Author: Ophelia Benson

Or you can have Alister McGrath (yes, really, again) recycling his jeers and fleers. He says about the (terrible) idea of rebranding atheists as “Brights”

Dawkins’s advocacy in the United Kingdom proved especially successful, persuading many in the media that a new force was emerging in western culture. “The future looks Bright,” they declared.

No they didn’t. McGrath is quoting a ”they” who never existed. No one in the UK media was persuaded, and “they” certainly never “declared” that the future looks Bright. I think one editor once used that as a title. Editors do silly things with titles; that means nothing.

He goes on to make the obvious point that there are lots more theists going to church than there are atheists going to “Brights” meetings – which is true, but then one reason not to be a theist is so that one won’t feel obliged to go to church every week. (“Oh but community!” comes the cry. Yes yes, but all the same, Sunday morning staring at the hummingbirds instead.)

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation, like the British one (are the two related? or is the ABC just a slavish imitator?), has a Religion and Ethics page, as if the two were a natural pair, as if secular ethics didn’t and couldn’t exist, as if religion had a lock on the subject.

The page is (apparently) reacting to the Global Atheism Convention with an orgy of atheism-bashing.

There is for instance a numbingly self-important and over-written jeremiad by someone called Scott Stephens. I don’t know who he is; I hope my Oz readers will clue us in. Have a sample of the jerry:

But what is most pronounced and historically novel about this form of “agonistic hyperpluralism” is that it is dispersed among individuals themselves, and not simply bound up in adjacent communities. This reflects, does it not, the great cultural revolution that has taken place over the last four decades, a revolution every bit as thoroughgoing and perfidious as those that ravaged the East in the first half of the twentieth century.

Unlike socialism – which invariably took the form of the radical assertion of the state over the economy, culture and indeed the bodies of the people themselves – the revolution that has defined our time and continues to hold sway within western liberal democracy is the assertion of the freedom, the rights and the pleasure of the body over every other person or institution that might stake some claim over it, whether it be nation, tradition, community, marriage, children or religion. Or, as Herve Juvin has nicely put it, the western body is “a body without origin, character, country or determination.”

Interesting, isn’t it. Sophisticated in language, while the idea expressed is deeply sinister.

One could point, he says, to

 the widespread abrogation of our morally symmetrical responsibilities to the unwanted elderly and the inconvenient unborn: one group shovelled away behind the walls of third party care and the other sentenced to death; both in the name of choice and out of fear that our lives might be dragged down into their servitude.

Or to the increasing desperation with which voluntary euthanasia is being legislatively pursued in the West, where the fear of the slow loss of autonomy in old age has usurped the fear of death itself, and where the choice of one’s own death is deemed the ultimate assertion of freedom.

And there the Catholic bullshitter comes out from behind the sophisticated mask. That’s such crap. Nobody thinks the choice of one’s death is the ultimate assertion of freedom; people (in large numbers) think it’s sometimes the best option for people who want it.

It’s interesting that this ABC page is deluging Richard Dawkins with scorn and loathing while promoting good old-fashioned authoritarianism and Your Body Is Ours thinking.

A guest series by Bruce Everett

Day one – Thursday: It begins…

… or the fringe events begin, at any rate.

I’ve arrived in Melbourne, being greeted by more than a few pubs with closed doors and ‘For Sale’ signs, and hijab or ten. The voice of an invisible, satirical yokel cries in my mind ‘Sharia law! This was a Christian nation’.

We don’t have the same presence of far-right, totalitarian, Islamic groups here in Australia that Europe has. Our yokels object to Muslims, not Islam (which they don’t know anything about – ask them what they think of Wahhabism, and they’ll probably tell you they don’t like sushi), while our political left remains somewhat oblivious to the ways far-right political Islam can manifest, and don’t seem to understand why others on the left may have concerns.

(Indeed, given that moderate Muslims in migrant communities are often the first to be pressured/bullied/harassed by Islamic extremists in western nations, being reflexively blind to such extremism makes portions of the left bad friends to Muslims).

