Year: 2010

I was listening to the introduction to that panel where Dan Dennett set John Haught straight about “scientism”, and David Kelly, president of the CUNY graduate center, said that Haught had been given a “Friend of Darwin” award by the NCSE. He broke off to remark on what a nice award that would be, and everyone smirked or smiled politely, as appropriate. “What?!?” I squawked. I googled. I found it to be so.

NCSE’s Friend of Darwin award is conferred annually to people (and occasionally organizations) whose efforts to support NCSE and advance its goals have been truly outstanding.

Scroll down, and it is even as Kelly said. It’s alphabetical – he’s below Forrest and above Kitcher and Krauss.

So my question to you is: why? Does anybody know? In what sense does Haught advance the goal of defending and improving science education?

This is exciting – an atheist blog in Uganda. H/t to PZ for the link. Excellent. I want more allies in Africa.

James Onen has an excellent post on “scientism” including a video with Dan Dennett and I believe the man said Dr Haught – I’m pretty sure the man to the right of Dennett talking bollocks about literalism and “scientism” is our Friend of the Week John “carried away” Haught. He doesn’t look very contented while Dennett replies.

The New Humanist asks if it would be a good idea to set up avowedly atheist or humanist schools. I think it would be a terrible idea. I think all schools should be secular, and no schools should be doctrinaire. A secular school would have all the atheism that is necessary for education.

It’s not that I think atheism is inherently doctrinaire, of course, but in a context where religion is pervasive and granted lots of respect and deference and special privileges (tax exemptions, seats in the House of Lords, access to major media), it is contingently doctrinaire. It’s political. It differs from a status quo. Schools that take positions in that way are automatically excluding some students; that seems not ideal for schools in general.

Secular schools are de facto atheist, because god is not part of the curriculum. That’s all that’s needed, and it’s better than avowed atheism because it needn’t exclude children whose parents aren’t atheists. Some parents of course want god to be part of the curriculum, which is most unfortunate, but avowedly atheist schools wouldn’t address that in any case.

Francis Beckett is actually arguing for secular education, not avowedly atheist or humanist education, but the NH added a poll asking about the latter. I didn’t vote, because I didn’t want to say no but I also didn’t want to say yes.

Just a little more John Haught. If it’s good enough for Jesus and Mo, it’s good enough for me.

He really does have a little bondage thing going here – one feels tempted sometimes to close the door hurriedly and pretend not to have seen.

And we can trust our search for right understanding ultimately because our minds have already been taken captive by a truthfulness that inheres in things, a truthfulness that we cannot possess but which possesses us. [p 75]

Jeez, get a room.

But more to the point – that’s typical of the way he goes on, and it’s like an incantation but not at all like an argument. What he says is not tethered to any kind of observation or inquiry or awareness or even thought – it’s just a kind of schmaltzy poetry that sounds pretty but doesn’t mean anything. I know that’s obvious, and that I’ve said it before, but it’s just so peculiar – this aestheticky word salad effect. I wonder what he’s like to talk to. Does he come out with this stuff face to face, do you suppose?

Faith, as theology uses the term, is neither an irrational leap nor “belief without evidence.” It is an adventurous movement of trust that opens reason up to its appropriate living space, namely, the inexhaustibly deep dimension of Being, Meaning, Truth, and Goodness. [p 75]

Fetch the sick bag.

What does it do to use capital letters on those words? Is Meaning different from meaning? How? How does Haught know?

No, of course it’s not, it’s just silly conjuring, that shouldn’t impress anyone over the age of four. Yet he’s an academic, with a job, and a title. Funny, innit.

Shiv Sena complains to Bombay University about Rohinton Mistry’s novel Such a Long Journey, which is on a university reading list. Bombay University says “oh I do beg your pardon” and cuts Mistry’s novel from the list. Shiv Sena hugs itself in glee at this easy victory.

Mistry is not so chuffed. Mistry says a few words.

“The Shiv Sena has followed its depressingly familiar script of threats and intimidation that Mumbai has endured since the organisation’s founding in 1966,” the author said. “More bobbing, weaving, and slippery behaviour is no doubt in the offing. But one thing remains: a political party demanded an immediate change in syllabus, and Mumbai University [made] the book disappear the very next day.”

But Shiv Sena explained.

Mohan Rawale, a Shiv Sena official, said the book was full of “very bad, very insulting words”, especially about Bal Thackeray, 83, the group’s founder and leader.

“It is our culture that anything with insulting language should be deleted. Writers can’t just write anything. They can’t write wrong things,” said Rawale, who admitted not having read the book.

Well there you are. The book has insulting words in it. It is Shiv Sena’s culture that all insulting words should be deleted…unless they’re directed at Shiv Sena’s enemies, one imagines. There is of course no need to find the insulting words by reading them first; revelation and hunches are perfectly valid ways to detect the presense of insulting words.

In a pig’s eye.