Great interview with Udo Schuklenk conducted by Maia Caron.
Sample:
The UN Human Rights Council, which adopted a resolution decrying religious defamation as an affront to human dignity, is controlled mostly by countries that are among the most prolific violators of civil rights, including the right to speak one’s mind.
The blasphemy document itself is remarkable in its scope and deliberate vagueness. Notorious civil-rights violators like Iran and Saudi Arabia will now be able to claim with some confidence that the UN is on their side when they clamp down on liberal-minded or secular Muslims. Western countries will also be happy to note that the council thinks the human right to free speech is not violated when they enforce their own, less draconian, blasphemy laws. The UN has firmly established itself as a body that is not even prepared to defend the basic principles enshrined in its Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948.
About Me
- Russell Blackford
- Australian philosopher, literary critic, legal scholar, and professional writer. Based in Newcastle, NSW. My latest books are THE TYRANNY OF OPINION: CONFORMITY AND THE FUTURE OF LIBERALISM (2019); AT THE DAWN OF A GREAT TRANSITION: THE QUESTION OF RADICAL ENHANCEMENT (2021); and HOW WE BECAME POST-LIBERAL: THE RISE AND FALL OF TOLERATION (2024).
Friday, January 15, 2010
Thursday, January 14, 2010
McKillop, McSchmillop ... James Bradley tells it like it is
Over at City of Tongues, James Bradley asks how uncritical anti-science nonsense ends up on the front pages of major newspapers.
Rather than fulminate at length, I’m going to confine myself to a few questions. How is it even remotely okay for major newspapers to be publishing uncritical articles about "miracles" on their front pages in 2010? Have we really lost the fight against the anti-science mob that comprehensively? If such claims were made by another, less established religion or belief-system (let’s say Scientology, or perhaps the Exclusive Brethren) would they be allowed to go through to the keeper so easily? And what does that tell us about the power and influence of the big churches, and the Catholic Church in particular? And finally, and perhaps most pertinently, why are editors who are so resistant to the scientific evidence surrounding climate change so uncritical when it comes to this sort of religious claptrap?
Rather than fulminate at length, I’m going to confine myself to a few questions. How is it even remotely okay for major newspapers to be publishing uncritical articles about "miracles" on their front pages in 2010? Have we really lost the fight against the anti-science mob that comprehensively? If such claims were made by another, less established religion or belief-system (let’s say Scientology, or perhaps the Exclusive Brethren) would they be allowed to go through to the keeper so easily? And what does that tell us about the power and influence of the big churches, and the Catholic Church in particular? And finally, and perhaps most pertinently, why are editors who are so resistant to the scientific evidence surrounding climate change so uncritical when it comes to this sort of religious claptrap?
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Table of contents for Worlds Next Door
Here is the table of contents for Worlds Next Door, a forthcoming anthology of speculative fiction for 9-13 year olds, edited by Tehani Wessely.
Angela Slatter "Genevieve and the Dragon"
Michael Pryor "Horror Movie"
Rowena Cory Daniells "Tabitha"
Dirk Flinthart "Best Dog in the World"
Dave Luckett "Disobedience"
Kaaron Warren "A New Rat in Town"
Thoraiya Dyer "Sir Pesky Poos-A-Lot And The Pony"
RJ Astruc "Enid and the Prince"
Felicity Dowker "The House on Juniper Road"
Edwina Harvey "Rocket and Sparky"
Launz Burch "The Trouble with Fifi"
Geoffrey Hugh Miller "The Guardians"
Jenny Blackford "Slugs and Snails"
Tansy Rayner Roberts and Karyn Landelius "Nine Times"
Aidan Doyle "Inksucker"
Leith Daniel "Old Saint Nick"
Jen Banyard "Through the Break"
Sue Bursztynski "Mega Wombats and Demon Ducks"
Pamela Freeman "Ghost Town"
Angie Rega "Philomena Plaitbinder"
Martin Livings "Welcome to Deathtown"
Joanne Anderton and Gaston Locanto "Graffiti"
Bren MacDibble "Moonchild"
Matthew Chrulew "The Nullarbor Wave"
Paul Collins "A Wizard in Trouble"
Angela Slatter "Genevieve and the Dragon"
Michael Pryor "Horror Movie"
Rowena Cory Daniells "Tabitha"
Dirk Flinthart "Best Dog in the World"
Dave Luckett "Disobedience"
Kaaron Warren "A New Rat in Town"
Thoraiya Dyer "Sir Pesky Poos-A-Lot And The Pony"
RJ Astruc "Enid and the Prince"
Felicity Dowker "The House on Juniper Road"
Edwina Harvey "Rocket and Sparky"
Launz Burch "The Trouble with Fifi"
Geoffrey Hugh Miller "The Guardians"
Jenny Blackford "Slugs and Snails"
Tansy Rayner Roberts and Karyn Landelius "Nine Times"
Aidan Doyle "Inksucker"
Leith Daniel "Old Saint Nick"
Jen Banyard "Through the Break"
Sue Bursztynski "Mega Wombats and Demon Ducks"
Pamela Freeman "Ghost Town"
Angie Rega "Philomena Plaitbinder"
Martin Livings "Welcome to Deathtown"
Joanne Anderton and Gaston Locanto "Graffiti"
Bren MacDibble "Moonchild"
Matthew Chrulew "The Nullarbor Wave"
Paul Collins "A Wizard in Trouble"
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Oh no! "Licentiousness breeds extremism"
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown has a worrying column in The Independent. It is not worrying because of the concerns she raises about "licentiousness", "social nihilism", "debauchery", etc., but because it is another example of blaming the victims. Somehow the blame for Islamist terrorism is to be sheeted home to the relative sexual permissiveness of Western (in this case, British) society. It is also worrying because Alibhai-Brown is supposed to be an example of a moderate Muslim, but when you see someone writing so emotively about the evils of sexual freedom you have to ask the usual question where "moderate religion" is concerned, "Moderate about what?"
Her supposed moderation does not extend to acceptance that teenagers and young adults are (quite rationally) largely focused on sexual pleasures, and will inevitably engage in various forms of sexual display - such as wearing revealing clothing - if they are allowed to. Moderate she may be about some things, but she still writes in the way you'd expect of someone who has been socialised into a prudish kind of moral vision that irrationally condemns sexual expression and understands the naked human body as shameful.
Let's be clear about this. Alibhai-Brown does not merely offer the descriptive sociological conjecture that there's a causal nexus between the relative sexual permissiveness of Western societies and some Islamist extremism. She could have said something like the following: "In contemporary Western societies, many young women engage in a great deal of sexual display, in particular by wearing clothing that reveals much of their bodies. Some young men from Muslim backgrounds find this frustrating because it arouses them sexually, yet they are taught not to engage in sex outside of marriage. Some of these young men may react by becoming religious extremists."
If she'd just said that, we could guess that at least some young men, such as Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, really do match this description. We could then consider whether the alleged causal connnection applies to more than a small number of isolated cases. Is that claim supported by any sociological data, and if so what policy response, if any, is required?
However, that is not how Alibhai-Brown presents her thesis. Instead, she uses highly emotive language to condemn the degree of sexual permissiveness that she finds in the UK. She obviously considers it repugnant and morally outrageous.
Early in the article, she writes sympathetically of how Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab "tried to hold on to Islamic Puritanism in a country of no shame, no restraint." She then adds: "Millions of Britons of all backgrounds are alarmed by the dissipation and debauchery that now defines Britain." It might be thought that when she writes of "no shame, no restraint", she is merely representing how Abdulmutallab perceived things, but not so. The following sentence is clearly in her own voice: she actually does see Britain as now defined by what she calls "dissipation and debauchery". This kind of language continues throughout the article. She speaks of "social nihilism", of a nation that "has gone from Fifties uprightness to public striptease", of "libertine excess" and "a state of perpetual abandon". Make no mistake, Alibhai-Brown is not merely describing a clash between Muslim ideas of sexual modesty and the relative sexual permissiveness of Western societies. She is condemning the latter in strong and angry terms.
Some of her examples are silly. She writes:
A list was sent home to the parents of girls at a middle-class school in London last week sternly reminding non-uniformed sixth-formers that there were still rules of decorum to follow. A list followed of garments henceforth disallowed: no tops that show the midriff or cleavage, no tight mini-skirts, no underwear showing, no clothes with holes in them, etc, etc.
Now, there might be something to the idea that high school is a place to wear fairly modest clothing, to help everyone in concentrating on studies - though, frankly, I rather doubt this. First-year university students wore "immodest" clothing in the 1970s, when I was an undergraduate, and they still do, though the fashions have somewhat changed (the thin see-through tops, with no bra underneath, that were commonplace among young women in Australia in the 1970s are not so socially accepted now). Undergraduates are not very much older than high school students (especially those in sixth form, i.e. Year 12), yet their attire doesn't seem to have any adverse effects from a purely pedagogical viewpoint. At least I see no evidence of this. Alibhai-Brown is probably barking up the wrong tree here, as elsewhere.
