Category: Religion

Posts on religion and secularism, and how religion can intrude on secular interests.

Brief thoughts on Jack Bloom

While I’ve previously commented on the illiberal nature of some of Helen Zille’s recent public utterances, at least she’s mostly kept her personal religious beliefs out of the equation. Sure, they no doubt inform her conservative moral stance, but her arguments and proposed interventions are nevertheless supported by arguments (regardless of your, or my, views on the quality of those arguments).

By contrast, Jack Bloom (DA Leader in the Gauteng legislature) seems to have no qualms in putting God at front and centre as a potential answer to South Africa’s ills, regardless of the diversity of belief among those who voted for his party (not to mention a large number of those who work for his party). In fact, God seems to have been here all along, not only facilitating the “transition from Apartheid”, but also working abroad in spurring the abolitionist movement against slavery, and inspiring people to formulate the “democratic concepts that led to the American Revolution”.

There’s no question that Bloom is sincere, and that he believes religion can play a role in encouraging people to think about their moral obligations. Sadly for those of us who think morality can only be principled if also secular, he’s in agreement with the DA’s general position here, where the party says that religion “should serve as a moral and spiritual inspiration“.

But even this view (the mistaken one, that morality and religion are easy bedfellows) is at least comprehensible, given that our country is mostly religious. Comprehensible, not reasonable, because if we need more prayer and less politics (as Bloom argues), surely the ACDP would have a far higher share of the votes?

What’s most egregious about Bloom’s opinion piece is that he by and large simply makes things up as he goes along, plucking historical events out of the timeline and – without any evidence (unless you count dubious correlations as evidence, which you shouldn’t) – attributes them to prayer and religion. It’s true that Lanphier drove a large Christian revival movement in the US during the mid-1800’s, yes, but to say that it was the Christianity – rather than basic human compassion or economics – that informed the abolition of slavery is an entirely circular argument, which assumes what it purports to demonstrate.

The American Revolution – also offered by Bloom as evidence for the power of prayer – seems more plausibly explained by something like the first 13 colonies revolting against rule by the British Empire, regardless of whether some or many the revolutionaries were religious. Their desire to be free doesn’t need religion to make sense, and it seems entirely spurious – and again circular – to use this as evidence for us needing more prayer and less politics.

And then of course there’s the elephant in the room: namely, that the data overwhelmingly suggest that on any benchmark of morality you care to pick, secular countries usually outperform religious ones. Corruption? Check. Divorce rates? Check. Crime? Check. Do a comparison for whatever measure you like using something like Google’s public data explorer, or read a simple and short book like Sinnott-Armstrong’s Morality without God.

One of the saddest aspects of public utterances like this from DA leaders, for me, is the fact that the DA has one clear advantage over other contenders in the political arena: the effective, and entirely pragmatically motivated, delivery of goods and services. That’s their clear competitive advantage, and the drum they should be beating more loudly than any other. But when a DA official – and a highly placed one at that – tells us that he hopes to outsource his job to God (at best) or collective insanity (at worst), it only reinforces the fear that populism is taking the place of common sense.

Bloom closes his piece with “maybe if we all prayed more the social change we desire will happen”. Seeing as all the existing studies of prayer’s efficacy show no effects (or in at least one case, negative effects), don’t hold your breath.

Edit: This post as well as a reply from Jack Bloom can be found on PoliticsWeb, where you’ll also find some entertaining comments. Also see another Christian perspective from Jordan Pickering.

 

TopTV plans to “release a flood of filth into our communities”

Or so says Errol Naidoo, in any case. I wasn’t planning to say anything about TopTV’s plans to launch 3 porn channels (provided by Playboy TV), because besides this involving TopTV rather than Multichoice, the salient details are identical to those in the DStv porn saga last year. But a few people have enquired as to my views, so here they are.

First, it remains true that we have no compelling evidence that pornography necessarily causes harm in itself. I can’t dispute that some people have had miserable lives, or been exploited and abused in the production of pornography. It’s true that it’s an industry which conduces to trafficking, and it’s plausible that it might lead some consumers to dysfunctional attitudes towards sexuality, gender equality and so forth. These are unwelcome and regrettable correlates of porn.

But as one can’t seem to say often enough, correlation doesn’t equal causation. The fact that many people consume pornography from within healthy relationships, or as singletons who are not disposed towards seal-clubbing, satanic rituals or violence against women and children shows that it’s possible for porn to come without these complications. Which tells us that as much as some production and consumption of porn can come with problems, those problems can be addressed directly without needing to shut down an entire industry. If it ends up being true that these problems are inescapably part of porn production, then I’d agree that porn should be more strictly controlled, and perhaps even eliminated (if that were possible). But they’re not, or at least we have no good evidence that they are.

