Author: Ophelia Benson

There’s this thing called Skepticon, and the next one (5) is November 9-11, and because we are Special here at FTB, we can tell you how to order a Skepticon 5 T shirt and get a free gift. (How Special is that?!) (No I don’t know what it is. I’m assuming it’s a secret decoder ring, because what else could it be, but I don’t know.)

Here’s what you do: you enter a Special Code in the Special Code section. Can you do that? I thought you could.

The Special Code is:

FtButterflies

Unless of course you decide you’d rather get a different code from a different FTB blogger.

There’s a new Jesus and Mo…which Jesus kicks off by pronouncing the Koran overrated.

I’m reading Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen’s collection of essays Making Minds and Madness: From Hysteria to Depression. It’s about what one might call the epistemology of psychoanalysis, and its relationship to things like reputation and fashion and consensus. There’s a bit on page 160…

The fact is that psychoanalysis managed to impose itself in significant sectors of twentieth-century society as the only psychological theory worthy of the name and the only psychotherapy capable of theorizing its own practice. In such locations, calling into question the unconscious, the Oedipus complex, or infantile sexuality could – and still can – provoke the same incredulous hilarity as do Kansas creationists or members of the “Flat Earth Society.” There, psychoanalysis has become indisputable, incontrovertible. It is “blackboxed,” to use the jargon of sociologists of science, that is to sa it is accepted as a given that it would be simply futile to question. The Freud legend and its widespread acceptance are the expression of this successful blackboxing, of this supposed victory of psychoanalysis over rival theories. Better yet, they are this blackboxing itself, that which protects psychoanalysis from independent inquiry.

Sound familiar? Remind you of anything? It reminds me of religion.

Excellent piece by Dan Fincke the other day, on why Dawkins wasn’t wrong or mean to say at the Reason Rally that patently absurd religious beliefs should be as subject to mockery as any other patently absurd beliefs, and in fact more so, since their very immunity helps people to go on being included as “Catholics” and other brands of believer when in fact they aren’t really believers at all.

While the media has largely ignored The Reason Rally, the one most popular bit of news that seems to be traveling around and getting criticized is Richard Dawkins’s recommendation to the crowd that we should incredulously and mockingly ask people who say they are Catholic whether they really believe in the transsubstantiation during the Eucharist in which bread becomes literally the body of Christ and wine becomes literally the blood of Christ.

Critics are responding to Dawkins’s remarks by accusing him of hypocritically and perversely using what was nominally a rally for reason to pump up prejudice and mocking unreasonableness. To interpret his critics charitably, the following assumptions must be in play:

“To be rational in the utmost is to consider one’s opponent’s best arguments rather than to attack either strawman or ‘weak man’ arguments.”

“To attack with mockery, rather than argument, the prima facie absurdity of transsubstantiation is to evade serious rational discussion of the question of God’s existence.”

“To attempt to persuade someone by mocking their beliefs rather than carefully refuting them is to attempt an end-run around rational debate and to try to bully someone into agreement by pressuring them that if they do not agree with you they will look silly and be thought a fool.”

I want to give my own reply to that last one, even though it duplicates what Dan says later. It’s a point worth making often; drip drip drip, you know.

Yes, mockery is an unworthy shortcut if that’s all you do, but of course Dawkins wasn’t suggesting that that should be all you do.

The point of this idea in general is that most obviously absurd ideas are recognized as such (hence the word “obviously”). Fairy stories and the Easter bunny are for children. Adults who take Harry Potter or Dr Mr Spock seriously are the source of endless nerd jokes. It’s only longstanding religious absurd ideas that are treated as immune from the equivalent of nerd jokes. That’s why we think it’s a good idea to end this immunity. That doesn’t mean we think that’s all that should happen, or that we think there’s no need ever to give reasons for thinking the beliefs are absurd. We just think that treating religious magical beliefs the same way we treat belief in fairies or the Easter bunny is one way – one of many – to chip away at religion’s special immunity. We don’t think religion should have that kind of special immunity. We accept that it should have certain kinds of special immunity from the state, but that doesn’t mean that we as citizens have to pretend that while it’s obvious that Santa Claus is just a story, it’s not at all obvious that a wafer doesn’t turn into a bit of Jesus.

