Over at The National Post (whatever that is). Sample:
... if one uses the reverse test, no court would ever prosecute Mr. Wilders for saying similar things about Christianity and the Bible. Why, then, should courts, governments or human rights commissions accept Muslims’ outrage or hurt feelings as the trigger for prosecutions and investigations, when those institutions (rightly) would never dream of doing the same to protect Christians, Jews or others from offence?
Last week, Dutch prosecutors asked the judges hearing Mr. Wilders’ case to acquit him. This appears to be good news, but it may prove otherwise.
Two years ago, the Dutch courts overruled prosecutors and implemented charges against Mr. Wilders after prosecutors refused to bring another case against him. And this week, judges whittled Mr. Wilders’ witness list down to three, from 18, while at the same time adding to the witness list against him the Muslims groups that initiated the complaints that led to his arrest.
If there is any justice in the Netherlands, or enough backbone to defend Western civilization, Mr. Wilders will go free.
I'm still scratching my head as to why this is not a straightforward freedom of speech case, however, exactly, we try to draw the boundaries of free speech. It's still beyond me what Wilders has said that could merit criminal prosecution. As Gunter is saying, I want the right to say similar things about Christian fundamentalism or other belief systems that I think merit harsh criticism.
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).
Thursday, October 21, 2010
My copy of Sentinels arrives
The cover uses a beautiful Chesley Bonestell illustration, and the whole book is beautifully packaged. It's always nice, as an author, to get something like this to hold in your hand and admire. I'm looking forward to reading it.
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Mumbai University caves in to extremists
Mumbai University has removed a novel from its literature syllabus in response to demands and threats by extremists from a group called "Shiv Sena" - which apparently promotes the interests of the Marathi People. The novel is Rohinton Mistry's award-winning (and Booker listed) Such a Long Journey, first published in 1992. The university withdrew the book following a book-burning and a threat against the author's life. You might ask, "What was the university supposed to do?" Well, maybe, but this back-down seems to have happened at a point when there was little or no reason to fear for the safety of staff or students. I'm open to hearing more about the circumstances, but it doesn't sound good.
Currently reading: Philip Kitcher's "Militant Modern Atheism" (Part 6)
In previous posts, I've explored Philip Kitcher's idea, which is, I think, largely true, that religious folks come in a range from the true, full-on religious believers, whose goals and values are genuinely shaped by their supernatural beliefs, through to the mythically self-conscious, who are much more like cultural Christians or Jews, or Muslims, or whatever. Perhaps calling them "cultural X's" is too strong, as they are not entirely secular - they use religious writings, take part in ceremonies, and so on. But they have no supernatural beliefs. They find this-worldly benefit in participating in "their" respective sets of traditions and practices. They have no problem with the idea that people much like themselves benefit from participating in other traditions and practices, if that's their heritage.
For secular people, and especially for atheists who see their atheism as part of their identity, participation in a religious tradition may appear alien, though some of us may actually be happy to do it in a slight way, such as attending Carols by Candlelight. We may be able to take aesthetic pleasure in some of the religious legacy of our culture. But in any event, we shouldn't see the mythically self-conscious people as suffering from anything like a delusion or as wishing to impose ideas that make no sense without supernatural support.
Kitcher goes further, though. Although he argues against supernatural doctrines, he wants us to take a fairly soft approach to people whom he'd class as doctrinally indefinite or doctrinally entangled. Other things being equal, he says, it would be better if they moved to being mythically self-conscious, but, he adds, "things are not always equal." He elaborates:
Under some circumstances, the only psychologically and socially available ways of supporting a life that has any sense of worthy goals at which it aims, or any capacity for working with others to attain those goals, involve participating in traditions that cloud the messages Dawkins and Dennett want to deliver. Secular thinkers can regret that fact, but they should see it as a stimulus, not to break spells and abolish delusions, come what may, but to work towards an intellectually articulated and socially realized version of secular humanism that will permit satisfying orientations for the many people whose opportunities are currently limited.
So, he asks for a degree of tolerance even of the doctrinally entangled, and certainly, a fortiori, for the doctrinally indefinite. As to the former:
Within the actual social environments in which contemporary people grow up, doctrinal entanglement can be expected to persist, not because the arguments directed against the doctrines are incomplete or because the people who hang on to belief in transcendent entities are too stubborn or too stupid, but because enlightened secularism has not yet succeeded in finding surrogates for institutions and ideas that religious traditions have honed over centuries or millennia. Until those surrogates are widely available, we need respect and tolerance for the doctrinally-entangled. True enough, it would be better if their religion evolved to a state of mythical self-consciousness, but the costs for them — and sometimes for important social causes — that would attend the simple removal of false belief outweigh the benefits. Only those who approach these issues with the conviction that these matters are, from beginning to end, purely epistemic, who suppose that the belief model fits all religious lives, who think an evolutionary account will show how we’ve been had, will insist on breaking spells and ending delusions come what may.
This is rather vague, so it's a bit different to be sure of exactly Kitcher wants us to do. He goes on to talk about extending "secular tolerance" to the doctrinally entangled, but that's a slightly odd thing to say. As I understand secular tolerance, it means a lack of persecution by the state. But surely secular tolerance in this sense should even be extended to the full-on religious believers! Or at least it should be if no special circumstances apply - so long, for example, as they're not acting in a way that is dangerous to us or cruel to their children, or whatever. If Kitcher thinks that secular tolerance should not be extended to full-on religious believers but it should be to other categories, surely he must mean something else by secular tolerance, but I'm not sure what. Does he just mean that we are entitled to express a degree of hostility towards full-on religious belief, but that we shouldn't do so towards people with more attenuated beliefs?
