressed tendentiously (to say the least!) in the book description. The description makes the secularisation of government, society, and learning sound like a bad thing!

Before the Protestant Reformation, Western Christianity was an institutionalized worldview laden with expectations of security for earthly societies and hopes of eternal salvation for individuals. The Reformation’s protagonists sought to advance the realization of this vision, not disrupt it. But a complex web of rejections, retentions, and transformations of medieval Christianity gradually replaced the religious fabric that bound societies together in the West. Today, what we are left with are fragments: intellectual disagreements that splinter into ever finer fractals of specialized discourse; a notion that modern science — as the source of all truth — necessarily undermines religious belief; a pervasive resort to a therapeutic vision of religion; a set of smuggled moral values with which we try to fertilize a sterile liberalism; and the institutionalized assumption that only secular universities can pursue knowledge.

The changes mentioned did happen, of course, though they are exaggerated, demonised, and misdescribed in the quote. Putting in words like "sterile" doesn't change the fact that we have moved increasingly in the direction of liberalism. And it's been a good thing too! All these changes, if only they were properly described without the negative/hyperbolic (and emotion-laden) rhetoric, did take place. When we look at their actual character, rather than at the book description's frothing-at-the-mouth summary of them, they were actually logical and beneficial.

Yes, science is now specialised and professionalised; yes, it really does tend to undermine much in the way of religious belief (so it's no wonder people say it does); yes, many of us do prefer the "sterile" situation where the state does not try to impose comprehensive conceptions of the good on us all, and attempts to do so are to a considerable extent off the political table (not as much as I'd like, but still...). Properly understood, all the developments alluded to are good things.

(As I always say when a book interests me, I'd be happy to receive a review copy if anyone reading this post has been sent one and is looking for a reviewer. I'd even do my best to be fair to it, as is my modus operandi.)

Transforming humanity

2011-12-15T11:57:00.002+11:00

The N4CM church and state site has picked up Ron Lindsay's long editorial on the above topic in the current Free Inquiry. There's a bonus cartoon (not an especially good one, though) and a bonus video interview with James Hughes.

Apparently Plantinga has a new book

2011-12-15T00:12:00.000+11:00

According to this NYT article. Guess this is one more thing that I need to read. Someone going to send me a review copy?

Freedom of Religion and the Secular State - first chapter available online

2011-12-14T13:03:00.001+11:00

If you go to the book's page on the Wiley site you can actually read a page proof of the first chapter - see over on the right-hand side of the screen.

This should give you an idea of whether the rest of the book might be of interest to you, or someone you know, or your local library or educational institution. Getting to read the entire first chapter will give you a more in-depth grounding in what the book is really all about, and the kinds of arguments that I am going to use, than anything I could possibly say here. So please consider having a look.

You can also see the table of contents and the index, which will give you an even better idea of what is covered.

Also, if you live here in Australia ordering straight from Wiley's site might be as easy a way as any of getting hold of the book at a reasonable price (if you create an account with them, you can also use it to buy other interesting books in the Wiley-Blackwell philosophy range). I've gotta say, though, that for American readers there's really no substitute for the very good pre-release price that Amazon is still offering.

H/T Akiva Quinn