Which leaves us in a position of having to balance various interests. On the one hand, we have TopTV (or Multichoice), who want to make money. They do this by offering a service that consumers want, in this case porn. If they’re wrong, and consumers don’t want it, then the channels will most likely be pulled. But what they are planning to offer is legal, and they are entitled to do so. Of course they should (from their own self-interested point of view, as well as from the point of view of not causing needless offence) do so in a responsible way. Their plan is to offer these 3 channels as an opt-in service at an extra cost each month. So, parents need to choose whether to allow these channels in their homes or not.

This is stage 1 of the firewall that protects the innocent, fragile children. Unless a parent chooses to subscribe, Jenny and Johnny won’t be exposed to any part of the “flood of filth”. Then, in stage 2 of the firewall, each viewing of one of the porn channels requires the viewer to enter a PIN code. A parent could change this code every day, if they so choose. What this firewall adds up to is that, if Jenny or Johnny end up watching any porn on TopTV, it’s the fault of the parents, not of TopTV.

Naidoo might of course say that this shouldn’t be broadcast even to parents (or adults). For consistency’s sake (although I’m not sure if he’s familiar with that concept), he might also have to say that there can be no violence on TV. There should certainly be no booze on TV – and perhaps there should be no cars on TV, seeing as those can also be used irresponsibly. But none of this really matters to Naidoo and his ilk, seeing as personal choice needs to make way for his fascist world of obedience to the dictates of God. Well, not your god, perhaps, but the one that he insists you believe in. You know, the homophobic one.

He also says that these parental controls aren’t sufficient because:

Despite TopTV’s assurances of parental controls, it will not stop sexually depraved adults from sexually abusing women and children. The majority of the 55 000 rapes of women & sexual abuse of 25 000 children in SA every year, are perpetrated by TopTV’s target market – adult men!

He’s right. TopTV’s parental controls won’t stop sexual abuse, because we’ve got no reason to believe that a) TopTV’s porn will cause their target market to want to go out and rape women or children, and b) all these people already have access to porn, for god’s sake. In the course of his “research”, surely Errol has come across porn that would make whatever PlayboyTV provides look like scenes of Bambi running through a forest?

Naidoo closes his December 8 newsletter with this:

I appeal to you to urgently write to TopTV CEO, Vino Govender and inform him that you will stop paying your subscription fees, cancel your contract or support a targeted boycott of TopTV advertisers if he launches his proposed porn channels in South Africa.

Email Vino Govender at acidrais@toptv.co.za and copy in Melinda Connor at mconnor@toptv.co.za

Christian consumers stopped Multichoice from launching a 24 hour porn channel on DStv last year. You and I can do it again! Christian citizens must stand up and do what is right!

Before you take a well-deserved holiday with your family – please consider the families that will suffer because of TopTV’s greed. Please encourage your family & friends to write today!

PS: Please forward this email to your family & friends and NOT TopTV [my emphasis]. Please also join us on the official FPI Facebook page for more updates and info about TopTV’s evil agenda.

Perhaps he doesn’t want TopTV to have advance warning of the tsunami of self-righteousness heading their way. I don’t know. But there’s the CEO’s email address. Feel free to write to him to express your support for freedom of choice. Or to say that, even though you don’t like porn yourself, you commend him for his efforts to ensure that it reaches only it’s target market, rather than innocent bystanders. And if you want to mail the other public protector, Errol Naidoo, you can do so here: enaidoo@familypolicyinstitute.com

Lotter trial: Satan (or maybe God) made me do it

As submitted to The Daily Maverick

The primary function of a trial is to find out who is guilty of what, and to establish an appropriate sanction for that crime. Justifying the sanction chosen has traditionally involved either the belief that punishment could reform or rehabilitate offenders, or the notion that retribution is an appropriate disincentivising signal of how society condemns the criminal act in question.

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John Gray’s accommodationist waffle

In a lengthy post for the BBC magazine, John Gray tells us that “what we believe doesn’t in the end matter very much. What matters is how we live”. The post is titled “A Point of View: Can religion tell us more than science?” – and while he certainly expresses a point of view, I don’t think it a particularly good one.

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The JSC hearings on Mogoeng Mogoeng

As submitted to The Daily Maverick

While I intended this column to be a follow-up on my thoughts on Slutwalk, dealing more generally with the topic of gendered epithets and why they are generally wrong, that will have to wait. Because as a colleague put it, I have ‘no infrastructure’ following a recent double-dip round of burglaries, and more than a tablet computer is required for the research needed to do that topic justice.

