Category: Religion

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

Affleck, Maher, Harris and Islamophia

sam_harris_200In 2011, I wrote a column defending Sam Harris against critics of his perceived “Islamophobia” (no scare-quotes from here on, but please assume that I consider the term problematic, for reasons including those I outline below).

I no longer agree with all that I had to say then. At the time, I thought that Islam was the subject of more critique from Harris than other religions were because he regarded Islam as the most dangerous in a range of religious beliefs. In other words, I was convinced that he had a pragmatic, rather than prejudiced, reason for focusing on it. As I said at the time:

Harris, and atheists in general, do have a problem with Islam, just as they have a problem with Christianity. If Zoroastrianism was still popular, we’d have a problem with that too. But this generalised antipathy stems from the fact that religion encourages people to believe things on the basis of poor or nonexistent evidence. If we think it a good thing that people tend to believe what is true and disbelieve what is false, believing things in this way would be a harmful trait that merits discouragement.

This discussion never really goes away, but it’s foregrounded at present thanks to the barbarism of ISIL, and – on a more prosaic level – a recent CNN interview with Reza Aslan, and then the Bill Maher segment featuring Ben Affleck and Sam Harris.

I’m not going to focus on those interviews in their specifics, but I encourage you to watch them if you care about the context. There are also numerous commentaries and critiques you could read – this one by Avicenna Last (on the Maher/Affleck/Harris segment) probably comes closest to capturing my response to Harris, and also includes a useful transcript of the show.

The purpose of this post is rather to make two points that are of general concern in this debate. First, on Islamophobia: Islam is of course not a “race”. However, there are other ways of being bigoted than simply being racist. And, when one responds to a charge that you’re prejudiced by (simply) asserting “I have nothing against Muslims, it’s their religion I hate”, you might forget that this can serve as an evasive gambit.

The religion is held by people – and held with great commitment and sincerity – so criticism of it might be difficult to separate from criticisms of them. Scott Atran is worth reading on the sociology and psychology of belief, and how wilfully obtuse the language of “I respect people, but not their ideas” can sound to people who hold the ideas you happen to disrespect.

Second, I do think that Harris (and others) don’t consistently make the point that it’s primarily the extremists that they think problematic. Their language (and sometimes tone, which I think important) can create the impression that their criticisms apply generically to Islam, especially (I’d suspect) to people of that faith.

The point that Affleck was trying to convey is that there is a tendency for critics of Islam to read or sound like fundamentalists themselves, in part because they assume that an audience is as capable of separating the context from the logic of argument as they are. Our discussions take place in a political context, and persuasion depends in part on recognising that.

It is relevant, as Affleck points out, that more than a billion Muslims are only similar to ISIL in the sense that they all pray five times a day. They’re not similar in the sense that they will kill for this right, and I’m also not persuaded by Harris’s claim in the End of Faith that moderates provide some sort of “cover” or “legitimacy” for extremists.

They all believe in the same god, sure, but from within a radically different value system – one which allows for beheading infidels and opponents, and the other not. The fact that these two sorts of Muslim are nominally on the same spectrum of belief doesn’t mean they should be conflated with each other.

Harris and other critics of Islam forget – or speak as if they have forgotten – that believers can have an interpretation of a holy text, rather than a set of dogmas related to it. Instead, critics take the most reactionary views and treat them as representative of the whole, or more broadly as the most authentic form of Islamic faith (with thanks to Kenan Malik for this insight).

What this move allows for is the invalidation of the beliefs and ways of living that are more typical or representative. If a Muslim were to say “well, I’m not offended by Danish cartoons”, you can retort with “but you’re not a typical (or even a ‘real’) Muslim, because you’re not being a literalist when it comes to interpreting your holy texts”.

But if the typical Muslim isn’t a literalist, why use that as the standard by which to criticise others? Isn’t it rather unusual to judge people by the standards of the most pure, or best, exponents of any skill, virtue of way of living? (“Son, I grant that you’re able to kick a ball, but you can’t be a real footballer until you’re as good as Cristiano Ronaldo.”)

How about if the anti-fundamentalists – like Harris – might be giving some cover or legitimacy for the extremists themselves, by making them seem more representative or relevant than they are?

Or, how about we make make an effort to keep those moderates on our side, by not speaking in ways that make it appear we see all Muslims as different only in degree, but not in kind – because when you say they are of the same kind, you’re telling your neighbour that she’s really just like the beheaders, when one dispenses with the tact.

Anti-fundamentalism can play into stereotypes, too – and maybe, in doing so, it can give some power to the extremists. Because if you cast them as martyrs, moderates will be surrounded with examples of their religious identities being questioned and attacked.

Would you think that makes them more, or less, less likely to join the secular battle against fundamentalism?

John Lennox and @Eusebius McKaiser debate: does morality need God?

eusebiusMckaisercroppedA trip to Johannesburg last week (for the unlikely purpose of presenting a paper at a nutrition conference!) was well-timed, in that I had the opportunity to both attend a debate between Christian apologist John Lennox and Eusebius McKaiser, as well as to join Eusebius in studio the next day for a chat on religion and its place in state-run schools.