However, unless you encounter the yokel, the political RadiCool, or the occasional sanctimonious wonk, discussions of issues of religion and politics are comparatively laid back inAustralia. We don’t have to worry about genuine critics of Islam being marginalized by the media, the way Maryam Namazie has been sidelined by the BBC in the UK, nor do we have to worry too much about secularists being sent death threats the way Jessica Ahlquist has been targeted by cowardly Christian nationalists in the US.

(And no, Andrew Bolt is not a victim of ‘political correctness’.)

***

I’m a vegetarian, in much the same ethical tradition as ethicist Peter Singer, a speaker at the Global Atheist Convention. Finding vegetarian-friendly meals on the fly while travelling can be a little trying, but thankfully I’ve had a little advice in advance, and tried out a local chain of vegetarian fast food: Lord of The Fries.

                       

Lord of the Fries… No piggy served here.

It’s not the kind of place I’ll be eating at too regularly – cost and dietary concerns prohibit that. However, the food was truly wonderful, and worth every cent. I have my doubts anything like this could succeed in my hometown of Adelaide, but it’d be nice.

A cheaper vegetarian meal was sought in the Melbourne suburb of Preston, successfully, although the encounter raised an interesting issue. On shelves and on posters in the bakery sat propaganda for the ‘Supreme Master’ cult – a movement which has been advertising semi-regularly onAustralia’s multicultural, free-to-air television station, SBS.

This was hardly an interfaith exchange – my buying a vegetarian curry pie and sausage roll for cold hard cash. And it would be safe to say that I’m less than impressed with the way the ‘Supreme Master’ goes about the business of animal welfare and environmentalism. But in as far as we shared values, there was cooperation, differences notwithstanding.

On Monday night I’ll be going to an event hosted by Meredith Doig, and featuring Leslie Cannold, PZ Myers, and Chris Stedman, where the question will be asked, ‘can believers and atheists work together for the common good?’ I suspect my example fromPreston, amongst countless others, confirms a ‘yes’.

Honestly, I can’t think of a good, general secular principle binding me to not cooperate with believers. I guess you’d have to ask believers what their God (or ‘Supreme Master’) thinks, to see if there was an issue on their end.

In passing, I wonder just how much cooperation an infidel like me could expect from the staff of East Preston Islamic College or from the Islamic college at Werribbe – since arriving in Melbourne, I’ve heard rumblings from godless secularists and moderate Muslims alike, of concerns about Wahhabist overtones in the curriculum. This is second-hand anecdote, of course, not rigorous social science; perhaps Melburnian lefties will investigate rather than leaving it up to the Murdoch press.

Believer or not, most Australians don’t want divisiveness…although we argue endlessly about what it is and how to avoid it, with various levels of competence (when we’re not busy being too laid-back, that is.)

***

My Thursday night’s event of choice, which meant missing out on Dan Dennett and Peter Singer, was a discussion of Sean Faircloth’s ‘10 point plan’ on how to push secularism forward, and how a similar approach could be adopted in Australia, held at Embiggen Books. The discussion featured secularist power-houses Russell Blackford, Meredith Doig and Graham Oppy.

Near-consensus seemed to be reached that a series of such points should, at least in an Australian context, represent underlying secular principles from which specific policy points emerge, rather than being a shopping list of policy wants (which is pretty much what Faircloth’s list is). The difficulty in this however, it was suggested, was making such a series of points politically relevant and attractive to Australians. Abstract political concepts aren’t the easiest thing to sell, especially when you’re running up against savvy evangelicals and Australian Rules football.

Retellings of the consequences of sectarian policy, such as the suffering caused by a historically religious prohibition against same-sex marriage (now a wolf-in-secular-sheep’s clothing on account of concocted concerns about child welfare), have had increasing impact over the last twenty years upon Australia’s attitude towards marriage equality. Stories of human experience are necessary, in addition to secular philosophy, and scientific investigation of empirical truths (please consider this and this).

                                             

 

I was handed this flyer on my way to Embiggen Books for the evening’s proceedings…

There were many substantive matters discussed on the night, including the matter of free speech, which unlike as in the US, isn’t a particularly well protected right in Australia, if a right at all. The agreed-upon place for the continuation of the night’s discussion is over at Russell Blackford’s blog, in the comments of a recent post (here).

