Shallow, smug, arrogant; pot, kettle, black

Sometimes you have to answer back

The anti-atheist diatribe recently published by Suzanne Fields in The Washington Times is of such poor quality that it scarcely merits a response. Unfortunately, I can't allow every such meretricious piece to go unrebutted: there are so many of them that there's a significant cumulative impact if we let too many through without comment. At least now and then, it's worth taking the time to pick apart such a piece in some detail, if only to demonstrate just how intellectually empty it is.

Since Fields has mentioned my (and Udo Schuklenk's) edited anthology, 50 Voices of Disbelief: Why We Are Atheists, her article has been drawn to my attention, so she gets to be my target this time round. Fields' article is not merely intellectually empty, though it certainly is that: again and again it demonstrates the very arrogance that she accuses her opponents of.

Fields' article is bereft of even one worthwhile point, though it does offer up a few useless, platitudinous truths. Unfortunately, there's obviously a market for such pieces as long as they attack an easily-demonised group such as outspoken atheists.

The sub-editor strikes, and strikes again!

Let's start with the article's title: "The new dance on a pinhead." I'm going to give Fields a pass with this one. While it's a poor choice of title, having little to do with the article itself, it was probably the creation of a sub-editor. It implies that Fields is about to discuss a group of people who fundamentally agree with each other but waste their time in bizarre and arcane debates, remote from the issues that really matter. Nothing in the article actually accuses anyone of doing that, exactly, or argues that any such debate is currently going on. So the title is completely inappropriate, but I'll blame that on the sub-editor.

In all this, we can leave aside the fact that the medieval thought experiments about how many angels can dance on a pinhead (an actual infinity of angels or merely however large a number God wants?) were meant to illustrate matters of deep philosophical significance. The sub-editor is not alert to this, but not many people are. It's worth noting, but not worth getting fussed about.

What about the sub-heading? This says: "Arguments for atheism are the best endorsements for faith." Well, the article goes nowhere near establishing such a thing or even saying anything at all cogent that could be interpreted that way. It's a misleading sub-heading, but again I blame the sub-editor rather than Fields herself.

First para: what is Fields talking about?

But we must blame Fields for the first paragraph. This is so all-of-over the place that it's difficult even to see what she is getting at. You look at each of the sentences in the para and they simply don't follow from each other in a logical sequence. This is poor writing.

Somewhere there, however, she seems to be saying that atheism has become a fashionable topic in political circles or perhaps simply in the city, Washington, D.C., where the article is being published. Either way, that is doubtful - how many Washington dinner parties, I wonder, really turn to discussions of Richard Dawkins and the "New Atheism". In any event, Fields tells us that this fashion has appeared on the scene because of efforts by atheist intellectuals who are interested in taking on the long-dead medieval monks who engaged in esoteric theological debates.

But that is just wrong. Sure, some atheists may make fun of medieval monks - even in some of the essays in 50 Voices of Disbelief you'll probably find some of this. But it's wildly misleading to suggest that contemporary outspoken atheism is about taking on obscurantist theologians, past or present. If anything, it is about taking on creationists, violent fanatics (more of this later), and narrow-minded moralists and evangelists whose notion of "sin" includes such things as abortion, stem-cell research, and homosexual conduct. By and large, outspoken atheists are interested in reducing the social footprint of religion, and especially a certain kind of conservative, politicised religion. Some outspoken atheists think that even liberal religion is playing a negative role, but others are happy to ally with genuinely liberal religious people. And there's quite a spectrum of atheist opinion on this. None of us are greatly concerned about medieval monks. We have fresher fish to fry.

The Bible outsells Richard Dawkins. So?

So far, as of the end of the first para, Fields has not said anything that has any merit. What about the second para? This actually says something true: the Bible massively outsells books like 50 Voices of Disbelief or even Dawkins' The God Delusion. Of course, no one on my side of the argument has ever disputed this, and nothing interesting is made of this well-known fact, at least not in paragraph two. So I'll give the benefit to Fields of having stated something that is true but so obvious as to have no intellectual merit in itself. Will she build on this platitude in her third paragraph? Let's investigate ...

Conformity and Lucretius

Alas, no. The third paragraph changes the subject completely and sneers at atheists for imagining they are non-conformists even though atheism has (supposedly) been around for a long time. Fields quotes some anti-religious words from Lucretius, the great Epicurean poet and philosopher of ancient Rome, to make her point. But paragraph three is wrong at so many levels thats it's hard to know where to start in dismantling it. Note, fellow atheists, that it's an attack on our character, not our arguments. We think of ourselves as non-conformists, Fields says, "but" we can't be because there is a long history of disbelief going back to Lucretius. So instead of addressing our arguments against religions of various kinds, Fields sees fit to attack us as people: as people who falsely imagine we are non-conformists, as people who fool ourselves. But that's hardly playing fair. That's an unfair, arrogant, sneering style of debate.

So much for issues of tone, but what of substance? I think there's merit in discussing the tone of the article, especially as she makes so much of it herself, but might she have something of substance to say, visible through all the sneering? No.