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Allowing yourself to be wrong

As submitted to The Daily Maverick

Having a conversation requires all the participants to be listening, but having a fruitful conversation often requires something more: The possibility that someone will leave the exchange with their mind changed. If not that, at least with some doubt as to whether their convictions are justified. Or, perhaps more typically, the sort of conversation that simply makes you want to have more of them, just like that one.

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Atheists and the politics of productive engagement

As submitted to The Daily Maverick

As I noted in last week’s column, prominent spokespersons for divisive views can make their arguments in more or less divisive ways. And while we shouldn’t confuse whatever offence is caused by antagonistic expressions of a viewpoint with the legitimacy of that viewpoint, I also don’t think we should ignore the fact that persuasion becomes more difficult when your audience is pissed off.

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Sam Harris, ‘new atheism’ and alleged Islamophobia

As submitted to The Daily Maverick

André Gide remarked that “everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again”. So it is with the recent article by Mandy de Waal, who took Sam Harris (and the ‘new atheists’ in general) to task for ‘hate speech’, ‘bigotry’ and encouraging so-called Islamophobia. It’s difficult to know just where to begin in responding, as I find the content of de Waal’s piece disagreeable in almost every aspect.

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Breivik, terror and Islamophobia

Of course it is unfortunate, and prejudiced, for many commentators to have assumed that Breivik was a Muslim – and for those who assumed this, the bias is clear in how they concocted quite torturous narratives to explain why a Muslim would target kids at a Labour Party camp. It made little sense that he would (from those motives), yet the perceived equivalence between terrorism and Islam were too strong for some to resist.

And now that we know he was not a Muslim, but that he was instead perhaps a Christian, probably a Mason, and certainly an ethnic nationalist, much outrage has resulted from the selective use of words like “terrorist”, or “fundamentalist” – once he was revealed to not be Muslim, some columns and Tweets stopped referring to Breivik as a terrorist. This again exposes a bias, whereby something that is the subject of extreme fear and emotive reaction is illegitimately associated with a particular religion.

But this is the problem with stereotypes – they are blunt instruments, which even when grounded in something true, can be so broad as to capture many cases that are not true. And this one is founded in something true, despite how impolitic it might be to say so. The fact that Breivik might be a “Christian fundamentalist” cannot obscure the fact that much of what we describe as “terror” in the recent past has come from those that we caricature as “Islamic fundamentalists”.

The fact that some Muslims will say that Muslim terrorists are “not real Muslims”, and that Christians will say that Breivik is not a “real Christian” is irrelevant. People who commit acts of terror get their mandate from something or other – and if a belief system can be interpreted to provide that mandate, this is a reality (and a problem) that that religion has to deal with. And as Sam Harris pointed out, it is an unfortunate fact that as far as religious belief systems go, Islam is correlated with a disproportionately large amount of oppression and intolerance of competing world-views, including secular world views such as those that promote gender equality.

The violence in Oslo is no excuse for Islamophobia. But we don’t need (another) one – as with all religions, Islam teaches you that propositions with no (or poor) evidence can be regarded as fact. Religions allow you to engage in metaphysical Ponzi schemes, whereby debts can be paid later down the line – rather than you being accountable right now, for what you do in this life. Again, it doesn’t matter that this might be a poor reading of whatever scripture, from whatever tradition, you want to thrust in my face – these traditions are open to such interpretations in ways that others are not, and they have to take responsibility for that.

Breivik’s problem – or our problem, that is presented by people like Breivik – is that he is perhaps insane, and that he believes nonsense so strongly that he is prepared to kill for it. Any of us – and any religions – that encourage belief in nonsense is at least partly culpable. If a particular religion has a larger component of such nonsense than another – such as routinely allowing rights violations and perpetuating gender inequality – it is proportionally more culpable.

This remains true, no matter how many Muslims, or Christians, are appalled by the actions taken in the name of their chosen fictions.

Elevatorgate and the power of words

As published in The Daily Maverick

Comment facilities on blog posts and online newspapers can be enormously valuable to both readers and writers, in that they allow for prompt corrections and clarifications of points of view. As all readers will know, they can also conduce to venting of spleen or expressions of odious viewpoints, as I’ve discussed in a previous column. But what they also allow for is a detachment from the arguments of the piece in question, where the comment thread rapidly takes on a life of its own, completely divorced from the ideas the author intended to explore.

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