Author: Ophelia Benson

Here, for instance. A moral issue (an issue because some people have made it an issue, though that wasn’t inevitable): a moral issue being discussed with arguments and reasons rather than with invocation of a deity or of Christian/Muslim/Hindu morality.

Last week British scientists announced a revolutionary screening process for inherited diseases in embryos. It will be quicker and more accurate than the existing method and it will detect thousands more genetic defects than previously possible…Those who don’t know about it can perhaps hardly imagine the drawn out suffering of Huntington’s disease or Duchenne muscular dystrophy or Prader-Willi syndrome or Fragile X, both for the people affected and for their families, until death puts an end to it…It will be easier and better in every way to get rid of a tiny collection of cells. This is indeed playing God, as all the usual campaigners were quick to point out last week. But…whatever we may think about playing God and defying nature, we are doing it already and even though we don’t necessarily recognise it, we approve of it…There will always be absolutists, who claim the right to life for even the most infinitesimal scrap of tissue. But there are others who oppose screening on what seem to me to be even more irrational grounds.

Which she proceeds to counter with arguments. Those arguments will fail to convince many – or perhaps all – of the people who oppose screening on irrational grounds. That’s how these things go.

Simone Aspis of the British Council of Disabled People said last week that she was opposed in principle to such screening on the grounds that it sent the signal that being born disabled was a bad thing…It sent a message, she said, particularly to young people with disabilities, that their lives were worth less than everyone else’s. This seems to me to confuse a disability with a person with a disability. (This is a confusion that people with disabilities normally resent, understandably.) To say that a disability is undesirable in itself is not to say that a person with that disability is undesirable in herself, or her life worth less than someone else’s. The disability is not the person. It is to say that her life would be better without that disability.

That seems right to me, but it seems a safe bet that it won’t alter the conviction of Simone Aspis. That’s unfortunate; if people who oppose the screening succeed in blocking it, that’s very unfortunate indeed, as it was (in my view) unfortunate that the assisted suicide bill got postponed again in the House of Lords a few weeks ago. But pointing to god wouldn’t help. All the theists would simply say that their god supported their view and not the other one. That’s how these things go.

Norm quotes Freeman Dyson reviewing Dennett’s new book.

There are two kinds of atheists, ordinary atheists who do not believe in God and passionate atheists who consider God to be their personal enemy.

No, that doesn’t cover it. There’s more to it than that. There are atheists who, independent of what they consider god to be, are (probably, in terms of what Dyson is talking about) not ordinary atheists who do not believe in god and are not fussed about it: there are atheists who, whatever they think of god, feel a certain sense of outrage, or perhaps violation, at being urged or commanded to believe in something there is no good reason to believe. It’s not so much god that is their personal enemy (though that may also be the case) as the presumptuous demand that they accept a belief that there is a lot of good reason to think is false, that is their (our) enemy. Now, it’s true that the god of the Bible and the god of public belief and discourse (the one that punishes some people with hurricanes and earthquakes and tsunamis while saving a few, the one that answers some prayers and not others, the one that hates fags, the one that’s a man and has a low opinion of women, the one that didn’t lift a finger during the Holocaust or the Great War or King Leopold’s romps in the Congo or centuries of slavery in the US – that god) strikes me as being a repulsive guy; yes, he’s my personal enemy, but of course that’s really the doing of the people who dream him up and then try to force him on everyone; so he’s my personal enemy only in a rather peculiar sense. But the hostility to the demands for belief is much more straightforward. I don’t think people ought to chastise or rebuke or lecture or whine at people who refuse to accept truth claims about a giant powerful person who really exists in the world and really makes things happen, on the basis of no proper evidence. That is where the, shall we say, vehemence of my atheism comes from. I do not like being ordered to believe fairy tales. It pisses me off.

The first example Dyson gives actually seems much more like an example of the kind of atheism I’m talking about than what Dyson calls it. In short, his illustration doesn’t illustrate his own claim: the guy he’s talking about, he says, “had always disliked religion in general and Simpson’s piety in particular.” But disliking religion and piety is not the same thing as considering god one’s personal enemy. In other words, there are other reasons for disliking or indeed hating religion than considering god an enemy. Dyson’s formula conceals and belittles those other reasons. It’s an irritating little bit of rhetoric. I noticed it when I linked to that review in News on June 9th, and made unpleasant faces at it, but didn’t bother commenting. But that is just the kind of thing that makes atheists of my kind just that little bit more the kind of atheist we are – that rather sneering implication that we can’t have any good or rational or understandable reason for disliking religion and its attempts at imposition. So we get that bit more hostile, and the Dysons get more sneering, and round we go.

Norm points out that there is another issue:

But for both believers and unbelievers there’s another issue that is probably more important in determining their belief and unbelief, respectively. It’s the issue of the truth or otherwise of religious belief. Here Dyson opts for a standpoint that puts the issue beyond the reach of any rational adjudication. These are just two incommensurable types of knowledge…

It is indeed the issue of the truth or otherwise. I think it would have been more civil if Dyson had taken that aspect into account. But it’s the fashion to talk as if atheists are more or less loony.