So, there's something not entirely satisfactory about Kitcher's analysis at this point. I agree with this much of it, though. First, it's important to do positive work to offer non-religious philosophies of life and to make them accessible to ordinary people. I deliberately say "philosophies", not "philosophy", because I think the last thing we need is a new comprehensive system that could end up becoming a new totalitarianism. I'd like to see the development of a range of views that have in common that they embrace political liberalism and what I understand (above) by "secular tolerance". Obviously a lot of this work was already going on before the "New Atheism" appeared, and the New Atheism is partly a reaction to the efforts by many conservative religious people to oppose politically liberal viewpoints. There was a sense, a few years ago, that "enough is enough" and it was time to go on the attack, questioning the fundamentals of the conservative religious worldviews themselves.
So, I agree with Kitcher that it's important to do this work. But I think he underestimates how much how much it was already being done (e.g. by Peter Singer), and why it became important to do something more in popular debate, i.e. to attack religious doctrine more directly. Putting this another way, if Kitcher is asking us to do "something more" in the sense of developing positive ethical and political philosophies, he's kind of getting things back to front. That's what we were already doing, and we were not making that much headway. The "something more" that was required was a more aggressive attack on the fundamentals of our opponents' positions, something we'd been treating as taboo during the 1990s (and for which, to be honest, there may not have been much of a market).
Still, many people have become involved in these debates for the first time, and it's perhaps worthwhile reminding them that atheism is not much of an end in itself, that aggressive, popular atheism is an add-on to the task of developing this-worldly ethical and political philosophies. In doing the "something more" of the New Atheism, we shouldn't stop doing the other stuff that was being done, and perhaps it actually is time for some extra focus on that.
Kitcher is also, I think, hinting that the real game in America is organising to take that country down a path more like that of the social democracies of Europe. If that's what he's getting at, I agree. The US will probably become significantly more secularised only when its less advantaged demographics have greater economic security. So there's some advantage in putting energy into such causes as universal healthcare, and perhaps showing some compassionate understanding that economically insecure people are likely to cling to religion.
That, however, is not a reason to stop challenging supernatural belief. Perhaps Kitcher thinks we should do so in a more compassionate way, given the circumstances of many believers. I can see some point in saying that. On the other hand, even in more secular societies than the US there is still a widespread sense that religious leaders have some kind of moral expertise, and this sense of things needs to be challenged. It's not so much a matter of kicking or mocking the ordinary believers, which is probably not such a good idea, as of stripping away the aura of authority enjoyed by the leaders and their organisations. And that does require pointing out that they have no supernatural source of authority. And that requires, in some cases, pointing out the absurdity of some of their supernaturalist claims.
All in all, if Kitcher's analysis is going to lead to any changes in our behaviour, then the changes may be rather subtle. It may involve a careful thinking about where our priorities are, who and what our scorn and indignation should best be reserved for, and so on. It's not immediately obvious to me what Dawkins and Dennett should be doing differently, though, even if Kitcher's analysis is totally correct. Again, maybe they should be doing something a bit differently - it's worth thinking about. But Kitcher seems to want some fairly dramatic change in tactics, and it's not clear to me exactly what it would be.
All this analysis cuts more than one way. For example, the mythically self-conscious and doctrinally-indefinite folks could learn something from it. They could understand that they are not automatically allies of their doctrinally-entangled or true-believing co-religionists. In particular, mythically self-conscious people from various faiths have more in common with each other than with true-believing co-religionists of their respective faiths. They may also have more in common with thoughtful secular people than with true-believing co-religionists: although they may find it valuable, for themselves, to be steeped in a religious tradition, they have no actual supernatural beliefs, so their actual worldviews are more like those of secular people than like those of true religious believers.
What's more, the mythically self-conscious and doctrinally indefinite should face up to the fact that they do not exhaust the categories of religious people. They are not even the majority. When "New Atheists" attack supernatural beliefs, they are not attacking a straw man. On the contrary, they are attacking orthodox, traditional, popular, and resurgent beliefs. It's no use Karen Armstrong, for example, complaining that the religion being attacked by Dawkins or Dennett is not her religion or not real religion. It may well not be her doctrinally-indefinite religion, but it is certainly real religion. It's here, it's popular, if anything it's growing, and it's socially and politically influential. She should concede this without hedging.
Kitcher represents the "New Atheists" as addressing reasonable religious people, which can probably be translated as the mythically self-conscious and doctrinally-indefinite religious participants, as follows:
[The New Atheists] can challenge those who believe in ‘reasonable religion’ to specify more clearly just what commitments such types of religion entail — to declare in public what has been abandoned, and to stick to the declaration. They can demand that those who profess a more enlightened religion no longer provide cover for fanatics who take a simplistic view of the scriptures they share with the sophisticated.
Kitcher seems to think that there's something inadequate about making this challenge, but I don't see why. If the mythically self-conscious and doctrinally-indefinite religious folks accepted all of Kitcher's analysis, why would they not conclude that the "challenge" Kitcher mentions is fair enough? Instead of defending religion and claiming that its essence is something this-worldly, such as compassion, why not agree that there's a lot of supernaturalist religion around, that it is false and often dangerous, and that it merits rebuttal? Why shouldn't they resolve that they'll "no longer provide cover for fanatics who take a simplistic view of the scriptures they share with the sophisticated"? The real moral of the analysis may be that the mythically self-conscious and doctrinally-indefinite religious practitioners should be more honest - and less hostile towards outspoken atheists.
