Atheist: Hey man, how you doin'?
Theist: Not so well, actually. I've been feeling really tired, and my leg hurts all the time.
A: Actually I've been meaning to talk to you about that. I think I know why you're not feeling well.
T: Why?
A: Not to put too fine a point on it, but you have an 18 lb. iron ball chained to your ankle.
T: What? You're crazy!
A: No seriously. Look: I'm pretty sure that's an 18 lb. iron ball, and see, there's the chain and the shackle around your ankle.
T: Oh, that's just my religion. That can't be why I'm feeling bad.
A: I'm pretty sure that's the cause. It takes a lot of energy to drag an 18 lb iron ball around.
T: But my mom gave it to me!
A: Your mom? Not to diss your mom, but why would she chain an 18 lb. iron ball to your ankle?
T: She had one, my dad had one, my grandparents all had one; why shouldn't I have one too? And I told you, it's not an 18 lb. iron ball, it's my religion.
A: Well, you can have it if you want it, but like I said, that's what's making you tired all the time.
T: Speaking of which, where's your 18 lb. iron ba... I mean... religion?
A: I took it off when I was in Jr. High. It's actually pretty easy. Here let me show you: You just turn this doohicky here and...
T: DON'T TOUCH MY RELIGION!
A: Whoa! Sorry dude. I didn't mean anything.
T: But how do you get around without an 18 lb... um... without a religion?
A: I walk, same as you. Except I don't have to drag around an 18 lb. iron ball everywhere I go.
T: But if you don't have a... a religion, you could just take people's stuff and run away.
A: I suppose so, but I don't want to do that. Besides, I can't outrun everyone, iron balls or not. And you could do the same if you wanted to. It just takes a second to take it off.
T: But if I keep it on, I'll go to heaven; if I take it off, I'll go to hell!
A: You're kidding me, right? You might as well say that if you kiss Hank's ass, he'll give you a million dollars when you leave town, but if you don't, he'll kick the shit out of you.
T: Hank? Who's Hank?
A: Never mind. I'm just saying: Do you know anyone who's gone to either heaven or hell? I mean do you personally know?
T: Duh! I'm not stupid. Of course not. You go to heaven or hell after you die. Everyone knows that.
A: So how do you know?
T: Well it stands to reason, doesn't it? If I go around my whole life with an 18 lb.... er... religion, surely I deserve to go to heaven.
A: The world doesn't work that way, though. Flap your arms every day and you'll never end up on the Moon.
T: Well, if I'm right, I've traded an eternity in hell for an eternity in heaven. If I'm wrong, I've lost nothing.
A: Except that you have to carry around an 18 lb. iron ball your whole life.
T: But I like carrying around my... um... my religion.
A: You do? Just now you were just complaining about being tired and your leg hurting.
T: That's not because of my religion.
A: It isn't?
T: No. Pastor Hardwick explained it to me: We're tired all the time and our legs hurt because... [lyrical voice] Many years ago, the first man and the first woman broke God's law by eating a magical apple, and he punished them by making their legs hurt. It's only by wearing our 18 lb.... I mean, it's only by our religion that we can atone for that sin and run around in heaven after we die.
A: Um... you believe that?
T: Sure! Can you prove me wrong?
A: I need to prove that story wrong? Are you serious?
T: Of course.
A: Well, I guess you've got me there. It's impossible to prove wrong.
T: So it's true! Besides, Pastor Hardwick runs around like nobody's business, and he has an 18 lb. iron... I mean, he's the most religious guy there is.
A: I know. Have you checked out Hardwick's "iron" ball?
T: Yeah. It's very light.
A: It's papier-mâché. Painted black. He takes it off at night. Ever notice how he'll come up, put his hands on you, and then walk away quickly.
T: Yeah, so what?
A: Ever check your wallet afterwards?
T: No, why?
A: Ah, never mind. Look man, I have to go. Good luck with the whole religion thing.
A: Theists! Totally impervious to reason. [walks off]
T: Atheists! Totally impervious to reason. [walks off... thump, drag, thump, drag...]
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
The New Atheism
Let's talk about what the New Atheism is really all about.
The New Atheism does indeed assert that it is just as simple (and considerably more useful) to drop God like we drop Santa Claus when we're eight. We would indeed, as John Haught claims, offend the "old" atheists, Sarte, Nietzsche, Camus, etc. with our flippancy. So much the worse for the old boys. They're pretentious, deeply vain and fearful, and, like many philosophers, mostly full of shit. There are hundreds of millions of atheists living without a shred of existential angst. Millions who realize that existential angst is just the fear of the newly-freed slave, so conditioned to obedience that the prospect of simple choice fills him with dread.
But atheism is easy: It's rational to simply do what you want, for no other reason than that you want it. You do of course have to understand how the real world works: If you want to fly to the Moon, you must do some complicated, expensive things to get there, but the only reason you need to do those complicated things is that you want to. You'll also have to keep in mind that there are six billion other people, many of them with fists, sticks, rocks, guns, and some with nuclear weapons, and all of them want things of their own. I advise everyone to consider their reaction before acting on their own desires.
Reality — and many other people — are utterly indifferent to your happiness or suffering. If you're going to find happiness and avoid suffering, you need to take personal responsibility and act sensibly and rationally, or the universe will use you harshly. If you wait around for a just and loving God to make you happy, you're just buying a lottery ticket: A few people get lucky, but everyone else dies unhappy. And once you're dead, that's it. Worm food. Sucks to be mortal, eh?
