AI calls on the Egyptian authorities to investigate allegations of torture, including forced ‘virginity tests’, inflicted by the army on women protesters.
Author: Ophelia Benson
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The yukkists
Man, it’s been a busy week for the gnu-hating crowd. There was Michael Ruse, then Jacques Berlinerblau, and now (it grieves me to say) Joseph Hoffmann. All three doing an extended yell of rage at “the new atheists” while seldom actually giving any specifics or quoting anyone or linking to anything, so that a reader could figure out exactly what they’re talking about. They do mention Dawkins and Harris, and Hoffmann quotes from a press release by the Center for Inquiry, but mostly there’s just a great deal of generalization.
Here’s Ruse:
I think the New Atheists are a disaster, a danger to the wellbeing of America comparable to the Tea Party. It is not so much that their views are wrong—I am not going to fall into the trap of labeling those with whom I disagree immoral because of our disagreements—but because they won’t make any effort to think seriously about why they hold their positions about the conflict between science and religion…
Here’s Berlinerblau:
In fact, what is fascinating about the New Atheists is their almost complete lack of interest in the history and philosophical development of atheism. They seem not the least bit curious to venture beyond an understanding that reduces atheist thought to crude hyper-empiricism, hyper-materialism, and an undiscriminating anti-theism…
New Atheists, like Fundamentalists, only read “original texts” (kind of like the way Tea Party activists prattle on about the “original intent” of the Constitution). They don’t understand hermeneutics, or the interpretive process, and for this reason they are doomed to saying very silly things about their subject matter.
And now here’s Hoffmann:
…it is not clear that the EZs are listening, at least not directly, to their critics, because their royalty checks and speaking fees are talking too loud…
The mode of critique is lodged somewhere between “Stupid Pet Tricks”- and “Bushisms”-style humor, a generation-based funniness that thrives on ridicule as a worthy substitute for argument: Blasphemy contests, Hairdrier Unbaptisms, Blowgun-slogans (“Science flies you to the moon, religion flies you into buildings”), and my latest personal favorite, Zombie Jesus Jokes (“He died for your sins; now he’s back for your brains”)…
And so on and so on – lots of generality with very little specificity (although at least there is a link to Zombie Jesus Jokes, which is something). I don’t know who the new atheists in question are supposed to be, whether the four cowboys, or the four plus some more, or all new atheists (and how are they defined?). That means I don’t know how accurate the descriptions of them are, or how to check. That means I suspect that the whole enterprise is just bad temper as opposed to reasoned criticism. Yet a major pillar of the criticism or bad temper is how unreasoned the criticism by the new atheists is.
So the question is: what exactly is it, really, that they’re so pissed off about?
I don’t even know. You’d think I would, after all this time, but I don’t. They’re all over the place. They change their story every time they post. One minute it’s being political failures, the next minute it’s being too popular. I can’t possibly keep up.
The truth is I don’t think it’s really anything. I think they just don’t like us, in a dopy Leon Kass-ish “yuk” way, and that’s all there is to it. We really really get on their nerves, and they don’t know why themselves, but they don’t seem to have noticed that they don’t know why, so they keep self-importantly issuing noisy but incomprehensible jeremiads on the subject. This is good free publicity for the gnu atheists, so it all works out.
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EZ theist ethics
Rabbi Adam Jacobs tells the Huffington Post and its readers that atheists can’t say it’s wrong to stone women to death because they are atheists.
In fact, the most sensible and logically consistent outgrowth of the atheist worldview should be permission to get for one’s self whatever one’s heart desires at any moment (assuming that you can get away with it). Why not have that affair? Why not take a few bucks from the Alzheimer victim’s purse — as it can not possibly have any meaning either way. Did not Richard Dawkins teach us that selfishness was built into our very genes?
I wonder if Jacques Berlinerblau will do a thoughtful erudite eloquent piece saying why that is ignorant and wrong. No, I don’t really. There is only so much time in a life, and with so many ignorant gnu atheists to beat up, ignorant theists just have to take care of themselves.
Furthermore, doesn’t Darwinism suggest that certain groups within a given population will develop beneficial mutations, essentially making them “better” than other groups? It would seem that racism would again be a natural conclusion of this worldview — quite unlike the theistic approach which would suggest that people have intrinsic value do to their creation in the “image of God.”
Much for you to do there, Professor Berlinerblau. Much ignorance and error. Still too busy?
At the end of the day, the reason that I can agree with many of the moral assertions that these atheists make is because they are not truly outgrowths of their purported philosophies, but rather of mine. I would suspect that the great majority of the atheistic understanding of morality comes directly or indirectly from what is commonly referred to as the Judeo-Christian ethic.
Directly or indirectly – well that makes it easy. Fine, have it your way, Rabbi: my understanding of morality comes indirectly from what is commonly but mistakenly referred to as the Judeo-Christian ethic, an “ethic” which is very different now from what it was when it was young, thus showing that not even your understanding of morality comes directly from “the Judeo-Christian ethic.” Whatevs.
