Eric MacDonald & last year's IQ2 debate

I came across this somewhat by chance. Eric MacDonald comments on the IQ2 Australia debate on the topic "Atheists are wrong", held in Sydney last year and subsequently broadcast on national radio and television here in Australia.

As my regular readers will know, Peter Jensen (the Anglican archbishop of Sydney), and theologians Scott Stephens and Tracey Rowland spoke in favour of the motion.

Tamas Pataki, Jane Caro, and I (pictured here from the ABC's video) formed the opposition team, speaking against it.

Written versions of the speeches were also published on the ABC Religion and Ethics Portal, though mine is a reconstruction that may not much resemble what I actually said, as I spoke with little recourse to my notes.

For whatever it might be worth, the opposition team was declared victorious in the debate: following the rules used by IQ2, the live audience shifted toward our position when polled before and after the debate. We gained a big chunk of the undecided vote and a small piece of the "for" vote.

It's hard to know what to make of these sorts of results, and I discussed in some posts last year what, if anything, such debates, on whatever topic, really mean. Arguably, they are won by whichever team seems more likable overall to the audience, but it would be interesting to see some research to establish whether there's more to it than that - just why do people change their votes? What we do know about debates in the IQ2 format is that the pre-debate and post-debate votes often, indeed typically, show dramatic shifts one way or the other, for whatever reasons.

Eric MacDonald's post contains some embedded video from the debate (though you can find this elsewhere). It includes an excerpt from my presentation as third speaker for the opposition, as well as material from Dr Jensen's performance that night.

MacDonald is rather scathing about the theodical ideas put forward by Dr Jensen during the debate in response to my challenge as to why the world (not to mention the Christian churches, with their very flawed histories) looks as it does if it's the creation of an omnicompetent god of love. Says MacDonald:

Their god, according to Jensen, spent billions of years thoroughly enjoying himself, but, in order to become human, we need to suffer and be diminished, and Jensen, and hundreds, perhaps thousands, of his ilk, are not at all backward when it comes to forcing people to undergo this suffering and this diminishment, all the while repeating the empty catch phrases about the goodness, the power and the love of their god.

On the future of this blog (more)

This blog was largely in hiatus through October, which was for a number of reasons. One was simply that I was very busy with Udo Schuklenk putting the finishing touches on the manuscript of our next book, 50 Great Myths About Atheism. This can be seen as, in a way, a sequel to our co-edited volume 50 Voices of Disbelief.

Since we submitted the manuscript in mid-October, there's been a flurry of activity, as we plot and plan with each other and our commissioning editor at Wiley-Blackwell. There will be more news, no doubt, as the book goes through the editing/publishing process, but at this stage I can just say that we're very excited about it, and we're getting great feedback from the publisher. As the title might suggest, we'll be examining a wide range of myths, misconceptions, slanders, and half-truths about atheism and atheists. Amongst it, we'll also have quite a bit to say about the rise of modern atheism and why we think atheism is the most reasonable response to the God question.

I also have a deadline looming for another book, Humanity Enhanced, which will be published by MIT Press. This is involving a lot of work, and it is intensifying as that deadline approaches.

Some people may think that I'm a glutton for punishment, but I also stepped up during October to become the new chair of the board of a significant local arts body, here in Newcastle, Australia, the Hunter Writers' Centre. This immediately involved me (in a modest way) with the lead-up to the Centre's annual flagship event, the award night for the prestigious (and even somewhat lucrative) Newcastle Poetry Prize. The NPP is one of the most important annual literary awards in Australia. And there's the prospect of even more news relating to literature in Newcastle. That will have to wait for now, but I'm very pleased to find myself more closely involved in the cultural life of this beautiful city where I grew up, and to which I returned from Melbourne three years ago.

In the background of my own life, though, there are ongoing and worrying health issues in my family (not directly involving me!). That's placed some demands on my energy level just lately ... well, since about June.