The New Atheism is pro-science. It's not that The Scientific Method is by definition the only way to knowledge. It's just that it's the only method we've ever discovered that does give us actual knowledge. The theists can bullshit all they please about different "layers" of meaning, but our demand is straightforward: By what method can we reliably and publicly differentiate between true and false statements? More importantly, what do we have to accept uncritically to make that determination?
Science demands only three things: That we look for ourselves, that we think in some sort of deterministic manner (e.g. canonical logic) and that we can count. That's all you have to accept "uncritically" to use science. There is no such thing as "scientific" evidence as distinguished from "unscientific" evidence. There's only evidence. (There are certain kinds of evidence, certain ways of collecting evidence, that makes it more efficient to draw scientific conclusions.) The word "evidence" labels "statements uncontroversially accepted as true." It is a contradiction to deny any evidence: If you deny a statement, it is no longer uncontroversially accepted as true; evidence is that which cannot be and is not denied.
(In theory one could deny evidentiary statements about ordinary perception. Most people simply agree on statements about perception, so such denial is of interest to only philosophers. In this larger sense, calling a statement evidentiary means that one must consider a denier non-sentient, irretrievably insane, or a member of an incompatible linguistic community. If the theists wish to call atheists insane for denying what they call "unscientific evidence", there's nothing I can do except note that we cannot then be reasonably assured of the mutual good will necessary to civil society, and we will act accordingly.)
It's a bullshit excuse to say that religion is fuzzy and elusive, chthonic, mysterious, occult. Fuzzy is fine for literature, but the value of literature doesn't depend on its factual truthfulness. It would be great if people were willing to say that the value of their scripture doesn't depend on whether God really exists, or if statements about God are somehow factually true, or if the universe really does have some sort of sapience, intention or love. As far as I'm concerned, once you drop the truthfulness of the underlying statements, you cease having any sort of religion, and you can go talk to the literary critics, not the scientists, philosophers and politicians.
The New Atheism is anti-religion. Not because religion is always bad, or because everything bad comes from religion, but you can use religion to "prove" anything, good, bad or indifferent. It denies and actively erodes the skepticism and criticality that is each person's only fundamental protection against being exploited and oppressed by lies and bullshit.
We realize that there are "good" theologies, but we don't talk about them much. Religious fundamentalists at least have some meat to their theology, there is enough there to be at least wrong. But the "good" theologians are not even wrong; their work is nothing but vacuous nonsense. If there is a warmed-over half-assed humanism, it is so buried under metaphysical bullshit that the search for a few nuggets of obvious truth is not worth the effort.
And even good theology is dangerous, as Diderot observes:
Anything that requires supernatural justification cannot be considered good. Anything that we can rationally agree is good does not need supernatural justification. Worse yet, supplying a supernatural justification to what appears today to be rationally justifiable undermines the self-correcting mechanisms of rational thought. Once we supply a supernatural justification, we go from reasonably confident to absolutely certain. And one cannot correct a mistake one has become absolutely certain of.
The worst excesses of religion are bad, very bad. Worse than child sexual abuse? Maybe, maybe not: I'm not in the business of drawing fine distinctions of really bad shit. But the worst excesses are certainly in the same ballpark as childhood sexual abuse. And religion even at its best disarms the believer from using her critical faculties to protect herself.
But, bad as religion is, it cannot be eliminated by force. Religion is, in a sense, self-slavery, and you cannot free a person who has enslaved himself. American atheists typically endorse the Free Exercise clause not because it is in the Constitution; we endorse free exercise because it is a good idea and is thus in the Constitution. We're not going to put religious believers or even their clergy in prison. Nor will we ever, even if atheists were to become a majority. We would be punishing only the victims. There is no "perpetrator" to religion: It is a self-sustaining circle of victimization. Atheism, rationality, common sense, critical thought, none of these can be enforced. They have to be freely chosen, and we atheists will promulgate our beliefs the hard way: By rational persuasion, even to the very last believer. We will not choose the easy way of the religious: By the sword, or by the indoctrination of defenseless children.
Yes, we do insist that religion not betaught to indoctrinated into defenseless children, children who have not yet developed the skills of critical thinking, children under the coercive authority of their parents and teachers. What sort of intellectual respectability can you demand for a belief system that cannot be taught to a rational, more-or-less unbiased adult, that requires the coercive indoctrination of defenseless children?
We are willing to also refrain from indoctrinating atheism in children. We are confident that mature, rational adults, raised without superstitious indoctrination, will have the best chance of coming to the truth. Whether that truth is theistic or atheistic, so be it. We insist only that humanity have a fair chance at coming to the truth. It is irresponsible and indefensible to teach as the absolute, unquestionable truth either side of a legitimate* controversy to children lacking intellectual defense.
*i.e. a controversy where neither side depends almost exclusively on transparent lies of both commission and omission, as does creationism and Intelligent Design
The New Atheism is about nothing more or less than promoting freedom and condemning intellectual and moral slavery. Fundamentally, it's about freedom from exploitative and oppressive lies and bullshit in general, but religion has pretty much cornered the market. "Religion is," as Carlin puts it, "the greatest bullshit story ever sold." As hard as Stalin worked on it, not even Marxism has come close.
