On Hitchens and the defense of reason

As submitted to The Daily Maverick.

On hearing that Christopher Hitchens had been diagnosed with oesophageal cancer, one response from a self-proclaimed man of god was the following post on Twitter: “God 1, Hitchens 0”. The motivation for such a callous response to a usually fatal disease (fewer than 5% of sufferers are alive after 5 years) is easy enough to trace: Hitchens, along with Dennett, Dawkins and Sam Harris, is one of the “4 Horsemen” of a groundswell of resistance to the unreason that is exemplified by religious faith, and he is thus a direct threat to the mysterious legitimacy that faith-based claims enjoy.

What our divine scorekeeper does not (of course) dwell on is the fact that according to his beliefs, all deaths are attributable to god, and that he could therefore just as well add another notch to this metaphysical bedpost if his mother, for example, were to die an equally unpleasant death. God’s victory is inevitable, as either she takes a believer “home”, or she smites down an unbeliever. Either way, a civilised response to human trauma is sympathy, rather than gloating.

Mandela’s autopsy

As submitted to The Daily Maverick.

Yiull Damaso’s painting of an imagined autopsy of Nelson Mandela has provoked outrage similar to that generated by Zapiro’s recent Mohammed cartoon. The outrage is similar in its severity, and unfortunately also similar in its knee-jerk thoughtlessness. Most troubling, the similarities extend to having to hear yet another argument in favour of the censoring of free expression on the grounds of cultural or religious sensibilities.

The painting, adapted from Rembrandt’s “The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp”, shows a deceased Mandela being autopsied by Nkosi Johnson, while FW de Klerk, Helen Zille, Desmond Tutu and others look on. It is, of course, the portrayal of Mandela as deceased that is causing most of the consternation, on the grounds that this portrayal consists, variously, of witchcraft, disrespect, a violation of dignity, and a “insult and an affront to values of our society” – at least according to ANC spokesperson Jackson Mthembu.

As with the Zapiro cartoon, we can and certainly should ask whether images like these are in unacceptably bad taste. If they are, we should say so, and hope that we can persuade artists of the legitimacy of our point of view. Having fewer offensive artworks in our purview would no doubt make for a more comfortable life. But one person – or one group, no matter how large – does not have the authority to define what counts as unacceptable and what doesn’t, except within their own cultural universe.

Pastor Michael returns

And he’s gone from being dishonest to being paranoid, delusional and threatening. Well, the “delusional” part is a given, I suppose, given the nonsense we know he believes in. Despite the fact that the mothership has tried to beam him out of the conflict (see Taryn Hodgson’s apology for the Christian mis-representation of the atheists here), he still insists that it’s the UCT Atheist and Agnostic Society who had intentions that “were not right to [him] at all”, and that the AAS is now “threatening him”.

His grievances are two-fold: first, he’s upset that we (myself on this site, and the AAS on their forum) published his correspondence with us. As I’ve explained previously, we were forced to do so because the reasons for myself and Tauriq withdrawing from the debate were being mis-characterised by Michael, as well as by websites run by Taryn Hodgson and Paintball Hammond. Despite the apology received, the mis-representations have not been removed from some[ref]The ACA website was edited in February to more accurately reflect the events[/ref] websites, so this reason for publishing the correspondence stands, and leads me to publish extracts from the most recent correspondence here also.

The Internet and cell phone pornography bill

The original text of this article in The Daily Maverick.

Last Saturday, in an act of flagrant disregard for the faiths of others, Pastor Ray McCauley had planned to promote his brand by exploiting paranoia around tourist safety at the World Cup. Unfortunately for Pastor Ray, a heart attack meant that he could not attend. But while tickets for the “National Day of Prayer” for a safe World Cup might as well have been accompanied by homeopathic remedies for xenophobia (which would be equally effective), the event still raises questions. Firstly, why do we need his god to help out with policing those pesky foreigners and other threats to World Cup harmony, like Ivo Vegter? Is Ray saying that the other gods aren’t up to the task or even – sotto voce – that they may not exist?

On Zapiro, and Draw Mohammed Day

The original text of this column, first published in Daily Maverick.

We all find something offensive. Many of us might prefer to live in a world which caters to our sensibilities, and limits how much offence we have to tolerate. I would like for everybody to be able to spell, for example, and also for most uses of quotation marks in advertising to be outlawed. Unfortunately, nobody seems willing to offer me any legal assistance towards achieving these outcomes.

Zapiro angers the omnipotent

Jonathan Shapiro (a.k.a. Zapiro) is an equal opportunity offender – that is, if you like to think of what he does as offensive at all. There’s no doubt that some people have been, and are, offended by some of his cartoons, but that is a separate matter from whether they are in fact offensive, objectively speaking.

His role as a social critic and commentator leads him to sometimes poke at open wounds, yes, but almost always in a way that reveals the underlying prejudices that cause significantly more harm than any harms caused by the cartoons themselves.

The cartoons challenge their audience to reflect on whether their feelings of outrage are justified, and also whether others – like Zapiro – may be justified in feeling that there is something worth critiquing, challenging, and even sometimes mocking, in opinions and beliefs that we sometimes take far too seriously.

© 2010 Zapiro
Printed with permission from www.zapiro.com
For more Zapiro cartoons visit www.zapiro.com

Targets of his satire are drawn from a pool which has historically admitted just about anyone, and anything. If he has an axe to grind, that axe is most likely composed of inflated egos, undeserved reputations, malfeasance against the equal treatment and dignity of all – no matter how rich or poor, influential or invisible.