The trouble is that even if we were motivated by a sense of ourselves as non-conformists - which might show some element of vanity, I suppose - her argument that we actually are not what we imagine ourselves to be clearly fails. Even if atheism had a long history, it would not follow that it is currently popular. Conformity is about going along with the majority view that you see around you, not about going along with a view that happens to have a long historical pedigree. So even if Lucretius had been an atheist, this would not make the required point. It would show that there were atheists in classical antiquity, but it would not show that atheism is (or ever has been) popular. The article is not only poorly written; it's poorly argued. It's flagrantly illogical.

The fact is that atheism is a minority view right now in the English-speaking countries, taken overall, and especially in the United States where Fields' article is published. Probably even in Washington. So what the hell is she talking about? Let's be clear about this before moving on: even if Lucretius had been an atheist, it would prove nothing of any relevance - it would remain the fact that atheism really is a minority, or non-conforming, view in the US, where Fields has her primary audience.

And if it comes to that, Lucretius was probably not even an atheist! He was anti-religious, but that is not the same thing. If we take their writings at face value, the Epicureans did actually believe in the gods, who were portrayed as powerful, tranquil beings with no care for humanity. Again, even if the Epicureans such as Lucretrius can be interpreted as "really" atheists, merely giving some kind of lip-service to the existence of the gods for the sake of propriety, that is very much a matter of textual and historical exegesis, not something plain on the face of the Epicurean writings from which Fields quotes.

Note that the point made by Fields back in para 2 actually goes against her here: sales of the Bible dwarf sales of De Rerum Natura or any other Epicurean text, or any other text in the broadly Epicurean tradition.

So to take stock, Field managed to say something true in the second paragraph, but has then done nothing useful with it. By the end of paragraph three, the article is still intellectually empty. It's also showing an early touch of arrogance.

Those awful atheist intellectuals

I turn to paragraph four. Again note the sneering tone: Fields starts to say something about "atheist intellectuals" but can't resist adding "and those who only imagine they're intellectuals"; again, isn't Fields supposed to be on the side of the nice people? But again, this is nastyness we're seeing from her, this is arrogance, this contributes nothing to the debate. Notice that I'm not alleging that she has been arrogant somewhere else: her arrogance is right damn well there, plain on the face of the text.

And before anyone tells me that someone else has said worse while sounding off on a blog, let me remind you that this is not a blog post that we're looking at: it's an op.ed. piece in a reputable newspaper. It should aspire to a certain dignity. Apparently Fields thinks it's okay to write like this about your opponents in such a place. This is not charity, my friends. This is not fairness. It's mean-spirited. It's poisoning the well.

Is there anything of substance in the fourth paragraph? Some of it is about atheists mocking believers. Well, do they? I suppose some do. On the other hand, most of us are actually quite careful not to engage in empty mockery. Most of the mockery you'll see from atheists has a point. It's legitimate, for example, to highlight how a particular idea leads to absurdity or to show that a particular claim is ridiculous on its face. Mockery and ridicule have their place in our cultural and intellectual debates, and if Fields wanted to mock some particular statement by an atheist that was clearly ridiculous I couldn't complain. However that's exactly what she doesn't do - she never provides a single example of anything like that. I dare say there are examples Out There, but Fields doesn't provide them: she simply sneers at what atheists are supposedly like, as described by her.

Where atheists do the same to Christians, I'm not especially impressed, but it's important to point out that is not the typical approach in books by Dawkins, Dennett, and other high-profile atheists, or in the essays in 50 Voices of Disbelief. You wouldn't know it, reading Fields, but that is simply not what the high-profile "New Atheist" books are like. Fields attacks atheists for doing what she does herself - thereby providing us with examples of her own resort to empty, nasty mockery - but she never provides an example of her opponents doing such a thing. Again, I'm not saying it never happens, but it's astonishing to see how this plays out in the article.

Religious people do good things (well, some of them do)

The rest of paragraph four is, again, all over the place. Fields says that some religious people do good things. But hang on a minute: it doesn't follow either that religion is true or that religion brings about good results on balance. Plenty of evil has been inspired by religion. And yes, I know that plenty of evil has been inspired by other things, such as greed, desperation, political ideology, but that's not the point. No one says that religion is the source of all evil in the world. What we do say is that it's not beyond criticism and satire. Nothing in paragraph four amounts even to the beginning of a case against that proposition. Alas, some religious believers really are rubes, rascals, or rednecks, and it's worth pointing this out. Think of creationists, the surfeit of rascally televangelists, and the very large number of unpleasant homophobes who can be found in Fields' country. No amount of out-of-context quotation from Milton or Shakespeare can detract from the truth about that.

The bottom line is that some religionist deserve all the mockery they get - I'm happy to mock the likes of Jimmy Swaggart or Ted Haggard - and some do not (you'll never see me mocking Shelby Spong, for example). Many religious ideas, such as contrived theodicies also deserve mockery. Some religious ideas may not. The fact that some religious people perform good works is neither here nor there. Oh, and some individual atheists may deserve mockery, or the kind of sneering that Fields indulges in, but Fields gives no examples, let alone any convincing ones. She evidently feels that she can just sneer away regardless of the evidence.