There's doubtless a lot more to say about these issues, and I'll need at least one more post to comment on Dennett's reply to Kitcher. I continue to think that Kitcher has given us useful concepts, terminology, and insights. Exactly what we should all be doing with them is another matter. His paper is really addressed to fellow atheists/secular people, but it could make useful reading for others as well. In particular, the mythically self-conscious and docrinally-indefinite folk might also see things a bit differently if they took the analysis to heart. Outspoken atheists should not be looked upon as their enemies.
For secular people, and especially for atheists who see their atheism as part of their identity, participation in a religious tradition may appear alien, though some of us may actually be happy to do it in a slight way, such as attending Carols by Candlelight. We may be able to take aesthetic pleasure in some of the religious legacy of our culture. But in any event, we shouldn't see the mythically self-conscious people as suffering from anything like a delusion or as wishing to impose ideas that make no sense without supernatural support.
Kitcher goes further, though. Although he argues against supernatural doctrines, he wants us to take a fairly soft approach to people whom he'd class as doctrinally indefinite or doctrinally entangled. Other things being equal, he says, it would be better if they moved to being mythically self-conscious, but, he adds, "things are not always equal." He elaborates:
Under some circumstances, the only psychologically and socially available ways of supporting a life that has any sense of worthy goals at which it aims, or any capacity for working with others to attain those goals, involve participating in traditions that cloud the messages Dawkins and Dennett want to deliver. Secular thinkers can regret that fact, but they should see it as a stimulus, not to break spells and abolish delusions, come what may, but to work towards an intellectually articulated and socially realized version of secular humanism that will permit satisfying orientations for the many people whose opportunities are currently limited.
So, he asks for a degree of tolerance even of the doctrinally entangled, and certainly, a fortiori, for the doctrinally indefinite. As to the former:
Within the actual social environments in which contemporary people grow up, doctrinal entanglement can be expected to persist, not because the arguments directed against the doctrines are incomplete or because the people who hang on to belief in transcendent entities are too stubborn or too stupid, but because enlightened secularism has not yet succeeded in finding surrogates for institutions and ideas that religious traditions have honed over centuries or millennia. Until those surrogates are widely available, we need respect and tolerance for the doctrinally-entangled. True enough, it would be better if their religion evolved to a state of mythical self-consciousness, but the costs for them — and sometimes for important social causes — that would attend the simple removal of false belief outweigh the benefits. Only those who approach these issues with the conviction that these matters are, from beginning to end, purely epistemic, who suppose that the belief model fits all religious lives, who think an evolutionary account will show how we’ve been had, will insist on breaking spells and ending delusions come what may.
This is rather vague, so it's a bit different to be sure of exactly Kitcher wants us to do. He goes on to talk about extending "secular tolerance" to the doctrinally entangled, but that's a slightly odd thing to say. As I understand secular tolerance, it means a lack of persecution by the state. But surely secular tolerance in this sense should even be extended to the full-on religious believers! Or at least it should be if no special circumstances apply - so long, for example, as they're not acting in a way that is dangerous to us or cruel to their children, or whatever. If Kitcher thinks that secular tolerance should not be extended to full-on religious believers but it should be to other categories, surely he must mean something else by secular tolerance, but I'm not sure what. Does he just mean that we are entitled to express a degree of hostility towards full-on religious belief, but that we shouldn't do so towards people with more attenuated beliefs?
So, there's something not entirely satisfactory about Kitcher's analysis at this point. I agree with this much of it, though. First, it's important to do positive work to offer non-religious philosophies of life and to make them accessible to ordinary people. I deliberately say "philosophies", not "philosophy", because I think the last thing we need is a new comprehensive system that could end up becoming a new totalitarianism. I'd like to see the development of a range of views that have in common that they embrace political liberalism and what I understand (above) by "secular tolerance". Obviously a lot of this work was already going on before the "New Atheism" appeared, and the New Atheism is partly a reaction to the efforts by many conservative religious people to oppose politically liberal viewpoints. There was a sense, a few years ago, that "enough is enough" and it was time to go on the attack, questioning the fundamentals of the conservative religious worldviews themselves.
So, I agree with Kitcher that it's important to do this work. But I think he underestimates how much how much it was already being done (e.g. by Peter Singer), and why it became important to do something more in popular debate, i.e. to attack religious doctrine more directly. Putting this another way, if Kitcher is asking us to do "something more" in the sense of developing positive ethical and political philosophies, he's kind of getting things back to front. That's what we were already doing, and we were not making that much headway. The "something more" that was required was a more aggressive attack on the fundamentals of our opponents' positions, something we'd been treating as taboo during the 1990s (and for which, to be honest, there may not have been much of a market).
Still, many people have become involved in these debates for the first time, and it's perhaps worthwhile reminding them that atheism is not much of an end in itself, that aggressive, popular atheism is an add-on to the task of developing this-worldly ethical and political philosophies. In doing the "something more" of the New Atheism, we shouldn't stop doing the other stuff that was being done, and perhaps it actually is time for some extra focus on that.
Kitcher is also, I think, hinting that the real game in America is organising to take that country down a path more like that of the social democracies of Europe. If that's what he's getting at, I agree. The US will probably become significantly more secularised only when its less advantaged demographics have greater economic security. So there's some advantage in putting energy into such causes as universal healthcare, and perhaps showing some compassionate understanding that economically insecure people are likely to cling to religion.