We should remember that critics of this sort, who offer a courageous perspective on current events, and try to point out details that we might be missing, serve an enormous public good. It’s very easy for all of us to end up with our heads buried in the sand, or stuck up our own (or another’s) backsides to the extent that we forget that our outrage may be ill-construed or illegitimate.

Today, Zapiro’s cartoon for the Mail & Guardian was the subject of a last-minute attempt to stifle press freedom. The Twitter feed of the unfolding events makes for interesting reading, in that Molana Bam’s primary argument appears to be the standard one where representations of Muhammad are concerned – namely, threats of violence.

Not directly, but nevertheless, the cartoon is a “threat to harmony”, and “stirs emotion”. A much larger threat to harmony, perhaps, is the struggle involved in reconciling Bronze Age beliefs with the modern world, and the curious tolerance that it requires those of us who try to govern our lives according to knowables. Tolerance, that is, of beliefs that are shared by fanatics who try to kill cartoonists and authors who represent aspects of that belief.

If you are a believer who is not inclined to fanatical – and criminal – action, you certainly should feel aggrieved when cartoons like this are published. But the cause of your aggrievement should be your less civilised brothers and sisters, who make such comment necessary – not those who make the comments.

The points made by Zapiro, as well as by past examples of this same issue, are a reminder to you to get your house in order, so that there is no longer any need to mock or ridicule.

You do this most effectively from the inside, by persuading people who take faith as a way to justify paedophilia, homophobia, oppression, murder, censorship and all sorts of other social ills that they have lost their way, and that surely a god worth taking seriously would not want you to do those things.

Two responses to the issue worth reading: Nic Dawes, Mail & Guardian Editor; Jordan Pickering (a Christian response).

Corporate Social Responsibility – what’s a company to do?

As published in The Daily Maverick.

KFC’s recent advertising campaign, based around their stated concern to rid Johannesburg streets of potholes, brought to mind Milton Friedman’s claim that “the business of business is business”. Although there is some dispute whether the phrase should be attributed to him, the idea that private companies are there only to make money (within the bounds of the law) has never met with universal agreement. Critics assert that the power which companies wield obliges them to demonstrate social commitment, for example via financial contributions towards pothole-repair. These purported obligations are backed up by policy and legislation, such as triple bottom-line reporting and the three King reports.

But we should always be wary of letting convention, as well as law, dictate our perceptions of what words such as hypocrisy, right and wrong, moral and immoral mean. The fact that we may prefer the world to look a certain way, and for companies and individuals to act in accordance with those preferences, does not mean that they are obliged to do so – or that they are morally negligent when they don’t.

Facebook only half as evil as you think

Most objections to Facebook’s alleged violations of our privacy are somewhat hysterical. Mostly because, instead of explaining

  • why privacy is necessarily inviolable
  • if it’s not inviolable, under what conditions can it be violated
  • what harms accrue from those alleged violations of privacy
  • why Facebook is to blame in any case

people choose to instead simply assert their interpretations of the above, trusting that we all share their indignation. They usually cannot offer arguments in support of their claims that Facebook is evil. And, what they mostly do is forget that they signed up for something called a social network, which is set up for the purposes of connecting people to those they know, might know, and might like to know. So with that as a premise of this service that you voluntarily subscribed to, any future objections to what Facebook does with your “personal” data need to throw a little sprinkling of caveat emptor into the rant.

Get your tuna while it’s hot (or cold)

The original text of this column in The Daily Maverick.

In 1968, the biologist Garret Hardin published “The Tragedy of the Commons”, a paper which argued for some unfortunate implications of the unrestricted exploitation of common resources. The primary example used by Hardin is a communal grazing pasture for cattle, where common use presents no problem until the maximum capacity of the pasture has been reached. After this point, overgrazing leads to the pasture becoming worthless to everyone, as it no longer has any capacity to provide food for the cattle. The problem, of course, is that each individual farmer is incentivised to maximise their own good. They therefore keep adding animals to the pasture, with little thought for the future, until the capacity is reached – thus ensuring the eventual destruction of the pasture.

The dangers of tolerance

As published in The Daily Maverick, a companion piece to my previous post entitled Suffer the little children (some overlapping content, sorry).

Julian Barnes’ novel “Nothing To Be Frightened Of” opens with the sentence “I don’t believe in God, but I miss Him”. This echoes a question asked by Daniel Dennett in “Breaking The Spell” – that of whether we care more about being able to believe that our beliefs are true, or about those beliefs actually being true.

We might have rational doubts about all sorts of beliefs, yet still want them to be true. Or find value in living our lives under the assumption that they are true. It would be impossible – or at least exceedingly difficult – to live your life feeling that your job was meaningless, that you were not loved or that you had no free will and no actual soul, despite the fact that one or more of those statements may be true. We seem to seek out (and perhaps that indicates need) some transcendence or metaphysics in our lives.

But those desires and/or needs do not make their objects true or real. We need to bear in mind the possibility that certain beliefs serve a social or psychological function only, and that “belief in belief” may take us as far as we can go. In other words, that no value is added by insisting on the actual truth of some of our beliefs. In particular, we need to contemplate the possibility that treating some beliefs as literally true could be harmful, rather than neutral.