Author: Ophelia Benson

  • Big Reason Rally roundup

    Everything.

  • What Jason Rosenhouse learned from talking to creationists

    On many occasions I asked people the blunt question, “What do you find so objectionable about evolution?”  Never once did anyone reply, “It is contrary to the Bible.”

  • A tribe of one

    There was an earlier Heathen’s Progress a few days ago, which did hint that the series isn’t in fact intended to go on forever. That’s good to know. (One needs to know what to pack.) On the other hand, Julian used it to treat all disagreement as “tribalism,” which looks to a naive observer like an unfair move.

    First of all, it is dispiriting to see how tribal so many people seem to be. For all the interesting, thoughtful comments that have been posted on the pieces I’ve written, and supportive emails I’ve been sent, there have been many more that have used whatever the subject of the week is as a simple pretext to get in the familiar old digs against whoever the other tribe happens to be. There’s also been a tendency to take any critical comments I make as indications that I’m on a certain “side”, as though it is not possible to criticise your fellow travellers, or that we only agree with friends and those we disagree with are enemies.

    Maybe, maybe, but then again one could just turn the whole idea back on him. One could argue (with evidence via quoting) that the whole series was full of “the familiar old digs” at the tribally-hated gnu atheists. I’ve been arguing that throughout: his “critical comments” have been 1) familiar 2) tribal 3) generalized and evidence-free. Given that, it seems painfully self-serving to say that most of the criticism his series has received has been tribal as opposed to thoughtful.

    It’s probably true that much of the response was tribal; mine probably was tribal, but then Julian’s critical comments were directed at a tribe. His response now is rather like poking a dog with a stick and then complaining when the dog growls. He’s been talking about “new” atheists in a tribal way for years; we bristle because he talks about us that way; then he complains when we do what he’s been poking us to do. It’s all tribal. Sure, our response may be tribal, but his hand-waving generalizations about us are every bit as tribal, and his came first.

    Actually I think his are a good deal more tribal, because they’re so general and vague, while the responses give chapter and verse.

    The conclusion is pure poisoning the well.

    …atheists need to be a bit more modest and self-effacing than they have appeared to be. The whole idea of the “heathen” label was to take ourselves a little less seriously. We say we respect science and reason, but what both have taught us more than anything is how fallible, biased, irrational and prejudiced we all are.

    If you agree with these conclusions, then I expect you’ll find much to agree with in the Heathen Manifesto. If you don’t, and you like a good excuse to fire off a ranting response to a Comment is free belief blog, then start rubbing your hands now.

    In other words, if you don’t agree with my conclusions, you’re the kind of person who likes to fire off ranting responses to a Comment is free belief blog. That’s how to be modest and self-effacing, folks! Just announce that all disagreement is malicious hand-rubbing ranting.

    Tribal indeed.

     

  • A spectre is haunting the Guardian Open Weekend

    Oh no not that – not another installment of Heathen’s (ant-like) Progress. But yes, it is so.

    This time it’s a manifesto. Oh good, more management of atheism by a self-nominated boss of atheism. More telling us all how to do it more korrektly by some random guy. More “we have to do it this way” from one person who keeps forgetting to show us his Certificate of Rulership Over All Atheists.

    In recent years, we atheists have become more confident and outspoken in articulating and defending our godlessness in the public square. Much has been gained by this. There is now wider awareness of the reasonableness of a naturalist world view, and some of the unjustified deference to religion has been removed, exposing them to much needed critical scrutiny.

    Unfortunately, however, in a culture that tends to focus on the widest distinctions, the most extreme positions and the most strident advocates, the “moderate middle” has been sidelined by this debate. There is a perception of unbridgeable polarisation, and a sense that the debates have sunk into a stale impasse, with the same tired old arguments being rehearsed time and again by protagonists who are getting more and more entrenched.

    Sigh.

    I’ve pointed this out a million times, and here I am having to point it out again. (Well not having to – but there it is again, so it needs pointing out, and I’m right here, so I’ll save you the bother.) Here’s the glaring problem with that passage (and with the article and with the whole series): Julian is himself contributing to the very perception he cites, in this very article and series. He’s been contributing to it for a long time, ever since the piece in the Norwegian humanist magazine Fritanke. The backlash against “new” atheism has created a perception that “new” atheism is shrill-and-militant, and having created the perception, it cudgels “new” atheism for being shrill-and-militant, thus enforcing the perception, for which it cudgels “new” atheism, some more, etc, in an endless cycle which does its bit to keep journalists solvent. Given that Julian is himself one of the people responsible for the “perception,” he’s the wrong person to keep wringing his hands about the perception. He’s the wrong person to point the finger at “a culture that tends to focus on the widest distinctions, the most extreme positions and the most strident advocates” when he’s a stalwart of that very culture. The fact that his statement that “there is a perception of unbridgeable polarisation” links to one of his own articles demonstrates this hilariously; I suspect that the link is editorial rather than authorial, but that makes it no less ironic.