You can find the embedded stream of my interview with Eusebius at the bottom of this post. But while it’s still relatively fresh in memory, I thought I should capture a few thoughts on the debate for those of you who could not attend. A recording of debate will appear on YouTube at some point too, I’m told.

The topic of the debate was “Morality and God: is there a connection?”, although the conversation also ended up touching on other issues including the role of God in generating significance in life, and whether atheists are at all handicapped with regard to understanding science.

In his opening remarks, Lennox made the claim that science and atheism were essentially in conflict, as atheism undermines rationality. This was the first of many occasions where I had the clear sense that Lennox was failing to extend himself beyond certain premises that he considered to be axiomatic.

For him, God generates meaning, in that God creates the syntax and grammar of science – the order of things, the directions in which they flow, how they fit together. So without grasping God, you’re handicapped in your capacity to understand science at all. (This is my analogy, but I think it captures what he was saying.)

This question of mine (above) was put to him later in the evening, and he responded by professing ignorance regarding the state of Islamic science. This evaded my question, in that the dilemma I tried to make him grapple with was the possibility that his religion was interchangeable with any other for the purposes of generating this scientific foundation.

If it was not, he’d have to argue that his was superior – an easy thing to assert, but not easy to make a case for, and one of those occasions where the fundamentalism of the axiomatic premises I spoke of above would be exposed.

Another moment of disappointment to me was when he described evolution as a “mindless unguided process”, which reveals a rather caricatured and false view of evolution. Evolution is strongly guided by natural selection – but if one equivocates around what “guided” means, or rather, stacks the deck in favour of only one sort of guided (by a conscious agent, like God), then Lennox can certainly win the day, but only at the expense of making a plainly circular argument.

And that’s the problem with these debates. I’ve debated a couple of apologists over the years also, and besides the opportunity these debates present for showing an audience how arguments work (or don’t work), there’s pretty much zero prospect of productive argument between the antagonists.

Even strong critiques have little impact, such as when McKaiser exposed the inconsistency of Lennox (and all religious folk, to an extent) happily living in the empirical world of cause and effect when it comes to their day to day lives, but then bringing what is (to an atheist) essentially magic into the conversation when speaking of the souls, free will, morality and so forth.

We have a number of compelling (and competing) accounts for how morality evolves or is generated in animals that demonstrate moral instincts – and many of these are more plausible than an account requiring the sort of leap of faith that religion does (and, never mind the difficulty of then making a principled choice between the various religious accounts).

Again, it would only be if you’re predisposed to be sympathetic to the religious (and Christian) account of these things that they have any chance of gaining traction. In a fair fight, as it were, the religious account would be dropped from the list of plausible hypotheses fairly early on.

Similar tactics (and results) were in evidence with questions around the significance of life – a question that only becomes interesting if you grant that life needs some grand metaphysical meaning. There’s no reason to grant that premise, though – it’s a challenge that only has any force because it’s the product of centuries of religious privilege.

The conversation was fair-minded for the most part, although there were a number of sly digs from each debater towards his opponent. I thought Lennox more guilty of this, but my count might be unreliable, thanks both to my epistemic framework and the fact that Eusebius is a friend.

I suspect that Eusebius and I don’t agree on the morality question, although that requires that I hear his view outside of a context in which he was mostly attempting to rebut Lennox, rather than offer his full explanation of how moral principles are generated.

From what I heard on Thursday, Eusebius is a moral realist, which I’m not, but then, at other times, he seemed to speak as if his account of the objectivity of moral truths was one grounded in something like rationality, reciprocal altruism and the social contract, which together make certain moral principles binding on any rational agent.

If that’s true, we’d agree in substance, but I’d object that this doesn’t mean objectivity or moral realism, but rather that we’d converge on the same principles for pragmatic and contingent reasons – certain moral principles would be akin to conclusions in science, in that they are the best-evidenced, rather than being true by necessity.

Were you there? If so, feel free to let me know what you thought, below.

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Some updates on God (and related matters)

imagesJohn Lennox – mathematician and Christian apologist – is in town again, and giving talks at UCT, Stellenbosch and in Johannesburg. I’ve twice had the pleasure (or at least, experience) of chatting to him at length regarding his views on whether there is a necessary connection between religion and morality, and there’s no question that he’s a very smart and sincere man.

But he’s also wrong.

I’ve written many posts over the years dealing with meta-ethics and morality, and have debated a few Christian apologists on these topics over the years. There’s little point in doing so with the hope of changing their minds (and vice versa), but these conversations can still be very valuable to an audience, in that listeners or readers could certainly benefit from hearing how much moral behaviour we find in non-human animals, or about the clear lack of correlation between religious belief and “good” moral choices.

If you’re in Johannesburg this Thursday night (September 18), you might be interested to attend a debate between Lennox and Eusebius McKaiser on exactly this topic. It takes place at 7pm in the Great Hall of Wits University, and I’m looking forward to hearing what Eusebius has to say on the topic.