But even if we grant for the sake of argument that high school is different, that tight mini-skirts, etc., are not a good idea within school grounds, this doesn't justify the emotive description of "tops that show the midriff or cleavage ...tight mini-skirts ... underwear showing ... clothes with holes" as "wanton wear" or "public striptease". I can think of many outfits that have holes or show midriffs, or whatever, but are smart and edgy rather than blatantly sexy. But even if young women do choose to show their bodies to the world in unequivocal sexual display ... so what? It obviously upsets Alibhai-Brown, but she gives absolutely no reason why anyone else should find it upsetting or oppose it on moral grounds. Generally, when young women dress this way they are strutting their stuff, showing off in a fairly harmless way, and getting enjoyment from it. It's not because they're coerced. The resulting display is also enjoyable for many of the people who see it. It's enjoyable all round, except for the minority of prudes and puritans - but the latter don't get to dictate what everyone else does.
Of course, it's ridiculous to assert that the UK is a society that knows no shame or restraint. I'm sure that many people in the UK show restraint all the time, e.g. they probably restrain themselves from acts of violence or dishonesty that they might be tempted to in a vast range of everyday situations.
And they almost certainly feel shame in a similarly vast range of situations, perhaps when they fall short of their own moral standards (in honesty, for example) or in standards of skill and competence that they try to adhere to. It is nonsense to say that the UK is a society with no shame or restraint. No such society could survive for long.
What Alibhai-Brown means, of course, is that many people in the UK society do not show as much shame specifically about the body and sexuality as she'd like, or as much restraint specifically in sexual conduct and display as she approves of.
The truth of the situation is that Alibhai-Brown considers a certain high propensity for sexual shame and restraint to be a virtue, while many other people consider it to be a vice. Many people may think that a certain pride about the body and a certain degree of willingness to flaunt sexuality are actually the genuine virtues in this domain. If so, they are working with a more pagan set of virtues, perhaps, but they still have standards of virtue ... just different ones from Alibhai-Brown. That position may be growing more common, and those of us who share it are obviously pleased if our values are starting to seem normal. What Alibhai-Brown should not say, unless she is dishonest or ignorant, is that this amounts to "social nihilism". No, it is not a loss of values, or an absence of values, in the society, but the emergence of values that are different from hers. They are the values of people who do not use such words of condemnation as "debauchery", "licentiousness", and "dissipation".
It's true, of course, that life may be uncomfortable for people who don't share the dominant values in their societies. If sexual display, sexual permissiveness, sexual willingness or openness, and so on do become the dominant values in British society, then people with the opposite values may be psychologically uncomfortable - but no one has a right to control which values are prevalent in her society in order to ensure her own psychological comfort. The most she can ask is that she be legally permitted to live by her own (minority) values. I.e., she can ask that the state not coerce her to wear, say, a short, tight miniskirt and to expose her midriff. However, she cannot ask that other people be forbidden from doing so, or even that they be forbidden from making adverse judgments about her values if she chooses not to conform to theirs.
Alibhai-Brown either doesn't understand this or doesn't want to, because she indulges in the common statement of moral equivalence between (1) peer group, or other informal, pressure to wear revealing clothes and (2) the use of coercive political power to enforce wearing of the burka or other "modest" clothing. But peer groups inevitably establish norms of approved behaviour; no one can stop that happening. Nor is it surprising that many teenage peer groups develop a norm of approving a certain degree of sexual display in clothing, wherever this is legal (hint: teenagers of both sexes are typically as randy as stoats and want to be sexually attractive to other teenagers). Nor is it particularly surprising if an entire society moves towards values in which expressions of sexuality and displays of the body are valued (hint: sex is intensely enjoyable, and many human bodies are beautiful and sexually provocative ... so of course these things are likely to be widely valued).
Still, however much values may be shifting, Western society as a whole tolerates a very wide range of clothing. Alibhai-Brown can dress as modestly as she wishes without attracting much in the way of disapproval, let alone the punishment and stigma that goes with being a law breaker. Let her by all means wander the street in her veil, long dress, and sensible shoes - or whatever it is she wants to wear (I actually have no idea how she dresses). She probably won't suffer for it at all.
Sure, some younger people may find it psychologically difficult to go against the values of a peer group, but that is inevitable no matter what values their peer groups have. Alibhai-Brown's real beef is that she doesn't like the particular values that she sees. Fortunately, it is also inevitable that some people do manage not to conform to their peer groups, or to find alternative peer groups. This can't be guaranteed in each instance, of course, but even if going against the values of your peer group (or the wider society) is psychologically uncomfortable it is very different in kind from being locked up in a prison cell or being whipped or executed if you don't abide by the local code of sexual modesty.
Alabhi-Brown ends with this flourish:
With things falling apart and ethical compasses broken, you can see why so many are turning to self-discipline and certainties in an age of chaos. Islamic Stalinism is set to grow stronger. A society in a state of perpetual abandon cannot survive that onslaught. We need to sober up and see what we have become. The future is grim; it needs us to be serious.
Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! First, there is no evidence at all that "things" are "falling apart" or that ethical compasses are broken. At most, certain traditional anti-sex values are being replaced by certain (in my view, more rational) pro-sex values that Alibhai-Brown dislikes. That may cause confusion if some families and cultures are still preaching the anti-sex values while much of the advertising and entertainment industries preaches the pro-sex ones, but that does not make the former values correct. Nor does it mean that the transition in values is to "things falling apart" - that is nonsense.
Nor is the society of Britain or any other Western country in a state of "perpetual abandon". Can't Alibhai-Brown understand that a commitment to pro-sex values, and an unashamed enjoyment of sex and sexual display, is perfectly compatible with many other values, such as the value of fighting any onslaught from "Islamic Stalinism"? Indeed, people with the relevant pro-sex values are likely to be strongly motivated to resist "Islamic Stalinism", with its extreme anti-sex values.
As for the need to "sober up", how is this to be achieved? If it involves abandoning the new pro-sex values, what public policy is Alibhai-Brown proposing to achieve this? Of course, we could all change our values individually (though she has provided absolutely no good reason to do so in her article), but is she hinting here at some kind of collective response? I hope not, because that way lies the very totalitarianism that we want to resist.
In all, this is a very bad article, one that goes too close to blaming people who have values different from the writer's (but not obviously false or irrational ones) for the evil of Islamist terrorism. We should push back against articles like this and assert our own pro-sex values even more strongly. Indeed, it's clear enough to me that, despite Alibhai-Brown's lamentations, the mass media are still permeated by suspicion of pro-sex values. Popular entertainment is still monogamist, pro-natalist, and somewhat puritanical about the body. There is a long way to go yet before we have a genuinely sexually permissive society.
Alibhai-Brown won't like it when we get there, but no one promised her a society that values just what she does.
Her supposed moderation does not extend to acceptance that teenagers and young adults are (quite rationally) largely focused on sexual pleasures, and will inevitably engage in various forms of sexual display - such as wearing revealing clothing - if they are allowed to. Moderate she may be about some things, but she still writes in the way you'd expect of someone who has been socialised into a prudish kind of moral vision that irrationally condemns sexual expression and understands the naked human body as shameful.
Let's be clear about this. Alibhai-Brown does not merely offer the descriptive sociological conjecture that there's a causal nexus between the relative sexual permissiveness of Western societies and some Islamist extremism. She could have said something like the following: "In contemporary Western societies, many young women engage in a great deal of sexual display, in particular by wearing clothing that reveals much of their bodies. Some young men from Muslim backgrounds find this frustrating because it arouses them sexually, yet they are taught not to engage in sex outside of marriage. Some of these young men may react by becoming religious extremists."
If she'd just said that, we could guess that at least some young men, such as Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, really do match this description. We could then consider whether the alleged causal connnection applies to more than a small number of isolated cases. Is that claim supported by any sociological data, and if so what policy response, if any, is required?
However, that is not how Alibhai-Brown presents her thesis. Instead, she uses highly emotive language to condemn the degree of sexual permissiveness that she finds in the UK. She obviously considers it repugnant and morally outrageous.
Early in the article, she writes sympathetically of how Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab "tried to hold on to Islamic Puritanism in a country of no shame, no restraint." She then adds: "Millions of Britons of all backgrounds are alarmed by the dissipation and debauchery that now defines Britain." It might be thought that when she writes of "no shame, no restraint", she is merely representing how Abdulmutallab perceived things, but not so. The following sentence is clearly in her own voice: she actually does see Britain as now defined by what she calls "dissipation and debauchery". This kind of language continues throughout the article. She speaks of "social nihilism", of a nation that "has gone from Fifties uprightness to public striptease", of "libertine excess" and "a state of perpetual abandon". Make no mistake, Alibhai-Brown is not merely describing a clash between Muslim ideas of sexual modesty and the relative sexual permissiveness of Western societies. She is condemning the latter in strong and angry terms.
