Year: 2010

Karen Armstrong is a former English teacher and current religious apologist with a strong dislike of science; she has found a novelist who also has a strong dislike of science, and who was invited to give some lectures on the subject at Yale. (Yale invites some very odd fish to give lectures on subjects they don’t seem to know much about. Terry Eagleton for instance, and now Marilynne Robinson. Why does Yale do that?)

[T]he novelist Marilynne Robinson argues that positivism, the belief that science is the only reliable means to truth, has adopted a “systematically reductionist” view of human nature.

Oh yay, a much-needed critique of the reductionism of positivism and the folly of thinking that science is better at finding out things than more amateurish brands of inquiry. That will be new and different.

Armstrong summarizes Robinson in several excruciating paragraphs of uncomprehending formulaic nonsense, then winds up with a final deepity:

If we are indeed completely in thrall to the selfish gene, why not throw all constraint to the winds and just be selfish – individually and collectively, in our politics, social arrangements, financial and economic dealings? We saw during the 20th century (not to mention the first decade of the 21st) what can happen when the “me-first” mentality is given free rein.

She seems to have derived her understanding of the selfish gene from Mary Midgley, or perhaps the back of a cereal box. The whole review is warmed-over Midgley, which might as well be warmed-over Charles Windsor, which might as well be warmed-over Marilynne Robinson. They all peddle the same line of annoying uninformed grandiose New Agey bullshit, and they give me a pain.

Let’s celebrate Christopher Hitchens (and the 4th of July, if you like) by watching his hard-eyed look at a putative saint.

I’m just echoing Norm here, but what the hell.

Sakineh Mohammadie Ashtiani is due to be stoned to death on a bogus charge of “adultery.” She’s already had 99 lashes, but the authorities in Iran have decided to be thorough about it.

“She’s innocent, she’s been there for five years for doing nothing”, [her son] Sajad said. He described the imminent execution as barbaric. “Imagining her, bound inside a deep hole in the ground, stoned to death, has been a nightmare for me and my sister for all these years.”

Yes. Naturally. And there is something hideously, deeply, intolerably wrong with people who can not only contemplate doing that, but actually do it. Who consider it not a nightmare but Justice. It’s so ugly it turns me sick every time I contemplate it. Burying a woman in the ground up to her neck, pinning her with only her head sticking out, then throwing stones at it, small stones, so that the disgusting terrifying shaming filthy process will take longer.

Five years ago when Sakineh was flogged , Sajad was 17 and present in the punishment room. “They lashed her just in front my eyes, this has been carved in my mind since then.”

Torture the woman and her children – for, at most, sex outside marriage.

The US State Department does not entirely approve.

“We have grave concerns that the punishment does not fit the alleged crime, ” Assistant Secretary of State P.J. Crowley said Thursday. “For a modern society such as Iran, we think this raises significant human rights concerns.”

Calling Iran’s judicial system “disproportionate” in its treatment of women, Crowley said, “From the United States’ standpoint, we don’t think putting women to death for adultery is an appropriate punishment.”

I hate to say it, but I think they could use a bit of Bush-speak for subjects like this. I realize they have sane reasons for avoiding Bush-speak, but I wish they could say torturing a woman to death for putative adultery is something more than inappropriate.

Cristina Odone is there, announcing to a breathless world that She is Praying for Christopher Hitchens. Well good, because that is the first thing that leapt to my mind, of course – will Cristina Odone be praying for him?

While condemning the intolerance of religious organisations, he shows zero tolerance for believers: a person of faith must be a fanatic, or a fraud. (Mother Teresa, according to his book The Missionary Position, was both.)  He refuses to consider the evidence of religious do-gooding, found in the Catholic Church’s AIDS clinics in Africa, Anglican schools in Asia, and Jewish charities around the globe. He is determined to persecute Pope Benedict XVI, and would like to see him arrested on his forthcoming visit to Britain.

Mother Teresa was both. It’s not that she must have been, it’s that she was. Hitchens didn’t say “persons of faith” must be fanatics or frauds and therefore “Mother Teresa” was both; he investigated “Mother Teresa” in an effort to find out if her actions matched her reputation, and found out that they did not.

And Hitchens is not determined to “persecute” the pope, unless by “persecute” Odone means “tell the truth about.” It would be stupid for Hitchens to be determined to persecute the pope in any other sense, because it’s stupid to be determined to do the impossible, and Hitchens is about as unstupid as anyone alive. It’s impossible to persecute the pope, because we can’t get at him. He’s protected by layer upon layer upon layer of immunity and holiness and specialness and law and guards and bubble cars. We can’t get at him to tell him to his face that he’s doing bad things. (Yes there was that woman last Xmas, but all she managed to do was tip him over for a second. That’s not great for an elderly fella, but it’s not persecution.)

Hitchens is of course determined to see the pope prosecuted – and so he should be. The pope has real temporal power, and he uses it; he uses it to protect criminals and keep crimes out of the hands of secular law enforcement and rebuke countries that take law enforcement into their own hands. The pope should be subject to prosecution for, at least, heading an organization that abets criminals.

As for Hitchens – I hope medical science can keep him around until he reaches the pope’s current age, at least.