Eusebius is unlikely to say much that I’ll want to disagree with on this topic, but I do want to use the debate as a segue to briefly return to a topic he and I do disagree on, namely the question of whether we should call ourselves atheists or agnostics.

I’ve written about this at length too, so I’ll just summarise the disagreement here. All knowledge – excepting technical points like Descartes’ cogito – does not entail certainty. We can be overwhelmingly convinced of the truth or falsity of any given proposition, and for the sake of communicative efficiency, we call those propositions “true” or “false”.

Furthermore, we’ll in all likelihood often right to call many of those propositions true or false. In other words, they correspond to the way the world actually is.

What does it mean to say that you’re an atheist, as opposed to an agnostic? Here’s the problem: it can mean at least three things. First, you could mean that you’re sure that there is no God – that “God exists” is a false proposition. Second, you could mean that you are sure that there are no gods at all, or in general – that all god claims are false. Or third, you could be saying that you regard it as overwhelmingly likely that one of the two formulations above are correct, without claiming certainty.

The third formulation is consistent with the way in which I treat all other propositions, and I see no reason to treat propositions relating to God(s) differently. I don’t claim certainty for any other propositions, and wouldn’t want to claim one here, even if the chances of God(s) existing are vanishingly small.

Does that, then, make me an agnostic, as opposed to an atheist? Eusebius says yes, it does, and that it’s a more epistemically responsible choice to call myself an agnostic. And here’s where he’s not so much wrong, but perhaps reaching a slightly hasty and unsubtle conclusion.

We don’t need a qualifier like agnostic (in the sense that it qualifies that you’re not certain) when we speak about propositions like grass being green, or smoking causing cancer. Everyone from one interpretive community – the philosophically inclined one – will fill in the epistemic doubt for themselves, and know that you’re not making an absolute claim.

However, everyone from a different interpretive community – those who regard truth claims as being absolute – will simply assume you’re using language in the conventional sense (and to be honest, how most of us use it, most of the time), and that you are making a claim of absolute certainty.

And this, in turn, opens up the possibility of using these words – just like we use most words – to signal a certain stance or attitude towards the proposition in question, cognisant of who the audience is. If Eusebius and I are talking, we could both say we are atheists, and neither of us will assume the other is claiming certainty. Likewise, we could both say we are agnostics, and neither of us will assume that the other is in doubt about the overwhelming likelihood that we are correct in saying God(s) don’t exist.

But when talking to other people, especially ones we don’t know, we can be fairly confident that the common understanding of “agnostic” is “we’re not sure” – in other words, it signals that it’s an open question to us as to whether God(s) exist or not. And while it’s an open question in a strictly logical sense, it’s not an open question in any practically relevant sense, just like it’s not an open question whether grass is green or not.

So, using the word “atheist” – in situations where we don’t have the time to explain all this – might well both capture our position more accurately (in the mind of the audience), as well as serve a useful political function in reinforcing the notion that the proposition in question (that God exists) is one that we consider overwhelmingly likely to be false.

Having said that, I’ve come to prefer “agnostic atheist”, in that it seems a “best of both worlds” response, as well as one that tends to open up an interesting conversation, thanks both to not appearing to be dogmatic, and because it tends to discourage a dogmatic response (except in the case of some atheists, who think it a cop-out).

Before moving on to a different topic, I’d encourage you to take a look at Eusebius’s column this week. I agree with most of it, but would again want to disagree on some elements of politics and strategy, especially with regard to his example of Richard Dawkins, who has progressed from being a useful lightning rod to becoming somewhat of a troll.

In relation to the column, all I’ll say here – before this becomes far too long – is that while it’s of course true that the concept of God shouldn’t be treated with kid gloves, that logical point can be used as an excuse to be quite the bully (I don’t think Eusebius and I disagree on this point, though).

Moving on:

You might remember Andrew Selley, the chairperson of the Christian advocacy group FOR-SA, for his valiant (sarcasm font) efforts to secure parents the right to beat their children, because that’s apparently what Jesus would have wanted. He has written a more recent post arguing that the OGOD case against 6 schools entails “The Court … being asked to order that Christianity be removed and banned from the schools.”

That’s simply untrue – the point of the lawsuit is equality of representation, and obeying existing regulations that require schools to be essentially secular. He goes on to argue that the schools are welcoming to other faiths, but as I’ve said in the past, paying lip-service to inclusivity does not amount to inclusivity in practice. If a school advertises themselves as having a Christian character, that immediately a) decreases the likelihood of other faiths (and nonbelievers) getting a welcoming reception, and b) increases the likelihood that the school will remain Christian, because those of other faiths (and nonbelievers) will be less likely to apply to that school.

Lastly, I’m pleased to see the launch of an “Open Mosque” in Cape Town, where women will be treated equally, and where homophobia will not be tolerated. It should be noted that Sataar Parker, spokesperson for Cape Town’s biggest mosque, Masjid Ul Quds in Athlone, says this is “nothing new”, with their mosque having been “open” in these senses for 25 years. Whether that’s true or not I don’t know, but if it is, we can simply celebrate their now being two such mosques available to Cape Town Muslims.