All patently absurd ideas should be on the same footing. If it’s ok to laugh at the idea of adults who wear Star Treck Trek uniforms then it’s ok to laugh at the idea of adults who believe a priest can turn wine into Jesus’s blood.

The archbishop is at it again. This time it’s “enough of all this selfish focus on how you are marginalized because you’re a woman or black or gay – we are all in this together so shut up about it and let the nice straight white men keep running things as we always have, ok?”

Of course he doesn’t put it quite that way. Well naturally not – you don’t get to be an archbishop by putting things that way. (Oh yes? What about George Carey then?) He puts it in the usual grand archepiscopal way.

In Cardiff he was joined a group of teenagers debating the idea of “identity politics” which he said amounted to saying: “This is who I am, these   are my rights, I demand that you recognise me”.

He told them: “Identity politics, whether it is the politics of feminism, whether it is the politics of ethnic minorities or the politics of sexual minorities, has been a very important part of the last 10 or 20 years because before that I think there was a sense that diversity was not really welcome.

“And so minorities of various kinds and … women began to say ‘actually we need to say who we are in our terms not yours’ and that led to identity politics of a very strong kind and legislation that followed it.

“We are now, I think, beginning to see the pendulum swinging back and saying identity politics is all very well but we have to have some way of putting it all back together again and discovering what is good for all of us and share something of who we are with each other so as to discover more about who we are.”

Yes interesting except that it’s not his problem, is it. He doesn’t have to worry about being marginalized because people like him aren’t marginalized, are they. That means it’s not enormously attractive for him to tell people who are marginalized that they should think about what is good for all of us. I tell you what, why don’t we go tell him to think about what is good for all of us? We could explain that he might not have a complete understanding of what it means for things to be good for all of us, since many things have probably been better for him than they have been for all of us.

A nice write-up of a chat by David Cameron to some religious bossies.

He starts by saying he welcomes the Easter message as being one of hope, but at the same time admits that he has problems believing a word of it – particularly the resurrection! Even so, he welcomes what he calls the “Christian fightback” in Britain.

It is not clear what this “fightback” is against but he measures it in “the enormous reception of the Pope’s visit.”

However, the Pope’s visit – as the Catholic Church’s own research showed – was a comprehensive flop.

And if it hadn’t been, what would he be doing rejoicing about it anyway? What is this deranged assumption that all of a sudden everybody everywhere just loves Catholicism, as if the Vatican were as benign and liberal as a Quaker? Cameron is a Tory prime minister of the United Kingdom; what’s that got to do with the Catholic church? Why is he following Tony Blair’s lead in sucking up to that vile reactionary institution?

Farther down there’s a transcript, which shows that what he said is even worse than that.

I think there is something of a Christian fight-back going on in Britain and I think that’s a thoroughly good thing. I think you could see it in the enormous reception of the Pope’s visit; I think you could see it with the successful return visit that Sayeeda Warsi led. I think you can see it, actually, in the reception to Sayeeda’s superb speeches about standing up for faith and celebrating faith and, as she so famously put it, actually doing God in Britain.

He thinks it’s “superb” when a Muslim peer joins a pope to promote theocracy.

It’s madness, I tell you.

The French approach to autism was discussed a couple of months ago, too.

A controversial new film by French documentary filmmaker Sophie Robert, screened  last week at an autism  conference here in Philadelphia, reminds the world that in France these  thoroughly discredited and dangerous ideas still hold considerable sway. The film, Le  Mur or The Wall, already viewed  tens of thousands of times on YouTube, is calling attention to the ongoing  stranglehold that psychoanalytic theories still have over autism treatment in  France.