Shallow, smug, arrogant

After all this, it's remarkable that she claims to find nothing but "smug, shallow and arrogant assertions" in all the atheist books she's read. This is, of course, nonsense. If she's read, for example, Daniel Dennett's Breaking the Spell, she'll know that it's actually full of facts and careful arguments. As for the essays in 50 Voices of Disbelief, since she mentions it, some are light and humorous, but I can't think of any that can fairly be described as containing nothing but "smug, shallow and arrogant assertions". I suggest strongly that Fields is factually wrong here, and that she writes absolutely nothing to back up her implausible generalisation about atheist writing. It also hasn't escaped me that the claim is itself smug, shallow, and rather arrogant. Fields seeks to smear and belittle her opponents, rather than to engage them.

She does go on, in paragraph five, to quote some smug, shallow, arrogant, breathtakingly condescending assertions from David B. Hart, but she does nothing to support them. She simply repeats them and, in effect, adopts them as her own. Even if you think Hart did a good hatchet job in the piece concerned, and had something in the way of an argument to support his extraordinary claims - I can't agree, but we'll set that aside - Fields offers precisely nothing in support. There's nothing of any intellectual value in paragraph five, and as I reach the end of this paragraph, arguably the key paragraph in the whole article, I can only wonder why such an empty piece was published. Well, let's go on.

"Atheists believe in nothing"

Actually, not quite yet. Paragraph five also contains one breathtaking claim, stuck gratuitously in the middle of nowhere. Fields writes: "Atheists by definition believe in nothing, and anyone would find it hard to make something of nothing." That is a nice smug bit of rhetoric, but what in the world does it actually mean? It is simply not the case that atheists "believe in nothing". We don't believe that any of the gods identified in human religions actually exist, but so what? If believing in nothing is meant to mean that atheists have no beliefs at all, that is just false. Like everyone else, any atheist comes with plenty of beliefs. For example, I believe that this planet is approximately 4.5 billion years old, that my species is descended from apelike creatures through a path of biological evolution, that I am currently sitting at my desk in front of my computer, that there will be a general election in Australia on 21 August 2010, that the pantry in my kitchen contains walnuts, and many, many other things. Of course atheists have beliefs. How else could it be?

But aha! Might it be said that we don't believe in anything, perhaps in the sense that we have no ideals or values? But that's also ludicrous. Obviously I am as well-stocked with ideals and values as anyone else. My values include such things as freedom and amelioration of suffering - and many other things that sound less high-falutin'. How dare Fields say we have no ideals or values, if that's what she means? That would be a false and extraordinarily arrogant claim.

But might she mean that our ideals and values are not entailed by our bare lack of belief in the existence of any gods? Now that claim might be true, but so what? No one has ever claimed that atheism itself, taken as a bare lack of belief in any gods, provides a complete philosophy. Neither, of course, does the bare belief in the existence of, say, Yahweh, or Zeus, or Astarte, or Vishnu, or Ra, or Sif, or any other deity. All of these beliefs are tied up in far more complex belief systems.

Atheists, of course, also have more complex belief systems, sometimes good ones that appear to contain much truth and to provide much that is socially beneficial - and sometimes not. The issue is not whether bare lack of belief in the existence of gods is sufficient for a full belief system - clearly it isn't. The real questions are about which belief systems are likely to be close to the truth, which systems might be socially beneficial, whether theism as we've known it historically, in the Abrahamic religions, is likely to be true, whether or not it has been beneficial, whether it is beneficial right now, and so on. All of these questions are worth debate, and atheists are as well-equipped to debate them as theists. You can't argue that atheists' contributions to such debates are worthless merely by sneering knowingly that "Atheists believe in nothing." Again, Fields' approach is not charitable, fair, intellectually reputable, or even civil.

Hitchens and Hitchens

All right, paragraph six at last. Here, Fields outdoes herself. She stoops to an even more despicable level, trying to make a point from Christopher Hitchens' current very serious illness - he is suffering from throat cancer that is likely to kill him. Once again, she doesn't seem to care much about the truth of what she's discussing. It's true, of course, that Hitchens has cancer, but not true at all that he's softened on religion as a result: see this interview, for example, and Jerry Coyne's transcription of some of it. And if that's not her point, what, exactly, is her point?

This brings me close to the end, where Fields has a bit to say about Peter Hitchens. I openly admit that I haven't read the book by Peter Hitchens that she refers to, so I'm prepared to assume that the factual claims she makes about it are true. But she offers nothing independent to support the banal and dubious points that Peter Hitchens apparently makes. The first is that there was something wrong with the social revolution of the 1960s. Secondly, Hitchens apparently thinks that outspoken atheists are hypocritical in being hard on Christianity and soft on Islam. Thirdly, we are told that "The concepts of sin, of conscience, of eternal life and divine justice under an unalterable law" are bulwarks against relativism and consequentialism, which produce great evil.

Note that Fields herself puts no argument whatsoever for any of these three controversial claims. She makes these claims as if they are self-evident and/or the authority of Peter Hitchens is enough. Well, Hitchens may put arguments for them, but no such argument appears in Fields' article - coming from her, these three claims are merely asserted in a rather smug, arrogant, shallow manner. But the claims are far from being self-evident, and the onus is on her to put evidence and argument as to why we should think any of them are true. She offers ... nothing.

In fact, though I don't accept any onus and can't put the full argument here, all three claims lack merit. The social revolution of the sixties had been building for decades, was long overdue, and was, on balance, beneficial. It doubtless caused problems, as all large-scale social change does, but it gave us new freedoms and ushered in a more compassionate society. By and large, we are now more tolerant of diversity than we were prior to the 1960s and we're less tolerant of suffering. None of us should want to go back to what existed before. The 1960s provided an important and largely valuable watershed in history.