While all this has been happening, I've been somewhat neglecting this poor blog and even wondering about its future. However, I do still think that it has a future as my personal blog, even if my lengthier and more philosophical pieces (particularly those where I feel I am writing for professional philosophers) are more likely to appear elsewhere, such as at Talking Philosophy.

Okay, so I've decided that the place needs a facelift. This is a work in progress, and you may see more tinkering over the next few days.

A new interview over at RationalHub

A new interview with me over here at RationalHub. I talk about New Atheism, metaethics, the free will debate, accommodationism, scientism ... all sorts of stuff, really. It was a pretty searching interview. Perhaps best to talk about it over there?

Sunday Supervillainy (SPOILERS) - Goodbye AvX, and hello Marvel NOW

Avengers vs X-Men has come to an end with issue #12, which leaves us with us some big changes.

So, what's happened? Professor X is dead. Cyclops is seen as a bad guy (after all, he killed Professor X) and he's in jail. Nonetheless, the X gene has been reignited (thanks to all the twists and turns in the plot, culminating in good work by the Scarlet Witch and Hope Summers); as a result, new mutants are manifesting, but all those millions of mutants whom the Scarlet Witch depowered back in House of M have not been repowered. The number of mutants remains small, but mutantkind is no longer under threat of extinction. And that will affect the strategic situations of some of Marvel's in-universe movers and shakers.

Several powerful mutants are left on the run. Among them are at least Emma Frost, Magneto and Namor (we've been shown their images on "wanted" signs), and seemingly Magik and Colossus. There may be others, but it looks as if this group at least are now regarded in-universe as bad guys. That's not entirely logical, since arguably Magneto did nothing very wrong during AvX, and the other four were under the influence of the Phoenix force and not in their right minds. Still, this makes for an interesting situation.

Meanwhile, the marriage between Storm and the Black Panther has broken up, at least for now (they came to a violent confrontation earlier in the event), and (in X-Men Legacy #274) the love affair between Magneto and Rogue has also been put on hold (Rogue now needs to think things over, can't commit even when made an offer, blah, blah).

With mutantkind now relatively safe and the mutant mini-nation of Utopia no longer needed in the same way, it looks as if Magneto now has no reason to keep playing Mr Relatively-Nice Guy: who wants to bet against the idea that he'll be breaking Cyclops out of prison, or that we'll be seeing him return to more villainous ways? And we've certainly been promised a lot more of Cyclops.

And then there's the fact that the original teenage X-Men are going to be brought into the present (about a dozen years in their future) to confront a very different world in which one of them (Cyclops) is more or less a villain and has killed Professor X, one of them (Jean Grey) is dead, and other drastic events have taken place. They are in for a shock when they see how it all turns out for them.

The new status quo will also feature an Avengers team consisting largely of mutants, including some former X-Men. That's the rationale for the Uncanny Avengers book, and it epitomises a greater willingness by the Avengers to help out in mutant affairs. (In the real world, it involves a greater willingness by Marvel to integrate the Avengers and the X-Men, its two most lucrative properties.) As we've seen, Uncanny Avengers involves a line-up of Captain America, Thor, Rogue, the Scarlet Witch, Havok (as team leader), and Wolverine, which is an odd combination of characters, some of whom don't have much liking for each other (though why is Rogue quite so pissed off with Wanda here?).

Apparently they are going to be faced early on with an updated and upgraded version of one of Marvel's least sympathetic villains - the monstrous Red Skull, an irredeeemable and utterly malevolent Nazi.

I got bored with AvX, as I'm sure I've mentioned previously, but these last twists in the final two issues (and in related books) take the overall story forward in an interesting way. We have quite a new status quo for the big Marvel Universe reboot relaunch that is being marketed as Marvel NOW. It hasn't escaped me that one potential effect is to bring the MU more into line with the ending of the latest X-Men movie. That is, we may have Magneto and Emma Frost in an alliance, moving into a more villainous mode than we've been seeing from either of them, on the run from the authorities, and causing trouble.