 

Religion in schools, religion on your plate

A quick update from a broadband-compromised hotel room in Botswana, on two three four matters that will no doubt be of interest to regular readers.

downloadFirst, you might have noticed that a few of us on social media had renewed cause to be exasperated at the Dawkinsian Twitter presence of Prof. Tim Noakes (for those who don’t follow that link, I’m referring to his predilection for saying outrageous things on Twitter, and then blaming the audience for reacting to those utterances).

Fresh from hinting that Robin Williams’ mental turmoil might have been due to his vegetarianism, and from misrepresenting his own words about LCHF diets and their relationship to cancer, dementia and so forth, Noakes thought to make a point about bad science and potential cover-ups of inconvenient data by posting fodder for the anti-vaccination lot.

Nathan Geffen has said enough on the tweet in question, so I’ll not go into it in detail here, except to make two points: one, Noakes’ first defence, when people (rightly) called him out for tweeting “Dishonest science. Proven link between autism and early immunisation covered up?” (with a link to a video about an alleged CDC cover-up) was to say he was “just asking questions”.

Those are weasel-words of the highest order, in that they absolve the speaker of all responsibility for what they are saying, and place the entire interpretive burden and responsibility on the audience. When you are a prominent healthcare professional, operating in full awareness of a context where pseudoscience is rife – and sometimes manifests in anti-vaxxine conspiracy theories, that kill people – your words should be chosen more carefully.

Also, some of you might remember a certain President Mbeki using the “just asking questions” defence regarding HIV/AIDS. Mbeki actually believed in the “alternative” story regarding HIV, so his weasel-words were an attempt to deflect criticism, and gain support for challenging the mainstream hypothesis.

In the case of Noakes, he seems to believe in the consensus view regarding the safety of vaccines, which is comforting. He might have wanted to say “Dishonest science, as in this CDC coverup, is never acceptable – even if the CDC reached the correct conclusion”. He could perhaps even have chosen to clarify the point on noticing how it was being read, instead of doubling-down on blaming his audience for misinterpreting him.

It’s difficult not to misinterpret him when, at the time he tweeted that video, it was mostly to be found floating around on Natural News (home of David Icke – he who thinks Maggie Thatcher was an alien lizard in human form – and other nutters) and on anti-vaxx conspiracy websites. The only non-tinfoil-hat discussion of it that I could find at the time was that of neurologist oncological surgeon David Gorski, who comprehensively debunked it – before Noakes had tweeted it. (The Gorski links are in Geffen’s piece.)

Normally, it would be far too demanding to ask that someone had found and read potential debunkings such as Gorski’s, in advance of sharing a story. But I’d argue that a higher standard applies when tweeting something of this nature, from an account such as his.

There are examples of bad science and cover-ups that don’t run the risk of reinforcing pseudoscience, which could have served as his example of the same point. If this example was to be used, it was incumbent on Noakes to make sure that he wasn’t perpetrating a hoax. Sloppy, and irresponsible, in other words – and the kind of thing that merited a retraction and an apology.

Instead, he’s now asking Geffen to apologise and retract, yesterday commenting with a link to Dr. Thompson’s (the CDC scientist) statement, which Noakes reads as vindicating his tweet. But again, the statement in question had by that time already been extensively discussed and problematised, and more to the point, the paper that exposes the “conspiracy” had already been retracted 6 days earlier.

The Noakes comment is however oblivious to all this, opening with “Looks like the cover-up is indeed real so what I wrote is correct”, going on to quote extensively from Thompson’s statement, and then closing with “Can we now expect also a retraction of your article, Mr Geffen? And an apology?”.

This is the problem with relying on your Twitter following for breaking science news, which you then retweet: it’s often late, and it’s often uninformed.

The second matter is the paper that was recently published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, and is purported to show that… wait, I’ll let Noakes introduce it:

By the way did you see this scientific paper that made the headlines in New York and Boston on Monday and has become something of a hit on the social media?

Incidentally this is the 24th such scientific study to show the superiority of the low carbohydrate over the low fat diet. The science is outlined in Real Meal Revolution in 20 000 words with 4 pages of references.

But it seems you have not read any of it?

The account of the paper that’s being most widely shared is the one you can read in the New York Times, which indeed shares Noakes’ enthusiastic reading. Others are not as convinced, arguing that it demonstrates nothing of the sort. Here’s Dr. Yoni Freedhoff with a more temperate analysis, and Dr David Katz makes similar points.

As always, my concern is not the diet – it’s the fact that it’s misleading to present things as certain when they are not, and to suggest to a trusting audience that things are “proven” or settled when they are nothing of the sort. It’s also disingenuous, in light of uncertainty, to sneer at your critics in the way that last quoted sentence does.

A scientist should want the lay public to understand that science is complex, and that it’s not a place for ad hominem dismissals or assuming some epistemic high ground without warrant for doing so. To quote a learned professor:

The third matter, in brief: Eusebius McKaiser and I are going to try something that might be good fun on the radio tomorrow – an argument workshop, where we discuss some critical thinking concepts you might find of interest (or at least, entertaining, in light of examples such as the above). Do tune in to PowerTalk (on PowerFM) at 11am if you’re keen to listen or call in.