A brief review of WTM in the Guardian today. A favourable review mostly – calls it lively. It takes issue with our putative slapping around of Derrida, which was actually far more of a slapping around of one of his fans, but that’s okay.

People have also alerted me to some nice blog posts on the book. This one for instance by an ex-Mormon. His self-description in the margin makes him sound like a B&W kind of guy:

I’m a full-time academic trying to make my way in the world and recover my own independence of thought and feeling…I was raised Mormon and was quite believing until college, when I gradually began to make an intellectual and spiritual split. The gay thing was always lurking in the background, but I didn’t have the courage to deal with it until I was nearly 30. I am pretty far to the left politically, but try to be as critical as possible of my values and work to envision pragmatic solutions to real problems instead of being driven by ideology. This often leaves me out of step with other thinkers and activists on the left, the queer left in particular.

He went to Brigham Young, so he was interested in the excerpt from WTM on the implications of BYU’s religious policy for freedom of academic inquiry.

My concern, however, is more global. What happens to the quality of education when this kind of policy is enacted on its faculty? Furthermore, what is the quality of the education on a campus where 95% of the faculty are believing, temple-recommend holding members who agree with the policy and therefore do or say nothing that may be challenging to the world views of their students? Isn’t that the very nature of a university education? To have our foundations laid bare and examined?

Yup; what indeed. Good to meet you, Todd.

This one is very pleasing, because it starts with the author’s “reasons for taking readers on this ongoing tour of modern genetics. The words truth and mystery pretty much summarise most of Pundit’s reasons. A lot of discussions about modern genetics tend to lack truth, or all too sadly, miss out on the mystery.” then goes on to quote the last page or so of the book. I gather he liked it, I gather he liked the little aria to truth and mystery we finished off with (with help from Dawkins and Ridley). I’m glad he did.

So the upshot of all that is (since the implied question was, if I understand it correctly, how do atheists manage to believe in objective moral standards?) that I do think there are objective moral standards, if ‘objective’ means generally applicable, and generally applicable for sound, articulable, sharable reasons; but I don’t think they’re guaranteed by anything external to humans; I think we have to give reasons for them; and I think they are human artifacts, not something in nature or part of the fabric of the cosmos. That’s sad, in a way. It would be nice if animals had a moral sense, but they don’t. (They have affections, or something like affections, which prompts them to treat some conspecifics well within certain limits, but that’s about it, and that’s a pretty rudimentary version of morality.)

But thinking moral standards are human artifacts doesn’t weaken them. On the contrary. Theists have the option of thinking that god will make things come out all right eventually (or after we die), that wickedness doesn’t, finally, flourish like the green bay tree; atheists don’t have that option, so we know damn well that we have to keep the old moral standards in good repair, because they’re all we have.

A Christian reader wondered in a comment on That Special Glow how atheists believe in “objective absolute moral standards/truths” and asked if I could elucidate. Being short of time, I noted that it’s a large subject and gave a sort of place-holder answer. He expanded on his own view: “The point about objective truths and religious belief is not that we only believe these things because we are believers and thus taught to believe them, whether or not they are right, but that this is an assurance that these standards/truths/rights are, indeed universal and always apply.” Now it’s my turn to wonder. I wonder how that works. Because in fact it seems to me that it doesn’t. It seems to me there is no assurance that moral standards (the commenter actually said ‘objective truths’ in the second comment, but he started off with moral standards/truths, which is a confused way of putting it, since it’s not clear if he’s talking about moral standards and moral truths, or moral standards, and, separately, truths; at any rate, I take him to be talking primarily about moral standards [or moral truths], so I’m addressing that) are universal and always apply. If there were such a thing, I don’t think religious belief would provide it, but I don’t think there is such a thing in any case.

The truth is (and this is a general point about the [widely-held] view, not a specific one about my interlocutor), I think the invocation of an external guarantor of this kind is just lazy, in the same sort of way that Barthes’s cited views are lazy: it’s an evasion of argument. If you want to make a case for a moral view, if you want to try to convince someone else to agree to a moral view, it’s a lot easier and simpler to say ‘god said so’ than it is to offer reasons; but the ease is precisely what’s wrong with it. It’s easy because it’s empty, and because it’s empty, it doesn’t do the work it is thought to do. It amounts to a hollowing-out of content, leaving just a shell of words behind, and using the shell of words to compel assent. But what we need is the content. Why should I persecute or refrain from persecuting homosexuals? Why should people have or not have certain rights? Why is assisted suicide acceptable or unacceptable? Why is torture acceptable or unacceptable? You have to offer reasons, and furthermore, once you have offered them, there is no guarantee that anyone will accept them. They’re necessary but not sufficient. Saying ‘because god’ is an escape from both of these irksome conditions – the effort of giving reasons, and the frustration when people don’t accept them. ‘Because god’ is, therefore, frankly just a cheat, and it ought to be more widely recognized as such, because to the extent that it’s accepted as valid, that just undermines rational discourse ever more.