That, however, is not a reason to stop challenging supernatural belief. Perhaps Kitcher thinks we should do so in a more compassionate way, given the circumstances of many believers. I can see some point in saying that. On the other hand, even in more secular societies than the US there is still a widespread sense that religious leaders have some kind of moral expertise, and this sense of things needs to be challenged. It's not so much a matter of kicking or mocking the ordinary believers, which is probably not such a good idea, as of stripping away the aura of authority enjoyed by the leaders and their organisations. And that does require pointing out that they have no supernatural source of authority. And that requires, in some cases, pointing out the absurdity of some of their supernaturalist claims.
All in all, if Kitcher's analysis is going to lead to any changes in our behaviour, then the changes may be rather subtle. It may involve a careful thinking about where our priorities are, who and what our scorn and indignation should best be reserved for, and so on. It's not immediately obvious to me what Dawkins and Dennett should be doing differently, though, even if Kitcher's analysis is totally correct. Again, maybe they should be doing something a bit differently - it's worth thinking about. But Kitcher seems to want some fairly dramatic change in tactics, and it's not clear to me exactly what it would be.
All this analysis cuts more than one way. For example, the mythically self-conscious and doctrinally-indefinite folks could learn something from it. They could understand that they are not automatically allies of their doctrinally-entangled or true-believing co-religionists. In particular, mythically self-conscious people from various faiths have more in common with each other than with true-believing co-religionists of their respective faiths. They may also have more in common with thoughtful secular people than with true-believing co-religionists: although they may find it valuable, for themselves, to be steeped in a religious tradition, they have no actual supernatural beliefs, so their actual worldviews are more like those of secular people than like those of true religious believers.
What's more, the mythically self-conscious and doctrinally indefinite should face up to the fact that they do not exhaust the categories of religious people. They are not even the majority. When "New Atheists" attack supernatural beliefs, they are not attacking a straw man. On the contrary, they are attacking orthodox, traditional, popular, and resurgent beliefs. It's no use Karen Armstrong, for example, complaining that the religion being attacked by Dawkins or Dennett is not her religion or not real religion. It may well not be her doctrinally-indefinite religion, but it is certainly real religion. It's here, it's popular, if anything it's growing, and it's socially and politically influential. She should concede this without hedging.
Kitcher represents the "New Atheists" as addressing reasonable religious people, which can probably be translated as the mythically self-conscious and doctrinally-indefinite religious participants, as follows:
[The New Atheists] can challenge those who believe in ‘reasonable religion’ to specify more clearly just what commitments such types of religion entail — to declare in public what has been abandoned, and to stick to the declaration. They can demand that those who profess a more enlightened religion no longer provide cover for fanatics who take a simplistic view of the scriptures they share with the sophisticated.
Kitcher seems to think that there's something inadequate about making this challenge, but I don't see why. If the mythically self-conscious and doctrinally-indefinite religious folks accepted all of Kitcher's analysis, why would they not conclude that the "challenge" Kitcher mentions is fair enough? Instead of defending religion and claiming that its essence is something this-worldly, such as compassion, why not agree that there's a lot of supernaturalist religion around, that it is false and often dangerous, and that it merits rebuttal? Why shouldn't they resolve that they'll "no longer provide cover for fanatics who take a simplistic view of the scriptures they share with the sophisticated"? The real moral of the analysis may be that the mythically self-conscious and doctrinally-indefinite religious practitioners should be more honest - and less hostile towards outspoken atheists.
There's doubtless a lot more to say about these issues, and I'll need at least one more post to comment on Dennett's reply to Kitcher. I continue to think that Kitcher has given us useful concepts, terminology, and insights. Exactly what we should all be doing with them is another matter. His paper is really addressed to fellow atheists/secular people, but it could make useful reading for others as well. In particular, the mythically self-conscious and docrinally-indefinite folk might also see things a bit differently if they took the analysis to heart. Outspoken atheists should not be looked upon as their enemies.
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Kate Harding on bullying
If you read Seanan McGuire's post, it may have led you to this impassioned post by Kate Harding. The long thread that follows has some especially interesting discussion.
Does the original post overstate? Does it go too far with some of its rhetoric? Well, maybe. Yes ... and maybe not. I'd rather some passion be expressed than that this not be taken seriously. Kudos to Harding and McGuire for speaking up in such a forthright way about such a touchy issue. They've made a new fan, in my case, even though I haven't actually read their books or listened to McGuire's music, or whatever.
I'll now be watching out for them.
Does the original post overstate? Does it go too far with some of its rhetoric? Well, maybe. Yes ... and maybe not. I'd rather some passion be expressed than that this not be taken seriously. Kudos to Harding and McGuire for speaking up in such a forthright way about such a touchy issue. They've made a new fan, in my case, even though I haven't actually read their books or listened to McGuire's music, or whatever.
I'll now be watching out for them.
Seanan McGuire on bullying at school
Please do read this wrenching post by Seanan McGuire. Speaking for myself, I never experienced bullying on the scale that she describes, though she does say: "I was rarely the target of violence." Now that is not actually my experience: when I was at school I experienced plenty of violence. But even if McGuire was never or seldom (surely even one time is too many!) actually beaten up ... well, some of the things she describes, such as being pushed into traffic, are terrifying and horribly dangerous. And perhaps more importantly, it sounds as if the cruelty that she faced was absolutely fucking relentless, driving her to multiple suicide attempts.