Apologies, but I have to now mention a fourth thing, or else the post’s title will make no sense. My friend Hans Pietersen has recently brought a case to court, involving schools that violate the secularity provisions of South Africa’s National Policy on Religion in Education. I’ve written about the policy (and this issue) many times before, but myself and others have had little to no joy in getting schools to play ball, despite many letters and calls to principals, district offices and the like.

A lawsuit is a last resort, but unfortunately, one that seems necessary in this case. Hans’s press release regarding the case can be downloaded here, and if you want to keep up with his organisation on Facebook, their group is called OGOD. Marianne Thamm’s Daily Maverick column on this issue is also worth reading, for background as well as some early reaction.

Children, religion, and distinguishing fact from fiction

prayOne of the less attractive traits of the non- (and especially, the anti-) religious is that we can sometimes allow confirmation bias to lead us into believing rather uncharitable claims regarding the role of religion in society, or the effect that a religious upbringing can have on children.

Confirmation bias – the tendency to favour information that confirms what you already believe and disfavour contrary evidence – is of course not unique to us heathens. It’s just that as one of them, I’m concerned about the bad PR we (hello, Prof. Dawkins!) sometimes generate. So, I’m inclined to be wary when I read headlines like this, in the HuffPo:

Children Exposed To Religion Have Difficulty Distinguishing Fact From Fiction, Study Finds

The headline creates the impression that children brought up in a religious environment might well think that Harry Potter is real, perhaps lives just up the street, and that maybe there’s a chance that you might become a wizard too if luck shines her light upon you.

What a popular website reports that a “study finds” isn’t always a neat fit to what the study actually says. So if you have access, I’d recommend that you read the paper by Corriveau, Chen and Harris yourself, or alternately at least read the more sober take on it that was published by Vox.

To briefly summarise, the paper describes how 5 and 6 year-old children from religious, parochial and secular backgrounds were presented with Biblical stories in original and modified (one including “magic” but no God; the other a realistic version) forms, and then asked to express a view on whether the protagonists were real or fictional.

Here’s one of the stories (the story of Joseph) in its three forms, quoted from the paper:

Religious
This is Joseph. Joseph was sent to a mean king in a land far away. However, God sent Joseph many dreams warning about terrible storms, and Joseph used those dreams to tell the king how to protect his kingdom from the storms. The king was so amazed by Joseph and they became friends.
Fantastical
This is Joseph. Joseph was sent to a mean king in a land far away where there were terrible storms. Joseph used his magical powers to see into the future, and told the king how to protect his kingdom from the storms. The king was so amazed by Joseph and they became friends.
Realistic
This is Joseph. Joseph was sent to a mean king in a land far away where there were terrible storms. The king realized that Joseph was very good at looking at clouds and predicting when there would be rain. The king was so amazed by Joseph and they became friends.

Vox summarises the lead author’s response as follows:

What was most interesting to Corriveau, however, was how children classified the fantastical story: while secular children classified it as pretend 87 percent of the time, religious children only did so about 40 percent of the time. To Corriveau, this suggests that “religious children have a broader conception of what can actually happen.” In other words, she told me, “religious exposure may influence the way in which children mark the boundary between factual and fictional, allowing for a more likely suspension of disbelief.”

It’s not obviously true that having a broader conception of the range of possibilities is a bad thing – in fact, it seems rather banal to observe that one of the fun things about childhood is being able to engage in flights of fancy. I don’t have data on this, but I’d imagine that most of us did so to varying degrees.

Our imaginations might not have led us all to imagine the same sorts of things, but whatever it was that we imagined, those imaginings were not only enjoyable (well, leaving aside nightmares), but also conducive to creativity both then and in later life.

Fantasy, as with chemical substances, can be good or bad depending on the dose – it’s not yet a problem when we simply observe that 5 or 6 year-olds with exposure to religion are more credulous when hearing tales of people doing magical things. In fact, we can’t rule out the possibility that at that age, and depending on how it progresses, that it’s actually a good thing, and that it’s the secular children who are impoverished.

I’ve said this before, and while I know that many of my heathen friends and colleagues don’t agree, the majority of religiously-educated children who grow up to be religious adults don’t regard their religious texts as literally true. Even Dawkins’ (who has spoken of teaching kids they might go to hell as “child abuse“) own research suggests that to most Christians in the UK, the Bible hardly features in their lives at all, even as moral guidance never mind as a guide to reality.

In other words, we don’t have good reason (from this study) to say that because religiously-educated children are more credulous, we end up with defective adults. I’m not suggesting that it’s impossible that this is the case – just that we don’t yet know that it is.

Using studies like this to make claims like that is perhaps just as fantastical as the thing you’re objecting to – and more to the point, it’s an obnoxious thing to do.

Chief Justice Mogoeng, religion and the law

In September of 2011, I was one of those to express concerns regarding Mogoeng Mogoeng’s suitability for the position of Chief Justice. At the time, I noted that “there is a distinct danger that he would be unable to separate his faith from his duties as a jurist”, and also remarked on how his appointment would occur in a context of apparent tolerance for homophobia on the part of the President himself, as well as in the appointment of someone like Jon Qwelane as ambassador to Uganda.