The point made about Islam is uncharitable, largely false and entirely unfair. Of course those Western atheists who think religion should be criticised are likely to concentrate on the religion that exerts the most social influence around them and which they understand best, i.e. Christianity. There is nothing surprising or sinister about this. It doesn't show hypocrisy and or a double standard, merely a sense of local priorities and a rational division of labour. For exactly the same reason, it is perfectly understandable, and there's nothing sinister about it, when Turkish atheists concentrate more on Islam. In any event, as Islam gains in influence in the West more actually is being written about it by Western atheists. The violent fanaticism associated with various strains of political Islam constantly comes under attack from Western atheists (among others). There are numerous examples of this every day, e.g. over at Butterflies and Wheels, and again that is a natural step.

Fields doesn't even try to define what she means by relativism - this is an important and difficult issue in meta-ethics, but she shows no sign of even the slightest understanding. If she means the cruder kinds of moral relativism that say, for example, "Female genital mutilation is acceptable if it's practised in a culture where it's accepted", then fine. I don't approve of that kind of vulgar moral relativism. But there are far more sophisticated relativist theories than that.

Besides, when "relativism" is referred to in this way it is usually code for a utilitarian morality, or for something similar that measures the morality of conduct by its consequences, rather than against inflexible moral rules handed down over time. By and large, the acceptance of consequentialist moral ideas has been beneficial. I'm not suggesting that utilitarianism, or any other consequentialist system, provides the last word in normative ethics, but I do suggest that it's a step forward to stop asking, "Will action X breach a moral rule that we've inherited" and to start asking such things as "Will action X cause suffering?" "Might action X even ameliorate suffering to some extent?" Whatever the faults of current Western society, we have advanced insofar as we actually care about the suffering in the world rather than about archaic concepts such as "sin" or an immutable, supposedly God-given moral law.

Conclusion

I apologise if I've wasted your time by writing such a long blog post on such an undeserving topic. However, as I said at the beginning, sometimes it's necessary to respond at length in order to show in detail just how bad some of these anti-atheist articles are.

The piece by Fields is badly written and poorly argued; it is as smug, shallow, and arrogant as anything ever written by any so-called "New Atheist" known to humankind. All in all this piece is a worthless contribution to current debates about God and religion. I'd like to ignore it, but we do have to grapple with these sorts of pieces from time to time.

A placeholder

I'm going to get back to this Washington Times article by Suzanne Fields, but meanwhile see for yourself. I do like the idea of placing copies of 50 Voices of Disbelief: Why We Are Atheists in hotel rooms, but I don't otherwise see a lot of merit in the article. But I'll discuss it more deeply when I'm less pressed for time - maybe this evening. I think an article like this provides a teachable moment.

Douthat's pathetic attempt to oppose same-sex marriage

Pop over to the New York Times site for a pathetic attempt by Ross Douthat to oppose same-sex marriage as a legal option. It's not "pathetic" as in unintelligent or ill-informed: on the contrary, Douthat is obviously a smart enough guy, and he makes some sensible concessions. It's pathetic in the sense of a last-ditch effort doomed to failure. It shows how even the most rational repackaging of the arguments against same-sex marriage relies on assumptions that are now simply untenable.

To his credit, Douthat concedes the weakness of many of the common arguments put by his side. First, it is incorrect, he admits, that lifelong heterosexual monogamy is universal or "natural" (I take it that the relevant sense of "natural" is something like "deeply-embedded in human nature" rather than something like "consistent with physical laws"). Leave aside what would follow even if it were universal or natural - Douthat is quite correct that the premise simply can't be sustained. If anything, the default family arrangement for our species is polygamous and the default mode of child-rearing communal. That doesn't entail that we should adopt arrangements that involve polgamy and communal child-rearing, but it certainly exposes the danger of the common arguments that Douthat rightly rejects. If such arguments from "is" to "ought", relying on what has been anthropologically universal or what is "natural" to us, were valid, then defenders of traditional same-sex marriage might be shocked at the implications. In any event, there is nothing universal or "natural" (in the requisite sense) about traditional or Christian marriage.

Showing a bit of wisdom that his political allies might learn, Douthat points out the following:

So what are gay marriage’s opponents really defending, if not some universal, biologically inevitable institution? It’s a particular vision of marriage, rooted in a particular tradition, that establishes a particular sexual ideal.

He elaborates this "sexual ideal" as follows:

[It] holds up the commitment to lifelong fidelity and support by two sexually different human beings — a commitment that involves the mutual surrender, arguably, of their reproductive self-interest — as a uniquely admirable kind of relationship. It holds up the domestic life that can be created only by such unions, in which children grow up in intimate contact with both of their biological parents, as a uniquely admirable approach to child-rearing. And recognizing the difficulty of achieving these goals, it surrounds wedlock with a distinctive set of rituals, sanctions and taboos.

The point of this ideal is not that other relationships have no value, or that only nuclear families can rear children successfully. Rather, it’s that lifelong heterosexual monogamy at its best can offer something distinctive and remarkable — a microcosm of civilization, and an organic connection between human generations — that makes it worthy of distinctive recognition and support.

