Year: 2010

A guy called Erich Vieth did a useful interview with Paul Kurtz the other day. There are some odd things in it, which could shed some oblique light on the PK-CFI quarrel.

PK says he left voluntarily but under great duress, which is useful to know. I don’t think I’ve seen that before. Then they talk about why no explanation of his resignation appeared in Free Inquiry, and he said it was because it was censored. Vieth said isn’t that at odds with free inquiry?

PK: It is similar to thought police. Alas! They refused to publish three of my editorials, and they refused to publish my statement regarding my resignation. What a contradiction. Even though I am the founder of the organizations, their position essentially was that I had no right to publicly express my concerns about the direction of the organization or the new management practices adopted under the current leadership — both of which I have grave reservations about. I consider this as similar to a Board of Bishops seeking to control its Founder.

Look closely at that last sentence. Look at the capital F on Founder. He’s saying it’s like bishops trying to control Jesus, and he’s Jesus.

PK: I have been censored and members of the staff have been instructed not to reveal any information about CFI to me. Barry Karr said that since I resigned, I have no right to be made aware of internal matters within the organization. I asked, “What about my moral authority? I said, “This is similar to what happened to Galileo when placed under house arrest.”

Except for the part about being placed under house arrest, and the part about Galileo.

PK: I never intended for the organization to mock religion…

EV: Are you suggesting that it is improper for anyone to ridicule religion?

PK: No, others in society can and should do so, but not Free Inquiry and CFI. As I just pointed out, I have always considered these organizations to be important philosophic and scientific forums requiring appropriate decorum.

But Free Inquiry published the Motoons – it was the only magazine in the US that did. Jesus Galileo seems to be moving the goalposts here.

I skimmed The Observer’s profile of Karen Armstrong yesterday, but I must have done a sloppy job of it, because I failed to notice something that if I’d really been properly skimming, would have jumped out at me. I never would have known about it if Nicholas Lawrence hadn’t told me.

But like Kissinger, Armstrong has enemies. Many devout Catholics quietly accuse her of treachery, while professional theologians despise her for emphasising the opposition between rationality and faith. Ophelia Benson and Jeremy Stangroom have accused her of being a religious apologist who covers up inconvenient texts to bolster the idea there is no conflict between modern morality and religion in matters, for instance, of gender and sexuality.

Well now I call that handsome! I should send Vanessa Thorpe a box of chocolates. Really – many devout Catholics, and professional theologians, and JS and me. Pretty select company, do admit. The sum total of Karen Armstrong’s enemies (by which is meant, people who think Karen Armstrong is wrong about some or many things), and I get to be in that august company. I even get to be named. I think that’s pretty exciting.

Mind you, she could have plugged the book while she was at it, but one can’t have everything.

I’ve said more than once that I don’t have a firm opinion about who is more right (or wrong) in the dispute between the Center for Inquiry and its founder and former director Paul Kurtz. I still don’t, but one thing I do think is that when the dispute gets into a major media outlet, the reporting is incomplete.

I have an opportunity to rectify that a little, because I saw something Barry Karr said on Facebook this morning that clarified or expanded a couple of points. I got his permission to quote him, and asked two questions of my own. Karr is the Chief Financial Officer of CFI and Executive Director of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.

Here is the Facebook comment:

PK can be in the building M-F 9-5 anytime he wants and for any events. He is quite aware of this. In fact he was in here Friday afternoon, in his office, talking on the phone, chatting with employees, etc. He was in here Wednesday and Thursday as well. And this was AFTER his allegedly being barred from the buidling. He wasn’t, not true, and he knows it. I find it amazing actually that you think he should have unfettered access during weekend and non business hours. Regardless of what you think of his new organization, he is actively contacting CFI donors asking these people to give to his new organization. And he should have free reign of the building? Huh? that would be irresponsible of us to say the very least.

And here are my questions and Barry’s replies:

OB: Is CFI worried that PK’s solicitation of funding could be in competition with CFI’s?

BK: I think there is some concern. On one hand, if you are doing your job well, you count on the donors to want to support your efforts and activities. We have a great many projects and programs originating with the Center and we believe we are offering our donors many good reasons to continue to support these efforts. We feel our donors are aware of the good things we do and will want to continue to support us. On the other hand, given these difficult economic times, and the constant pressures from multiple sides, there is the possibility of donor fatigue from requests from an increasing number of worthy groups and foundations.

OB: Do you think the Times did an adequate job of seeking out all the relevant facts and of presenting them?

BK: I was a bit disappointed. I think the reporter should have taken the opportunity to talk to Ron about Kurtz’s comments regarding the Center allegedly changing the direction of its mission. It hasn’t. It also strikes me as a bit odd that the reporter could travel up here to visit Paul at his home, but was unable to find the time to visit the Center itself.

