Author: Ophelia Benson

Thought for the day. From Chapter 10 of Susan Haack’s Defending Science, ‘Point of Honor’:

‘In The Mind of God, Paul Davies, also a physicist, but a believer (and winner of the million-dollar Templeton Prize “for progress in religion”) concludes that “belief in God is largely a matter of taste, to be judged by its explanatory value rather than logical compulsion. Personally I feel more comfortable with a deeper level of explanation than the laws of physics. Whether the use of ‘God’ for that deeper level is appropriate is, of course, a matter of debate.” This, from the idea that explanatoriness is just a matter of taste, through the play on “deeper,” to the insouciance about the meaning of “God,” sounds to me like – well, a million-dollar muddle.’

So, as promised, or threatened, a little more of the Counterblast on Religion in Politics. Because it raises so many issues, that are so very often danced around rather than addressed directly. Because the whole subject is so hedged about with squeamishness and politeness and tact and unexamined assumptions and let’s pretend and refusals to admit the obvious. Not, certainly, because I have anything new or original or profound to say. I’m not that delusional. But because what I do have to say gets drowned out by what the soapy side has to say. It’s the same point as the one Daniel Dennett made in that Op-Ed piece about the Brights: that if atheists are politely silent while theists never shut up, then atheists start to think they are a tiny peculiar insignificant minority, and theists get more and more domineering and aggressive.

Many students came up to me afterwards to thank me, with considerable passion, for “liberating” them. I hadn’t realized how lonely and insecure these thoughtful teenagers felt. They’d never heard a respected adult say, in an entirely matter of fact way, that he didn’t believe in God. I had calmly broken a taboo and shown how easy it was.

We don’t realize. We lose sight of the way our polite silence becomes not just polite silence but actual assistance for the ill-mannered people who would force religion on everyone else.

Whether we brights are a minority or, as I am inclined to believe, a silent majority, our deepest convictions are increasingly dismissed, belittled and condemned by those in power — by politicians who go out of their way to invoke God and to stand, self-righteously preening, on what they call “the side of the angels.”…Most brights don’t play the “aggressive atheist” role. We don’t want to turn every conversation into a debate about religion, and we don’t want to offend our friends and neighbors, and so we maintain a diplomatic silence. But the price is political impotence. Politicians don’t think they even have to pay us lip service, and leaders who wouldn’t be caught dead making religious or ethnic slurs don’t hesitate to disparage the “godless” among us. From the White House down, bright-bashing is seen as a low-risk vote-getter.

Try to disregard the unfortunate ‘brights’ usage. Apart from that, everything he says seems to me to be obviously true. That diplomatic silence is, surely, a terrible mistake. So this is some of the explanation for Dawkins’ bluntness, and for mine too. All this politeness and mealy-mouthedness just lets the theocrats get away with it.

So, allow me to be blunt. It is understandable but mistaken for theocrats to confuse religion with morality. It’s not entirely mistaken for theocrats to think that religion adds some motivation or stiffening to morality – it probably does. It’s understandable and not entirely mistaken for theocrats to value some of the good effects of religion (I say ‘some’ because most of the effects of religion are so mixed, the good effects so difficult to disentangle from the bad ones) such as loyalty, community and so on. It is entirely mistaken for theocrats to think and to tell the rest of us that belief or ‘faith’ is a virtue. It is not. Not in the sense they mean it. Faith in a friend or relative, faith in democracy or equality or liberty, may well be a virtue, but faith in the existence of a supernatural being for which there is no good evidence is not a virtue, it’s a vice. In any other context we know that perfectly well. We don’t want to hear engineers’ ‘faith’ that the bridge will stand up, nor the pilot’s that the plane will fly; we want considerably more than that. Religion gets a special dispensation, or rather two: first, it is accepted on the basis of authority rather than evidence, and then that very acceptance becomes a virtue. That’s a bad thing, not a good one. Pointing that out only seems ‘glib’ or too blunt or blowhardism because we’ve been trained to shut up while the theocrats shout. It’s time to stop doing that.

On a lighter note. Somewhat lighter anyway. I’ve been reading Susan Haack’s wonderful new book Defending Science – Within Reason, which I strongly recommend you all read without delay. I was amused to find her twice (at least) quoting the Underground Grammarian – whom I also suggest you read without delay. This amused me partly because only a few days ago a reader emailed me with an apposite quotation from the dear Grammarian, and added that it was via B&W that he’d learned of that irascibly witty writer. That did make me feel useful.

Here’s a brief sample – although not as brief as usual, because there is no worry about copyright: the dear Grammarian gave blanket permission to use as much of his material as our little hearts desired, and the site continues that tradition.

