Author: Ophelia Benson

  • Want to drive on the sabbath? Get a thought car

    It totally works, because thought is not action, so you’re allowed to use the thought car.

  • Katha Pollitt on the bitter tea of Greg Mortenson

    Afghanistan and Pakistan have many honest aid workers, including many locals—they just don’t get the celebrity media treatment or the celebrity-sized budgets.

  • Blair and Brown not invited to the royal wedding

    Palace explains. We forgot. No, they’re not knights of the garter. No, it wasn’t a state occasion. No, they’re not Vic’s great-great-great grandsons.

  • Pop culture interlude

    So James Spader is one of the group of possible successors to Steve Carrell. That would be fun. I thought he was brilliant in Boston Legal.

    I liked the red mittens. The oven mitt thing was really mean. The red mittens repaired that.

  • China scolds Salman Rushdie about human rights

    Rushdie called for the release of Ai Weiwei. China calls this “blatant interference in China’s judicial independence.”

  • Jerry Coyne on the archbish on evolution

    Buried within the leaden prose is a deep and abiding dislike for evolutionary biology and genetics in particular.

  • Charles Freeman on reliquaries at the British Museum

    Glittering opulence risks concealing the anguish poured out at the shrines as those desperate for salvation pleaded with a saint to intercede with God for them.

  • This is not a job for bomb makers

    Another thought about “Why Do We Need New Atheists?” (subtle way of announcing a desire to get rid of us, that title). The post is actually a pretty rich study in scapegoating and other forms of disguised hostility, so despite its nastiness and wrongness, it repays a close look.

    (The disguised part really interests me. I’ve said before, probably more than once, that one thing I really dislike is hostility or rivalry that tries to dress itself up as its own opposite. I really hate it when people are obviously brawling or competing but pretend that they’re just joking or “teasing” or being absent-minded. I especially hate it when women do that, because it fits a stereotype about us.

    This may be one reason Gnus get so much stick. We mostly don’t do that “oh I’m just a sweet little thing” routine – so we leave people plenty of room to pretend shock-horror at our failure to dissemble.)

    There is a fear among New Atheists that moderating and dissenting voices are trying to erase the polemic as an avenue of approach. But that’s a polemical overreaction. No one is suggesting that we burn New Atheist books or silence their authors. Those bells have been rung. We can’t un-ring them, nor should we. The Four Horsemen of New Atheism did their work well, but they cannot help us clean up the battlefields they created. That’s not their job. The clean-up, the strategizing, the community rebuilding, the future imagining, and the alliance-making — this is not a job for bomb makers.

    On the one hand, no one is suggesting that we silence gnu atheist authors (and where would you get the authority to do that if you were suggesting that?), but on the other hand, this is not a job for bomb makers. In other words, actually yes, we do want you to be silent now, because it’s time to “clean up the battlefields” you created.

    Only we didn’t create any battlefields. McLaren loves her some metaphors, and she lets them run away with her. We didn’t create any god damn battlefields, and there is nothing to clean up. What is she talking about? “The clean-up, the strategizing, the community rebuilding, the future imagining, and the alliance-making” – oh that – she’s talking about The Great Return to Conformity. She’s talking about resuming the status quo. She’s talking about restoring The Group to its former hegemony by rebuilding community and making alliances.

    We know she’s doing that, because she’s saying we can’t do it. Thus we know she’s not talking about just ordinary life, because how could she possibly say we can’t help with that or that it’s not our job? She couldn’t – so she’s talking about a kind of community and alliance that of its nature excludes us. She’s doing her best, in an opaque way, to tell us we are too weird and extreme and abnormal to be part of the Community.

    It’s sinister stuff, frankly. I don’t think she intended it to be, but I do think she has a sad lack of awareness about the resonances of her own rhetoric.

    That’s my thought.

  • God is loving and holy

    Greta Christina pointed out a little nightmare of a post by William Lane Craig at his wittily-named blog “Reasonable Faith,” saying that genocide is ok because God decided.

    I haven’t properly read Greta’s article yet because I wanted to read Craig first. I’m doing that now.

    He says about the genocide of the Canaanites.

    These stories offend our moral sensibilities.  Ironically, however, our moral sensibilities in the West have been largely, and for many people unconsciously, shaped by our Judaeo-Christian heritage, which has taught us the intrinsic value of human beings, the importance of dealing justly rather than capriciously, and the necessity of the punishment’s fitting the crime.  The Bible itself inculcates the values which these stories seem to violate.

    What? The story violates our moral sensibilities but oh, haha, those moral sensibilities come from the place that says the story is fine.