Again, this is not how many cultures approach marriage. It’s a particularly Western understanding, derived from Jewish and Christian beliefs about the order of creation, and supplemented by later ideas about romantic love, the rights of children, and the equality of the sexes.


This is important, because Douthat is going to go on and argue, in effect, that the power of the state should be used to shore up this particular sexual ideal. The state should give special recognition to relationships that meet this ideal, possibly with tangible legal rights attached. It should do that by recognising as marriages only those arrangements that meet the ideal - or at least don't blatantly depart from it, as with same-sex marriages. But one immediate problem with this is that the sexual ideal which Douthat advocates no longer has unchallenged acceptance, even within the culture of the West. As he acknowledges, it has largely been superseded, even in the popular understanding of marriage:

Lately, it has come to co-exist with a less idealistic, more accommodating approach, defined by no-fault divorce, frequent out-of-wedlock births, and serial monogamy.

In this landscape, gay-marriage critics who fret about a slippery slope to polygamy miss the point. Americans already have a kind of postmodern polygamy available to them. It’s just spread over the course of a lifetime, rather than concentrated in a “Big Love”-style menage.

This is exactly right. While marriage means different things to different people, and there are many ideals of sexual love, the more pragmatic, accommodating, "postmodern" approach to marriage that he describes does co-exist with the old Christian/traditional concept. Indeed, the "postmodern" approach has largely displaced the "Christian" approach in the popular imagination. It seems to me, what's more, that this is a good thing, a social advance. Why on earth should people be trapped in loveless marriages that no longer suit them? Reason has gradually been prevailing in this area.

And of course there might be still other sexual ideals that can find expression in personal styles of marriage. Two people may see their marriage as essentially about companionship. Another two might see themselves allied in a great life-adventure that they face together, which will involve them both gaining diverse sexual experience with other people. There are many possible ideals on offer.

In any event, marriage no longer acts as a means to regulate who can have sex with whom - while most people still frown upon adultery and polyamory, and some still frown on "fornication", all of these practices are perfectly legal in most Western jurisdictions. Whatever marriage now symbolises for this person or that person, it does not have any legal force that commits participants to monogamy, to exclusive heterosexuality, to lifelong union, or to procreation. While many people still want to get married, what it symbolises to them is now much more diverse and often rather inchoate. It is, as Douthat acknowledges, usually something to do with a celebration of romantic love, but it now has nothing directly to do with procreation or with state regulation of who is legally permitted to have sex with whom.

So Douthat is left with the bare argument that ...

lifelong heterosexual monogamy at its best can offer something distinctive and remarkable — a microcosm of civilization, and an organic connection between human generations — that makes it worthy of distinctive recognition and support.

... and that

if we ... accept this shift, we’re giving up on one of the great ideas of Western civilization: the celebration of lifelong heterosexual monogamy as a unique and indispensable estate. That ideal is still worth honoring, and still worth striving to preserve. And preserving it ultimately requires some public acknowledgment that heterosexual unions and gay relationships are different: similar in emotional commitment, but distinct both in their challenges and their potential fruit.

But hang on. Douthat is entitled to honour his particular sexual ideal as much as he likes. Let him have a lifelong monogamous heterosexual marriage involving children. Fine. May his children grow up healthy and happy. Doubtless there are many other individuals who honour the same ideal, expressing it in their life plans and projects. Well, let them.

But nothing prevents that. On the other hand, the state now permits "fornication" and "adultery", and it recognises marriages that are deliberately childless, marriages that are open or involve other polyamorous arrangements (I could tell you plenty of stories just from the science fiction community in, say, the US), and doubtless all sorts of other things that I can't even begin to imagine. It also permits procreation outside of marriage, and has abolished old notions of "illegitimacy". Marriage takes many forms, in modern societies, and is used in many different ways by many people with many diverse ideals. I doubt that there is much sense continuing to have a state-recognised status called "marriage" anymore, but insofar as we go on doing this the status has become extremely malleable. And again, this is a good thing. We are not all cut from the same template; we are all different, as individuals, and we should, as far as possible, be free to live in accordance with our varied conceptions of the good.

If same-sex marriages obtain recognition from the state, that won't prevent anyone from living in accordance with the ideal that Douthat espouses. But it's not good enough for Douthat to say that this is an attractive ideal that "we" should honour. Whether "we", as individuals, want to honour it is up to "us" as individuals. If somebody wants to live in accordance with a sexual ideal of lifelong, monogamous, heterosexual fecundity ... she should be free to do so. But she has no claim on the rest of us that her sexual ideal gets some special advantage from the state in competition with the many other the alternatives that are on offer. Yes, we as individuals can choose the ideal that Douthat loves so much. Douthat himself can, well, do whatever he likes, provided he doesn't harm others. (I'm not sure how his name is pronounced, but I'm tempted to say: Douthat can do that.)

But as for whether the state should give such a sexual ideal some special honour ... why? In a pluralist society it is not the role of the state to give special honour to one or the other of the many different ideals (sexual or otherwise) that are legitimately available to people, and which, in effect, compete for our adherence. The state should allow people as far as possible to live in accordance with their diverse views of the good; it should not honour one particular group's view of the good and, by implication, stigmatise another's.