The truth, at last, can be told. That Aristotle fellow was, in fact, not a literate man. He never developed positive feelings about barbarians. Indeed, the more he came to learn about them, the less he appreciated them. Franz Kafka wasn’t literate either, you know. Like so many other illiterate “writers”-who can count them?-he was never able to develop any positive feelings of self-worth and importance…But don’t worry about it. Our schools are doing everything they can to assure that we will be less and less troubled by such pseudo-literates. The true literates are in the sphere—or is it the arena?—of education. In that sphere, or field, it is almost impossible to find anyone who hasn’t developed impregnable feelings of self-worth and importance…The quality of their relationships with others is amazing; they never, never disagree or contend, and they always hail enthusiastically each other’s bold innovative thrusts and experiential programs of excellence. And what could be stronger testimony to their fulfillment of individual potential than the fact that they have somehow persuaded the rest of us to pay them for all the stuff they do?

And a bit farther down (this is volume 6 number 2, by the way):

Among the great successes of our schools is the fact that they have always been able to prevent serious and widespread outbreaks of hyperkinetic reading behavior syndrome. This is a remarkable feat, since most young children, even when they first come to school, already exhibit morbid curiosity behavior and persistent questioning behavior, dangerous precursors that must be replaced quickly with group interaction skills and self-awareness enhancement. (Children who are properly preoccupied with themselves and with some presumed distinctions between individual whims and collective whims hardly ever fall into hyperkinetic reading behavior syndrome.) Although a few intractable cases can still be found, we realistically expect, and before long, to eradicate this crippling disability and usher in the age of true literacy.

The Grammarian did not think much of US schools of education. He didn’t worry much about hurting those schools’ feelings, either. He was a lovely fella.

Part of what is so grotesque about Lieberman’s tactic (and I realise it is indeed a tactic, and part of a political campaign, and that people will say whatever they think will work in those situations [which is one of the more irritating and destructive aspects of democracy] and so in a sense perhaps not to be taken too literally – but then again if the candidate thinks the tactic will work, perhaps that makes it still worth examining) is the fact that Dean hasn’t exactly been campaigning as an atheist. Has he? Not that I’m aware of. No, it’s just that he ‘has run a steadfastly secular campaign’ as the Times put it.

So he’s not even allowed to be neutral. Not allowed simply to be silent on the matter, to take no position one way or the other, to keep his opinions to himself, to keep his own counsel. Neutrality on this subject is not permitted. He has to declare, and he has to declare for one side and not the other. Public avowed ‘faith’ in a pious fiction is mandatory if you want to win high office in the US. Plenty of people are perfectly happy with that, think it’s a fine thing, an excellent guarantor of moral principles. That’s one argument, but let’s at least be clear about it. We can’t have the argument at all if most of the terms of it are forever being covered up, prettified and fuzzied and blurred and confused. If we pretend that there’s nothing at all dubious about demanding public declarations of faith in a fictional supernatural entity as a condition of election to a secular office.

I’ve noticed a couple of clichès in play that help this fuzzification process along.

“I know that some people believe that faith has no place in the so-called public square,” said Mr. Lieberman, an observant Jew. “They forget that the constitutional separation of church and state, which I strongly support, promises freedom of religion, not freedom from religion.

That’s a very popular one, almost as popular as ‘God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve,’ that unanswerable retort to people who favor equal treatment for gays. One has to wonder what people mean by it. We can have freedom of religion but not freedom from religion? Does Lieberman really want to say that? Religion is mandatory? We are free to choose one but we’re not free to choose none? Funny, I would have thought that the constitutional separation of church and state does indeed promise freedom from religion in the realm of the state. But then that would rule out all those invocations and prayer breakfasts and ‘in God we trust’ on the money, and that would never do.

The other banality is from the Atlantic.

Dean signed a gay-civil-union bill and is suspected of having culturally elitist values-a point made by Scott Spradling, the co-moderator at the New Hampshire debate. “Governor Dean said recently that religion does not play into his policy decisions,” Spradling noted. “Do you believe this could hurt the Democratic Party’s chances in areas of the country like the South, where politics and religion tend to go very much hand in hand?”

Culturally elitist values? Making policy decisions on grounds other than religion? That’s culturally elitist?

Well, maybe it is, maybe it is. Or maybe not. But then, surely lots of things are in some sense ‘culturally elitist’ that one would think would be useful qualifications for the job in question. Things like, you know, knowledge of the world, politics, society, history; ability to think and talk well and quickly; wisdom, understanding, judgment. Those are all minority attributes, though they’re also all attributes we can all aspire to, they’re all attributes we can all develop in ourselves if we put some effort into it, they’re not like being seven feet tall, which only a few of us can do. But even more than that, consider the way such assertions function as directives; the way the descriptive becomes the normative in the act of being uttered. ‘Most people ______.’ Therefore (the implication goes) you’d better _____ too if you don’t want to be abnormal and weird and geeky and, ooh er ah ugh, ‘culturally elitist.’ So both religion and being like Everyone Else become mandatory, and we get yet another drearily mediocre talent-free guy for president. The resounding banality has done its work again.