The conservatives hate us because they embrace religion as a tool of oppression and exploitation. It's much easier to convince someone to be a slave in the physical sense if you can convince him that God will take care of him in the afterlife (a.k.a. There's a sucker born every minute, and two to take him). The liberals hate us because we do not tolerate lies and bullshit, no matter how many pious words you wrap it in, and liberalism is, of course, all about pluralism. (Indeed criticizing any idea, regardless of its nature or consequences, should be seen as intolerant and against pluralism.) And we make no apologies whatsoever: We are no more tolerant of religious lies and bullshit than we are of neoconservative bullshit, of racist bullshit, of homophobic bullshit, of sexist bullshit, of Marxist bullshit, of Deepak Chopra crystal healing woo-woo bullshit, of politically correct bullshit, or any other kind of lies and bullshit you care to name used to oppress and exploit actual human beings.
We're not going to sit down and shut up. Call us fascists, totalitarians, traitors. If caring about the truth and its critical importance to the well-being of myself and my fellow human beings is fascist, totalitarian or treasonous, well then, I'm proud to be a fascist, totalitarian traitor. Arrest us, imprison us, assault us, kill us: we will not sit down and shut up. We'll resist as best we can — we're neither pacifists or stupid — but we have no illusions of being able to win in a stand-up fight.
We know we're a tiny minority and that's OK. The abolitionists were once a tiny minority, reviled, dismissed, hated and sometimes murdered. The scientists were once a tiny minority. The secularists and democrats were once a tiny minority. It might take ten years or a hundred years, maybe a thousand years, but that's OK. We're still not going to sit down and shut up, however long it takes.
Because we're right, we know we're right, and we know you're spouting nothing but bullshit. And the truth will win in the end, because reality is the final arbiter of belief, and reality has no sympathy or pity for falsehood or error. We will stand up and speak our piece, time and again, and when one falls another will stand up. Because, unlike reality, we do have sympathy and pity for our fellow human beings, mired in lies and bullshit, and no matter how much you hate us for it, we're going to do all we can to pull you out.
And we will continue to do so until you come to your senses and agree or you prove us wrong.
Update: Commenter Chris Lowe of PDX Peace weighs in with some substantive interesting criticism, to which I respond (and emend).
Update 2: I've changed "we do insist that religion not be taught to defenseless children" to "...indoctrinated into..." to more precisely represent my viewd on the matter. It's definitely a fact about the world that people are religious, and skeptical atheists do not oppose teaching facts.
The New Atheism does indeed assert that it is just as simple (and considerably more useful) to drop God like we drop Santa Claus when we're eight. We would indeed, as John Haught claims, offend the "old" atheists, Sarte, Nietzsche, Camus, etc. with our flippancy. So much the worse for the old boys. They're pretentious, deeply vain and fearful, and, like many philosophers, mostly full of shit. There are hundreds of millions of atheists living without a shred of existential angst. Millions who realize that existential angst is just the fear of the newly-freed slave, so conditioned to obedience that the prospect of simple choice fills him with dread.
But atheism is easy: It's rational to simply do what you want, for no other reason than that you want it. You do of course have to understand how the real world works: If you want to fly to the Moon, you must do some complicated, expensive things to get there, but the only reason you need to do those complicated things is that you want to. You'll also have to keep in mind that there are six billion other people, many of them with fists, sticks, rocks, guns, and some with nuclear weapons, and all of them want things of their own. I advise everyone to consider their reaction before acting on their own desires.
Reality — and many other people — are utterly indifferent to your happiness or suffering. If you're going to find happiness and avoid suffering, you need to take personal responsibility and act sensibly and rationally, or the universe will use you harshly. If you wait around for a just and loving God to make you happy, you're just buying a lottery ticket: A few people get lucky, but everyone else dies unhappy. And once you're dead, that's it. Worm food. Sucks to be mortal, eh?
The New Atheism is pro-science. It's not that The Scientific Method is by definition the only way to knowledge. It's just that it's the only method we've ever discovered that does give us actual knowledge. The theists can bullshit all they please about different "layers" of meaning, but our demand is straightforward: By what method can we reliably and publicly differentiate between true and false statements? More importantly, what do we have to accept uncritically to make that determination?
Science demands only three things: That we look for ourselves, that we think in some sort of deterministic manner (e.g. canonical logic) and that we can count. That's all you have to accept "uncritically" to use science. There is no such thing as "scientific" evidence as distinguished from "unscientific" evidence. There's only evidence. (There are certain kinds of evidence, certain ways of collecting evidence, that makes it more efficient to draw scientific conclusions.) The word "evidence" labels "statements uncontroversially accepted as true." It is a contradiction to deny any evidence: If you deny a statement, it is no longer uncontroversially accepted as true; evidence is that which cannot be and is not denied.
(In theory one could deny evidentiary statements about ordinary perception. Most people simply agree on statements about perception, so such denial is of interest to only philosophers. In this larger sense, calling a statement evidentiary means that one must consider a denier non-sentient, irretrievably insane, or a member of an incompatible linguistic community. If the theists wish to call atheists insane for denying what they call "unscientific evidence", there's nothing I can do except note that we cannot then be reasonably assured of the mutual good will necessary to civil society, and we will act accordingly.)