    It is time, therefore, for those of us who are tired of the status quo to try to shift the focus of our public discussions of atheism into areas where more progress and genuine dialogue is possible. To achieve this, we need to rethink what atheism stands for and how to present it. The so-called “new atheism” may have put us on the map, but in the public imagination it amounts to little more than a caricature of Richard Dawkins, which is not an accurate representation of the terrain many of us occupy. We now need something else.

    This manifesto is an attempt to point towards the next phase of atheism’s involvement in public discourse. It is not a list of doctrines that people are asked to sign up to but a set of suggestions to provide a focus for debate and discussion. Nor is it an attempt to accurately describe what all atheists have in common. Rather it is an attempt to prescribe what the best form of atheism should be like.

    Modest, isn’t it. Who’s “we”? Who commissioned Julian to manage the next phase of atheism’s involvement in public discourse? Whence comes all this instruction and prescription?

    The manifesto itself – meh. It’s not so much a heathen manifesto as a Julian manifesto. It’s not quite up there with Marx and Engels for rhetorical flair, so meh.

    h/t Geoff

  • Fuck the pope…but use a condom

    Rowdy irreverent people in Mexico city protest the pope’s visit. I want to be friends with all of them!

    Wisely, the pope is not going to Mexico City. He’s going to a city where people like him.

    I wonder if his BFF Sayeeda Warsi is going to meet him there so that they can plan the war on militant secularism some more.

    h/t Roger

  • Bifurcated epistemology is doing it wrong

    PZ is doing another talk tomorrow, at the American Atheists National Convention. Subject: “Scientists! If you aren’t an atheist, you’re doing it wrong!” Regular commenter (here as well as there) julian disagreed.

    Meh.

    I’d say if a philosopher’s not an atheist they’re doing it wrong but a scientist can be whatevs so long as they’re sufficiently ignorant of things outside their area of expertise.

    I disagreed with that.

    How is that not doing it wrong? How is believing something that is dependent on being sufficiently ignorant of things outside their area of expertise not doing it wrong?

    I see how it’s technically possible, of course, and how it can be made to “work” in a narrow, vocational sense, but I don’t see how it is, considered more broadly, anything but doing it wrong.

    To put it another way, of course strict compartmentalization is possible, but it’s not a respectable solution for a scientist or any other kind of honest inquirer.

    That’s what I think. Being ignorant in order to do a special, defective kind of thinking is doing it wrong, as long as “it” is understood to be cognitive functioning in general as opposed to just doing a particular (scientific) job. Yes a scientist can do science in the lab and woo everywhere else, but that’s doing it wrong. NOMA is doing it wrong. Doing it wrong is doing it wrong.

     

     

  • It’s not a priority

    I saw a powerful BBC report on FGM in Egypt the other day.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bObvzSHRKT8

    The most chilling part is at the very end (11:00) when Sue Lloyd Roberts asks a Salafist honcho if he’s on board with the campaign to end FGM and he said it’s not a priority. She pressed him by saying, “So you wouldn’t deter a mother who wants to get her underage daughter mutilated.”

    He stared for a second and then said, with a tiny smirk, “I have nothing further to say on this matter.”

    Sue Lloyd Roberts in voiceover: “The will of mothers like Olla will therefore be respected, and 11-year-old Raja will be mutilated.” Freeze-frame on young Raja.

  • Sometimes the ploy is really too obvious

    One such time is when a clerical type (or “expert” or “scholar” or other male boffin who dispenses religious rules) tells a woman she has to open her legs whenever her husband tells her to and that if she doesn’t she’s a sinner and that godknowsbest.

    It’s Sheikh Assim Al-Hakeem I’m talking about this time. A woman said her husband was issuing the open legs command three times a day and it was too much, what should she do.

    It is not permissible for a wife to refuse fulfiling her husband’s desire. You should answer his calls as this is not phisically hurting you.

    If you can’t do that for no legitimate reason, you are sinful. You should ask him to marry another woman or to divorce you.

    And Allah knows best

    See what I mean? Transparent. Self-interested. God says women can never say no to a spousal fuck, and godknowsbest. If she wants an occasional break she should ask him to get a second wife. (Then maybe a couple of decades down the road she can have the fun of being murdered by the husband and wife #2, as with the Shafia family. It’s a great arrangement any way you look at it.)

    If toddlers were in charge of religion it would be sinful for adults to refuse to give toddlers candy. Godknowsbest.

  • Marriage is defined as

    The Muslim Council of Britain says no thanks to marriage equality for gays.

    Farooq Murad, Secretary General of the MCB, said: “Whilst we remain opposed to all forms of discrimination – including homophobia – redefining the meaning of marriage is in our opinion unnecessary and unhelpful.