Of course, Douthat is welcome to argue that there is some good secular reason not to provide for same-sex marriage because, for example, it will cause suffering, or because it will lead to social breakdown and civil chaos. But he hasn't even attempted to put an argument of that kind. His argument is, instead, the illiberal one that the state should give its backing to his particular, entirely optional, sexual ideal. But why the hell should it?

That's why it's a pathetic attempt to oppose same-sex marriage. When an intelligent conservative who opposes same-sex marriage looks at the issue squarely, he has to concede that the usual arguments relied on by his allies are rubbish. What's more, he clearly has no viable argument based on secular concerns, such as concerns about harms to worldly interests. Surely he'd put an argument like that if he had one: he knows that recognising same-sex marriages will not lead to suffering or chaos.

Douthat is left with a bare plea that the state should honour his favourite sexual ideal over others that compete with it. Sorry, sir, but that's pathetic.

Buy this book or your entire city will be destroyed by a monsoonal rain of giant frogs

I.e., this book.

A variety of prominent overseas authors have made significant contributions to the general public conversation on belief and religion, but Australians have been somewhat less heard.

The Australian Book of Atheism aims to change that, gathering together an impressive collection of essays from pre-eminent Australian atheist, rationalist, secular, humanist, and skeptic thinkers, many of whom participated in the 2010 Global Atheist Convention in Melbourne.

I'm delighted to have an essay in this book, edited by Warren Bonett and published by Scribe, and I'm confident that it'll be a great overall package. I'm looking forward to getting my hands on a copy. The Australian Book of Atheism will make an excellent companion for your copy of 50 Voices of Disbelief: Why We Are Atheists.

Edit: Embiggen Books would be one good place to preorder this.

Off to talk about hammers, knives, motor-cars, novels, sunsets, people, and actions

What counts as a "good" one in each of the above cases?

Catching up with the X-Universe

I'll never get to write for the X-Men franchise, alas, though it may not have been out of the question just a few years ago when I was actively doing media tie-in work. I enjoyed my stint doing some work for the Terminator franchise and writing a sequel to the original King Kong movie, but this sort of work is probably not something I want to go on with, and I've not pursued possible opportunities for some time. The death in a car crash of my editor at ibooks, the great Byron Preiss, had a serious effect on my situation, and of course other priorities have come along, some of them unexpected (story of my life!).

Still, that stint with The Terminator was valuable in more ways than one; it certainly taught me new respect for people who make a living from media tie-in writing. It's difficult, skilled work, though also a lot of fun if you can play - officially! - with iconic, resonant characters and settings. It's something I'm very glad to have done.

If, by a miracle, I saw a reasonable prospect of doing some work for X-Men it's the one thing that would make me have another go. From varying distances, I've been following events in the X-Universe ever since primary school, and I think I have as good an in-the-bones sense as almost anyone of the dramatic structures and intentions underlying the whole franchise. So ... what with the world science fiction convention on its way, I've been taking a bit of trouble, just lately, to catch up. Alas, I'd fallen a fair way behind in recent years. It's not that I expect to be handed a run scripting Uncanny X-Men (though wouldn't that be cool!!) or the opportunity to do a trilogy of novels like the excellent ones that my pal and sometime editor Steve Roman published a few years ago. It just seems a pity to lose track of something that I've understood well.

Note here that I'm not talking about the movies or any other spin-off version: I mean the original "Earth-616" continuity.

When I was young and an avid reader of anything I could get my hands on - not least comics - there was, of course, no internet. It's always fascinating to see what controversy is generated on almost anything out there in internet-land. I see that there are a lot of people who really hate what is happening in the flagship Uncanny X-Men comics, currently being scripted by Matt Fraction, but there's also a lot of support out there for current directions. Well, controversy can be good.

By and large, I like what I'm currently seeing. Now of course we're talking here about superhero comics: don't expect the storylines to be scientifically plausible in the same way as a Gregory Benford novel. Expect plenty of deus ex machina endings, characters with sudden mood swings (suicidal one minute, euphoric the next), and other such flaws that would grate horribly in any other medium ... and do grate slightly even in comic-book narratives. Like everyone else in the world who's read it, I have my own theory about how the recent Second Coming cross-over could have been concluded with less of that good old deus-ex-machina feeling, but so what? I guess I really look for interesting extensions of the mega-text as we've received it - good, insightful work with the established characters that also leads to new directions. There has to be a respect for the core of the characters, but there has to be enough that's new to make the whole thing worthwhile continuing, which can even mean killing off some beloved characters like [Spoiler] and [Spoiler] in Second Coming (and making at least some of those deaths "stick").

For example, the decision some time ago now to pair off Cyclops and Emma Frost would have sounded crazy to anyone reading X-Men back in the 80s, but it's an innovation that actually works. These two unlikely lovers go well together in a bizarre way, and their blatantly lusty relationship adds a quirky element to X-Men, slightly amusing ... and just slightly sinister for fans with long memories of a more innocent Scott and a more villainous Emma. Strangely, but convincingly, Emma often seems like the more idealistic, naive one, as Scott has toughened up to do what he thinks has to be done.