The evening concluded with Russell and Jenny Blackford and Graham Oppy, leading VIP Debbie Goddard, and a bunch of Adelaidian misfits off to The Moat, under the Wheeler Centre, for drinks and a chin-wag. I must have been getting tired, because some of the details are a little hazy, and I only had one drink (a nice little pinot) – I do recall misplaced apostrophes being found in the menu, and Archbishop George Pell being the butt of a joke.

Maybe I shouldn’t be revealing these kinds of details anyway. Hopefully though, my constitution can withstand the full force of the convention proper!

~ Bruce

No voodoo “cure teh gay” ads for London buses after all.

The posters, backed by Anglican Mainstream, read: “Not gay! Post-gay, ex-gay and proud. Get over it!”

The adverts were reportedly booked for two weeks by the Christian group Core Issues to display on vehicles running on five routes in central London, including top tourist destinations such as St Paul’s Cathedral, Oxford Street, Trafalgar Square and Piccadilly Circus.

Strange idea. Imagine posters saying “Not male! Not Canadian! Not tall! Not straight! Post-male, ex-straight and proud. Get over it!”

In other words, it’s strange to think “gay” is something people should be ex-. It’s thinking that they should be getting over.

 

Good old Vision Forum and Doug Phillips and the bedbug-crazy idea that the Titanic is a Christian morality tale about men protecting women and children.

They’re having an Event. The whole thing was so much fun, you see, that they need to throw a party to celebrate it.

This April, the attention of the world will focus on the 100-year anniversary of the second-most famous ship in world history—the R.M.S Titanic. Next to Noah’s Ark, no other seagoing vessel has captured the imagination of so many. Certainly no event in history has done more to remind Western culture of the Christian doctrine of “women and children first.”

Christian? Doctrine? Who says? Where?

And what does he mean “first”? First to go to school? First at university? First hired? First promoted? First to inherit? First mentioned? First rewarded? First encouraged to be ambitious?

No, actually, he means “last” for all of those, when he doesn’t mean “never.”

But only one international event will be dedicated to presenting a distinctively Christian message with a historical interpretation designed to inspire the next generation to embrace and advance the ideal that men should sacrifice for women and children.

Today, Vision Forum Ministries and the Christian Boys’ and Men’s Titanic Society are pleased to invite you to join us for the Titanic 100: An International Centennial Event—the family event of the year. The Titanic 100 is a living history, home education, commemorative experience, replete with dramatic performances, music of the 1912 era, stirring messages, costume events, stories your children will remember, an interactive journey through the greatest Titanic museum in the world, and a fabulous anniversary banquet cruise on a steamer (that we hope will not sink), as we remember the 100-year anniversary of the R.M.S. Titanic.

Every element of the Titanic 100 is designed to leave your family with stories they will retain for the rest of their lives, inspiring them to remember the heroism of the past and to embrace a fundamental principle of Christian civilization—that women and children are to be honored and protected.

And excluded. Don’t forget excluded. The price of being “honored and protected” is being excluded.

Vision Forum is all about turning women and girls into pseudo-Victorian angels in the house who do nothing beyond the domestic. Vision Forum attempts to train women to be limited and dependent, so that they need protection instead of being able to take care of themselves.

The Duggars enacted this on their “Look At All These Children!” show this season. “The men” all went off for a camping trip while the feeble females all stayed home. It was never discussed, it was just announced – Jim Bob and the boys go camping, Michelle and the girls don’t. I kept wondering. Did any of the girls want to go? Did any of the boys want not to go? Did anybody have any option? It seemed so rude, excluding each other that way. It reminded me of a time my sister’s husband decided to take one of his kids to work and leave the other behind. He took the boy, who was younger, and left the girl. She wanted to go too; she cried. He explained, “this is just for the men, sweety.” I felt murderous. (He’s a lawyer, by the way, not a lumberjack or a coal miner. It wasn’t obviously “just for the men” in any sense. He just meant he didn’t want any stinkin’ girls messing up his fun.)

Once Jim Bob and the boys had finished camping, Jim Bob had a Good Idea: they would all take Michelle and the girls flowers, to show them how special they are. So off they went to the flower store, and each boy chose a flower for a particular sister, and they went home and handed them out. It was gross. The males all went off and had an adventure and the females all had to stay behind, and then the males came back and passed out a patronizing little prezzy for each captive.

