Blessings Upon Them, and Upon Their Typing Hands
May the god of the atheists shine its everlasting light on Polly Toynbee. Wait. May the – oh never mind, you know what I mean.
At least she hasn’t swapped her brain for a fleece.
It would be entirely reasonable for secular Labour MPs to plead conscience on this, just as the religious are excused the whip on matters that trespass on their faith. This touches on freedom of thought and ideas, with far-reaching consequences for the values of the Enlightenment that are under growing threat from a collective softening of the brain on faith and superstitions of all kinds.
Yep. And you need to watch out for that collective softening of the brain stuff. It can creep up on you and before you know where you are or can say ‘Look at that tortilla, doesn’t that look like St Aloysius the Uninteresting?’ you’ve got religious zealots running the place. It can happen. Don’t you think it can’t. Listen, the US was not such a god-ridden place thirty years ago – not nearly. Then people absent-mindedly voted a ‘born-again’ Christian into the White House, and things have been getting worse ever since. So don’t let down your guard just because Tony Blair doesn’t keep saying ‘God bless you’ during question time – yet.
it is now illegal to describe an ethnic group as feeble-minded. But under this law I couldn’t call Christian believers similarly intellectually challenged without risk of prosecution. This crystallises the difference between racial and religious abuse. Race is something people cannot choose and it defines nothing about them as people. But beliefs are what people choose to identify with: in the rough and tumble of argument to call people stupid for their beliefs is legitimate (if perhaps unwise), but to brand them stupid on account of their race is a mortal insult. The two cannot be blurred into one – which is why the word Islamophobia is a nonsense. And now the Vatican wants the UN to include Christianophobia in its monitoring of discriminations.
Just so. ‘Race’ can’t possibly be stupid, because it doesn’t have any cognitive content anyway. It’s a complete category mistake. One might as well call a pineapple loyal or a Prada bag dyslexic. But beliefs are all about cognitive content – that’s what they are. Believers are always trying to disguise that, trying to pretend that belief is something else – virtue, or a disposition to kindness, or a talent for keeping your pants on, or marital stability combined with fecundity combined with the ability to hang on to a job – but that’s not what it is. It’s inane and meaningless to call red hair stupid (unless it’s the product of a packet of dye, but that’s a special case, and not relevant), it’s not inane and meaningless to call belief in heaven and hell stupid. Rude, possibly, but not meaningless.
…the religious are already getting their way in more insidious ways. For the chilling effect of this law is here now. There is a new nervousness about criticising, let alone mocking, any religious belief, a jumpiness about challenging Islam or Roman Catholicism. This most secular state in the world, with fewest worshippers at any altars, should be a beacon of secularism in a world beset by religious bloodshed. Instead, our politicians twitch nervously in a lily-livered capitulation to unreason. Why? Because this clever blending between race and faith has tied all tongues. This law springs from a cult of phoney racial/religious respect that makes it harder than it ever was to dare to criticise, let alone mock. There is a new caution about “causing offence”. What kind of offence? Not to people’s race but to ideas in their head.
Remember what Stephen Fry said at Hay about the two words that have taken on creepy overtones lately? Remember what the words were? I knew, I knew before he said them – I said the second one aloud before he got it out of his mouth. Everyone knows; it’s obvious. Respect and offence. ‘I’m offended,’ Fry said in a mincing voice. ‘Well so fucking what?!” Exactly. May the god of the atheists shine its everlasting light on Fry and Toynbee – and Atkinson and Rushdie and Hitchens. Bless all articulate atheists, amen.
Caconymic ‘Islamophobia’?
Polly Toynbee says that ‘Islamophobia’ is a nonsense; it may be a misnomer for hatred – but from my readings of the koran, it most certainly scares the shit out of me.
“beliefs are what people choose to identify with”
Just as I don’t think I could believe if I tried, I doubt many of them actually understand that it’s a choice, especially those for whom it began with childhood indoctrination. Does a believer feel an individual choice has been made or that god has chosen to bless with belief? Not that I’m suggesting that a single inch should be given because of that, merely that we (as the ones in this conflict supposedly using our noggins) will benefit from keeping in mind what the self-perceptions of these people are.
I consider myself neither a religious nor a legal expert, but it seems Toynbee left one of the most interesting avenues for exploration to her closing sentence: “… while the Bible and the Qur’an incite enough religious hatred to be banned outright.” Just before that she mentioned the Australian case of the mutually-suing fundamentalists. All of these legislations are concerned exclusively with hatred directed against religion and none of it (explicitly) to protect from hatred emanating from religion. Surely most religious hatreds are either explicitly in the so-called sacred texts or derived from them by interpretation? Not to mention a lot of other hatreds. Doesn’t seem to matter how poisonous a religious text is; if it has a long enough tradition or enough contemporary adherents, it acquires immunity. Talk about extending protection to the aggressor…
A friend who did graduate school in Illinois thirty years ago says that the religious right was there then and that Bush is a product of the system, not an originator.
“it acquires immunity”
Just so. Which is why it’s worth pointing that out – as Toynbee did.
Sure – I didn’t mean religious right hadn’t been there at all – just that religion has become vastly more pervasive. Just that Nixon wasn’t always bleating about ‘God’.
‘Race’ can’t possibly be stupid, because it doesn’t have any cognitive content anyway. It’s a complete category mistake.
No well-informed, articulate person literally claims that ‘race’ is stupid. What people say is something like:”
On average, dark-skinned people whose ancestors come from Africa score poorly on IQ tests and school examinations and this is partly due to natural selection in favour of brawnpower rather than brainpower.
Or something to that effect.
Assertions like that certainly have ‘cognitive content’ in that they are – at least in principle – falsifiable. For example one can compare the cognitive performance of adopted African children with that of non-adopted African children and draw definitive or tentative conclusions.
Just out of interest, I wonder what kind of evidence would tempt you to say something like’:
‘Yes, it looks as though Africans are on average less intelligent than the Chinese at least partly for genetic reasons’ or
‘Yes, the fact that Jews have received over 25% of all Nobel Prizes for Economics may be partly due to genetic grounds.’
or simply:
‘Scientists who claim that differences in the average intellectual abilities of human breeding populations are partly inherited may have a point.’
The book to read is Michael Levin’s ‘Why Race Matters’. For a preview, originally published in The Journal of Libertarian Studies, see here:
http://www.lrainc.com/swtaboo/stalkers/ml_wrm_jls.html
A more reader-friendly review here at the Ludwing von Mises website:
http://www.mises.org/misesreview_detail.asp?control=117&sortorder=issue
Not the point, Cathal. The point is that it’s nonsensical to say ‘it’s stupid to be black/white/whatever’ while it’s not nonsensical (however rude, aggressive, etc. it may be) to say ‘it’s stupid to be Christian/New Age/Muslim.’
Race doesn’t refer to anything very real in any case, but what people mean when they use the term is something born, innate, not changeable, not voluntary. But religion is not born or innate or unchangeable or involuntary. Race doesn’t have ideational content of its own, religion decidedly does.
Hear, hear to Stephen Fry, et al. During the “Satanic Verses” saga, the vast majority of the book-burners and violent protesters clearly hadn’t read the thing. Indeed, many of them made a point of boasting that they hadn’t. So, in essence, they were “offended” because their religious leaders had ordered them to be so! What a pity that so many prefer not to think for themselves and/or acquire a sense of humour.