However, there has been no reason (that I’m aware of, at least) to fear that the worst has in fact come to pass. Morally conservative he may be, and also homophobic, but I’ve seen nothing to indicate that Mogoeng has been anything other than the loyal servant of the Constitution that he swore to be when appointed.

Continue reading “Chief Justice Mogoeng, religion and the law”

Liberal bullying can still be bullying

To quote a September 2013 version of me,

there’s an arms-race of hyperbole going on, especially on the Left, and therefore especially in matters pertaining to social justice. This is understandable, especially because the Right has bombarded the world with similar hyperbole for long enough. But the trend is not a good one, and we should resist it.

It’s not good, partly because we denude language through doing so. More importantly, though, it’s not good because it gives an intrinsic advantage in argument to those who shout the loudest, and who are willing to claim that they are most fundamentally or critically hurt. And in the long run, it’s not good because the only rational (or sadly, so it might seem) way to respond to a climate of hypersensitivity is to shut up, and not say anything at all, for fear of offending someone.

EichI’m not at all sure where the dividing line is between expressing justified grievances and bullying someone out of a debate – or out of a job, as happened to Brendan Eich, ex-CEO of Mozilla, yesterday. While it’s true that some viewpoints are not worth entertaining, that doesn’t necessarily mean that someone who holds those viewpoints shouldn’t be allowed to, and shouldn’t be allowed to campaign for them without fear of reprisals.

Homophobia is wrong, and harmful – you’ll find plenty of posts over the years highlighting the offence, hurt, injustice and sometimes even murders that can be attributed to homophobia, from the relatively trivial cases of Error Naidoo to the properly odious Scott Lively, who had a part in inspiring the criminalisation of homophobia in Uganda.

However, it’s not at all clear to what extent Brendan Eich is a homophobe at all, unless we define homophobia simply as the belief that certain legal entitlements should be reserved for heterosexual people. Again, I must stress that I personally reject that belief – discrimination based on sexuality is premised on an entirely arbitrary characteristic, and is thus unjust and should be unlawful.

Usually.

Because as usual, there’s a background issue that needs to influence our reading of a case like this, and that issue is that Eich is a Christian, who believes that marriage is something ordained by God, and reserved for a man and a woman. And for as long as we (or in this case, the USA) respects freedom of religion, that’s not only a legitimate belief to hold, but also a legitimate position to campaign for, and to donate money to defending.

Perhaps we should weaken our respect for freedom of religion, and insist that a church or a minister who wanted to marry anyone should also be willing to officiate marriages for gay couples. If you won’t marry a gay couple, you can’t marry anyone. Perhaps we should argue that if you get tax breaks from government, you should lose them if you discriminate on arbitrary grounds such as sexuality, or race, or gender.

But that’s not where we are, yet, and (some) churches are still operating in a grey zone where their archaic morality is grudgingly accommodated, even in progressive democracies. Maybe it shouldn’t be – but for as long as it is, Eich has a warrant for believing (on his, archaic, standards) that it’s not unjust to deny homosexual couples the right to marry, and that it should be unlawful for them to marry.

This is the cause that Eich was supporting, in that he gave a $1000 donation, in his personal capacity, to a campaign in support of Proposition 8 (that sought to outlaw gay marriage) in California. He wasn’t alone – Proposition 8 passed, meaning that over 50% of voters voted in favour of it, before it was later overturned by the courts.

All of those people who voted for Prop 8 were – and no doubt, still are – wrong. But of those thousands of people, Eich might be the only one who was hounded out of his job, after his donation came to be public knowledge. The dating website, OKCupid, displayed a banner to Mozilla Firefox users, telling them  to change their browsers because of Eich’s position. This and similar moves (e.g. Rarebit apps, who pulled their apps from Firefox), as well as sustained criticism on social media, led Eich to resign (or so we’re told – he might well have been pushed, judging by the Mozilla chairperson’s statement that “We failed to listen, to engage, and to be guided by our community”).

So, in essence, Eich lost his job for being a Christian (of a certain sort). One of my closest friends would (I think – I haven’t checked this detail) hold the same view regarding gay marriage, and is certainly no homophobe in any other sense. I think he’s wrong about marriage and who it should be reserved for – but I would think it even more wrong if he were not able to hold the view he does, for fear of losing his job.

Yet, of course we should be able to express our dissatisfaction, even sometimes outrage, at the things people do and support. As I said at the top, I don’t know where we draw the line. But Eich operating in his personal capacity is a separate thing to his role at Mozilla, and his personal democratic choices are legitimate ones until the law says they are not. He was acting in accordance with his religious beliefs, which are constitutionally protected.

If you think that’s wrong, you need to campaign against freedom of religion, not against Eich.

(Related – an earlier piece on the Chick-fil-A homophobia.)