Some of her examples are silly. She writes:
A list was sent home to the parents of girls at a middle-class school in London last week sternly reminding non-uniformed sixth-formers that there were still rules of decorum to follow. A list followed of garments henceforth disallowed: no tops that show the midriff or cleavage, no tight mini-skirts, no underwear showing, no clothes with holes in them, etc, etc.
Now, there might be something to the idea that high school is a place to wear fairly modest clothing, to help everyone in concentrating on studies - though, frankly, I rather doubt this. First-year university students wore "immodest" clothing in the 1970s, when I was an undergraduate, and they still do, though the fashions have somewhat changed (the thin see-through tops, with no bra underneath, that were commonplace among young women in Australia in the 1970s are not so socially accepted now). Undergraduates are not very much older than high school students (especially those in sixth form, i.e. Year 12), yet their attire doesn't seem to have any adverse effects from a purely pedagogical viewpoint. At least I see no evidence of this. Alibhai-Brown is probably barking up the wrong tree here, as elsewhere.
But even if we grant for the sake of argument that high school is different, that tight mini-skirts, etc., are not a good idea within school grounds, this doesn't justify the emotive description of "tops that show the midriff or cleavage ...tight mini-skirts ... underwear showing ... clothes with holes" as "wanton wear" or "public striptease". I can think of many outfits that have holes or show midriffs, or whatever, but are smart and edgy rather than blatantly sexy. But even if young women do choose to show their bodies to the world in unequivocal sexual display ... so what? It obviously upsets Alibhai-Brown, but she gives absolutely no reason why anyone else should find it upsetting or oppose it on moral grounds. Generally, when young women dress this way they are strutting their stuff, showing off in a fairly harmless way, and getting enjoyment from it. It's not because they're coerced. The resulting display is also enjoyable for many of the people who see it. It's enjoyable all round, except for the minority of prudes and puritans - but the latter don't get to dictate what everyone else does.
Of course, it's ridiculous to assert that the UK is a society that knows no shame or restraint. I'm sure that many people in the UK show restraint all the time, e.g. they probably restrain themselves from acts of violence or dishonesty that they might be tempted to in a vast range of everyday situations.
And they almost certainly feel shame in a similarly vast range of situations, perhaps when they fall short of their own moral standards (in honesty, for example) or in standards of skill and competence that they try to adhere to. It is nonsense to say that the UK is a society with no shame or restraint. No such society could survive for long.
What Alibhai-Brown means, of course, is that many people in the UK society do not show as much shame specifically about the body and sexuality as she'd like, or as much restraint specifically in sexual conduct and display as she approves of.
The truth of the situation is that Alibhai-Brown considers a certain high propensity for sexual shame and restraint to be a virtue, while many other people consider it to be a vice. Many people may think that a certain pride about the body and a certain degree of willingness to flaunt sexuality are actually the genuine virtues in this domain. If so, they are working with a more pagan set of virtues, perhaps, but they still have standards of virtue ... just different ones from Alibhai-Brown. That position may be growing more common, and those of us who share it are obviously pleased if our values are starting to seem normal. What Alibhai-Brown should not say, unless she is dishonest or ignorant, is that this amounts to "social nihilism". No, it is not a loss of values, or an absence of values, in the society, but the emergence of values that are different from hers. They are the values of people who do not use such words of condemnation as "debauchery", "licentiousness", and "dissipation".
It's true, of course, that life may be uncomfortable for people who don't share the dominant values in their societies. If sexual display, sexual permissiveness, sexual willingness or openness, and so on do become the dominant values in British society, then people with the opposite values may be psychologically uncomfortable - but no one has a right to control which values are prevalent in her society in order to ensure her own psychological comfort. The most she can ask is that she be legally permitted to live by her own (minority) values. I.e., she can ask that the state not coerce her to wear, say, a short, tight miniskirt and to expose her midriff. However, she cannot ask that other people be forbidden from doing so, or even that they be forbidden from making adverse judgments about her values if she chooses not to conform to theirs.
Alibhai-Brown either doesn't understand this or doesn't want to, because she indulges in the common statement of moral equivalence between (1) peer group, or other informal, pressure to wear revealing clothes and (2) the use of coercive political power to enforce wearing of the burka or other "modest" clothing. But peer groups inevitably establish norms of approved behaviour; no one can stop that happening. Nor is it surprising that many teenage peer groups develop a norm of approving a certain degree of sexual display in clothing, wherever this is legal (hint: teenagers of both sexes are typically as randy as stoats and want to be sexually attractive to other teenagers). Nor is it particularly surprising if an entire society moves towards values in which expressions of sexuality and displays of the body are valued (hint: sex is intensely enjoyable, and many human bodies are beautiful and sexually provocative ... so of course these things are likely to be widely valued).
Still, however much values may be shifting, Western society as a whole tolerates a very wide range of clothing. Alibhai-Brown can dress as modestly as she wishes without attracting much in the way of disapproval, let alone the punishment and stigma that goes with being a law breaker. Let her by all means wander the street in her veil, long dress, and sensible shoes - or whatever it is she wants to wear (I actually have no idea how she dresses). She probably won't suffer for it at all.
Sure, some younger people may find it psychologically difficult to go against the values of a peer group, but that is inevitable no matter what values their peer groups have. Alibhai-Brown's real beef is that she doesn't like the particular values that she sees. Fortunately, it is also inevitable that some people do manage not to conform to their peer groups, or to find alternative peer groups. This can't be guaranteed in each instance, of course, but even if going against the values of your peer group (or the wider society) is psychologically uncomfortable it is very different in kind from being locked up in a prison cell or being whipped or executed if you don't abide by the local code of sexual modesty.
Alabhi-Brown ends with this flourish:
With things falling apart and ethical compasses broken, you can see why so many are turning to self-discipline and certainties in an age of chaos. Islamic Stalinism is set to grow stronger. A society in a state of perpetual abandon cannot survive that onslaught. We need to sober up and see what we have become. The future is grim; it needs us to be serious.
Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! First, there is no evidence at all that "things" are "falling apart" or that ethical compasses are broken. At most, certain traditional anti-sex values are being replaced by certain (in my view, more rational) pro-sex values that Alibhai-Brown dislikes. That may cause confusion if some families and cultures are still preaching the anti-sex values while much of the advertising and entertainment industries preaches the pro-sex ones, but that does not make the former values correct. Nor does it mean that the transition in values is to "things falling apart" - that is nonsense.
Nor is the society of Britain or any other Western country in a state of "perpetual abandon". Can't Alibhai-Brown understand that a commitment to pro-sex values, and an unashamed enjoyment of sex and sexual display, is perfectly compatible with many other values, such as the value of fighting any onslaught from "Islamic Stalinism"? Indeed, people with the relevant pro-sex values are likely to be strongly motivated to resist "Islamic Stalinism", with its extreme anti-sex values.
As for the need to "sober up", how is this to be achieved? If it involves abandoning the new pro-sex values, what public policy is Alibhai-Brown proposing to achieve this? Of course, we could all change our values individually (though she has provided absolutely no good reason to do so in her article), but is she hinting here at some kind of collective response? I hope not, because that way lies the very totalitarianism that we want to resist.
In all, this is a very bad article, one that goes too close to blaming people who have values different from the writer's (but not obviously false or irrational ones) for the evil of Islamist terrorism. We should push back against articles like this and assert our own pro-sex values even more strongly. Indeed, it's clear enough to me that, despite Alibhai-Brown's lamentations, the mass media are still permeated by suspicion of pro-sex values. Popular entertainment is still monogamist, pro-natalist, and somewhat puritanical about the body. There is a long way to go yet before we have a genuinely sexually permissive society.
Alibhai-Brown won't like it when we get there, but no one promised her a society that values just what she does.
Coming soon ... some observations on Sunday Night Safran
It was an interesting experience listening to Sunday Night Safran, after my interview with (primarily) John Safran the other night. For anyone listening to the podcast version, available on the show's website, my interview starts at about 36 minutes in and goes (I think ... I didn't take much notice) for about 10 minutes. Most of what comes before is an interview with the author of a book about exorcism, then discussion between the hosts after that interview is over.
As for my own interview ... well, the interview itself was generally fine, even though I didn't feel as relaxed as I sometimes do with radio interviews. I do have some observations to make about it (and the pros and cons of how I handled it ... IMO, some things were good, some not so good). More frustrating was the discussion later on between the hosts (around the 50 minute mark), where some of the things said by Father Bob Maguire in particular had pretty obvious responses that I could easily have given if I'd still been on the air. Still, that's the format of the show and all interviewees have to live with it.