    “With the advent of civil partnerships, both homosexual and heterosexual couples now have equal rights in the eyes of the law. Therefore, in our view the case to change the definition of marriage, as accepted throughout time and across cultures, is strikingly weak.”

    He added: “Like other Abrahamic faiths, marriage in Islam is defined as a union between a man and a woman. So while, the state has accommodated for gay couples, such unions will not be blessed as marriage by the Islamic institutions.”

    Wut? Marriage in Islam is defined as a union between a man and a woman? Orilly? What happened to sura 4:3? What happened to “or two, or three, or four”?

    It’s sweet that they remain opposed to all forms of discrimination though. Really adorable.

  • MCB opposes marriage equality for gays

    Farooq Murad, Secretary General of the MCB, said, “marriage in Islam is defined as a union between a man and a woman.” Or a man and two women, or three, or four.

  • Islamist preacher barred from university talk

    A Muslim preacher who said homosexuality was ‘unnatural’ and gays needed to be ‘treated’ has been barred from speaking at an event for the Islamic Society at U of Hertfordshire.

  • ACLU 1 USCCB 0

    It’s about time. Sarah Posner reports that – at last! – a judge rules for the ACLU in a challenge to the stinking meddlesome theocratic US Conference of Catholic Bishops.

    Late yesterday a federal court in Massachusetts ruled [PDF] in favor of the American Civil Liberties Union in a challenge it brought against the Department of Health and Human Services over contracts with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops under the Trafficking Victims Protection Act. When the ACLU first brought the case in 2009, HHS permitted the USCCB to prohibit the referral of victims of sexual assault to be referred for contraception and abortion services. Although HHS did not renew the USCCB contract last year, the ACLU proceeded with the case “to ensure that taxpayer dollars are not misused to impose religious restrictions on vulnerable trafficking victims that receive U.S. aid,” according to a statement.

    And the judge ruled against theocracy.

    Judge Richard Stearns agreed the case was not moot, and in holding that the policy permitting the Bishops to restrict trafficking victims’ access to reproductive health services violated the Establishment Clause, noted, “[t]o insist that the government respect the separation of church and state is not to discriminate against religion; indeed, it promotes a respect for religion by refusing to single out any creed for official favor at the expense of all others.”

    It does that and it also promotes respect for and freedom of people who follow no religion. It rules, in short, against theocracy.

  • Mexican activists protest pope’s visit

    And they do a good job of it, too!

  • Washington Post on the Reason Rally

    “We have the numbers to be taken seriously,” said Paul Fidalgo, spokesman for CFI, one of the organizations sponsoring the rally. “We’re not just a tiny fringe group.”

  • Working Works Ltd

    It’s a funny word, “works.” What do people mean when they talk about what works? Well it depends – if they’re talking about a toaster or a lawnmower it’s obvious enough what they mean. But the word is often used when the thing supposed to be working or not working is not a thing at all but something much larger and more nebulous, like a political system or a reform movement or a controversy, and then the meaning of “works” becomes not obvious at all.

    I briefly joined in yet another argument with James Croft about his (as far as I can tell) favorite subject: whether or not “the atheist movement” is “working” and how he and his colleagues can make it “work” better by managing the way atheists communicate. After awhile I gave it up, because my joining in made no difference – James just kept on managing. But in the process I wondered, not for the first time, what James thinks he means by “working,” when it’s not as if “the atheist movement” is trying to do anything as simple as cutting grass or grilling bread.

    Here’s some of that discussion:

    James: The idea that opinions only may be given if they are solicited – a sort of “who asked you anyway” response – seems to me a criterion you would never accept in your own writing. One of the things I appreciate about your blog is that you have a view on almost everything, and are happy to express it. I think I am allowed to express my view too, including views which include some normative element (this is hardly uncommon on the other side of the debate, after all – pretty much every post about Chris, for instance, boils down to “he shouldn’t do what he’s been doing and here’s why”).

    So, if anything, I think the shoe is on the other foot – here you are trying to tell me not to talk about certain things because you feel “managed” by my airing a different opinion. Well, I don’t want people to feel “managed”. And I accept I have a way of coming across kind of imperious in my writing (and in my speaking – my mum will tell you it’s been a constant struggle for me throughout my life ;) ). That’s something I’m trying to work on. But the issue of how we communicate our message to the public is, I think, very important. It’s worthy of scrutiny and deep consideration, and I think I have something to contribute to that discussion.

    Me: Opinions are different from advice. Unsolicited opinions, good; unsolicited advice, usually not so much. That’s why it’s a phrase – “unsolicited advice.”

    Here it is again – “the issue of how we communicate our message to the public is, I think, very important.”

    So you want to manage it. But lots of us don’t want to be managed! Lots of us just want to do it however we do it and not be corrected all the time.