It's a bullshit excuse to say that religion is fuzzy and elusive, chthonic, mysterious, occult. Fuzzy is fine for literature, but the value of literature doesn't depend on its factual truthfulness. It would be great if people were willing to say that the value of their scripture doesn't depend on whether God really exists, or if statements about God are somehow factually true, or if the universe really does have some sort of sapience, intention or love. As far as I'm concerned, once you drop the truthfulness of the underlying statements, you cease having any sort of religion, and you can go talk to the literary critics, not the scientists, philosophers and politicians.
The New Atheism is anti-religion. Not because religion is always bad, or because everything bad comes from religion, but you can use religion to "prove" anything, good, bad or indifferent. It denies and actively erodes the skepticism and criticality that is each person's only fundamental protection against being exploited and oppressed by lies and bullshit.
We realize that there are "good" theologies, but we don't talk about them much. Religious fundamentalists at least have some meat to their theology, there is enough there to be at least wrong. But the "good" theologians are not even wrong; their work is nothing but vacuous nonsense. If there is a warmed-over half-assed humanism, it is so buried under metaphysical bullshit that the search for a few nuggets of obvious truth is not worth the effort.
And even good theology is dangerous, as Diderot observes:
The arbitrary rule of a just and enlightened prince is always bad. His virtues are the most dangerous and the surest form of seduction: they lull a people imperceptibly into the habit of loving, respecting, and serving his successor, whoever that successor may be, no matter how wicked or stupid.It is worth noting that Christianity, originally conceived as (to some extent) a pacifistic religion of universal love, has for the last fifteen centuries — even before Constantine conferred political power on the religion — motivated its adherents to torture and slaughter each other with savage ferocity. The slaughter only even began to abate once natural reason, humanism, science, individual liberty and democracy arose in the Enlightenment.
Anything that requires supernatural justification cannot be considered good. Anything that we can rationally agree is good does not need supernatural justification. Worse yet, supplying a supernatural justification to what appears today to be rationally justifiable undermines the self-correcting mechanisms of rational thought. Once we supply a supernatural justification, we go from reasonably confident to absolutely certain. And one cannot correct a mistake one has become absolutely certain of.
The worst excesses of religion are bad, very bad. Worse than child sexual abuse? Maybe, maybe not: I'm not in the business of drawing fine distinctions of really bad shit. But the worst excesses are certainly in the same ballpark as childhood sexual abuse. And religion even at its best disarms the believer from using her critical faculties to protect herself.
But, bad as religion is, it cannot be eliminated by force. Religion is, in a sense, self-slavery, and you cannot free a person who has enslaved himself. American atheists typically endorse the Free Exercise clause not because it is in the Constitution; we endorse free exercise because it is a good idea and is thus in the Constitution. We're not going to put religious believers or even their clergy in prison. Nor will we ever, even if atheists were to become a majority. We would be punishing only the victims. There is no "perpetrator" to religion: It is a self-sustaining circle of victimization. Atheism, rationality, common sense, critical thought, none of these can be enforced. They have to be freely chosen, and we atheists will promulgate our beliefs the hard way: By rational persuasion, even to the very last believer. We will not choose the easy way of the religious: By the sword, or by the indoctrination of defenseless children.
Yes, we do insist that religion not be
We are willing to also refrain from indoctrinating atheism in children. We are confident that mature, rational adults, raised without superstitious indoctrination, will have the best chance of coming to the truth. Whether that truth is theistic or atheistic, so be it. We insist only that humanity have a fair chance at coming to the truth. It is irresponsible and indefensible to teach as the absolute, unquestionable truth either side of a legitimate* controversy to children lacking intellectual defense.
*i.e. a controversy where neither side depends almost exclusively on transparent lies of both commission and omission, as does creationism and Intelligent Design
The New Atheism is about nothing more or less than promoting freedom and condemning intellectual and moral slavery. Fundamentally, it's about freedom from exploitative and oppressive lies and bullshit in general, but religion has pretty much cornered the market. "Religion is," as Carlin puts it, "the greatest bullshit story ever sold." As hard as Stalin worked on it, not even Marxism has come close.
The conservatives hate us because they embrace religion as a tool of oppression and exploitation. It's much easier to convince someone to be a slave in the physical sense if you can convince him that God will take care of him in the afterlife (a.k.a. There's a sucker born every minute, and two to take him). The liberals hate us because we do not tolerate lies and bullshit, no matter how many pious words you wrap it in, and liberalism is, of course, all about pluralism. (Indeed criticizing any idea, regardless of its nature or consequences, should be seen as intolerant and against pluralism.) And we make no apologies whatsoever: We are no more tolerant of religious lies and bullshit than we are of neoconservative bullshit, of racist bullshit, of homophobic bullshit, of sexist bullshit, of Marxist bullshit, of Deepak Chopra crystal healing woo-woo bullshit, of politically correct bullshit, or any other kind of lies and bullshit you care to name used to oppress and exploit actual human beings.
We're not going to sit down and shut up. Call us fascists, totalitarians, traitors. If caring about the truth and its critical importance to the well-being of myself and my fellow human beings is fascist, totalitarian or treasonous, well then, I'm proud to be a fascist, totalitarian traitor. Arrest us, imprison us, assault us, kill us: we will not sit down and shut up. We'll resist as best we can — we're neither pacifists or stupid — but we have no illusions of being able to win in a stand-up fight.
We know we're a tiny minority and that's OK. The abolitionists were once a tiny minority, reviled, dismissed, hated and sometimes murdered. The scientists were once a tiny minority. The secularists and democrats were once a tiny minority. It might take ten years or a hundred years, maybe a thousand years, but that's OK. We're still not going to sit down and shut up, however long it takes.