There are then some final comments by the hosts right at the end of the program - in fact I think it's really just John Safran summing up by saying that he liked 50 Voices of Disbelief:Why We Are Atheists but Bob Maguire didn't. That's fair enough, of course - they are entitled to their respective opinions of the book.
Anyway, here's a chance for anyone else who listened to the show to make comments. I've been away from my computer for most oftoday ... technically yesterday ... so I'll have to hold my fire for now on anything more detailed than this post. But I'll get back to the topic soon.
As for my own interview ... well, the interview itself was generally fine, even though I didn't feel as relaxed as I sometimes do with radio interviews. I do have some observations to make about it (and the pros and cons of how I handled it ... IMO, some things were good, some not so good). More frustrating was the discussion later on between the hosts (around the 50 minute mark), where some of the things said by Father Bob Maguire in particular had pretty obvious responses that I could easily have given if I'd still been on the air. Still, that's the format of the show and all interviewees have to live with it.
There are then some final comments by the hosts right at the end of the program - in fact I think it's really just John Safran summing up by saying that he liked 50 Voices of Disbelief:Why We Are Atheists but Bob Maguire didn't. That's fair enough, of course - they are entitled to their respective opinions of the book.
Anyway, here's a chance for anyone else who listened to the show to make comments. I've been away from my computer for most of
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Michael Bachelard's story on the New Atheism - a response
In today's Sunday Age, Michael Bachelard has a feature article on the world-wide trend towards outspoken atheism (the so-called New Atheism that we hear so much about), which he relates to the forthcoming Global Atheist Convention in Melbourne. (I am scheduled to speak at the Melbourne Convention along with far more celebrated writers and thinkers such as A.C. Grayling and Richard Dawkins ... and many others from Australia and elsewhere.)
Human faces of atheism
Most of Bachelard's article tells the stories of various individuals who have turned away from religious belief: Damian Coburn, who was raised in an extreme offshoot of the Catholic Church; Anne Robinson, who began as a Christian but went through a spiritual quest that included dabblings with Buddhism, New Age magic, and Wicca; "Aam" (a protective pseudonym) who comes from a Bangladeshi Muslim family; Leanne Carroll, who was schooled by nuns, but had an atheistic moment of epiphany at the age of 12; and Joe Kilgour, who lapsed from the faith of his very religious Uniting Church family.
These are all interesting stories, and I'm grateful to Bachelard for making them public. I could recommend the article just for these stories, which give contemporary atheism not just one but several human faces.
However, some of the other commentators quoted in the article make observations that require a response. Strangely enough, I am more concerned about a couple of reactions from fellow atheists than the more-or-less predictable ones from various theologians and religious leaders.
Guy Rundle and "missing the point"
I'm most concerned by the comments from hardline political leftist Guy Rundle, who seems of late to have become a walking, talking cautionary example of how not to be guided by reason and reality. Not content with his naive, illiberal, and spectacularly wrong comments about the Bill Henson debacle a couple of years ago, he now blunders in - just as crudely - on the topic of contemporary atheism:
WRITER and former editor of Arena magazine Guy Rundle, an atheist, believes the Dawkins-Hitchens version of atheism is "the most shatteringly empty creed to come along for many a year". It misses the point, he says, goes out of its way to hurl insults, misunderstands how belief systems work, uses straw man arguments and is boring because it "takes the least sophisticated form of theism and beats it around the head". It also fails to grapple with sophisticated theologians such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Karl Barth; and it is blind to the fact that, when science (quantum physics and cosmology) try to explain the origins of the universe, its materialist, atheist account is as mysterious and improbable as that of any religion. New atheism also, he says, refuses to concede that many people have feelings of transcendence that must be expressed.
This is so ill-informed and thoroughly wrong-headed that it's hard to know where to start in straightening it out. How do you unscramble an egg? For someone who accuses others of missing the point - suggesting that he imagines he knows what the point is - Rundle appears awfully obtuse.
For a start, the trouble with religious explanations of the world is not so much that they are implausible, for their implausibility becomes apparent to many people only after a great deal of thought and against a background of accumulated scientific knowledge. Over the centuries, indeed, religious explanations have proved to be all-too-plausible for people who are attracted to them by their rhetoric, their association with wealth or power, or the comfort they provide ... rather than by actual evidence. Conversely, it is a gross misunderstanding to imagine that anyone thinks of quantum theory or cosmological theories as plausible in themselves. On the contrary, these theories, taken in isolation, are difficult and highly counterintuitive.
The entire history of modern science, from Galileo, through Darwin, to the present day, has been one of replacing the common sense of medium-sized earthbound creatures such as us with explanatory theories that defy commonsense intuitions - but are superior in their explanatory reach and conformity to the evidence. Scientific evidence, of course, does not fall from the sky without labour, like so much manna; instead, it is gathered painstakingly and incrementally, year by year, drawing on the professional efforts of many highly-trained individuals. Eventually, some of the evidence converges so powerfully as to support highly successful bodies of theory. Some of these are never likely to be overthrown, such as the theoretical finding that human beings descended from apelike creatures, that the Earth is billions of years old, that it revolves around the Sun (while rotating on its axis), that many diseases are caused by bacteria or viruses, and so on. None of these claims, taken in isolation from the evidence and from the rest of science, is especially plausible.
In the scientific context, of course, "theory" does not mean "conjecture" or "speculation" - as it tends to in most everyday situations. It refers to a body of explanatory propositions, usually involving entities and other phenomena that can't be observed directly with the naked senses (since science deals with the very small, the very distant, and the remote past). Sufficiently well-evidenced theoretical propositions can quite rightly be accepted as facts.
To somebody who is untutored in the relevant evidence, and ignorant of the rest of science, it may be far more plausible that diseases are caused by the activity of evil spirits than that they are (often) caused by micro-organisms. But that is in no way an argument to abandon the micro-organism theory of disease in favour of the evil spirit theory. Nor is it a reason to respect the rationality of someone who lives in a modern Western society, yet still favours the evil spirit theory. The micro-organism theory is superior, not because it is more the sort of explanation that human beings find plausible when considered in isolation, but because it has survived all attempts at falsification, proved highly fruitful in scientific and medical practice, obtained support from observations with scientific instruments, cohered successfully with other scientific findings, and so on.
In all, it is Rundle's comments about the implausibility of science that are beside the point. Yes, science is implausible to untutored human common sense. It was already so 400 years ago when Galileo argued that the Earth rotates. That in no way casts doubt on the correctness of well-established scientific findings.
What Rundle does not admit is that only the most non-literalist kinds of theology – together with rarefied views such as eighteenth-century-style deism – are readily compatible with such parts of the scientific picture of the universe (and ourselves) as are now well-established. Obviously there are many religious claims that are plainly incompatible with well-established science, among them the claim that our planet is only six to ten thousand years old (the kind of age that can be deduced from the Old Testament genealogies, when calibrated against well-established dates in the secular historical record). However, even more sophisticated and supposedly "moderate" theologies (moderate about what?) are difficult to reconcile with the emerging scientific picture. When theologians make claims about human exceptionalism, divine providence, contra-causal free will, and so on, they paint a picture contrary to anything in the scientific one. Scientifically-minded atheists who point this out are not attacking a straw man. Rather, they are challenging mainstream Abrahamic theology - with all its centuries of accumulated prestige and influence.
It may well be true, as Rundle notes, that "many people" have "feelings of transcendence" (whatever, exactly that means; Rundle, of course, doesn't tell us), but no one is arguing that the expression of these "feelings" should be suppressed. Most modern atheists are all for freedom of speech and expression (unlike Rundle, who would have been happy to restrict Bill Henson's artistic freedom). It might, however, be beneficial if more people recognised their feelings of transcendence for what they are: i.e, they are feelings. As such, they have no capacity to reveal truths about a world external to the people who have them. Express away with all your heart, but don't be surprised if you're disbelieved when you attribute your feelings to contact with an unseen spiritual agency.
Of course, Rundle totally omits the central point - that religious organisations and leaders continue to exert social and political power, even in the supposedly enlightened nations of the West. All too often, they seek to control how we plan and run our lives, including choices about how we die. We still see intense activism from the religious lobbies of all Western democracies, and even in relatively secular countries, such as the UK and Australia, governments pander blatantly to Christian (and now Muslim) moral concerns. Here in Australia, we are confronted by the pathetic sight of our Boy Scout prime minister, Kevin Rudd, sucking up to the sanctimonious killjoys of the Australian Christian Lobby.
The situation is even worse - far worse - in the religiose US, where the popular forms of religion have nothing especially subtle about them. I hate to break the news to Rundle and his fellow accommodationists of religious faith, but the names of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Karl Barth are not household words in the American Bible Belt.