Ken Ham is concerned about Aronofsky’s “psychopathic Noah”

imagesA few nights ago, Ken Ham and a few of his fundie friends went to go and watch Aronofsky’s new film, an adaptation of the Biblical story of Noah. Ham’s blog makes his attitude toward the film clear – it’s “disgusting”, “evil”, and left him feeling “unclean”. It was allegedly also “boring”, which it pretty much the only complaint of Ham’s that might hold some water.

It’s in the review that TIME magazine somehow thought worth printing that Ham turns his irony-meter completely off (assuming irony is something that fits with his rather alien worldview, that is). He says:

Except for some of the names in the movie, like Noah, his sons’ names, and Methuselah, hardly any remnant of the Bible’s account of the Flood in Genesis 6-9 is recognizable. Yes, there is an Ark in the film that is true to the massive biblical proportions, but it did not look like a seaworthy vessel. There were many animals that came to Noah and went on board the Ark, but there were far too many creatures crammed inside and certainly many more than were needed.

So, you’re upset about a lack of realism in a Hollywood movie? That’s par for the course – especially with a big-budget blockbuster. Furthermore, complaining about the number of animals in an ark that supposedly held thousands – if not hundreds of thousands – of animals seems pretty rich. Even on Ham’s version from Answers in Genesis, the ark held around 16 000 animals, and Ham’s version is a rather conservative reading.

But regardless of the exact number, the point is that the story is a fable, and you’re a little deluded if you think it literally true, regardless of whether it’s 16 000 or 60 000 animals. And on a more trivial matter, if the film version of the Noah pictures “far too many animals crammed inside”, then Ham seems to be a really quick – and eerily accurate – counter of animals, because I’d imagine that even 16 000 would look like “far too many” when pictured on screen.

Most amusing of all is Ham’s closing observation:

“Noah” is an insult to Bible-believing Christians, an insult to the character of Noah, and most of all, an insult to the God of the Bible. As a result, I believe Hollywood will have a much harder time in marketing future biblically themed movies to Christians.

“Hollywood” must be quaking in their boots, wondering how to cope with the loss of custom from fundamentalist creationist folk. As for me, I’ll skip Noah, and wait for Noah II, “the story of how two koalas get from Mount Ararat to Australia” (as a Twitter friend put it).

Scientism vs. Philosophism?

Earlier this week, Twitter user @fardarter alerted me to a paper recently published by Massimo Pigliucci, in the journal Midwest Studies in Philosophy. The paper isn’t very technical (and, not behind a paywall), so non-philosphers shouldn’t be afraid of taking a look, assuming that you’re interested in its core topic, namely what Pigliucci describes as the “scientistic turn” in the atheist movement.

Pigliucci’s paper has strong words for Hitchens, Dawkins, Harris, Stenger and PZ Myers, setting them up as exemplars of a

totalizing attitude that regards science as the ultimate standard and arbiter of all interesting questions; or alternatively that seeks to expand the very definition and scope of science to encompass all aspects of human knowledge and understanding.

As you might expect, the paper has attracted responses from some of its targets. Jerry Coyne’s response is rather ill-tempered, even as he criticises Pigliucci for his “arrogance” and “attack-doggishness”. PZ Myers is characteristically snarky in his dismissal of Pigliucci’s paper, pointing out that Pigliucci needs to cherry-pick examples for his case to have any merit at all.

Before I add my own (slightly tangential) contribution, I’d also want to remind you of 50 Great Myths About Atheism, in which Russell Blackford and Udo Schüklenk address the topic “Atheism implies Scientism” as myth #43. My brief review of “50 Great Myths” is available on that Amazon page, but in brief, this chapter – and the rest of the book – are well-worth reading for a nuanced take on this and other important issues.

And, nuance is precisely the problem with the two responses to Pigliucci highlighted above, as well as with parts of Pigliucci’s paper itself. There’s a world of difference between the “proper”, and unapologetic, scientism of Alex Rosenberg and the strong naturalism of a Coyne or a Myers, just as there’s a world of difference between the out-there philosophising of Nick Bostrom’s “Simulation argument” and the (typically) pragmatic work of a Daniel Dennett, for example.

The fruitful discussions – in my experience at least – have been in the spaces between these caricatures, and I think that a commenter on Myers’ post, Dominik Miketa, gets it right when he says

I think that atheism itself is not a scientific position, but a philosophical position heavily informed by science, the difference arising due to the fact that, as Massimo has noted, it is pretty much impossible to pin down a set of specific ‘God hypotheses’ that we could mechanically verify or falsify. To be more concrete, you say “Why shouldn’t we reject ideas that might be pretty to some people, but contradict reality?” To which I reply: because you can’t actually show that those ideas contradict reality. What you can do is show that given the theories which form our best-supported science and a satisfactory philosophy of science, those ideas ought to be rejected. To say that science itself has done the work is to skip a step, which may seem nitpicky here, but can be crucial when the science is at least a bit hazy and can be perceived by some as ambiguous – in the case of evo psych, say.

Scientific reasoning and philosophy are partners in a truth-seeking endeavour, and it’s precisely because of this intersection (in atheism) that we need to be aware of nuance, because when you have firmly-held beliefs – and when you’re challenging firmly held-beliefs in others – it can be easy to become complacent or dogmatic about our strategies, and even our epistemic habits.