And then there’s the matter of class, as Julie Ingersoll points out.

As is often the case with “providential history,” the actual history is distorted to tell make specific theological points. This time what is missing is real history that an equally important criteria for access to lifeboats, and thereby survival, was the price of one’s ticket. Phillips says:

If numbers prove anything, it’s that 71% of the survivors were passengers and 29% were crew, and that in raw numbers, almost as many Third Class (174) passengers survived as did a First Class (202) and crew (212)… Other than “Women and Children first,” there wasn’t any attempt to save one class of passengers over another.

Raw numbers? Really? By percentage, twice as many women in third class died as did women in first class; children in first class had nearly three times the survival rate of those in third. One would only use “raw numbers” if one was trying to make a point not supported by the numbers.

Shut up and have a daisy.

 

The Catholic bishops have released another Declaration of Theocracy.

Sarah Posner reports

As expected, it’s basically a rehash of the same arguments the Ad Hoc Committee on Religious Liberty has been making for almost a year. This document, though, is even more pointed and hostile than previous statements, expressing disdain for (and even a refusal to acknowledge) court rulings against the Bishops, vowing not to obey “unjust laws,” and pledging to deploy “all the energies the Catholic community can muster” to resist “totalitarian incursions against religious liberty” this summer.

In other words, theocracy. Disobey laws, disobey judges, do what the bishops say “God” says instead. That. is. theocracy.

The Bishops’ statement complains about the treatment of Christian students on college campuses, alleging that “the University of California Hastings College of Law has denied student organization status to only one group, the Christian Legal Society, because it required its leaders to be Christian and to abstain from sexual activity outside of marriage.” The CLS requires members and those wishing to hold leadership positions in the club to be professing Christians and to disavow “unrepentant participation in or advocacy of a sexually immoral lifestyle.” To gain official club status, the group requested an exemption from the school’s anti-discrimination policy, which the school denied, thus denying CLS official student organization status. In 2010, though, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the law school’s denial of official status to the group did not violate its free exercise rights. Yet the Bishops persist in claiming that this denial infringes on Christian student rights.

As the ACLU’s Paul Cates noted when the case was pending before the Court in early 2010:

If the court were to accept CLS’s claim that religious beliefs trump the need to abide by non-discrimination rules, all non-discrimination laws—the laws we have put in place to guarantee everyone an equal opportunity to earn a living, find housing and to obtain access to critical services including health care—would be in jeopardy.

And we would be living under a theocracy. That would be bad. Resist the bishops.

Let’s reverse all trends toward greater freedom in order to attract more rabid reactionaries. What a good plan!

A London University may become the first in the country to ban alcohol from part of its campus to attract more Muslim students, its Vice Chancellor has said.

It could ban women from part of its campus, too, or it could ban just women with naked heads, or it could split the difference and ban just women not in burqas. Would that be a good plan?

London Metropolitan University is considering banning the sale of alcohol from some parts of the campus because a “high percentage” of students consider drinking “immoral,” Prof Malcolm Gillies said.

One-fifth of the University’s students are Muslim, and of those the majority are women. It is an issue of “cultural sensitivity” to provide drink-free areas, Prof Gillies told a conference, adding he was “not a great fan of alchol on campus”.

It’s likely that a high percentage of students consider bans on alcohol immoral, too. Four fifths of the University’s students are not Muslim; is there an issue of “cultural sensitivity” to refrain from banning alcohol in places where it’s currently allowed?

Professor Gillies said the University was “much more cautious” about the portrayal of sex on campus than universities had been 30 or 40 years ago, the Times Higher Education reported.

Many of its female Muslim students “can only really go to university within four miles of home and have to be delivered and picked up by a close male relative”, he said.

“Now we’ve got a younger generation that are often exceedingly conservative, and we need to be much more cautious about [sex] too.”

Power to the conservatives! Let’s everybody go backward! Soon no women will be allowed to do anything unless accompanied by a close male relative. Utopia!

 

Rebecca took it.

It’s nicer than that stinking letter.