In a different world, without the many religious leaders, organisations, and lobby groups that claim moral authority and exert actual political influence, contemporary atheists would feel less need to be outspoken. However, we don't find ourselves in that world. Instead, the religious sects, even those that give lip-service to a separation of Church and State (a concept which they self-servingly misinterpret), typically lobby for their specifically religious moralities to be imposed by the secular law. When the religious do that, it is only natural for us to reply by asking what moral authority they really have. Are their holy books and traditions really repositories of supernatural moral wisdom, dictated or inspired by a higher being, or are they all-too-human constructs, reflecting the limited moral visions of their times? Surely it is the latter, and surely we perform a public service when we point this out - supported, where necessary, with evidence and argument. Which brings me to the comments attributed to David Nicholls.
David Nicholls and the herd of cats theory
Bachelard reports Nicholls' view as follows:
But it's to the accusation that they are establishing a new, fundamentalist faith called atheism that the unbelievers react most strongly. They are free thinkers. Individualists. They will change their mind if the evidence changes. The only thing atheists agree on, says David Nicholls, the president of the Atheist Foundation of Australia, is the lack of a God, "everything else is up for grabs". "Atheism itself doesn't say what it's got to do … there's no push, or movement or anything like that - it's certainly not anything like [the] women's liberation movement. ... [Atheists are] not good joiners, they don't mass on ovals and wave copies of Darwin around."
To this, Bachelard responds:
This makes for an odd lobby group. The most pressing questions regarding religion and society in Australia are political ones - tax exemptions for the religious, school funding, exemptions from discrimination law, public funding, religion in state schools. The Atheist Foundation of Australia and other humanist groups have long made their views known on these subjects, but there's no evidence that more and louder atheists have made any difference to their power - they could not, for example, secure public funding for the March convention, even though the Parliament of World Religions was given $4.5 million.
Here, I totally see the point. Nicholls is absolutely correct that contemporary atheists are not "fundamentalists". Indeed, this word and its cognates are thrown around by opponents in a manner that is both inaccurate and irresponsible. A fundamentalist atheist would be one who believes in the inerrancy of an atheist text – perhaps The God Delusion or God Is Not Great – even in the face of results from rational inquiry. However, no such people exist. There are no contemporary atheists who display the equivalent of a Young Earth Creationist's insistence, against all the genuine evidence, that the Earth is only six to ten thousand years old. Or if there are, their fundamentalism relates to something other than mere atheism - perhaps to a political quasi-religion of some kind (with Das Kapital or Atlas Shrugged as the holy text).
Sometimes when I make this point it's replied that I am using an unreasonably narrow definition of the word "fundamentalism", but that's a specious argument. You cannot legitimately use a word in some broad or extended sense while at the very same time relying on connotations from the word's so-called "narrow" sense. It's an equivocation; it's an anti-rational and unfair style of argument. What makes fundamentalism so wrong in the first place is a certain kind of literal-minded, irrational dogmatism. This may be shared by some Marxist or Libertarian idealogues who happen to be atheists, but it is not a feature of contemporary scientifically-based atheism such as espoused by Dawkins or Grayling. If you are going to use the word to mean something like "forthright" or "outspoken", or even something like "interested in persuading others", you have to put up with the fact that there is actually nothing wrong with being "fundamentalist" in those senses. Of course, the effect of using the word in these ways is to destroy its usefulness (in some cases, no doubt, that is the desired effect).
So far, I'm with strongly with Nicholls, but is it really true that there's no atheist "push" or "movement", however loosely structured? I think that's going too far. Atheists may be freethinkers, more like cats who walk alone than like herd animals, but it seems obvious that something of an atheist movement really has developed in the past few years. It may not be an internally-coherent movement, or a hierarchical one, or one with a rich body of structured dogma - and the latter, especially, is all to the good. But there's a strong feeling among many non-believers, tapped into by Dawkins, Hitchens, and others - and now becoming widely identified, shared, and discussed - that, well, we've had enough.
If religious leaders and their organisations were prepared to stay within the private sphere, worshipping their gods as they choose and performing works of charity, we would have no great problem with them - live and let live! Unfortunately, they tend to lobby for government actions that would impose their moral views on the rest of society - whether it be views about homosexuality, abortion, artistic freedom, end-of-life decisions, blasphemy and vilification laws, or a raft of other issues involving precious individual liberties.
Against that background, there is at least a loose, minimalist movement to challenge the authority of religion. Individual atheists within this unstructured feline community may have widely differing philosophies and priorities, but one thing we could almost all agree on is that religion continues to obtain far too much deference in government decision-making, including when the decisions involve coercion and police powers ... and when they involve large sums of public money. An obvious topic for discussion at the forthcoming Global Atheist Convention will be exactly what should be done to counter this political deference to religion.
Bachelard is, of course, correct, that Australian atheists and humanists have been weak, to date, as a lobby group. As he says, one might well judge by the failure to obtain public funding for the Global Atheist Convention itself. Still, it's very early days, and this is the first such large-scale convention for a nascent and ill-defined movement. My hope is that broad consensus will be achieved on at least a lowest common denominator of goals. In particular, we can agree that our freedom of speech and expression is constantly threatened in Australia, usually with religious morality lurking in the background - whether it be attempts to suppress Henson's photography, religious vilification laws, or the federal government's dangerous plan to censor the internet. Our colleagues in other countries have similar problems.
A good start for future lobbying would be cohesive, active agreement that free speech and artistic expression are non-negotiable, and that we cannot trust governments to legislate wisely on what we may lawfully say, hear, and see. Except in absolutely compelling cases, freedom of speech should not be abridged.
This is a good time for atheist cats to gather and voice their disbelief, but it's more than that. We should not accept intrusions on our freedoms, based on antiquated, often irrational, religious moralities ... and it is oppressive when these are imposed on us in such forms as extended government censorship. Atheist cats are not herd animals - that's true - but we do need freedom to live the lives we choose, based on reason. In particular, we need guaranteed freedom to express ourselves, including through satire of religion and so-called blasphemy.
On something as important as that, we can have a collective voice, and we should be proud if we get it heard loudly this coming March, in Melbourne.
Human faces of atheism
Most of Bachelard's article tells the stories of various individuals who have turned away from religious belief: Damian Coburn, who was raised in an extreme offshoot of the Catholic Church; Anne Robinson, who began as a Christian but went through a spiritual quest that included dabblings with Buddhism, New Age magic, and Wicca; "Aam" (a protective pseudonym) who comes from a Bangladeshi Muslim family; Leanne Carroll, who was schooled by nuns, but had an atheistic moment of epiphany at the age of 12; and Joe Kilgour, who lapsed from the faith of his very religious Uniting Church family.
These are all interesting stories, and I'm grateful to Bachelard for making them public. I could recommend the article just for these stories, which give contemporary atheism not just one but several human faces.
However, some of the other commentators quoted in the article make observations that require a response. Strangely enough, I am more concerned about a couple of reactions from fellow atheists than the more-or-less predictable ones from various theologians and religious leaders.
Guy Rundle and "missing the point"
I'm most concerned by the comments from hardline political leftist Guy Rundle, who seems of late to have become a walking, talking cautionary example of how not to be guided by reason and reality. Not content with his naive, illiberal, and spectacularly wrong comments about the Bill Henson debacle a couple of years ago, he now blunders in - just as crudely - on the topic of contemporary atheism:
WRITER and former editor of Arena magazine Guy Rundle, an atheist, believes the Dawkins-Hitchens version of atheism is "the most shatteringly empty creed to come along for many a year". It misses the point, he says, goes out of its way to hurl insults, misunderstands how belief systems work, uses straw man arguments and is boring because it "takes the least sophisticated form of theism and beats it around the head". It also fails to grapple with sophisticated theologians such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Karl Barth; and it is blind to the fact that, when science (quantum physics and cosmology) try to explain the origins of the universe, its materialist, atheist account is as mysterious and improbable as that of any religion. New atheism also, he says, refuses to concede that many people have feelings of transcendence that must be expressed.
This is so ill-informed and thoroughly wrong-headed that it's hard to know where to start in straightening it out. How do you unscramble an egg? For someone who accuses others of missing the point - suggesting that he imagines he knows what the point is - Rundle appears awfully obtuse.
For a start, the trouble with religious explanations of the world is not so much that they are implausible, for their implausibility becomes apparent to many people only after a great deal of thought and against a background of accumulated scientific knowledge. Over the centuries, indeed, religious explanations have proved to be all-too-plausible for people who are attracted to them by their rhetoric, their association with wealth or power, or the comfort they provide ... rather than by actual evidence. Conversely, it is a gross misunderstanding to imagine that anyone thinks of quantum theory or cosmological theories as plausible in themselves. On the contrary, these theories, taken in isolation, are difficult and highly counterintuitive.