Spending a lot of time with younger atheists, I notice plenty of the smugness (unwittingly, no doubt) captured in the picture below. Here Neil deGrasse Tyson is used to make the point that science is awesome (which it certainly is) – in fact, so awesome that nothing else can make an impact.

DGT

In my experience (and a similar point is made at the conclusion of the comment that I quote above), this sort of attitude is contiguous with the attitude that says “religion is universally bad”, and gets in the way of many attempts at cross-cultural understanding, or interfaith work.

And to my mind, this attitude is currently being reinforced by the fact that many of the prominent new atheists are scientific in outlook, even when they are trying to do philosophy (cf. Sam Harris). Now, this isn’t the fault of these new atheists – as Myers points out in his response, for example, it’s not at all plausible to describe him as being hostile to philosophy.

For readers, philosophy is (or, can be) difficult, so it’s no surprise that we might remember, and have more conversations about, scientifically-framed debunkings of the latest quackery from Deepak Chopra or whomever. That pleasure of finding “the evidence” that destroys some opponent’s case is seductive, to be sure, just as it’s satisfying (mostly for reasons of ego, I’d wager) for Pigliucci, Myers and Coyne to trade insults across their respective bows.

But perhaps, while they are doing so, readers might want to remind themselves, and sometimes be reminded, that this isn’t a zero-sum game. Blog squabbles are just another example of framing things as a contest, a verbal smack-down, where each party defends turf that they’ve either claimed or been pigeonholed into.

In this case, as is so often true, there’s something to be learned from everybody. As Russell Blackford said in a Twitter conversation we were having on this, a few hours ago, “we need patience and doxastic openness all round!”

Amen to that.

On “quitting” activist (atheist) communities (or maybe, just changing strategy?)

Late last year, my friend Martin Pribble blogged – in a piece that was later adapted for Slate,

I’m through with being an “activist atheist”. That’s right, I no longer want to troll Facebook and Twitter for theists and tell them why they are wrong, I no longer want to make fun of theists for their unreasonable beliefs, and I no longer want to be part of the online atheist “community”.

I’m very sympathetic with much of what he expresses there, which by and large indicates a significant change of focus rather than a literal “quitting” of the community. After all, he’s still on the Internet, and he still talks about religion. Instead, what he was attempting to convey was a shift in strategy – less simply pointing out when and where religious folk say something that sounds silly, and more focusing on what we need to do to fill the spaces that religion seems to fill in people’s lives.

In defining and arguing for the priority of what he calls “methodological humanism” over fact-checking and refuting religious utterances, Pribble isn’t saying that you – as a hypothetical “firebrand” atheist – are doing something wrong. But some of the reactions (“The evident lack of self-awareness in this piece is awesome. Is it satire or is he really this dense?”) made it clear that to some, Pribble was having forbidden thoughts. If you’re an atheist, some twitterers seemed to be saying, it’s compulsory to call religious folk out on their every logical error, and to ignore any common ground you might find.

The quote above was from an atheist, but he received plenty of flack from religious people too (regardless of the fact that they seem to not have read, or carefully read, the piece in question. “Why in the world atheists feel the need to proselytize their beliefs is beyond me” hardly seems a fitting response to a piece that argues against proselytising, and “Impressive writing to fit so much hubris, bigotry, hatred, stereotyping, & intellectual bankruptcy into a short essay” just seems like someone, well, parodying exactly what Pribble is trying to steer away from.

We’ve got to try harder to see, and talk about, the nuance that’s available between the extremes. It’s difficult, yes, but that’s also where much of the truth lies. One size doesn’t fit all, and there’s no reason to reject someone else’s strategy simply because you – or one of your intellectual heroes – chooses a different path. And even if there are a number of errors or misrepresentations in a piece, that doesn’t always mean you can’t learn something from it.

Take, for example, this piece on Dawkins with the inflammatory title of “Richard Dawkins, shut up and listen“. There’s lots in there to find fault with, in particular, the consistently negative interpretation of Dawkins’ intentions in the Twitter exchange documented there. Dawkins is framed as an oppressor – never given the benefit of the doubt. As I’ve argued before, he adopts a particular tone and strategy on Twitter, and to my mind, it sometimes fails, and he’s sometimes wilfully misread.

But if you only focus on how Dawkins has been misrepresented in that piece, or if you only focus on what one commentator described “liberalism attempting to eat itself”, you might stand less of a chance of recognising whatever good might exist in the argument you’re addressing.

The last two paragraphs of the “shut up and listen” piece present a totalitarian and judgemental summary of an imagined Richard Dawkins, and are uncharitable to the extreme. But between the extreme of the (misrepresented) Dawkins and Dawkins’ misrepresentation (to my mind, at least) of Salya Shaban AlHamdi, we can find (via Dawkins) a reminder that identity politics are an easy (but lazy) shield against fair critique, and via AlHamdi, that the reminder in question often won’t be heard, if it’s said with a sneer.

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