Because we're right, we know we're right, and we know you're spouting nothing but bullshit. And the truth will win in the end, because reality is the final arbiter of belief, and reality has no sympathy or pity for falsehood or error. We will stand up and speak our piece, time and again, and when one falls another will stand up. Because, unlike reality, we do have sympathy and pity for our fellow human beings, mired in lies and bullshit, and no matter how much you hate us for it, we're going to do all we can to pull you out.
And we will continue to do so until you come to your senses and agree or you prove us wrong.
Update: Commenter Chris Lowe of PDX Peace weighs in with some substantive interesting criticism, to which I respond (and emend).
Update 2: I've changed "we do insist that religion not be taught to defenseless children" to "...indoctrinated into..." to more precisely represent my viewd on the matter. It's definitely a fact about the world that people are religious, and skeptical atheists do not oppose teaching facts.
A note on comments
"Obloquy injures my self-esteem, and I'm suspicious of flattery." -- Jack Vance
I'm interested in only two types of comments: comments that demonstrate (or at least try to demonstrate) where I've gone wrong, made a mistake, or reasoned poorly. Whether you're correct or not, I'm interested in some sort of argument for why you disagree. Closely related are comments that extend or expand upon something that I've written. I also welcome comments that contain links to this kind of criticism, or other material that relates to my work.
I'm simply not interested that you think I'm a poopy-head. I'm an atheist, a "militant" atheist, a member of the most unpopular minority of the most unpopular minority in the world. I take it for granted that only archaic (and rapidly eroding) notions such as "freedom of speech" and "due process of law" keep me very literally from being hanged, drawn and quartered. So I'm not at all impressed or disturbed that a lot of people don't like what I have to say.
And, while I enjoy praise as much as the next guy, I don't want a coterie of sycophants. So... with the possible exception of certain long-time commenters, who have shown themselves capable of and interested in actual rational argument, if you don't post some kind of argument, I'm not going to publish your comment. If you want to tell the world what a wonderful guy I am, put me on your blogroll and write a nice post about me there. If you want to tell the world what a poopy-head I am, post that on your own blog as well.
I'm interested in only two types of comments: comments that demonstrate (or at least try to demonstrate) where I've gone wrong, made a mistake, or reasoned poorly. Whether you're correct or not, I'm interested in some sort of argument for why you disagree. Closely related are comments that extend or expand upon something that I've written. I also welcome comments that contain links to this kind of criticism, or other material that relates to my work.
I'm simply not interested that you think I'm a poopy-head. I'm an atheist, a "militant" atheist, a member of the most unpopular minority of the most unpopular minority in the world. I take it for granted that only archaic (and rapidly eroding) notions such as "freedom of speech" and "due process of law" keep me very literally from being hanged, drawn and quartered. So I'm not at all impressed or disturbed that a lot of people don't like what I have to say.
And, while I enjoy praise as much as the next guy, I don't want a coterie of sycophants. So... with the possible exception of certain long-time commenters, who have shown themselves capable of and interested in actual rational argument, if you don't post some kind of argument, I'm not going to publish your comment. If you want to tell the world what a wonderful guy I am, put me on your blogroll and write a nice post about me there. If you want to tell the world what a poopy-head I am, post that on your own blog as well.
Monday, December 17, 2007
Robert Farley takes the stupid pill
Farley is a usually intelligent, perspicacious writer who makes insightful, sound arguments and is a tireless champion of not only liberalism but rationality. But we can conclude that immediately before this post, "Thoughts" on religion [scare quotes added], he took a stupid pill... or perhaps the whole bottle.
Let me repeat Dawkin's statement, quoted in the earlier post, "New Atheism" [quotation marks original]
Perhaps Farley slept through fourth-grade civics class. The reason that we don't allow the state to violently punish speech is not because speech cannot be bad, or harmful or abusive. The one and only one reason we do not allow the state to punish speech is that no state can be trusted to punish only bad speech: the government will inevitably punish speech that is detrimental to its own interests, rather than the people's interests.
There's a lot of speech that is incredibly harmful, terribly damaging, and deserves our contempt and scorn. Racist, homophobic bigotry, neoconservative propaganda, Ann Coulter, and LOLCats. Just because the cure of coercively suppressing speech is worse than the disease doesn't mean bad speech is not in fact bad. In contrast, we punish sexual abuse because sexual abuse is bad and sexual abuse is not typically used to resist an evil government.
But if you say it's about God, that's different. I guess.
DJW is absolutely correct to follow up Matt's condemnation of Dawkins statement on Catholicism. It isn't just illiberal; it's virtually totalitarian. Dawkins is, essentially, arguing that raising children as Catholic is worse than sexually abusing them. Since we all agree that sexually abusing children merits the violent retribution of the state, the next logical step is pretty much unavoidable. Dawkins may have been tossing the statement off without really thinking about it (indeed, his "arguably" suggests that he isn't really willing to stand by it in its strongest form), but it is nonetheless illiberal, particularly if we define liberalism as, in large part, a political recognition of the fact of pluralism.The logic here is egregiously faulty and the insinuation can be considered nothing less than a canard, more appropriate to Ann Coulter or perhaps Jonah Goldberg.