    Oh no you don’t. None of that, bub. That’s called having it both ways, or eating your cake and having it, or a contradiction.

    The story violates our moral sensibilities because we have better moral sensibilities than the people who wrote the bible. We have the benefit of many centuries of thinking and learning and cumulative wisdom. We did not get them from the bible.

    According to the version of divine command ethics which I’ve defended, our moral duties are constituted by the commands of a holy and loving God.  Since God doesn’t issue commands to Himself,  He has no moral duties to fulfill.  He is certainly not subject to the same moral obligations and prohibitions that we are.  For example, I have no right to take an innocent life.  For me to do so would be murder.  But God has no such prohibition.  He can give and take life as He chooses.

    How does Craig know this god is “holy and loving”? He doesn’t. I don’t know that about Craig’s god, and I don’t know that Craig knows it either. I don’t want to be subject to Craig’s cosmic dictator who can kill anyone he damn well feels like killing. I’m not going to agree to Craig’s PR for the dictator.

    Moreover, if we believe, as I do, that God’s grace is extended to those who die in infancy or as small children, the death of these children was actually their salvation.  We are so wedded to an earthly, naturalistic perspective that we forget that those who die are happy to quit this earth for heaven’s incomparable joy.  Therefore, God does these children no wrong in taking their lives.

    So then all children should be murdered. It totally makes sense – that way they’re guaranteed god’s grace, while if they live to get older, they might lose it, by being gay or an atheist or an imbiber of spirits. Those who die are happy to quit this earth for heaven’s incomparable joy, so what possible reason could there be not to kill all children right now?

    Anyway, the best news is, it turns out that Christianity is good while Islam is bad.

    Christians believe that God is all-loving, while Muslims believe that God loves only Muslims.  Allah has no love for unbelievers and sinners.  Therefore, they can be killed indiscriminately.  Moreover, in Islam God’s omnipotence trumps everything, even His own nature.  He is therefore utterly arbitrary in His dealing with mankind.  By contrast Christians hold that God’s holy and loving nature determines what He commands.

    So if god kills you tomorrow it’s because of god’s holy and loving nature, even if you don’t go to heaven like the babies and children but instead go to the bad place. You’re pleased, right?

  • Hitchens on the upcoming nuptials

    By some mystic alchemy, the breeding imperatives for a dynasty become the stuff of romance, even “fairy tale.”

  • Stupid “birther” ravings carry on regardless

    “It’s easier psychologically to come up with a rationalization than it is to admit that you were wrong,” said Ronald Lindsay.

  • The squalor of US politics

    Obama wearily produced his birth certificate, so the loons changed the subject. “How did he get into those Ivy League schools? Huh? Explain that!”

  • Russell Blackford on atheists against atheism

    Atheist thinkers have joined the backlash against the New Atheism, often employing far nastier tones than anything in the New Atheist writings themselves.

  • Oh hai, why can’t the new atheists be nice?

    Why can’t they, asks “interfaith” atheist (don’t ask me, I don’t know how that works) Chris Stedman via a guest post on his blog by someone called Karla McLaren. He says “It’s a hugely informative and clear-eyed assessment of the state of the atheist movement.” I don’t agree. I think it’s just the 14 millionth installment of “new atheists are bad and mean ick.”

    Atheism, McLaren informs us, is more visible thanks to those books by the four New Ones, or as she calls them, “the Fractious Four.” Yes really.

    I call them the Fractious Four, which has a cool superhero ring to it (even though their superpower is to argue with everybody).

    Dawkins, Hitchens, and Harris have written polemics against religion, and true to the polemical form, they’ve taken a moral absolutist stance which asserts that religion is orders of magnitude more harmful than it is beneficial (if it is beneficial at all). Dennett is a philosopher, and his work is nuanced and, well, philosophical – and I often wonder why he’s included with the polemicists. However, he is, so on we go.

    We do? Why do we? Why not not include Dennett if you think he doesn’t belong? Why swallow the clichés whole in order to barf them back at us, even the ones you don’t agree with?

    The Fractious Four have put forward some very attention-grabbing ideas in a post-Twin Towers world, where many of us have seriously questioned the purpose and limits of faith and supernaturalism. However, the Four (Dennett excluded) have put those ideas forward at the end of a fist, and in a way that questions the sanity and morality of anyone who disagrees with them. But see, that’s the point of a polemic … you put forward the most extreme version of your argument, and you don’t make any room for moderating views.