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Atheists get their morality from theists so ha
“The atheistic understanding of morality comes directly or indirectly from what is commonly referred to as the Judeo-Christian ethic.”
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OIC states drop “defamation of religion” campaign
New resolution “condemns any advocacy of religious hatred that amounts to incitement to hostility or violence.” Non-believers not mentioned.
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Pakistan: children play “suicide bombing”
Teenagers are the best suicide bombers, because they’re easy to train and to brainwash.
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It gets better
The It Gets Better project is a good thing.
The interview with Dan and Terry on Fresh Air was also good. Terry had an especially horrible time the first two years of high school. He said he couldn’t even walk down the hall in such a way that he didn’t attract bullying. Everything he did – the way he moved, the way he talked, everything – got him bullied. His mother went to the school and asked them to do something about the bullying.
Their response was, ‘There’s nothing that they could do. If he looks that way, if he talks that way, if he walks that way, there’s absolutely nothing they could do to protect me and it was probably just going to happen and that my family should probably just get used to it.’
That really brought me up short. I think I’d heard it before, when they first started It Gets Better, but if so it shocked me all over again. Jeezis – his school telling his mother if he looks that way, if he talks that way, if he walks that way, there’s absolutely nothing they could do…that’s so complicatedly horrible I can’t deal with it. Which is why It Gets Better is so necessary.
I find it too moving to watch. I hope the kids don’t! I hope for them it’s a lifeline, not something that makes them go all maudlin. But I found the one by White House staff very…powerful.
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Whited sepulchre
But hey, then again, why worry about religious privilege and entitlement when the Vatican is busy telling the UN Human Rights Council that people who dispute its vicious homophbia are “attacking” it and interfering with its human rights? Why bother? Why not just give up, since we’re obviously outnumbered?
People who criticise gay sexual relations for religious or moral reasons are increasingly being attacked and vilified for their views, a Vatican diplomat told the United Nations Human Rights Council on Tuesday.
Or to put it another way, gay people are increasingly being attacked and vilified by reactionary religious fanatics who think they should have the power to tell everyone everywhere what to do down to the smallest detail.
“People are being attacked for taking positions that do not support sexual behaviour between people of the same sex,” he told the current session of the Human Rights Council.
“When they express their moral beliefs or beliefs about human nature … they are stigmatised, and worse — they are vilified, and prosecuted.
“These attacks are violations of fundamental human rights and cannot be justified under any circumstances,” Tomasi said.
What attacks? He means criticism and disagreement. Criticism and disagreement are not violations of fundamental human rights. Furthermore, the Vatican’s concern for human rights is…let’s say incomplete, and self-regarding, and cynical, and a joke.
Tomasi also said the Vatican believed in the inherent dignity of all human beings and condemned all violence against people because of their sexual orientation or behaviour.
“But states can and must regulate behaviours, including various sexual behaviours,” he said.
“Throughout the world, there is a consensus between societies that certain kinds of sexual behaviour must be forbidden by law. Paedophilia and incest are two examples.”
Says an archbishop of a church that has shielded paedophiles from, precisely, state law, the very state law he appealed to.
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Poor little mites, only 30 places for them
Big excitement: another religious state school is opening in Leicester, a Hindu one modeled on another in Harrow (London). Hooray hooray, even though there are people who think Not hooray hooray.
It, like other faith school proposals for “free” schools, has its opponents, those that think the plethora of religious schools being opened under the Gove initiative will destroy community cohesion and increase segregation on racial and religious grounds among pupils.
And that that’s not something the state should be fostering and funding. What’s the other view, exactly? I can never quite figure it out. That it will do those things but those are good things to do? Or that it won’t do those things? Either one seems…feeble.
The programme is intended to overcome the situation whereby there are a million Hindus in the UK but only 30 Hindu primary school places a year for them.
But there you are, you see, that’s just it: what does that mean, “for them”? Nothing, basically. You might think (if you were a naïve observer) it meant the children of Hindus are barred from all UK schools apart from a selected 30. But of course that’s not the case: the children of Hindu parents like the children of any other parents can attend state schools. The “for them” implies that children of Hindu parents perhaps “need” to attend specifically Hindu schools, even though parts of the article put that very idea into question. It’s a goofy, retrograde, sloppy idea that’s been coming into vogue in recent years, and people should toughen up and get rid of it. Children don’t “need” to go to any kind of denominational school, and assuming they do does indeed push them into religious and sometimes ethnic segregation. Get over it.
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Dan Savage and Terry Miller on “it gets better”
Miller’s school told his mother: “If he looks that way, if he talks that way, if he walks that way, there’s absolutely nothing they could do to protect him.”