Reading her article, I feel quite fortunate - I never faced anything so relentless that it made me feel suicidal. But then again, that's a stupid response. Notice that even McGuire says, "In a way, I was one of the lucky ones." But she wasn't of course. There's nothing "lucky" about what she describes, and it's worth pausing to note the self-deprecation of people who've experienced bullying: always bending over backwards to say that others had it worse. I reckon we ought to stop this. Compared to me, she did in fact have it worse, and doubtless we could find worse experiences still. But that shouldn't be the point. Even the degree of brutality that I experienced in school, and even the less-relentless-than-McGuire's level of harassment and intimidation that I put up with so many of those days in primary school and the first several years of high school, are the sort of thing that no child should have to endure and which our society should absolutely not tolerate.
There's doubtless some explanation for how each bully turns out that way, but there are many calls on our concern and understanding. If I have to pioritise, I want to see understanding and assistance given to kids who are bullied for being "different", in whatever way it may be, and usually without giving anything even remotely like provocation. Adults must be approachable, supportive, and decisive.
McGuire asks us to break the cycle. She concludes:
We've known for a long time that school bullying was out of control, but every time it gets "uncovered" again, people react like it's some sort of shock. Kids can be mean? HORRORS! Kids bully other kids? HORRORS!
Bullshit.
Everyone at my high school knew that bullying happened. If you were a bully, you knew. If you were bullied, you knew. If you were neither of the above, you tried not to align yourself too closely with the bullied, because there was a chance the big red target we all had painted on our backs might rub off. No one in the American [or any other - RB] school system is ignorant of bullying. But still, we take the word of the bullies over the word of the bullied. Still, we allow for the mistreatment and marginalization of anyone labeled "different."
And still, kids are dying over it.
This whole situation hurts my heart. Please, please, speak out against bullying. Break the cycle. Humanity will always have the potential to be cruel, but isn't the world already difficult enough? No one should die for the crime of being different. No one should learn the lessons so many of us were forced to learn.
No one else should die because we didn't stand up and say "enough" to the bullies of the world. The fact that I have to write "no one else," and not "no one," just shows how bad the situation has become.
Please. Break the cycle, before it's too late for someone else.
Please.
Frankly, I'm at a loss to know how to do that, apart from pointing you to her post. It's not as if I have kids in my life whom I'm in a position to listen to and protect - I'm not a schoolteacher, and the children who occupy a place in my life are either grown up now or a long way away. Perhaps there's something more concrete that you can do. If not, just passing on McGuire's post might help.
Reading her article, I feel quite fortunate - I never faced anything so relentless that it made me feel suicidal. But then again, that's a stupid response. Notice that even McGuire says, "In a way, I was one of the lucky ones." But she wasn't of course. There's nothing "lucky" about what she describes, and it's worth pausing to note the self-deprecation of people who've experienced bullying: always bending over backwards to say that others had it worse. I reckon we ought to stop this. Compared to me, she did in fact have it worse, and doubtless we could find worse experiences still. But that shouldn't be the point. Even the degree of brutality that I experienced in school, and even the less-relentless-than-McGuire's level of harassment and intimidation that I put up with so many of those days in primary school and the first several years of high school, are the sort of thing that no child should have to endure and which our society should absolutely not tolerate.
There's doubtless some explanation for how each bully turns out that way, but there are many calls on our concern and understanding. If I have to pioritise, I want to see understanding and assistance given to kids who are bullied for being "different", in whatever way it may be, and usually without giving anything even remotely like provocation. Adults must be approachable, supportive, and decisive.
McGuire asks us to break the cycle. She concludes:
We've known for a long time that school bullying was out of control, but every time it gets "uncovered" again, people react like it's some sort of shock. Kids can be mean? HORRORS! Kids bully other kids? HORRORS!
Bullshit.
Everyone at my high school knew that bullying happened. If you were a bully, you knew. If you were bullied, you knew. If you were neither of the above, you tried not to align yourself too closely with the bullied, because there was a chance the big red target we all had painted on our backs might rub off. No one in the American [or any other - RB] school system is ignorant of bullying. But still, we take the word of the bullies over the word of the bullied. Still, we allow for the mistreatment and marginalization of anyone labeled "different."
And still, kids are dying over it.
This whole situation hurts my heart. Please, please, speak out against bullying. Break the cycle. Humanity will always have the potential to be cruel, but isn't the world already difficult enough? No one should die for the crime of being different. No one should learn the lessons so many of us were forced to learn.
No one else should die because we didn't stand up and say "enough" to the bullies of the world. The fact that I have to write "no one else," and not "no one," just shows how bad the situation has become.
Please. Break the cycle, before it's too late for someone else.
Please.
Frankly, I'm at a loss to know how to do that, apart from pointing you to her post. It's not as if I have kids in my life whom I'm in a position to listen to and protect - I'm not a schoolteacher, and the children who occupy a place in my life are either grown up now or a long way away. Perhaps there's something more concrete that you can do. If not, just passing on McGuire's post might help.
"The Velvet Revolution" online
You can now read Jenny's story "The Velvet Revolution" as part of Cosmos magazine's online content. Go and have some fun. It's a lovely story, especially for cat lovers.
(I'm puzzled, though, that the only comment so far complains that the story doesn't offer a H/T to Cordwainer Smith, when it clearly does. There are very explicit allusions to Smith's writing.)
(I'm puzzled, though, that the only comment so far complains that the story doesn't offer a H/T to Cordwainer Smith, when it clearly does. There are very explicit allusions to Smith's writing.)
And another thing (on Ruse vs Kitcher)
"Kitcher repudiates all claims to objective truth in religion as unacceptable fundamentalism," says Ruse. He objects that, according to Kitcher, the Archbishop of Canterbury is a fundamentalist for believing in the literal resurrection of Jesus. But, the implication goes, that's surely absurd.