The entire history of modern science, from Galileo, through Darwin, to the present day, has been one of replacing the common sense of medium-sized earthbound creatures such as us with explanatory theories that defy commonsense intuitions - but are superior in their explanatory reach and conformity to the evidence. Scientific evidence, of course, does not fall from the sky without labour, like so much manna; instead, it is gathered painstakingly and incrementally, year by year, drawing on the professional efforts of many highly-trained individuals. Eventually, some of the evidence converges so powerfully as to support highly successful bodies of theory. Some of these are never likely to be overthrown, such as the theoretical finding that human beings descended from apelike creatures, that the Earth is billions of years old, that it revolves around the Sun (while rotating on its axis), that many diseases are caused by bacteria or viruses, and so on. None of these claims, taken in isolation from the evidence and from the rest of science, is especially plausible.
In the scientific context, of course, "theory" does not mean "conjecture" or "speculation" - as it tends to in most everyday situations. It refers to a body of explanatory propositions, usually involving entities and other phenomena that can't be observed directly with the naked senses (since science deals with the very small, the very distant, and the remote past). Sufficiently well-evidenced theoretical propositions can quite rightly be accepted as facts.
To somebody who is untutored in the relevant evidence, and ignorant of the rest of science, it may be far more plausible that diseases are caused by the activity of evil spirits than that they are (often) caused by micro-organisms. But that is in no way an argument to abandon the micro-organism theory of disease in favour of the evil spirit theory. Nor is it a reason to respect the rationality of someone who lives in a modern Western society, yet still favours the evil spirit theory. The micro-organism theory is superior, not because it is more the sort of explanation that human beings find plausible when considered in isolation, but because it has survived all attempts at falsification, proved highly fruitful in scientific and medical practice, obtained support from observations with scientific instruments, cohered successfully with other scientific findings, and so on.
In all, it is Rundle's comments about the implausibility of science that are beside the point. Yes, science is implausible to untutored human common sense. It was already so 400 years ago when Galileo argued that the Earth rotates. That in no way casts doubt on the correctness of well-established scientific findings.
What Rundle does not admit is that only the most non-literalist kinds of theology – together with rarefied views such as eighteenth-century-style deism – are readily compatible with such parts of the scientific picture of the universe (and ourselves) as are now well-established. Obviously there are many religious claims that are plainly incompatible with well-established science, among them the claim that our planet is only six to ten thousand years old (the kind of age that can be deduced from the Old Testament genealogies, when calibrated against well-established dates in the secular historical record). However, even more sophisticated and supposedly "moderate" theologies (moderate about what?) are difficult to reconcile with the emerging scientific picture. When theologians make claims about human exceptionalism, divine providence, contra-causal free will, and so on, they paint a picture contrary to anything in the scientific one. Scientifically-minded atheists who point this out are not attacking a straw man. Rather, they are challenging mainstream Abrahamic theology - with all its centuries of accumulated prestige and influence.
It may well be true, as Rundle notes, that "many people" have "feelings of transcendence" (whatever, exactly that means; Rundle, of course, doesn't tell us), but no one is arguing that the expression of these "feelings" should be suppressed. Most modern atheists are all for freedom of speech and expression (unlike Rundle, who would have been happy to restrict Bill Henson's artistic freedom). It might, however, be beneficial if more people recognised their feelings of transcendence for what they are: i.e, they are feelings. As such, they have no capacity to reveal truths about a world external to the people who have them. Express away with all your heart, but don't be surprised if you're disbelieved when you attribute your feelings to contact with an unseen spiritual agency.
Of course, Rundle totally omits the central point - that religious organisations and leaders continue to exert social and political power, even in the supposedly enlightened nations of the West. All too often, they seek to control how we plan and run our lives, including choices about how we die. We still see intense activism from the religious lobbies of all Western democracies, and even in relatively secular countries, such as the UK and Australia, governments pander blatantly to Christian (and now Muslim) moral concerns. Here in Australia, we are confronted by the pathetic sight of our Boy Scout prime minister, Kevin Rudd, sucking up to the sanctimonious killjoys of the Australian Christian Lobby.
The situation is even worse - far worse - in the religiose US, where the popular forms of religion have nothing especially subtle about them. I hate to break the news to Rundle and his fellow accommodationists of religious faith, but the names of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Karl Barth are not household words in the American Bible Belt.
In a different world, without the many religious leaders, organisations, and lobby groups that claim moral authority and exert actual political influence, contemporary atheists would feel less need to be outspoken. However, we don't find ourselves in that world. Instead, the religious sects, even those that give lip-service to a separation of Church and State (a concept which they self-servingly misinterpret), typically lobby for their specifically religious moralities to be imposed by the secular law. When the religious do that, it is only natural for us to reply by asking what moral authority they really have. Are their holy books and traditions really repositories of supernatural moral wisdom, dictated or inspired by a higher being, or are they all-too-human constructs, reflecting the limited moral visions of their times? Surely it is the latter, and surely we perform a public service when we point this out - supported, where necessary, with evidence and argument. Which brings me to the comments attributed to David Nicholls.
David Nicholls and the herd of cats theory
Bachelard reports Nicholls' view as follows:
But it's to the accusation that they are establishing a new, fundamentalist faith called atheism that the unbelievers react most strongly. They are free thinkers. Individualists. They will change their mind if the evidence changes. The only thing atheists agree on, says David Nicholls, the president of the Atheist Foundation of Australia, is the lack of a God, "everything else is up for grabs". "Atheism itself doesn't say what it's got to do … there's no push, or movement or anything like that - it's certainly not anything like [the] women's liberation movement. ... [Atheists are] not good joiners, they don't mass on ovals and wave copies of Darwin around."
To this, Bachelard responds:
This makes for an odd lobby group. The most pressing questions regarding religion and society in Australia are political ones - tax exemptions for the religious, school funding, exemptions from discrimination law, public funding, religion in state schools. The Atheist Foundation of Australia and other humanist groups have long made their views known on these subjects, but there's no evidence that more and louder atheists have made any difference to their power - they could not, for example, secure public funding for the March convention, even though the Parliament of World Religions was given $4.5 million.
Here, I totally see the point. Nicholls is absolutely correct that contemporary atheists are not "fundamentalists". Indeed, this word and its cognates are thrown around by opponents in a manner that is both inaccurate and irresponsible. A fundamentalist atheist would be one who believes in the inerrancy of an atheist text – perhaps The God Delusion or God Is Not Great – even in the face of results from rational inquiry. However, no such people exist. There are no contemporary atheists who display the equivalent of a Young Earth Creationist's insistence, against all the genuine evidence, that the Earth is only six to ten thousand years old. Or if there are, their fundamentalism relates to something other than mere atheism - perhaps to a political quasi-religion of some kind (with Das Kapital or Atlas Shrugged as the holy text).
Sometimes when I make this point it's replied that I am using an unreasonably narrow definition of the word "fundamentalism", but that's a specious argument. You cannot legitimately use a word in some broad or extended sense while at the very same time relying on connotations from the word's so-called "narrow" sense. It's an equivocation; it's an anti-rational and unfair style of argument. What makes fundamentalism so wrong in the first place is a certain kind of literal-minded, irrational dogmatism. This may be shared by some Marxist or Libertarian idealogues who happen to be atheists, but it is not a feature of contemporary scientifically-based atheism such as espoused by Dawkins or Grayling. If you are going to use the word to mean something like "forthright" or "outspoken", or even something like "interested in persuading others", you have to put up with the fact that there is actually nothing wrong with being "fundamentalist" in those senses. Of course, the effect of using the word in these ways is to destroy its usefulness (in some cases, no doubt, that is the desired effect).
So far, I'm with strongly with Nicholls, but is it really true that there's no atheist "push" or "movement", however loosely structured? I think that's going too far. Atheists may be freethinkers, more like cats who walk alone than like herd animals, but it seems obvious that something of an atheist movement really has developed in the past few years. It may not be an internally-coherent movement, or a hierarchical one, or one with a rich body of structured dogma - and the latter, especially, is all to the good. But there's a strong feeling among many non-believers, tapped into by Dawkins, Hitchens, and others - and now becoming widely identified, shared, and discussed - that, well, we've had enough.
If religious leaders and their organisations were prepared to stay within the private sphere, worshipping their gods as they choose and performing works of charity, we would have no great problem with them - live and let live! Unfortunately, they tend to lobby for government actions that would impose their moral views on the rest of society - whether it be views about homosexuality, abortion, artistic freedom, end-of-life decisions, blasphemy and vilification laws, or a raft of other issues involving precious individual liberties.
Against that background, there is at least a loose, minimalist movement to challenge the authority of religion. Individual atheists within this unstructured feline community may have widely differing philosophies and priorities, but one thing we could almost all agree on is that religion continues to obtain far too much deference in government decision-making, including when the decisions involve coercion and police powers ... and when they involve large sums of public money. An obvious topic for discussion at the forthcoming Global Atheist Convention will be exactly what should be done to counter this political deference to religion.