The idea seems to be that the ‘assurance’ that moral standards are universal and always apply is added on to other reasons for adhering to them. But what is it that is added? What is it that provides the assurance? I don’t see it, myself, for one reason among several because the moral standards have conspicuously changed over time, and are still highly contested to this day. If god were a provider of assurance, then why would there be change over time, and why would there be disagreement? Why does it all seem to be so fallible? And if it is fallible, in what way is it assurance?

I mostly admire Martha Nussbaum, except when she’s talking about religion or about the need for a Rawlsian tender regard for the religious sensibilities of our fellow citizens – I mostly admire her, but there are times when she gets kind of coy, or cozy, or personal, or ingratiating, or something that gets on my nerves. The opening paragraphs of this review of Harvey Mansfield’s book about manliness is not her finest hour. It might be one of her most skin-crawling. She tells us to suppose a scholar, then proceeds to give an admiring description of herself. Um…why did she do that?

Suppose a philosophical scholar–let us call this scholar S–with high standards, trained in and fond of the works of Plato and Aristotle, wished to investigate, for a contemporary American audience, the concept of “manliness,”…following the lead of Aristotle, S would probably begin by laying out the various widespread beliefs about the topic, especially those held by reputable people. S would also consider the opinions of well-known philosophers. In setting down all these opinions, S would be careful to get people’s views right and to read their writings carefully, looking not just for assertions but also for the arguments that support them.

Good. Good S. Well done, S. Good job.

S’s inquiry would uncover much fuzziness and equivocation…(“Don’t use your feminine logic on me,” I can already hear my partner saying teasingly in the background, as he typically does when words such as “necessary condition” are wheeled onto the stage.)

Oh, gosh – did you have to tell us that? Did you have to use the word ‘teasingly’? Does he have a boyish grin when he says things teasingly in the background? Do you both chuckle? Oh dear – I so don’t want to know.

Finally S would try to produce an account that seemed to be the best one, preserving the deepest and most basic of the opinions, and discarding those that contradict them. S would then hold this definition out publicly, inviting all comers to try things out with their own reasoning, and then accept the proposed definition or improve upon it. Being a friend of the Greeks, S would naturally have curiosity about the cross-cultural aspects of this particular topic.

Naturally. Of course. Because S is a good scholar, not like those other scholars who don’t do things the right way and don’t have curiosity about the cross-cultural aspects of this particular topic, because they’re not like S, which is shocking of them, and kind of pitiful.

So S would investigate these differences, and these would naturally lead S to the copious cross-cultural literature on manliness that by now exists: to the work of, say, Daniel Boyarin, on how Jewish males refashioned Roman norms of manliness, making the astonishing claim that the true man sits still all day with a book, and has the bodily shape of someone who does just that; or to work on Indian conceptions of manliness, contrasting the sensuous Krishna, playing his flute, with the tougher norms of manliness recommended by the Raj. A scholar with S’s curiosity and love of truth would find in this material rich food for reflection.

Of course! Of course S would! Because S is good, and cross-cultural, and thorough, and has read exactly the same books that Nussbaum has.

Harvey Mansfield’s credentials suggest to the reader that he will behave like S. He is a prominent political philosopher, recently retired from a chair at Harvard University, who has written widely about philosophical texts. He regularly taught a well-known class in the classics of Greek political thought…It quickly becomes evident, however, that Manliness is not the book that our imagined S would have written. To begin with, it is slipshod about facts–even the facts that lie at the heart of his argument.

Because Harvey Mansfield isn’t S, do you see? So he doesn’t do what S would have done, and he does do what S wouldn’t have done, and that is very wrong of him, because S is a shining example to us all.

I’m sure Nussbaum is right, the book sounds sloppy and silly, but the story of S is toe-curling stuff.

Old news, but why do they keep doing it? Why do the BBC keep rushing to ask Bunglawala what he thinks about the latest survey of Muslim opinion? Especially when they don’t ask anyone else? Why do they keep on treating the MCB as the go-to outfit for questions of this kind? Why do they keep on pretending the MCB is 1) representative 2) elected or chosen in some way 3) sensible?

Look at the article. Nine paragraphs devoted to Bunglawala. And no one else. Why? Why not talk to some scholars, or even one scholar? Why not talk to a (gasp) woman? Why not talk to a secular woman, or a woman scholar, or a secular scholar? Or several of each? Why instead talk yet again to fokking Bunglawala? Why talk to the MCB, which was founded, don’t forget, to organize opposition to The Satanic Verses?

And while we’re at it, as long as I’m in complaining and loudly-saying-why mode, why do they talk about a study of ‘Muslims’ on the one hand and ‘the West’ on the other? That’s stupid. They might as well talk about a study of Chicagoans on the one hand and sky divers on the other. They might as well talk about a study of Fijians on the one hand and short order cooks on the other. They might as well talk about a study of short people and liberals, or red-heads and anarchists, or Hungarians and violinists. Muddle muddle muddle. They should have asked what O would have done – but they never do.