A couple of our readers are cross with Dawkins and with me for being blunt about religion, or perhaps for oversimplifying it. Of course that’s one of those perennial irregular verb things that I’m always noticing. One of those eye of the beholder things, one of those glass half-full or half-empty things, one of those Well it depends on which way you look at it things. Granted, I did speak bluntly and even rudely – I said as much at the time. But this is part of my point. How odd that hardly anyone rushes to upbraid Lieberman for being rude about atheism or secularism. How odd that there’s such a radical asymmetry in public rhetoric about the whole question, and that we’re so used to that asymmetry that we never even notice it. Why is it all right for Lieberman and other believers to chastise non-believers, but not all right for non-believers to chastise back? This set-up is bizarre and inequitable in at least two ways. One, it’s just unfair on the face of it. They can say we’re wrong, and we’re not allowed to say that they’re wrong. Two, it’s particularly absurd because they are in fact so very much more likely to be wrong than we are – and that’s putting it politely. That, you see, is why I put it so rudely. Because surely there is something grotesque about the fact that religious people get to scold non-religious people for, precisely, not sharing their ‘faith’ or ‘belief.’ What does faith mean in that context? It means believing something is true without good evidence. The word itself carries the implication that one is supposed to overlook the lack of evidence and just believe anyway – a procedure which is not considered intellectually respectable in other contexts. We don’t just have faith that the earth moves around the sun or that the Holocaust happened or that viruses cause colds, do we – we rely on evidence. Granted it’s not evidence that we ourselves have examined or produced. Even if we are astronomers or historians or medical researchers, we still have to rely on researchers in other fields to examine that evidence in our place; nobody can examine the evidence for everything we believe. But that’s not the same thing as no evidence at all. There are no equivalents of astronomers in religion – theologians don’t look for evidence, that’s not in the job description.

So that’s why it is grotesque that religious people think they are entitled to scold non-religious people – because they are urging people to believe something that there is no good reason to think is true. We are so accustomed to the grotesquery that most of us don’t notice it, but that doesn’t make it less grotesque – arguably it only makes it more so. Hence the need to point out, loudly and firmly, to windbags on the campaign trail, the epistemologically shaky status of what they believe. However rude it may seem.

Soapy Joe again. I asked Richard Dawkins to say a few words on the subject, and he kindly obliged. You will see that he’s just as impressed with the seriousness and intellectual depth of our political campaigns as I am:

“The fact that political candidates, even those of education and intelligence like Howard Dean, are obliged to feign religious faith in order to stand a chance of getting elected, makes the United States the laughing stock of the civilized world.”

Richard Dawkins

Religion on all sides. How it does keep coming up, and how it does shape (and often distort) the debate – for that matter, how it does shape our lives. It’s inescapable, and massively influential, and yet it’s taboo to discuss it honestly. What a bizarre situation.

It’s kindly meant, of course. It’s about protecting people’s feelings and sensitivities. But the trouble is, if we give religion a permanent free pass, it can go ahead and trample on other people’s feelings and sensitivities, not to mention their freedoms and rights and bodies and lives. Religions are the foundation of a lot of the glaring systematic injustices in the world, and the more kindly-meaning people are too polite to say so, the more such injustices can carry on their merry way.

And then of course even apart from the physical harms religion can do, there is also the cognitive harm. There is the damage done to everyone by the pervasive pretense that religion is true. That’s another obvious fact that simply gets systematically overlooked, in order not to hurt anyone’s feelings. But at what a price! And besides, why doesn’t it ever work the other way? Why aren’t religious people too polite to hurt the feelings of non-religious people by disputing their truth claims? Hmm? Religious people don’t hesitate to say that atheists have it all wrong, so why do atheists keep their mouths shut when theists are talking? Why does Soapy Joe Lieberman get away with scolding Democratic presidential candidates for not talking about religion enough?

Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut called on Tuesday for strengthening the role of religion in public life and took a veiled swipe at Howard Dean, who has run a steadfastly secular campaign. “I know that some people believe that faith has no place in the so-called public square,” said Mr. Lieberman, an observant Jew. “They forget that the constitutional separation of church and state, which I strongly support, promises freedom of religion, not freedom from religion. Some people forget that faith was central to our founding and remains central to our national purpose and our individual lives.”