I'm crying foul at this point. While the literal resurrection of Jesus may well be one of the "fundamentals" that gave fundamentalism its name, the kind of literal-minded scripturalism that is denoted by the word "fundamentalism" goes way beyond belief in the literal resurrection of Jesus. Kitcher never says otherwise.
In fairness, Kitcher does say some (overly?) subtle and potentially confusing things about fundamentalism. But it's a very uncharitable reading of Kitcher to claim that he thinks all genuine religious believers are fundamentalists. What could be said, perhaps, is that Kitcher, by using five categories, of which only one consists of religious believers, fails to make important distinctions about people in that category. But that's not the same as thinking that all people with supernatural beliefs can be fairly labeled as fundamentalists. I don't see anything in Kitcher's article to suggest that he thinks that or wants us to think it.
I'm crying foul at this point. While the literal resurrection of Jesus may well be one of the "fundamentals" that gave fundamentalism its name, the kind of literal-minded scripturalism that is denoted by the word "fundamentalism" goes way beyond belief in the literal resurrection of Jesus. Kitcher never says otherwise.
In fairness, Kitcher does say some (overly?) subtle and potentially confusing things about fundamentalism. But it's a very uncharitable reading of Kitcher to claim that he thinks all genuine religious believers are fundamentalists. What could be said, perhaps, is that Kitcher, by using five categories, of which only one consists of religious believers, fails to make important distinctions about people in that category. But that's not the same as thinking that all people with supernatural beliefs can be fairly labeled as fundamentalists. I don't see anything in Kitcher's article to suggest that he thinks that or wants us to think it.
Monday, October 18, 2010
A coda on Ruse and Kitcher
Ruse says that Christians can say:
We don't accept African medicine. Why should we accept African religion? As a non-believer you may not think much of these arguments, but the point is that the Christian does. And unless you are prepared to give Christians the possibility of such an argument here, as I am and Kitcher is not, then they are not going to be interested.
But why should Kitcher say something in which religious believers - people who have supernatural beliefs - are "interested"? Kitcher rejects supernatural beliefs. He argues against them. True, he is prepared to go a bit soft on people whom he sees as merely "doctrinally entangled" as long as the latter don't try to impose supernatural beliefs - or ideas that are based on them - on others. But it's not Kitcher's fundamental goal to accommodate supernatural beliefs, and nor should it be.
At the same time, the issue here is not about [giving] Christians the possibility of such an argument. Christians can say what they want. They have freedom of speech, and I don't see how Kitcher is trying to take it away from them. Admittedly, Kitcher doesn't think that Christians (of the genuinely believing kind) have good arguments, but neither does Ruse! So I can't work out what Ruse is trying to convey. Perhaps the point is that if you accept the NOMA principle you think that any religious views are just plain illegitimate from the beginning unless they are confined to morality and the meaning of life. But Kitcher doesn't accept the NOMA principle. He thinks that's there's supernatural religion around, that it's real religion, and that it's false. That's very different from Gould's NOMA position.
In the end, how much more is Ruse saying than, "Religion is false, but we shouldn't say so"? And is that really the sort of thing that can coherently be said to the public? I could say it at a dinner party to a bunch of fellow atheists, but once Ruse says it in the Huffington Post ... the game's up isn't it? Ruse is not only endorsing atheism but even the thrust of Kitcher's arguments for it.
These meta-debates about what we can say do get tricky ...
We don't accept African medicine. Why should we accept African religion? As a non-believer you may not think much of these arguments, but the point is that the Christian does. And unless you are prepared to give Christians the possibility of such an argument here, as I am and Kitcher is not, then they are not going to be interested.
But why should Kitcher say something in which religious believers - people who have supernatural beliefs - are "interested"? Kitcher rejects supernatural beliefs. He argues against them. True, he is prepared to go a bit soft on people whom he sees as merely "doctrinally entangled" as long as the latter don't try to impose supernatural beliefs - or ideas that are based on them - on others. But it's not Kitcher's fundamental goal to accommodate supernatural beliefs, and nor should it be.
At the same time, the issue here is not about [giving] Christians the possibility of such an argument. Christians can say what they want. They have freedom of speech, and I don't see how Kitcher is trying to take it away from them. Admittedly, Kitcher doesn't think that Christians (of the genuinely believing kind) have good arguments, but neither does Ruse! So I can't work out what Ruse is trying to convey. Perhaps the point is that if you accept the NOMA principle you think that any religious views are just plain illegitimate from the beginning unless they are confined to morality and the meaning of life. But Kitcher doesn't accept the NOMA principle. He thinks that's there's supernatural religion around, that it's real religion, and that it's false. That's very different from Gould's NOMA position.
In the end, how much more is Ruse saying than, "Religion is false, but we shouldn't say so"? And is that really the sort of thing that can coherently be said to the public? I could say it at a dinner party to a bunch of fellow atheists, but once Ruse says it in the Huffington Post ... the game's up isn't it? Ruse is not only endorsing atheism but even the thrust of Kitcher's arguments for it.
These meta-debates about what we can say do get tricky ...
Not accommodationist enough - Ruse on Kitcher
As I've been discussing, Philip Kitcher has written an article that contains criticism (though also some praise) directed at the core "New Atheist" writers, particularly Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett. Michael Ruse has now written a piece for the Huffington Post basically criticising Kitcher for being insufficiently accommodationist.