I don't normally think comics should be driven by developments in the related movies, but that particular alignment pleases me. In particular, Emma has been reformed for a long time, but she's always retained a villainous edge even when doing good deeds, saving the world, etc. Let's see how she now operates - how Marvel now portrays her - if she's on the wrong side of the law.

My Twitter feed

This is just your occasional reminder that you can follow me at Twitter: @Metamagician.

Comics artists, can you please not do this? (Diminishing female characters.)

Rogue and the Scarlet Witch are great comics characters. Their presence in the forthcoming Avengers/X-Men combination book, Uncanny Avengers, is one reason why I'd at least be inclined to check it out.

They are also very powerful characters, and their superpowers are supposedly backed up with high-level athletic training and elite coaching in hand-to-hand combat. In-universe, they are kickass women with high profiles and important connections.

Both of them also have rather dark backgrounds - although they are written as heroes, both started out as villains, and in many ways they can be dangerous to be around.

So why not depict them as athletes and warriors? Why give them these horribly thin, frail-looking bodies ... but with enormous, out-of-proportion, prominently displayed breasts?

I do realise that Thor's waist is also out of proportion, and there's a sort of Mannerist vibe about it all. But what's the first thing you see here? Anna Marie's hanging breasts, as she bends in an awkward position? Wanda's rather startling cleavage?

By all means, artists, give the female heroes and villains sexy, skintight costumes that display their muscles (just like the men here, such as Wolverine crouching in the foreground). I have nothing against any of that. My objections are not based on prudishness or a rejection of the concept of "built" or idealised bodies. But why hold out bodies like this as a female ideal? Have you seen what female athletes actually look like? Even if you claim that the whole image is stylised, this sort of thing is too common, and it seems to be getting worse.

Over the years, Marvel has, to its credit, created many amazing female characters, even if it struggles to give any of them truly iconic status. Rogue and the Scarlet Witch are among them, and both have rich, complex back stories. They are valuable properties with much ongoing potential. I'm sure that many male readers would happily read good stories about them both, without any soft-porn vibe. Just give us those stories ... and let the artwork represent the characters as scarily powerful. That's the way, if you want to make them cool.

Another great cover - Alison Goodman's A New Kind of Death

And speaking of covers...

...Here is the cover for A New Kind of Death, a crime novel (with a science fiction element) by my pal Alison Goodman. The book was originally published in the US as Killing the Rabbit.

Alison's husband, Ron Gallagher, has done a nice job with this, don't you think?

Cover released for A Quiet Shelter There

The cover has been released for a forthcoming anthology edited by Gerri Leen, A Quiet Shelter There - which features a story by Jenny Blackford.

A Quiet Shelter There will benefit Friends of Homeless Animals, as well as other shelters that wish to sell it. It will be published by Hadley Rille. The beautiful cover is the work of Heather McDougal.

I'll provide details about the table of contents and date of publication as they come to hand.

Freedom of Religion and the Secular State in Huffington Post

Steven Paul Leiva's review of Freedom of Religion and the Secular State appears today in The Huffington Post. This was previously published on the United Atheists website, but it will now reach a wider audience.

Obviously, I'm pleased, as it's a very positive review, and timely in the midst of violence related to religion ... and new calls for restrictions on what can be said about gods, religions, prophets, etc.

New issue of Free Inquiry

The latest issue of Free Inquiry magazine has been released. As always, only a small selection of the material is available online to tease potential readers. You might be interested in Tom Flynn's editorial, in particular. But there's much more, as there is in every issue, so please consider subscribing.

The new issue contains my opinion piece “Up With Secularism!”

Here, I defend the ideal of secular government from the criticism that it is, among other nasty things, anti-democratic. This piece is not online, so if interested you'll need to get hold of a hard copy of the magazine for yourself.

Much of the other content comes from the Orlando CFI/CSH conference in Orlando, Florida, which I attended earlier this year.