Yeah, and some other people forget that ‘faith’ is not central to all our individual lives. But much more basic than that – people like Soapy Joe forget one important thing: that religion is not true. He’s rebuking people for not talking about a fiction as if it were true. He’s rebuking candidates for high office for not taking a fairy tale seriously, he’s whingeing about the putative failure of people seeking a secular political office for not loudly and often enough avowing their belief in a supernatural being for which there is no evidence. He doesn’t rebuke his rivals for not declaring their ‘faith’ in Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny or Hobbits or wizards or elves or talking animals, does he? Not that I’m aware of anyway. But rebuking them for neglecting to talk about that other made-up, invented, fantasized, magical being – that’s another matter, that’s normal and acceptable, and nobody answers him, ‘We don’t talk about the deity because we have no reason to think it exists, that’s why.’ Well why not? Because it would be rude and insensitive, no doubt. You may think I’ve just been very rude and insensitive. But what is the difference? Why is one invented supernatural being taken with the utmost seriousness when the others are not? Custom, habit, precedent? Not very good reasons, I would think, and certainly highly circular. Psychological need, wishful thinking? But our desire for something to be true doesn’t make it true, as surely we realize once we grow up. Group think? Everyone else does so I might as well too? Yes, no doubt, which is precisely why it would be nice if more people were willing to drop the ridiculous pretense and point out the truth. Soapy Joe should stop urging his rivals to join him in peddling a pack of lies.

RC makes a good point in a comment on the post below. Guilt by association certainly is a classic Bad Move, one that functions just as the word ‘brown’ does: as an attempt at intimidation via guilt-tripping. Maybe that’s one of the uses of entities like B&W, actually – to make moves like that just a bit less likely to work. That would be a worthy goal. If we could, by just a little, detach inquiry from ideology – maybe we could do some shaming in our turn, but in our case, I hope, by legitimate means and to good effect. If we could get people to realize and notice and accept that saying a given truth-claim is associated with a particular group or political stance is not the same thing as saying that it’s not true – that would be useful.

But there is also a tactical question, and that’s another matter. It’s also one that comes up endlessly. Feminists who oppose pornography find themselves on the same side (on this one issue, and for different reasons) as conservative Christians. Various human rights campaigns find themselves on the same side (on some issues) as libertarians with whom they disagree strongly on other issues – and so on. There’s no end to it, which is not at all surprising, since politics is a very large field with many possibilities, so the notion that there could be only two possible answers to any and every question, and they would all neatly harmonize each time, is an odd one. So it comes up endlessly, and one just has to keep deciding afresh each time, it seems to me. On one issue one might decide it’s not worth giving support to a party or movement one doesn’t agree with, while on another one might decide it is. It boils down to deciding which enemy trumps which, really.

But one thing it is possible to say very flatly indeed. There is no need whatever to spy out some hidden racist agenda to explain my, at any rate, opposition to and dislike of the hijab. [I call it the hijab, by the way, because the English alternatives seem unsatisfactory. It’s more than a headscarf, because it wraps around the neck and the whole face: it looks far more like a nun’s headgear than it looks like those triangles the royal women wear when out with the horses. But it’s not a veil in the English sense either, because it doesn’t cover the face. Ibn Warraq tells us ‘The Arabic word “hijab” is sometimes translated as veil, but it can signify anything that prevents something from being seen – a screen, a curtain, or even a wall…’ {Why I am not a Muslim, p. 314} So since both headscarf and veil are a bit misleading, I’m going to go with hijab.]

I loathe and detest and despise the damn thing, not because I’m a racist, but because I’m a woman. It’s not about tender concern or sympathy or piety or altruism – it’s about sheer gut loathing and fear. That’s how all women would look, all over the planet, if the Islamofascists got their way. The hijab is a badge of inferiority, slavery, obedience, submission. Of course I hate it! Are Jews fond of yellow stars and tatooed numbers? Are slaves and the descendants of slaves fond of shackles and brands? Would they take them up as either a fashion statement or a religious one? You can tell me it’s voluntary and chosen all you like, but I don’t have to believe it, and I don’t. And I’m not going to, either, until men start wearing them.

Of course, it doesn’t follow from that that the ban on conspicuous religious garments is a good idea. It may well be that the believers’ right to wear what they like ought to trump all other rights, not only the right of women and girls in general not to have to see symbols of their own putative inferiority in school all day, but also the right of girls who want to resist pressure to wear the hijab not to have extra pressure applied by compliant schoolmates. But I think it’s far less debatable what the basic meaning of the hijab is. I think it’s evasive and dishonest to pretend that it’s solely an expression of identity or religion, to deny that it is at least also a badge of submission, inferiority, degradation, and powerlessness.