As an aside, I've been tending not to use the term "accommodationist". When the term entered circulation, I thought it referred to a propensity to try to reconcile the worldviews of religion and science, as Ruse does (he's an atheist but seems to think that there's no knock-out blow for theism from the direction of science ... or something like that) and as theists such as Ken Miller do (e.g. by suggesting ways in which evolution could be consistent with Christianity). The debate was about whether science allows room for religion. The word now seems to have taken on a meaning where it applies only to atheists and just means something like "soft on religion". I thought that the original meaning, as I understood it, was one that we needed a word for. Unfortunately we now don't seem to have a word for that, given the way the meme has spread and mutated.
Be that as it may, Ruse and Kitcher are both atheists. Kitcher has made some rather mild and perhaps even useful criticisms of Dawkins and company. In doing so, he has introduced concepts and terminology that look quite handy. For his pains, he's being criticised by Ruse for not beingaccommodationist soft enough:
The simple fact is (let's stay with Christians to keep the discussion simple) Christians believe that God exists, that He was Creator, and that He came to earth in the form of Jesus for our eternal salvation, dying on the Cross and rising on the third day to make this possible. They believe that these claims are true, period. They do not believe them in order to give life to their moral beliefs. Contrary to Kitcher, though what he thinks is preferable is not relevant here, Christians believe that morality follows from these beliefs not that these beliefs prop up morality.
I remember vividly growing up as a Quaker in the years after the Second World War. Back in those days, it was not easy to justify pacifism. The war against Hitler had been a deeply justifiable war and to deny this, to belittle the deaths of the young men who had fought to defeat the Nazis, seemed to many to be simply wrong. The main answer we Quakers had -- and we thought it a pretty good answer -- was that Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount told us to turn the other cheek. That was it. That was enough. Jesus was the Son of God and what he said was final.
I personally agree with much that Kitcher says. Without empirical proof, religious existence claims depend on faith, and the trouble with faith is that different people with different cultures have different faith insights. For Kitcher (and for me) that is an end to matters. But the point is that the believer thinks that faith works and gives true insights. The believer also has arguments about the relativity. A Christian might argue that others are wrong. We don't accept African medicine. Why should we accept African religion? As a non-believer you may not think much of these arguments, but the point is that the Christian does. And unless you are prepared to give Christians the possibility of such an argument here, as I am and Kitcher is not, then they are not going to be interested.
I applaud Kitcher's attempt to move forward on the science and religion front. But, I am sorry, I just don't think that what he offers will work.
Ironically, though, Ruse makes a fairly strong point here. He says: Contrary to Kitcher ...Christians believe that morality follows from these beliefs not that these beliefs prop up morality. That seems to have a ring of truth, and there's a grain of truth in it.
However, I'm with Kitcher here. Kitcher freely admits that the direction goes as Ruse says it does for the people he calls religious believers. His point is that many religious adherents are not religious believers in this sense, and I'm sure he's correct about that.
Now, perhaps Ruse could respond that the great majority of religious adherents really are full-on religious believers. In the developing world that may be true. On a world scale it is likely to be true. Likewise, it may be true in the US - I said there's a grain of truth, didn't I? Very many Americans seem to believe stuff that can only be explained by a very full-blooded religious belief. I think one of the criticisms that can be made of Kitcher is that he hasn't counted numbers, so you'd think maybe his five categories are about equally well populated. But that won't be so; in any actual society, some categories may be far more populated than others. In America, there are many millions of people who believe all sorts of supernatural stuff, much of it plainly and directly incompatible with science. Score one to Ruse.
Nonetheless, Ruse needs to get out more and mix with a wider range of religious adherents outside of North America. I'm sure he'll find that there are many who fit into Kitcher's mythically self-conscious, doctrinally indefinite, and doctrinally entangled categories. I'm tempted (though I'm going to resist the temptation) to make a nuisance of myself with my own religious friends, here in Australia, to try to nail down where they belong, but my strong sense of it is that many of them would fall into the doctrinally indefinite and mythically self-conscious categories. In countries such as Denmark and Sweden, it seems that the majority of religious adherents are mythically self-conscious - they have no supernatural beliefs, but still identify as "Christians". For them, Christianity is mainly a system of morality (and a fairly liberal one at that).
In the upshot, a lot of work needs to be done to get a better sociological grip on all this, but things are not as simple as Ruse says. Moreover, if they were, that would be all the more reason to take a harder stance, rather than a softer one. The point of Kitcher's analysis is not to accommodate the true believers but to get a better understanding of religious people who are not out-and-out believers, so we (i.e. atheists like Kitcher, Dawkins, and Dennett ... and me) can think about how we ought to relate to them. Ruse would more or less cut off that exercise before we start. He asks us to assume that all the religious people we are dealing with are out-and-out believers, and then "accommodate" them.
Ruse misunderstands Kitcher's analysis in various ways, but one big problem is that he associates it with Gould's NOMA theory. But Gould's NOMA theory has no place in it for Kitcher's category of the full-on religious believers. Gould seems to think that religion by its very nature only makes claims about morality and the meaning of life. Kitcher never says anything so obviously false, not to mention silly. He merely says that some religious adherents are driven primarily by goals and values, rather than by supernatural beliefs. But he also acknowledges that others do, indeed, have supernatural beliefs that are doing the driving, and he argues that those beliefs are false.
Whether or not Kitcher's actual recommendations - which I haven't yet got to - are good or bad, or a mix, he's advanced the debate. He's given us tools to think about some of these dynamics. It's interesting to see him getting taken to task for not being, um, soft enough.
Edit: Link fixed.