Let me repeat Dawkin's statement, quoted in the earlier post, "New Atheism" [quotation marks original]
I was asked what I thought about the widely publicized cases of sexual abuse by Catholic priests in Ireland. I replied that, horrible as sexual abuse no doubt was, the damage was arguably less than the long-term psychological damage inflicted by bringing the child up Catholic in the first place.Now Dawkins is making a dramatic statement here, and he might well be mistaken. But is it totalitarian? He is not advocating or even suggesting the violent retribution of the state. That is Farley's own invention. And it's simply retarded.
Perhaps Farley slept through fourth-grade civics class. The reason that we don't allow the state to violently punish speech is not because speech cannot be bad, or harmful or abusive. The one and only one reason we do not allow the state to punish speech is that no state can be trusted to punish only bad speech: the government will inevitably punish speech that is detrimental to its own interests, rather than the people's interests.
There's a lot of speech that is incredibly harmful, terribly damaging, and deserves our contempt and scorn. Racist, homophobic bigotry, neoconservative propaganda, Ann Coulter, and LOLCats. Just because the cure of coercively suppressing speech is worse than the disease doesn't mean bad speech is not in fact bad. In contrast, we punish sexual abuse because sexual abuse is bad and sexual abuse is not typically used to resist an evil government.
...most of us quite likely know a mildly irritating militant atheist.And I'm sure most people who would have rather ignored the ugly facts of slavery knew a mildly irritating militant abolitionist. Most people who would rather not think about the war in Iraq... you get the point. We want to be irritating: It is only by irritating people who would rather not think about evil that anything bad gets fixed.
[R]eligion is so deeply embedded in human culture and society that there's very little point in trying to pry out and then weigh its positive and negative effects.Do I really have to draw yet another obvious parallel to slavery here?
But nevertheless, I can only bring myself to say that yes, Hitch is probably right about the effect of religion; I can't say for sure.You can't say anything for sure, all there is are degrees of probability. Farley makes arguments on "probably right" all the time, but suddenly when it comes to religion, he has to be absolutely certain to commit himself? Sorry, Bob, only the religious get absolute certainty, a.k.a. fanatic self-righteousness.
[R]eligion has an entirely different relationship with the unobservable, positing that it has some critical (but fundamentally unknowable) relationship with the world that we see.Good grief! Did Farley go to school to construct such egregious bullshit? A critical but fundamentally unknowable relationship with the world? Let me say that again, so you can savor the stench of bullshit: "[R]eligion... has some critical (but fundamentally unknowable) relationship with the world that we see." Please do tell me how a critical relationship can be unknowable... but first put down the bong.
Religion can explain the empirical world fullyWhat. The. Fuck. Religion can't explain jack shit. Religion's explanation for almost everything is "goddidit" (the explanation for the rest is "fallofman"). This apparently counts, in Farley's mind, as an explanation. I hope he's equally charitable grading his students' work.
But I'm probably wandering farther into philosophy than I should on this question...Ya think?
we're in danger of granting science a bit too much credit when we put it up against religion in debates like this. Science was made, not found; it is a mode of inquiry that was created by human beings, and it has had and continues to have many of the flaws that those human beings had.Science was created by man! Completely unlike religion which comes from God, Praise the Lord! Oh wait... religion comes from man too, but from that paragon of human history, that Golden Age, when we were all perfectly wise, and before we became corrupted by all that worldly stuff like agriculture, fire, or the wheel. How can mere science compete?
I most certainly prefer to have science taught in public high schools than religion, but that is in large part because I think the teaching of religion to be illiberal, and the teaching of science to be a part of the liberal/Enlightenment project.This is not the kind of endorsement we want. We teach science because it is better (much better: religion is bullshit through and through) not because it was endorsed by the priests and prophets that Farley prefers.
If I actually agreed with Dawkins that a commitment to science required atheism...I've never read that sense from Dawkins. A true commitment to science entails atheism, but doesn't require it. You do not have to first purify your mind to conduct science: You merely have to observe and think precisely and honestly. Of course, such an exercise does tend to purge the mind of bullshit, but that comes afterwards.
And one more bit on the rational/irrational point; most of the commitments we feel are, in some sense, irrational. I love my wife, and I'm not sure that there's a version of rationality that can sufficiently explain what that means.This is simply retarded. Love is an ordinary human emotion. It's complicated, and I doubt a complete reduction to neuro-biology would be worthwhile, but there's nothing unscientific and irrational about love. Just because I love my wife (and I do) doesn't mean I have to believe anything actually false or unprovable about the world. I don't believe I can literally read her mind, or violate the laws of physics. I just have a lot of groovy, but entirely natural, emotions working in my brain when we're together.
Moreover, it seems to me that evaluating and condemning such [irrational] convictions is absolutely the last thing that we should want the state to do.Again, it is only Farley's lying insinuation that has the state condemning irrational convictions. Dawkins has never, to my knowledge, advocated the state condemning irrational convictions. He, and I, and Farley himself (when he's off (on?) his medication) condemn irrational convictions as terribly all the time, in our capacity as citizens and rational people.
But if you say it's about God, that's different. I guess.
Retarded Appeasers
Here is proof positive that just the mention of the word "religion" can turn ordinarily sensible and intelligent people into right-wing-talking-points-spouting mystical mush-brained retards willing to bend ordinary logic and reason into pretzels to avoid offending sky-fairy-worshiping authoritarian theocrats.