The film’s interviews with prominent French psychiatrists leaves the viewer  wondering whether in France treatments for pediatric developmental disorders are  stuck in some sort of bizarre Freudian time warp. These ideas have been so  thoroughly debunked in the rest of the world (not that in the U.S. we don’t have  our equally controversial theories of autism—Exhibit  A: the rise of vaccine related hypotheses) that its persistence from a  non-French perspective seems farcical. Listening to the talking heads in  Robert’s film reinforces that feeling.

But here’s the kicker – Robert has been sued by three of the people she interviewed, and the film has been withdrawn.

The film is under attack in France and three of its subjects—Esthela Solano  Suárez, Éric Laurent and Alexandre Stevens—sued  the filmmaker, claiming that they were misrepresented in the film. Last week  a court  in Lille ordered Robert to remove from her film the likenesses of the  three plaintiffs and pay them significant damages. At issue in the case is  whether Robert edited the film to manipulate her subjects. Robert will be filing  an appeal and told me that the plaintiffs signed a detailed release prior to  appearing on camera.

Despite the intense pressure on her following the court’s decision—she is  financially liable and is likely to shutter her company while she appeals—Robert  is committed to her film and believes it is drawing a spotlight on the  stranglehold psychoanalysis has in France. To Robert, who herself once wanted to  be an analyst, “psychoanalysis has an hypnotic effect” and is a “cult  antithetical to science.”

Shades of Simon Singh, and critics of Burzynski, and victims of SLAPP suits.

To be continued.

In France people are still medically treated on the basis of the four humors.

No they’re not, that’s a bitter joke, because the truth is almost as horrifying – children with autism are treated with psychoanalysis.

In many countries, the standard way of treating autistic children is with behavioural therapy – stimulating and rewarding them to develop the skills they need to function in society – but France still puts its faith in psychoanalysis. And an increasing number of parents are now demanding change.

For autism campaigners, it is one of the most serious health scandals of our times.

How for decades France turned its back on the latest scientific thinking, and treated autism as a form of psychosis.

How, as a result, tens of thousands of children were misdiagnosed – or not diagnosed at all – and consigned to lives of misery.

And how, to this day, in its approach to autism, the French medical establishment continues to believe in the powers of psychiatry and psychoanalysis – long after the rest of the world has switched to alternative methods of treatment.

…

The blame – Fasquelle and autism associations argue – lies with a medical establishment that remains fixated with Freud.

“Today everyone knows that autism is a neuro-developmental problem. It is not a psychosis or mental disorder,” says Muhamed Sajidi, president of the association Conquer Autism.

“But in France it is the psychiatrists – heavily influenced by Freudian psychoanalysis – who remain in charge. And they have shut themselves off from all the changes in our knowledge of autism.”

…

Critics say this emphasis on psychoanalysis and relationships meant that autistic children were not spotted till far too late. And that, in turn, meant that their chances of effective treatment were sharply reduced.

Some 60% of autistic children in Sweden attend school, Sajidi says.

“Today only 20% of autistic children in France are in school, and often only part-time. The rest are either in psychiatric hospitals, or in medico-social centres, or living at home…”

Freud, Lacan, Deleuze and Guattari…the French seem to have a thing for deepities. What a mess.

Here’s a funny thing – Geoff posted some photos from QED at Facebook today, including this one

It turns out that the guy at the mic asking a question is David Aaronovitch. I hadn’t even known he was at the talk, let alone that he’d asked a question! This is all the funnier since I’d gone to his talk three hours earlier, and been informed and entertained by it.

I guess while talking I was so focused on content that I didn’t register faces. Or something. Mind you, people were instructed to say their names when they asked their question…I’m hoping he didn’t actually say, firmly and distinctly, “I’m David Aaronovitch.” I’m hoping he just said “I’m David.” I’m hoping I have that much excuse.

I always recognized Rhys when I saw him though. That’s a big advantage of neon hair.