As an aside, I've been tending not to use the term "accommodationist". When the term entered circulation, I thought it referred to a propensity to try to reconcile the worldviews of religion and science, as Ruse does (he's an atheist but seems to think that there's no knock-out blow for theism from the direction of science ... or something like that) and as theists such as Ken Miller do (e.g. by suggesting ways in which evolution could be consistent with Christianity). The debate was about whether science allows room for religion. The word now seems to have taken on a meaning where it applies only to atheists and just means something like "soft on religion". I thought that the original meaning, as I understood it, was one that we needed a word for. Unfortunately we now don't seem to have a word for that, given the way the meme has spread and mutated.
Be that as it may, Ruse and Kitcher are both atheists. Kitcher has made some rather mild and perhaps even useful criticisms of Dawkins and company. In doing so, he has introduced concepts and terminology that look quite handy. For his pains, he's being criticised by Ruse for not being
The simple fact is (let's stay with Christians to keep the discussion simple) Christians believe that God exists, that He was Creator, and that He came to earth in the form of Jesus for our eternal salvation, dying on the Cross and rising on the third day to make this possible. They believe that these claims are true, period. They do not believe them in order to give life to their moral beliefs. Contrary to Kitcher, though what he thinks is preferable is not relevant here, Christians believe that morality follows from these beliefs not that these beliefs prop up morality.
I remember vividly growing up as a Quaker in the years after the Second World War. Back in those days, it was not easy to justify pacifism. The war against Hitler had been a deeply justifiable war and to deny this, to belittle the deaths of the young men who had fought to defeat the Nazis, seemed to many to be simply wrong. The main answer we Quakers had -- and we thought it a pretty good answer -- was that Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount told us to turn the other cheek. That was it. That was enough. Jesus was the Son of God and what he said was final.
I personally agree with much that Kitcher says. Without empirical proof, religious existence claims depend on faith, and the trouble with faith is that different people with different cultures have different faith insights. For Kitcher (and for me) that is an end to matters. But the point is that the believer thinks that faith works and gives true insights. The believer also has arguments about the relativity. A Christian might argue that others are wrong. We don't accept African medicine. Why should we accept African religion? As a non-believer you may not think much of these arguments, but the point is that the Christian does. And unless you are prepared to give Christians the possibility of such an argument here, as I am and Kitcher is not, then they are not going to be interested.
I applaud Kitcher's attempt to move forward on the science and religion front. But, I am sorry, I just don't think that what he offers will work.
Ironically, though, Ruse makes a fairly strong point here. He says: Contrary to Kitcher ...Christians believe that morality follows from these beliefs not that these beliefs prop up morality. That seems to have a ring of truth, and there's a grain of truth in it.
However, I'm with Kitcher here. Kitcher freely admits that the direction goes as Ruse says it does for the people he calls religious believers. His point is that many religious adherents are not religious believers in this sense, and I'm sure he's correct about that.
Now, perhaps Ruse could respond that the great majority of religious adherents really are full-on religious believers. In the developing world that may be true. On a world scale it is likely to be true. Likewise, it may be true in the US - I said there's a grain of truth, didn't I? Very many Americans seem to believe stuff that can only be explained by a very full-blooded religious belief. I think one of the criticisms that can be made of Kitcher is that he hasn't counted numbers, so you'd think maybe his five categories are about equally well populated. But that won't be so; in any actual society, some categories may be far more populated than others. In America, there are many millions of people who believe all sorts of supernatural stuff, much of it plainly and directly incompatible with science. Score one to Ruse.
Nonetheless, Ruse needs to get out more and mix with a wider range of religious adherents outside of North America. I'm sure he'll find that there are many who fit into Kitcher's mythically self-conscious, doctrinally indefinite, and doctrinally entangled categories. I'm tempted (though I'm going to resist the temptation) to make a nuisance of myself with my own religious friends, here in Australia, to try to nail down where they belong, but my strong sense of it is that many of them would fall into the doctrinally indefinite and mythically self-conscious categories. In countries such as Denmark and Sweden, it seems that the majority of religious adherents are mythically self-conscious - they have no supernatural beliefs, but still identify as "Christians". For them, Christianity is mainly a system of morality (and a fairly liberal one at that).
In the upshot, a lot of work needs to be done to get a better sociological grip on all this, but things are not as simple as Ruse says. Moreover, if they were, that would be all the more reason to take a harder stance, rather than a softer one. The point of Kitcher's analysis is not to accommodate the true believers but to get a better understanding of religious people who are not out-and-out believers, so we (i.e. atheists like Kitcher, Dawkins, and Dennett ... and me) can think about how we ought to relate to them. Ruse would more or less cut off that exercise before we start. He asks us to assume that all the religious people we are dealing with are out-and-out believers, and then "accommodate" them.
Ruse misunderstands Kitcher's analysis in various ways, but one big problem is that he associates it with Gould's NOMA theory. But Gould's NOMA theory has no place in it for Kitcher's category of the full-on religious believers. Gould seems to think that religion by its very nature only makes claims about morality and the meaning of life. Kitcher never says anything so obviously false, not to mention silly. He merely says that some religious adherents are driven primarily by goals and values, rather than by supernatural beliefs. But he also acknowledges that others do, indeed, have supernatural beliefs that are doing the driving, and he argues that those beliefs are false.
Whether or not Kitcher's actual recommendations - which I haven't yet got to - are good or bad, or a mix, he's advanced the debate. He's given us tools to think about some of these dynamics. It's interesting to see him getting taken to task for not being, um, soft enough.
Edit: Link fixed.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)