    A polemic is a deeply emotional appeal made not just with anger, but with rage; not just with sadness, but with despair; not just with fear, but with gut-wrenching terror. If it’s done skillfully, a truly masterful polemic is melded with a careful overlay of logic, scholarship, and verbal skill. A polemic is made to be powerful and arresting, and it can be a very beautiful thing indeed. But it’s not something you should make a career of, because it’s exhausting (both to create, and eventually, to witness).

    And so on, and so on. It’s all like that – treacly and belligerent at the same time, and of course wildly inaccurate in the usual way of gnu-haters. This is the basin of warm sick that Stedman urges on our attention.

    The Four Horsemen of New Atheism did their work well, but they cannot help us clean up the battlefields they created. That’s not their job. The clean-up, the strategizing, the community rebuilding, the future imagining, and the alliance-making — this is not a job for bomb makers.

    In order to move forward, we need to rely on more than mere polemics. How about if we try dialectics?[iii] Dialectics can be just as fun as polemics (and they require just as much skill), but dialectics have the added benefit of creating community, building intelligent synthesis out of seemingly intractable positions, and teaching people how to manage – rather than merely weaponize – their emotions.

    It’s one long “shut up, ur doin it rong, stop doin it the way ur doin it and do it the way I do it, stop arguing and get busy creating community.” It’s written in a fey style so that it perhaps comes across as friendly, but it is in fact very unfriendly indeed. It’s packed with fiercely hostile language about argumentative atheists and their rage and extremism. With friends like these we’ve already got all the enemies we could possibly find room for.

  • Ron Lindsay on atheism, humanism and “interfaith”

     We should avoid the “faith” label at least as vigorously as we avoid the “religion” label.

  • Topp theologian says genocide ok if god says so

    Look: the Canaanite adults were corrupt and deserving of judgement. The children inherit eternal life. It’s all good.

  • Definitions

    The question is, how do we decide what “new atheism” is? What is new atheism, who gets to decide, how do we know?

    The answer turns out to be that we simply define it as that which we dislike. Easy. Circular, but easy.

    Rob Knop for instance:

    Do the New Atheists really believe that they aren’t being argumentative, aggreessive, and generally dickish in their attacks on religion? Or, are the religious the “other” against whom any sort of rude behavior is justified?

    There we go – easy. “The” New Atheists are – always and everywhere – being argumentative, aggreessive, and generally dickish in their attacks on religion. End of story. Simple. “I dislike ‘New Atheism’ because ‘New Atheists’ be dickish and I know this because I dislike them and I dislike them because I know this.”

    The anecdote=data version:

    Thanks Josh – that is a really helpful description of New Atheism. I have a friend who is a New Atheist and I find it really tough to discuss religion rationally with him…. I fail to understand why he feels so strongly that all religion is bad, and also why he feels so strongly that religion undermines science.

    I know someone who fits your description therefore all New Atheists fit your description.

    The reliable Anthony McCarthy is a stalwart group-definer:

    I use the term “new atheist” for atheists who demonstrate that they practice negative stereotyping of religious people, practice bigotry, false characterizations and similar, negative things.

    He uses the term that way and then he proceeds to make large sweeping generalizations about “new atheists” plural, thus adding his mite to the bonfire being readied to fry the despised group. (I don’t mean “fry” literally, Joe. Relax.)

    There’s the “they all don’t ever read anything” claim:

    NA’s often complain that their intemperate approach is a “style.” I disagree. I think it’s a way of casually dismissing all the hard questions that thoughtful people (like Max Weber that I mentioned above) ask. The pose of NA’s isn’t just style, it’s contempt for everything outside of their small circle of nerdly concerns.

    There’s the definition by someone called Raging Bee

    The only thing “new” about the “New Atheists” is their new wave of often pointless obnoxiousness, and their willingness to say things that are often as insulting as they are dead wrong.

    And on and on. You get the idea. The point is – there’s a faction of people who know one big thing, which is that they loathe and detest “the New Atheists,” and they define the group they hate by saying what it is they hate about them.

    It’s not a very thoughtful or enlightening way to analyze a subject.

  • Atheist “chaplains” in the military

    Atheist leaders acknowledge the seeming contradiction, but they believe the imprimatur of the chaplaincy will embolden atheists who worry about being ostracized.

  • Sanal Edamaruku on India without Sai Baba

    Sathya Sai Baba launched a “counter revolution” of superstition, supported by irresponsible politicians and other public figures who should have known better.

  • Barbara Forrest’s brave and important work

    The Synthese controversy will have one good outcome if it brings Forrest’s work for real science education in Louisiana to the attention of the philosophical community.