Bachelard is, of course, correct, that Australian atheists and humanists have been weak, to date, as a lobby group. As he says, one might well judge by the failure to obtain public funding for the Global Atheist Convention itself. Still, it's very early days, and this is the first such large-scale convention for a nascent and ill-defined movement. My hope is that broad consensus will be achieved on at least a lowest common denominator of goals. In particular, we can agree that our freedom of speech and expression is constantly threatened in Australia, usually with religious morality lurking in the background - whether it be attempts to suppress Henson's photography, religious vilification laws, or the federal government's dangerous plan to censor the internet. Our colleagues in other countries have similar problems.
A good start for future lobbying would be cohesive, active agreement that free speech and artistic expression are non-negotiable, and that we cannot trust governments to legislate wisely on what we may lawfully say, hear, and see. Except in absolutely compelling cases, freedom of speech should not be abridged.
This is a good time for atheist cats to gather and voice their disbelief, but it's more than that. We should not accept intrusions on our freedoms, based on antiquated, often irrational, religious moralities ... and it is oppressive when these are imposed on us in such forms as extended government censorship. Atheist cats are not herd animals - that's true - but we do need freedom to live the lives we choose, based on reason. In particular, we need guaranteed freedom to express ourselves, including through satire of religion and so-called blasphemy.
On something as important as that, we can have a collective voice, and we should be proud if we get it heard loudly this coming March, in Melbourne.
Hitchens on Nancy Graham Holm
Here's an interview conducted with Christopher Hitchens by Michael J. Totten, in which Hitchens rightly laments the mentality of blaming the victim when attempts are made on the lives of cartoonists, writers, and others for supposedly offending Muslim sensibilities. Hitchens pretty much nails the issues on this occasion.
While I'm still talking about this, I see that I made an error in my earlier post on the topic. While Holm certainly appears to believe that the attack on Kurt Westergaard's life can be blamed on the Danish suspicion of religion and the Danes' ongoing unwillingness to back down - and this apparently includes the attitudes of Westergaard himself and his editors - it is clear that she sees the responsibility to apologise as having initially fallen on the Danish prime minister at the time of the publication of the cartoons in Jyllands Posten. This was slightly easier to miss in the article as first published, and as I believe I first read it, and the logic of the article is far from clear. But I still should have picked up on this point.
But none of that lets the author off her hook of shame. Indeed, such a suggestion displays a shocking misunderstanding of freedom of speech and the proper role of governments in Western democracies. If a private individual makes comments or draws a cartoon or expresses herself in some other way that offends people, and if the offending expression is published by a private organisation such as a privately-owned newspaper, then the government is not responsible for it. In most cases, the government will have no legal authority to control what has been said, and any event governments should be upholding their citizens' freedom of speech and expression - including their freedom to engage in satire that might be offensive to some or seem unreasonable to others.
As for the idea of Westergaard or Jyllands Posten, or the Danish government, or the Danes in general, backing down now, after the horrifying attempt on Westergaard's life - the very idea is repugnant.
Hitchens is correct to relate this episode to the notorious fatwa that was issued against Salman Rushdie in 1989, over the publication of The Satanic Verses, at which time many public intellectuals in the West disgraced themselves by blaming the victim.
There is too little unambiguous defence of free speech by Western intellectuals, and far too much undermining of it by people who should know better. There is too much capitulation to violence, authoritarianism, and highly illiberal attitudes to free expression. As Hitchens says, this kind of capitulation must be stopped.
While I'm still talking about this, I see that I made an error in my earlier post on the topic. While Holm certainly appears to believe that the attack on Kurt Westergaard's life can be blamed on the Danish suspicion of religion and the Danes' ongoing unwillingness to back down - and this apparently includes the attitudes of Westergaard himself and his editors - it is clear that she sees the responsibility to apologise as having initially fallen on the Danish prime minister at the time of the publication of the cartoons in Jyllands Posten. This was slightly easier to miss in the article as first published, and as I believe I first read it, and the logic of the article is far from clear. But I still should have picked up on this point.
But none of that lets the author off her hook of shame. Indeed, such a suggestion displays a shocking misunderstanding of freedom of speech and the proper role of governments in Western democracies. If a private individual makes comments or draws a cartoon or expresses herself in some other way that offends people, and if the offending expression is published by a private organisation such as a privately-owned newspaper, then the government is not responsible for it. In most cases, the government will have no legal authority to control what has been said, and any event governments should be upholding their citizens' freedom of speech and expression - including their freedom to engage in satire that might be offensive to some or seem unreasonable to others.
As for the idea of Westergaard or Jyllands Posten, or the Danish government, or the Danes in general, backing down now, after the horrifying attempt on Westergaard's life - the very idea is repugnant.
Hitchens is correct to relate this episode to the notorious fatwa that was issued against Salman Rushdie in 1989, over the publication of The Satanic Verses, at which time many public intellectuals in the West disgraced themselves by blaming the victim.
There is too little unambiguous defence of free speech by Western intellectuals, and far too much undermining of it by people who should know better. There is too much capitulation to violence, authoritarianism, and highly illiberal attitudes to free expression. As Hitchens says, this kind of capitulation must be stopped.
Saturday, January 09, 2010
Coming up on Sunday Night Safran
I did a short interview with John Safran and Father Bob Maguire last Thursday night. This will be broadcast on Sunday Night Safran tomorrow - the show starts at 9 pm my time (eastern daylight saving time, here in Australia).
To be honest, I didn't think this was my best radio performance. I felt a bit jumpy about it and never really relaxed into the interview, let alone the program's slightly zany spirit. I tripped over Sue Blackmore's perfectly easy name, and managed to call the CFI the "committee" (rather than "center") for inquiry.
Still, I do think that I managed to make some good points in a fairly cogent way - particularly near the end when I suggested that public policy in the criminal law should be driven by John Stuart Mill's harm principle, rather than by a strategy of enforcing some kind of religious morality. That answered a line of questions about how we pick and choose between the various different things that the religious leaders and lobbies say, some of which we might even agree with.
Have a listen for yourself and see what you think. The show will then be available for ten weeks in podcast form from this coming Monday.
To be honest, I didn't think this was my best radio performance. I felt a bit jumpy about it and never really relaxed into the interview, let alone the program's slightly zany spirit. I tripped over Sue Blackmore's perfectly easy name, and managed to call the CFI the "committee" (rather than "center") for inquiry.
Still, I do think that I managed to make some good points in a fairly cogent way - particularly near the end when I suggested that public policy in the criminal law should be driven by John Stuart Mill's harm principle, rather than by a strategy of enforcing some kind of religious morality. That answered a line of questions about how we pick and choose between the various different things that the religious leaders and lobbies say, some of which we might even agree with.
Have a listen for yourself and see what you think. The show will then be available for ten weeks in podcast form from this coming Monday.
Friday, January 08, 2010
Electric Playground on the Terminator franchise
Over at Electric Playground, you can watch a short video that examines the Terminator franchise and speculates about its future. There are interview snippets from a few commentators, including me. I distinguish how the franchise began with The Terminator, in many ways a classic horror movie with the focus on an implacable, demonic enemy from another order of things: Sarah Connor's everyday world is suddenly ruptured by the arrival of a terrifying killer cyborg from the future. But the logic of the back story has caused the movie franchise to shift modes - to the point where Terminator Salvation is something much more like a war movie.
I should say that I don't necessarily agree with the views of the other commentators. In particular, I do agree that The Terminator must be seen in the context of the Cold War, which had intensified at the beginning of the 1980s. But I think it's a misreading to see the Terminator and the other war machines referred to as somehow representative of communism and coerced social conformity, as one of the commentators suggests. Writer/director James Cameron was and is no cold warrior, and let's not forget the narrative premise that America incorporated these advanced machines into its strategic weapons system. (This is even clearer in Terminator 2: Judgment Day, where we learn specific detail about Skynet).
Rather, the sinister, destructive machines stand in for the madness of the cold war, in which both sides built nuclear arsenals capable of mass destruction on a planetary scale. Beyond that, the machines can stand for all the madness of escalating war technology: I don't see these movies as unambiguously technophobic, but they certainly explore the darkest side of humans' use of technoscience, our penchant, over the centuries, for creating weapons of escalating destructive power. In doing so, they don't neglect the almost pornographic allure of guns and war machines (captured once again in Cameron's Avatar, but that's a topic for another post). At one point, the action of The Terminator takes place in a nightclub called Tech Noir, and that pretty much sums up the writer/director's theme.
The Terminator itself has nothing to do with communism, but is simply an unstoppable enemy - one that is ultimately revealed as an image of death, when its camouflage of human skin and flesh is burned away, and it rises from the flames as a walking metal skeleton with red-glowing eyes. At the end of the movie, as the pregnant Sarah Connor drives in the desert, menaced by a coming storm, it is not the triumph of communism that she anticipates but the madness of a nuclear war that will largely exterminate humanity.