I'm enjoying the line currently being taken with the rival visions of human/mutant relations espoused by Professor X and Magneto. That old theme is being respected, but also deepened and complexified. Good for Matt Fraction or whoever is driving this. And I'm especially liking the character work from Mike Carey on the X-Men: Legacy mag at the moment. He's doing very shrewd, deft work with established characters like Rogue (who is currently the central figure) and Magneto (who has rejoined the good guys in a big way, at least for now, and is being depicted very well). I'm going to watch the direction that Carey takes this. The artwork from Clay Mann in the current issue, #238, is beautiful in capturing these characters, with expressions and body language telling us much about them in addition to Carey's script.

With the modern trend to avoid thought balloons, artwork takes on a new meaning in suggesting the emotions and motives of characters. As one tiny example, I like the final page of X-Men: Legacy #238 for the way Rogue and Magneto fall into near-identical fighting stances as they suddenly face a common enemy. It makes a point, never explicit in the script, about these two hardened, effective warriors (both of them rather different from their cinematic equivalents).

If, like me, you have a long-standing love for the X-Men franchise, do have a look at what's been happening lately in the main continuity, or, hey, feel free to comment if you're more up to speed with it than I am.

Forthcoming speaking engagements

I've just been taking stock of my future gigs for another purpose. I think this is all that I have booked up for the moment. Some of these are open to the public, but others are not. The next one is a staff seminar for Philosophy and Religious Studies, in a couple of days (or as I just know Ophelia would prefer, a couple of days' time).

Then a similar topic the following evening at the Socrates Café forum at Berkelouw Books in Newtown (starting 6.30).

I'll be on various items at the World Science Fiction Convention in Melbourne, in early September, but at this stage I can only list one as locked in with a definite (I think) date and time. Other things will doubtless crop up during this time period: some of them are known unknowns and some are unknown unknowns.

Here's the full list as best as I can put it together right now.

10 August 2010: "Moral Scepticism and its Implications." School of Humanities and Social Science, University of Newcastle, seminar (Newcastle).

11 August 2010: "Why Morality is a Myth: How to be a Moral Sceptic and Still Be A Good Person." Berkelouw Books (Sydney).

25 August 2010: "Separation of Church and State." University of Newcastle Atheist Society (Newcastle).

5 September 2010: "Science Fiction and Technoscience: A Love/Hate Relationship." World Science Fiction Convention (Melbourne).

11 September 2010: "Survival Beyond the Flesh." Singularity Summit AU (Melbourne).

14 September 2010: "Living in a World Without Objective Values." Atheist Society (Mebourne).

21 September 2010: "The New Atheism." Crossway Conference (Melbourne).

1 February 2011: "Thomas Pynchon." Existentialist Society (Melbourne).

My comment that has NOT appeared (let alone been answered) at "The Intersection"

I.e., in this thread. Note the date when my comment was submitted, compared with today's date. I think I've waited long enough to go public with this, warts and all. I've even left a typo: "minoror" instead of "minor or".

As I said at the end, I believe that the comment is constructive and civil. Indeed, I go out of my way to be nice. It would have been easy for Chris Mooney to respond in kind. He keeps getting offered olive branches and refusing to accept them. It's as if he doesn't want this all to go away.
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11. Russell Blackford Says: Your comment is awaiting moderation.
July 30th, 2010 at 7:52 pm

Okay, Chris, this goes some way towards what I wanted from you. Thank you for that. You’re correct that the issue was the loud, confrontational, just-plain-rude behaviour that was described. That and some other things simply did not make a plausible story. I agree that if “Johnson” had mentioned something a lot less than that, such as a private conversation he’d had with an aggressive Gnu Atheist that rankled with him afterwards, that would have been more plausible – but of course, it wouldn’t have been evidence for anything. I do appreciate that you now regret elevating the story and relying on it.

The story struck me at the time as ridiculously implausible, and I mocked you for believing it. You can have a minoror half-hearted apology from me that I put it as harshly as I did. Obviously I was angry that damage was being done to “my” side by your use of what was, to me, obviously a dishonest or at best wildly exaggerated story. I can’t apologise whole-heartedly, though, because, frankly, I don’t believe that I’d have got far if I’d written something longer and in a more sober and civil tone explaining the detail of why I found the story so incredible. With so many people who seemed to want to believe the story and/or to support your use of it, I would have found myself drawn into a lengthy debate with commenters who, at best, had a tin ear for plausibility, as you yourself had (sorry, but that last bit is true, and perhaps you wouldn’t dispute it in retrospect), and who sometimes seem like your attack dogs. I hope you understand that the people who supported your use of the story were not actually doing you a favour. I may have been unnecessariy harsh, but people like me were giving you better advice.

If you really want to make a gesture of good will towards “my” side, the best thing you can do is unban Ophelia Benson. I’ve reviewed the whole thread that led to her banning, and I still don’t see how it was remotely justified. The worst that she did was get impatient and upset that her comments were being held up in moderation at a time when she felt (justifiably) that she was under personal attack and was eager to defend herself. Her substantive comments were thoughtful and civil, but led to very uncivil responses from some of your commenters, which obviously upset her. If anything, it looks like she was driven off by the attack dogs. If you’re in the mood to accept your own fallibility, read the thread again with an open mind and see for yourself.