New Atheism
"Thoughts" on Religion [quotation marks added; it's clear that whatever Robert Farley has posted bears no discernible relation to any brain activity that could be regarded as actual thinking]
I'm steaming mad, much to mad to do anything constructive right now; I'll have more tomorrow. It's all the more infuriating because these guys are otherwise very smart, very perspicacious, and argue extremely well.
This post also inaugurates a new tag: spineless appeasement. It will be retroactively applied to older posts when I get around to it.
New Atheism
"Thoughts" on Religion [quotation marks added; it's clear that whatever Robert Farley has posted bears no discernible relation to any brain activity that could be regarded as actual thinking]
I'm steaming mad, much to mad to do anything constructive right now; I'll have more tomorrow. It's all the more infuriating because these guys are otherwise very smart, very perspicacious, and argue extremely well.
This post also inaugurates a new tag: spineless appeasement. It will be retroactively applied to older posts when I get around to it.
The New Abolitionism
Stowe and Brown are deeply and troublingly illiberal on the subject of abolitionism (and in the Brown case, at least, everything else). Some are suggesting Stowe ought not be linked with a bombthrower like Brown, but this won't fly. From the Linker piece:
With no apologies whatsoever to DJW
Following a lecture in Hartford, she recalls, "I was asked what I thought about the widely publicized cases of sexual abuse by slave owners in Georgia. I replied that, horrible as sexual abuse no doubt was, the damage was arguably less than the long-term psychological damage inflicted by bringing the child up a slave in the first place."In addition to being demonstrably false, this view is an awful and appalling thing to say, and she clearly deserves strong criticism for it. As does, in my view, anyone who suggests that anyone who holds a substantially different position on slavery is not capable of being a good and decent person. A society that contains deep disagreements regarding these sorts of questions will be benefited by deep pluralism and ecumenicalism. Many commenters feel compelled to point out that abolitionists of all sorts are often not afforded the respect and tolerance that Linker wants abolitionists to extend to slave owners. This is factually correct, but as a defense of the likes of Brown and Stowe, it's nothing but a tu quoque. Moreover, even if returning the disrespect in kind had some sort of strategic value, which I can't really see, Brown and Stowe attack cruel and exploitative slave owners and compassionate and generous slave owners with the same broad brush.
With no apologies whatsoever to DJW
Friday, November 02, 2007
The Bidding of the Leaders
Göring: Why, of course, the people don't want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship.
Gilbert: There is one difference. In a democracy, the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars.
Göring: Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.
Hermann Göring, speaking to Gustave Gilbert
Gilbert: There is one difference. In a democracy, the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars.
Göring: Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.
Hermann Göring, speaking to Gustave Gilbert
Thursday, October 18, 2007
The disease model of religion
We can view religion like a disease: In most people it causes a degree of discomfort, and many people can be carriers, entirely asymptomatic, but often the disease explodes into deadly virulence (h/t to Himself).
Furthermore, it's often not enough to understand and react to the immediate, proximate causes of disease; it's also important to understand the complex causal web involved in disease transmission.
For example it's strictly true that dirt, filth, and shit in the gutters is not the proximate cause of diseases such cholera: cholera is caused by the Vibrio cholerae bacterium. One could, in one sense, disclaim moral responsibility for permitting or encouraging unsanitary conditions by pointing out the true cause of cholera. "Filth doesn't kill people, bacteria do!" One could also truthfully point out that many people who live in sanitary conditions contract cholera, especially when it's endemic in nearby unsanitary conditions, denying even the indirect causality.
But of course unsanitary conditions provide a vector and a reservoir for many diseases. It's not physically possible to control cholera unless you control the vector and reservoir. Once you understand the scientific connection between sanitation and cholera, it becomes hypocritical to both denounce cholera but not take active steps to improve sanitation; any "moral" arguments to the contrary fall flat.
So it is with religion: Once we understand that religion contributes to death and suffering, we assume a moral duty to find and implement effective measures to break the causal chain of events not at the mostaesthetically pleasing morally favorable points, but at the most scientifically effective points. For disease, this means that we raise taxes to clean up the slums, even though the dirt itself is not the proximate cause and those paying the taxes are not the ones who directly creating the unsanitary conditions. The only consistent alternative is to accept and embrace the consequences of not doing so: to say, effectively, "well, cholera is A-OK."
Accepting the disease model of religion entails a number of conclusions.
Religious "liberals" should be viewed as carriers, in just the same way that asymptomatic people can carry diseases such as typhus or tuberculosis. It's absolutely irrelevant that such people themselves do not act in extremist, violent or otherwise aberrant ways: they infect others, whose individual nature renders them more susceptible to symptomatic expression of the disease. Once you accept and propagate the idea that the literary interpretation of ancient mythology is a valid source of moral truth, you contribute to those whose interpretation leads them to embrace violence and extremism. The fact that your personal interpretation isn't violent or extremist is no more relevant than that you personally are asymptomatic when carrying tuberculosis.
The imperialism and colonialism of the West towards the Islamic world has to be seen as promoting and furthering "unsanitary" conditions. Let me be blunt: The proximate cause of Islamic extremism is Islam, and only Islam, not imperialism. But the oppression that results from imperialism and colonialism provides an environment where virulent and extremist strains of the disease of Islam can propagate, just as people shitting in the gutters provides an environment where cholera can propagate. It's not that removing imperialism and colonialism will immediately halt the disease of Islam. It's that we cannot halt the disease of Islam unless we mitigate this environmental factor in its propagation.