    We don’t want to be herded into some “we” that “communicates our message to the public” in some pre-determined way.

    We don’t want filters. We don’t want rules, especially not rules imposed by, say, you, or you and your colleagues. We don’t want frames we have to fit into.

    There is no “we” in that sense. There is no unified body that all “communicates to the public” in one market-tested way. Thank god for that!

    James: But no one is trying to “impose rules”. What I’m trying to do is have a discussion informed by evidence to determine what works. If, then, having determined what’s likely to be effective, people still wish to do other things, then fine – who am I to stop them? But to forestall the discussion before it has begun is not what I think we should be about.

    Me: But I don’t think “works” is even a meaningful word here! I’ve learned to hate it, because of the way it gets deployed in claims precisely like that one. I don’t care what “works.” I certainly don’t care what the combined wisdom of the Harvard Humanists tells me “works.”

    I could see it for one narrow subject like a billboard, say, or an ad like the one FFRF ran. Then it does matter what “works.” But for larger more amorphous activities like blogging? No.

    And I think you are trying to impose rules (you plural, not you James). I think that’s the whole point of all this research into what “works.”

    That’s what I think. It’s been what I think for a long time. It was what I thought when Chris Mooney was always giving the same kind of (unsolicited) advice, too. I don’t calculate what “works” before I write something, and I don’t want to; nor do I want other people to. I don’t even know what “work” would mean in that context – attract new readers? Not repel existing readers? Cause the pope to become an atheist? What?

    I’m not interested. I’m not in sales, and I’m not a campaign advisor, so I don’t have to worry about what “works”; I can just try to tell the truth as I see it, about things that I consider important.

    I think the whole idea is an excuse, frankly. I don’t think the advice-givers really care about what “works”; I think they dislike certain styles of writing and talking and want to discourage them, and framing it as about what works makes that seem more acceptable than would just saying, “Hey ew I don’t like your style, do it differently.” Maybe I’m wrong; that’s speculation; but that’s what I suspect.

    And I really don’t want to be managed. If I wanted to be managed I would get a real job with a paycheck. I want to be un-managed, which is why I shy away from real jobs with paychecks.

  • A bargain

    It can seem strange how entirely alien the whole idea of free discussion can seem to people who (I suppose) have never had any experience of it.

    A Bangladesh court on Wednesday ordered authorities to shut down five Facebook pages and a website for blaspheming the Prophet Mohammed, the Koran and other religious subjects, a lawyer said.

    Judges at the high court in Dhaka ordered the telecommunications regulator, home ministry officials and police to block the offending pages immediately.

    “These pages contain disparaging remarks and cartoons about Prophet Mohammed, the Muslim holy book of Koran, Jesus, Lord Buddha and Hindu gods,” Nawshad Zamir, a lawyer of the petitioner who brought the case, told AFP.

    “They mostly targeted the prophet and the Koran. These pages hurt the sentiments of the country’s majority Muslim population and the followers of other religions.”

    One, no they don’t, not necessarily. It’s not as if “these pages” by existing force themselves on the notice of all people everywhere. Two…well it’s Minchin’s fucking obvious again, but ok: if that’s your standard then nobody can say anything about anything, including you. The prophet and the Koran “hurt” my “sentiments,” but I don’t get to block them. I get to make disparaging remarks about them, instead.

  • A quiet Saturday

    Any interesting news on the Reason Rally? Twitter isn’t all that informative, possibly because for once people are too engaged to waste much time tweeting. I did like this one –

    “300 years after the enlightenment we have to have a rally for the fucking obvious” – Tim Minchin #reasonrally

    It’s a thought I have often often often, or it might be more accurate to say I never stop having it. Why are we still having to say this when it’s so fucking obvious?

    Dawkins made a similar point in the Washington Post a few days ago.

    How have we come to the point where reason needs a rally to defend it? To base your life on reason means to base it on evidence and logic. Evidence is the only way we know to discover what’s true about the real world. Logic is how we deduce the consequences that follow from evidence. Who could be against either? Alas, plenty of people, which is why we need the Reason Rally.

    Quite. I wonder how the True Reason people and their “water for the thirsty” are getting along.

    Lots of Freethought bloggers are there, of course, making complicated plans to find each other in the crowd – PZ, Ed, Greta, JT, Jen, Hank, Dan, Brianne, Mano, that I know of. Have fun, all.

     

  • Bangladesh will block Facebook pages for “blasphemy”

    “These pages hurt the sentiments of the country’s majority Muslim population and the followers of other religions.”

  • Elisabeth Cornwell on why women need secularism

    Some politicians and activists believe it is their ‘God-given-right’ to interfere in the most private of decisions of both women and men.

  • Washington Post: Hemant Mehta on Reason Rally

    Their “true stories” are now easily debunked on Snopes, their critiques against gay rights and women’s rights are quickly rebutted across the blogosphere…