If anyone has been abused and mistreated throughout this whole affair, it is Ophelia. You appear to have lost patience with her persistent questioning, but the main question she was asking last year, “How should Jerry Coyne have responded when asked to review the books by Miller and Giberson?” is one that you’ve never answered, and it’s an important question. If you let her back, I suppose she’ll go on asking it, but I don’t see why that’s a hanging offence in your eyes. You seem to think that Jerry did something wrong in agreeing to review the books and in reviewing them the way he did. I don’t see it. If you no longer think that, it would be nice if you said so explicitly. If you do still think it, I’d be interested to know what you think Jerry should have done when asked to review those books. It would be a nice gesture if you’d address this, independently of feeling that Ophelia harassed you about it (if that is what you feel).

I’m not interested in being baited by your usual supporters, so I hope you’ll restrain them if needed. Getting into a fight with those people (I won’t inflame things by naming them, but you can guess who I mean) is a waste of my time. I believe this has been a constructive and civil comment, and I’d like you to answer it directly.

More on the Californian gay marriage case

I've now read the full (138 page) judgment in the case of Perry v. Schwarzenegger. To be candid, just reading it with a degree of care took me quite a bit of time, so I won't be spending a similar amount of time writing a detailed commentary. Let me make just a few quick points.

At the level of social policy, this was a good outcome. Proposition 8, the voter-mandated addition to the Californian constitution that provides "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California", should never have been enacted. The outcome of the referendum back in 2008 was a tragedy.

Given the clear and specific terms of Proposition 8, combined with its status as constitutional law, there was no real prospect of challenging it under Californian law - opponents of the provision were forced to argue on a new basis, i.e. that it is inconsistent with federal constitutional provisions, specifically the due process and equal protection clauses of the US Constitution's Fourteenth Amendment. The challenge succeeded under both clauses.

I'm not a great fan of US jurisprudence on the Fourteenth Amendment, which has been murky over the years and has led to many contrived theories and interpretations. Based on existing jurisprudence, however, the judgment seems to be pretty solid. It will be fascinating to see how it is challenged in the appeals to higher courts that will undoubtedly take place. In particular, the US Supreme Court still has a conservative majority, and there's a prospect that several judges at that level will enter into quite fundamental questions about the Fourteenth Amendment. At least some (such as Justices Scalia, Alito, and Thomas) will seek to resist the outcome that has been reached so far. That's a way off, however, as there's a level of appeal in between.

Whether or not the institution of marriage is anachronistic and being maintained long past its original purposes and assumptions, it is still with us and permeates society in such a way as to affect people very seriously if they cannot marry. That is especially so in the US. The effect of Proposition 8 has to be assessed against that social backdrop. Proposition 8 was clearly motivated by bigotry against gays and moralistic disapproval of gay relationships, and it has contributed to the ongoing stigma that is applied to gays.

What becomes clear is just how much the campaign for Proposition 8 relied on bullshit arguments that then had to be repackaged significantly for presentation in the court. We've seen it all before, but it's good to have the arguments all set out in one document - including fatuous arguments that religious parents did not want their children being exposed to ideas of gay equality. This idea of an absolute right to control the indoctrination of your children must be challenged at every opportunity.

By and large, the proponents of Proposition 8 were a pretty dismal, bigoted crew ... and this becomes crystal clear when their arguments are placed under a judicial microscope.

The whole judgment is well worth reading. It contains extensive sociological information (with pointers to a lot more) about gay relationships, gay families, and so on. It provides a valuable resource that will be worth returning to.

Chalk this up as a victory for the good guys, though of course with appeals lying ahead we can't be sure the judgment will stand. This saga has a long way to run, and we'll have to wait.

Judge strikes down California's ban on gay marriage

Just in, a federal judge has struck down California's voter-mandated ban on gay marriage, though this first-instance decision is likely to be appealed to higher levels of the American court system. Here's a rather long and confusing story in The New York Times, which does everything except state the above straightforwardly.

I haven't yet read the judgment and can't offer any analysis beyond the tentative paras below (maybe tomorrow).

First, it seems like a good outcome: as long as the state is going to recognise some relationships as "marriages", I don't see any good policy reason not to recognise gay marriages as well as straight marriages. Refusing to do so is a slap in the face for gay men and lesbians.

At the same time, this was a case about the validity of a voter-mandated law overturning ordinary law that provided for gay marriage, which in turn was enacted in accordance with an interpretation of the Californian constitution. In theory, the judgment should be based on fairly technical issues about which law prevails, and it's not clear to me whether the outcome is technically correct, as opposed to welcome from the viewpoint of social policy. Higher courts will doubtless wrestle with that, and I'll try to make sense of it myself when I read the full judgment.

EDIT: See the comments below - apparently the above para is misleading, and the case was decided squarely on issues of compliance with the federal Bill of Rights.


In the longer term, the state should get out of the marriage business altogether and simply leave the courts clear authority to deal with relationship break-ups in an equitable way - looking after the best interests of children, where relevant, and dividing property in a way that recognises the contributions and legitimate expectations of those involved. Courts already do those things all the time, and there's no longer a need for a legal status of marriage in Western societies.

But official recognition of this is a long way off. So long as the state formally recognises some relationships as marriages and assigns them a package of special legal rights, there's no very strong reason not to recognise same-sex marriages. I could make up reasons, and some of them might have some marginal merit, but none of them outweigh the discriminatory message sent by the state if it fails to provide for same-sex marriage.