Under this model, the Iraq war must be seen as trying to control a cholera epidemic by dumping a million pounds of infected feces where the disease is epidemic, to indicate our "disapproval" of those who live in unsanitary conditions. The motivation is irrelevant; only causal efficacy is relevant.
(The war in Iraq — and especially its supporters' rhetoric — is a perfect example of the specific mechanism by which religion causes dysfunction: it breaks the connection between empirical observation and determination of truth. What becomes important is unfalsifiable assertions about "motivation" rather than empirically determinable causal efficacy. Opponents of the Iraq war are consistently labeled as "pro-Islam", as ridiculous as labeling those who oppose dumping shit into cholera epidemics as "pro-cholera". And religion is not the only cause of this disconnection, as Christopher Hitchens sadly demonstrates.)
One additional conclusion is that there are always unintended consequences to every ameliorative action. For instance, improved sanitation to control infections diseases such as cholera and typhus was indirectly responsible for the polio epidemic of the early 20th century.
Furthermore, it's often not enough to understand and react to the immediate, proximate causes of disease; it's also important to understand the complex causal web involved in disease transmission.
For example it's strictly true that dirt, filth, and shit in the gutters is not the proximate cause of diseases such cholera: cholera is caused by the Vibrio cholerae bacterium. One could, in one sense, disclaim moral responsibility for permitting or encouraging unsanitary conditions by pointing out the true cause of cholera. "Filth doesn't kill people, bacteria do!" One could also truthfully point out that many people who live in sanitary conditions contract cholera, especially when it's endemic in nearby unsanitary conditions, denying even the indirect causality.
But of course unsanitary conditions provide a vector and a reservoir for many diseases. It's not physically possible to control cholera unless you control the vector and reservoir. Once you understand the scientific connection between sanitation and cholera, it becomes hypocritical to both denounce cholera but not take active steps to improve sanitation; any "moral" arguments to the contrary fall flat.
So it is with religion: Once we understand that religion contributes to death and suffering, we assume a moral duty to find and implement effective measures to break the causal chain of events not at the most
Accepting the disease model of religion entails a number of conclusions.
Religious "liberals" should be viewed as carriers, in just the same way that asymptomatic people can carry diseases such as typhus or tuberculosis. It's absolutely irrelevant that such people themselves do not act in extremist, violent or otherwise aberrant ways: they infect others, whose individual nature renders them more susceptible to symptomatic expression of the disease. Once you accept and propagate the idea that the literary interpretation of ancient mythology is a valid source of moral truth, you contribute to those whose interpretation leads them to embrace violence and extremism. The fact that your personal interpretation isn't violent or extremist is no more relevant than that you personally are asymptomatic when carrying tuberculosis.
The imperialism and colonialism of the West towards the Islamic world has to be seen as promoting and furthering "unsanitary" conditions. Let me be blunt: The proximate cause of Islamic extremism is Islam, and only Islam, not imperialism. But the oppression that results from imperialism and colonialism provides an environment where virulent and extremist strains of the disease of Islam can propagate, just as people shitting in the gutters provides an environment where cholera can propagate. It's not that removing imperialism and colonialism will immediately halt the disease of Islam. It's that we cannot halt the disease of Islam unless we mitigate this environmental factor in its propagation.
Under this model, the Iraq war must be seen as trying to control a cholera epidemic by dumping a million pounds of infected feces where the disease is epidemic, to indicate our "disapproval" of those who live in unsanitary conditions. The motivation is irrelevant; only causal efficacy is relevant.
(The war in Iraq — and especially its supporters' rhetoric — is a perfect example of the specific mechanism by which religion causes dysfunction: it breaks the connection between empirical observation and determination of truth. What becomes important is unfalsifiable assertions about "motivation" rather than empirically determinable causal efficacy. Opponents of the Iraq war are consistently labeled as "pro-Islam", as ridiculous as labeling those who oppose dumping shit into cholera epidemics as "pro-cholera". And religion is not the only cause of this disconnection, as Christopher Hitchens sadly demonstrates.)
One additional conclusion is that there are always unintended consequences to every ameliorative action. For instance, improved sanitation to control infections diseases such as cholera and typhus was indirectly responsible for the polio epidemic of the early 20th century.
Poorer sanitation [prior to the 20th century] resulted in a constant exposure to the virus, which enhanced a natural immunity within the population. ... [Improved sanitation] drastically increased the proportion of children and adults at risk of paralytic polio infection, by reducing childhood exposure and immunity to the disease. [Wikipedia]These unintended and unforeseeable consequences are not an argument for doing nothing, but they are an argument for keeping our eyes open and our minds alert, so we can detect them and mitigate their effects.
Monday, October 01, 2007
Quotation of the Day
"The human race has produced only one successfully validated epistemology, characterizing all scrupulous inquiry into the real world, from quarks to poems. It is simply empiricism, or the submitting of propositions to the arbitration of evidence that is acknowledged to be such by all of the contending parties. Ideas that claim immunity from such review, whether because of mystical faith or privileged 'clinical insight' or the say-so of eminent authorities, are not to be countenanced until they can pass the same skeptical ordeal to which all other contenders are subjected."
-- Frederick Crews, Follies of the Wise
-- Frederick Crews, Follies of the Wise
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