———-

There. All fair points, I think, and points that the Times really should have been able to find for itself.

Update October 5: Ron Lindsay posted this comment at WEIT:

Let me comment briefly on the key issue. I must say I find it perplexing that some appear troubled that CFI management would not issue a key to Paul Kurtz after we decided to change the exterior locks. (The locks were not changed primarily because of Kurtz, but that’s another issue.)

Paul Kurtz resigned from all his positions with the Center for Inquiry and its affiliates in May, 2010. Since then he has launched a competing organization, solicited CFI donors, repeatedly sought access to confidential information by questioning our staff, and worked with others to denigrate CFI. Were I to allow unrestricted after-hours access to our facilities to such an individual, then the board of directors should terminate me for incompetence.

And it is worth emphasizing that unrestricted after-hours access is the only privilege that Kurtz does not now have. He can visit CFI’s facilities any time there is a staff person there with whom he wishes to talk. Not only that, CFI allows him to use his former office and his reserved parking spot—the only person to have such a parking spot.

Rather than wondering why CFI has not issued Kurtz a key, I think a more pertinent question is why Kurtz is so bothered that he can no longer be in the building when no staff member is present.

The New York Times could have done a better job of providing that view of the matter, I think.

Update 2: October 5: This is a comment on PK’s Facebook page, last Saturday, by Ed Beck.

Dr. Kurtz is allowed into the building during normal hours, just like anyone else. I, an intern there, let him in twice on Thursday, personally. If it’s what you’re referring to, he staged his photo-op during a return trip later in the day, before anyone knew he was at the door (he didn’t ring the buzzer that time). I opened it as soon as I saw him — although I quickly realized he was posing, not trying to enter.

The first comment on that thread (which is on the Times article, linked by Paul) is also quite…interesting.

Anthony Appiah says something in his review of Sam Harris’s The Moral Landscape that I don’t get – it looks wrong to me, but Appiah’s a philosopher and I’m not, so help me out here. Maybe he spoke in haste, or maybe a sub changed his wording, or maybe I’m just wrong.

Harris means to deny a thought often ascribed to David Hume, according to which there is a clear conceptual distinction between facts and values. Facts are susceptible of rational investigation; values, supposedly, not. But according to Harris, values, too, can be uncovered by science…

I thought the point was that facts can’t, as a matter of logic, get you to values. That doesn’t make values not susceptible of rational investigation, surely. Does it? It makes them not straightforwardly susceptible of empirical falsification, perhaps, but there are other ways of rationally investigating things – aren’t there?

Answers on a postcard.

To re-cap: we have The Cambridge Companion to Science and Religion, edited by Peter Harrison, director of  The Ian Ramsey Centre for science and religion in the University of Oxford, a Templeton-funded outfit whose previous director won the Templeton Prize. Harrison says in his introduction that this Companion gives short shrift to the view that science and religion are in fact incompatible.

We also have a BBC article by Thomas Dixon saying, in a roundabout sort of way, that science and religion are compatible. Dixon wrote the Oxford University Press Science and Religion: a very short introduction. Under “About the author” on that page we learn that

Thomas Dixon is Lecturer in History at Queen Mary, University of London. A member of the International Society for Science and Religion and an expert on modern intellectual history…

So, all agog, we look into what the International Society for Science and Religion might be – and we find out.

 the Society has now grown to over 140 members, including many of the leading scholars in the science and religion field. Indeed the last two presidents, George Ellis, a theoretical cosmologist and Professor of Applied Mathematics at the University of Cape Town, and John Polkinghorne, are both recipients of the Templeton Prize for Progress Toward Research or Discoveries about Spiritual Realities – the world’s best-known religion prize, awarded each year to a living person to encourage and honour those who advance spiritual matters.

We find that it’s really about Religion and science, not Science and Religion; that it’s by and for and about theism and theists trying to connect their theism to science; that it’s nothing to do with scientists as scientists trying to connect to religion. We find that it’s what looks very much like a stealth Templeton outfit giving an appearance of an extra splash of prestige to authors who write books about Religion and science.

If we dig around a little more we find one of Templeton’s grants to the International Society for Science and Religion:

Through this project, the International Society for Science and Religion will select an essential reference library for the field of science and religion. Upon selecting some 250 books, a companion volume will be prepared with short summaries and critical evaluations of each book. The project will distribute approximately 150 sets of these books through a competitive program to establish new science and religion libraries throughout the world, particularly in India, China, and Eastern Europe.

Why – that sounds like missionary work, or like cold war propaganda, or both. It certainly sounds like yet another brick in the edifice of this new discipline “Science and Religion” which, thanks largely to Templeton, is eeling its way into major universities in the UK and the US.