Disagreement is healthy, though, so have a look at the video and decide for yourself.
It's especially useful to see short excerpts from all of the movies (and the TV series, The Sarah Connor Chronicles) in the space of just a few minutes to show how much of the original look and feel has been retained, even as the emphasis in the movies shifts from the horror of one woman's pursuit by a sinister, unstoppable, seemingly-human but effectively demonic enemy ... to the larger scale of war. The war depicted in Terminator Salvation is fought against malevolent, powerful, and inhuman adversaries, but now on more equal (though certainly not symmetrical) terms. While the most recent movie retains much of the grim feel that has existed throughout, and some of the horror elements - particularly in the final scenes, which somewhat reprise the endings of the first two movies - the logic of the narrative has moved on, and that will need to be acknowledged in any future episodes.
Thursday, January 07, 2010
Nancy Graham Holm on Kurt Westergaard
Long-time readers of this blog will appreciate that I attempt to discuss issues in a fairly cool and reasoned way. Usually, I have some success. Even when I do denounce people with whom I have disagreements, it's usually good-natured and with a touch of humour. Not always, perhaps, but usually. Sometimes, however, more is needed. For example, here is a piece for which I'll make an exception, something truly worthy of disgust and denunciation. It's published in Comment is Free, The Guardian's online opinion forum, and written by one Nancy Graham Holm. Remember that name.
Holm is discussing the attempted murder of Kurt Westergaard, one of the Danish cartoonists who drew their impressions of Muhammad for Jyllands-Posten ... back in 2005. Now, you can have a range of views about whether the cartoons were fair, whether the motivations for publishing them were tinged by elements of racism or xenophobia, and so on. There is a great deal to be said about the circumstances that led to their publication ... and about the subsequent mayhem (which did not arise spontaneously and was actually stirred up much later, in a deliberate campaign that used grossly misleading material). I'm going to leave all that to one side except to note that the material was published in a context; it wasn't just arbitrary.
Forget about that. What I find shocking about the article by Nancy Graham Holm is the way that it tends to blame the victim of a terrifying murder attempt, carried out in front of the elderly victim's young granddaughter.
Westergaard was forced to retreat to an armoured panic room, leaving the poor girl behind, while his attacker attempted to break through with one his weapons - an axe. Westergaard had been advised that such murderers concentrate on their targets and seldom attack family members, and to run for the safe room in such circumstances. Fine, but imagine the emotions he must have had, the temptation to try to fight to protect his granddaughter. Somehow, for Nancy Graham Holm, all this is Westergaard's fault for not apologising for the humiliation that he supposedly inflicted on Muslims with his cartoon. There are more fanatics out there, Holm warns, and it appears that this, too, is somehow the fault of Westergaard, the other cartoonists, their editor, and the Danish people for their characteristically suspicious attitude towards religion.
What utter nonsense! First, people in Western democracies (or, arguably, anywhere else) should have every right to be suspicious of religion, or of a particular religion, and the right to express their suspicion in whatever form they find most natural - including by way of satire or mockery. They should then have the right to stick to their guns and refuse to apologise, even if somebody takes offence. We can argue about whether or not a particular expression of views - once interpreted "correctly" - was wise or justified, or whether it was tainted in some way, but people do, or certainly should, have the right to express what they think and feel. It is not reasonable to demand that they give insincere apologies if someone else responds with violent acts. Even a wildly implausible view, tainted by suspect motivations, and expressed in a highly provocative way, does not provide any excuse for acts of murder.
Even if something you've said is quite unreasonable, that is not justification for acts of violence against you or others, and the onus is not on you to apologise in an attempt to forestall attempts on your life. Whether you've been unreasonable or not, the onus is on others to reply with better speech, or simply leave you alone, and to refrain from using violence to make their point. Not even the most unreasonable speech justifies a violent response, particularly when the response is in cold blood years later - not spur-of-the-moment rage from an immediate insult delivered in your face. Any suggestion that there is some sort of proportionality between even the most unreasonable speech and an attempted axe murder is morally abhorrent.
Furthermore, we must all be very reluctant to back down in the face of actual or threatened violence, since this can create a situation that encourages further violence - it is a way of making sure that violence, or even the prospect of it, is an effective means of suppressing unwanted speech. Well, effective at least on that one occasion. But if it works once, why not use it again? And again?
In writing the paragraphs directly above, I'm not at all conceding that Westergaard's famous cartoon of Muhammad with a bomb in his turban actually was unreasonable (because of unfairness, or racism, or xenophobia, or whatever other reason). But even if it was, so what? There is still no onus on Westergaard to give an insincere apology in an attempt to avoid murderous violence against himself. It's naive to assume that such a course of action would have the best long-term consequences. Why would it not be seen as a victory? Why would it not inspire attempts to gain more such victories?
Holm's entire article is incredible. She would do better to stand up for the right of Danes such as Westergaard to be suspicious of religion - and to express it openly if it's what they feel. What she has written is worth denouncing - soberly, deliberately, and in all seriousness this time. Let the name of Nancy Graham Holm find its place in every hall of ignominy and shame, indelibly incribed there for posterity.
Holm is discussing the attempted murder of Kurt Westergaard, one of the Danish cartoonists who drew their impressions of Muhammad for Jyllands-Posten ... back in 2005. Now, you can have a range of views about whether the cartoons were fair, whether the motivations for publishing them were tinged by elements of racism or xenophobia, and so on. There is a great deal to be said about the circumstances that led to their publication ... and about the subsequent mayhem (which did not arise spontaneously and was actually stirred up much later, in a deliberate campaign that used grossly misleading material). I'm going to leave all that to one side except to note that the material was published in a context; it wasn't just arbitrary.
Forget about that. What I find shocking about the article by Nancy Graham Holm is the way that it tends to blame the victim of a terrifying murder attempt, carried out in front of the elderly victim's young granddaughter.
Westergaard was forced to retreat to an armoured panic room, leaving the poor girl behind, while his attacker attempted to break through with one his weapons - an axe. Westergaard had been advised that such murderers concentrate on their targets and seldom attack family members, and to run for the safe room in such circumstances. Fine, but imagine the emotions he must have had, the temptation to try to fight to protect his granddaughter. Somehow, for Nancy Graham Holm, all this is Westergaard's fault for not apologising for the humiliation that he supposedly inflicted on Muslims with his cartoon. There are more fanatics out there, Holm warns, and it appears that this, too, is somehow the fault of Westergaard, the other cartoonists, their editor, and the Danish people for their characteristically suspicious attitude towards religion.
What utter nonsense! First, people in Western democracies (or, arguably, anywhere else) should have every right to be suspicious of religion, or of a particular religion, and the right to express their suspicion in whatever form they find most natural - including by way of satire or mockery. They should then have the right to stick to their guns and refuse to apologise, even if somebody takes offence. We can argue about whether or not a particular expression of views - once interpreted "correctly" - was wise or justified, or whether it was tainted in some way, but people do, or certainly should, have the right to express what they think and feel. It is not reasonable to demand that they give insincere apologies if someone else responds with violent acts. Even a wildly implausible view, tainted by suspect motivations, and expressed in a highly provocative way, does not provide any excuse for acts of murder.
Even if something you've said is quite unreasonable, that is not justification for acts of violence against you or others, and the onus is not on you to apologise in an attempt to forestall attempts on your life. Whether you've been unreasonable or not, the onus is on others to reply with better speech, or simply leave you alone, and to refrain from using violence to make their point. Not even the most unreasonable speech justifies a violent response, particularly when the response is in cold blood years later - not spur-of-the-moment rage from an immediate insult delivered in your face. Any suggestion that there is some sort of proportionality between even the most unreasonable speech and an attempted axe murder is morally abhorrent.
Furthermore, we must all be very reluctant to back down in the face of actual or threatened violence, since this can create a situation that encourages further violence - it is a way of making sure that violence, or even the prospect of it, is an effective means of suppressing unwanted speech. Well, effective at least on that one occasion. But if it works once, why not use it again? And again?
In writing the paragraphs directly above, I'm not at all conceding that Westergaard's famous cartoon of Muhammad with a bomb in his turban actually was unreasonable (because of unfairness, or racism, or xenophobia, or whatever other reason). But even if it was, so what? There is still no onus on Westergaard to give an insincere apology in an attempt to avoid murderous violence against himself. It's naive to assume that such a course of action would have the best long-term consequences. Why would it not be seen as a victory? Why would it not inspire attempts to gain more such victories?
Holm's entire article is incredible. She would do better to stand up for the right of Danes such as Westergaard to be suspicious of religion - and to express it openly if it's what they feel. What she has written is worth denouncing - soberly, deliberately, and in all seriousness this time. Let the name of Nancy Graham Holm find its place in every hall of ignominy and shame, indelibly incribed there for posterity.
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