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UN: Vatican defends “right” to bash gay rights
Religious homophobes “are increasingly being attacked and vilified for their views,” a Vatican diplomat told the United Nations Human Rights Council.
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Does religion belong in the classroom?
“There are a million Hindus in the UK but only 30 Hindu primary school places a year for them.” Beg the question much?
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Roberto De Mattei explains the catastrophe in Japan
“…catastrophes are the just punishments of God” inasmuch as “to the guilt of the Original Sin are added our personal and collective sins.”
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Texas bill would outlaw “discrimination” against creationists
Universities would be forbidden to fire anyone “based on the faculty member’s or student’s conduct of research relating to the theory of intelligent design.”
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Orac on anthroposophic medicine at the U of Michigan
Anthroposophic medicine is based on many ideas with no basis whatsoever in science that can best be described as pure magical thinking.
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The people look like ants
So how about that Jacques Berlinerblau eh?
He totally agrees with Michael Ruse that “new” atheists are equatable to the Tea Party, and wishes he’d said it first.
For those not familiar with their world-view, let me help you understand their central and timeless insight: Unless you as an atheist are willing to disparage all religious people, describe them all as imbeciles and creeps, mock every text and thinker they have ever produced, then you must be some sort of deluded, self-hating, sellout, subverting the rise of the Mighty Atheist Political Juggernaut (about which more anon).
Goodness; how very vulgar. Miss Manners does not, on second thought, believe she has very much to say about sheer vulgarity. Miss Manners is forced to conclude that Mr Berlinerblau is beneath her notice.
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Asylum seeker deported from Norway is in Evin
Iranian authorities have signaled that Iranians who seek asylum should be charged for “dissemination of false propaganda against the Islamic Republic.”
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Brandish that crucifix
Andrew Brown seems to have taken a Michael Ruse pill (may cause drowsiness, perversity of reasoning, tendonitis, irregular heartbeat).
The decision of the European court of Human Rights that Italian schools may continue to display a crucifix in the classroom is obviously a victory for common sense, of which only fanatics would disapprove.
Oh obviously; oh only fanatics, certainly. (What was that about gnu atheist rhetoric and lack of humility again?)
The idea that human rights legislation should be used to prevent children from being exposed to a crucifix is a profoundly totalitarian and superstitious perversion of one of our civilisation’s best inventions.
Well yes, it would be, but that isn’t the idea in question. Oddly enough, nobody was attempting to prevent children from being exposed to a crucifix. That would be quite a tall order, and would involve forcibly keeping children out of churches as well as off the streets, out of shops and museums, away from people – it would involve a quite remarkable program of visual isolation. What a good thing it is that that’s not the issue. The idea, of course, was to prevent the state from imposing a crucifix on children in state schools. That is a more limited ambition, do admit.
So Andrew renders his piece worthless at the outset, by misrepresenting the issue. What’s the point of that? Hooray, he says, the fanatics can’t do what they were trying to do – but they weren’t trying to do that and they aren’t fanatics, so what exactly is Andrew’s point?
And if a secularist is able to protest against the presence of a crucifix in a classroom on the grounds that it breaches her children’s human rights, why shouldn’t a Muslim bring a lawsuit against the V&A for displaying Christian imagery to her children when they are taken on school trips around it?
Because the two are different, for reasons that are too obvious for me to bother explaining. (Oh all right – a crucifix permanently stuck on a classroom wall is an endorsement, a teaching, an admonition; a trip to a museum is a different kind of thing altogether.)
The answer, of course, is that NSS thinks that secularist children – or the children of secularists, since it absolutely certain that no child is born a rationalist or secularist – have different and better rights to those of religious children, and especially Muslim children.
You may wonder how NSS got in there, and what it has to do with anything. I don’t know. It’s not that I omitted a previous bit where the NSS was mentioned or scolded; that’s its first appearance, out of nowhere. I think he meant “secularists in general” but accidentally turned that into “NSS” (without even the normal “the”). Bit of a King Charles’s head there, I’m afraid. At any rate – that’s crap. Secularism protects the rights of religious people. The ruling on the crucifix certainly does not protect the rights of Muslim children! Secularism would; this ruling does not – unless of course the idea is the odd one that Muslim children have a religious right to have a crucifix imposed on them in state school.
But it doesn’t follow from this argument that atheism is a privileged position that the state should teach and enforce. A theologically neutral state takes no position on the question of which gods exist, or, if you like, which conceptions of God (if any) correspond to reality.
But atheism isn’t the issue. Secularism isn’t atheism, and it is entirely possible, and indeed reasonable, for theists to be secularists for their own protection as well as that of other people. State neutrality on religion is not state atheism. That’s why I did a post a few months ago saying atheist schools would be a terrible idea.
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Paul Sims disagrees with Andrew Brown
This is the government of Italy (a state whose constitution has been secular since 1985) imposing a symbol of Catholicism on every classroom in the country.