Author: Ophelia Benson

The Coyne-Haught video has been posted.

Watching. Watching and listening to Haught. Sigh.

We should talk about cosmic purpose; it’s good to talk about cosmic purpose. Metaphors are ok.

It’s a traditional philosophical view that a smaller thing can’t understand a greater thing.

There is evidence: the evidence that comes from being carried away by something very large, very important.

If this ultimate reality has no personality, if it’s an it, it’s smaller than we are.

Religions emphasize the importance of personal transformation.

Medieval philosopher would be skeptical that science is wired to understand deeper meaning.

I’m not convinced of anything yet. Perhaps that wasn’t the goal.

It’s a fucking outrage.

FTB got almost 5 million pageviews for October. That’s a lot. I knew you would be pleased.

PZ had a good time with a blogger fretting about the US moving from democracy to despotism on account of not sucking up to Catholic bishops quite enough. I took a look at the blog post and spotted an item or two for mopping up.

The Church is raising the alarm: Our religious liberty is under attack.

Cardinal Francis George was prophetic in 2009 when he said the White House had taken “the first step in moving our country from democracy to despotism.” That was when President Obama broke the promise he made to Catholics at Notre Dame and made the decision to strip conscience rights from Catholic health care professionals, a ruling that could force them to either perform abortions or lose their jobs.

Really! That is shocking. So the gummint is going to force Catholic neurosurgeons and pediatricians to perform abortions or lose their jobs?

No. It’s not a matter of all Catholic health care professionals having to perform abortions if they want to keep their jobs; it’s a matter of  requiring Catholic health care professionals whose jobs include providing abortions to do the jobs they have. It’s a matter of the quite familiar principle that if you refuse to do your job, you don’t get to keep it just the same. That principle isn’t special for Catholics, it’s not made up to persecute them; it’s just that they’re the ones refusing to do the jobs they have.

In other words, beware of the self-pitying rhetoric of the offended godbotherer.

Forced Contraception. Health and Human Service has issued a regulation mandating contraceptive coverage from almost all private health insurance plans. “There is an exception for certain religious employers,” said Lori, “but to borrow from Sr. Carol Keehan of the Catholic Health Association, it is so incredibly narrow that it would cover only the ‘parish housekeeper.’”

Same again, you see? It’s not forced contraception. It’s not the gummint forcing everybody to be contracepted. It’s not forcing Catholics to be contracepted; it’s not forcing bishops to be contracepted. It’s mandating insurance coverage for contraception. That is not “forced contraception.” It’s funny what a hard time this devout fella has reporting accurately.

There are more, and even worse, details at WEIT. It’s all really quite astonishing.

Well, you’re not going to see that tape—ever.  After agreeing to be taped, Haught decided that he didn’t want the video released.  Here’s what happened:

• Dr. Robert Rabel, head of the Gaines Center for the Humanities, which sponsored the debate, informed me on Sunday that Haught had requested that he did not want the video posted. Note that Haught had already agreed to be taped, so his appeal that it not be made public was a post facto decision.

• Rabel decides to honor Haught’s request on the grounds that he didn’t get permission from Haught in advance to post the video.  I find this bizarre because the whole idea of taping the event is to make the debate more public, and because previous debates in this series have been posted.  The idea of posting is implicit when one agrees to be taped, and, believe me, I would not have gone back on that agreement even if I had lost badly. That is not only bad form, but intellectually dishonest.

• Eager to at least get my part out, I asked Rabel to just edit the tape omitting John’s talk and his answers in the question session.  Rabel refuses, saying that it would be too much trouble.

• I ask Rabel for Haught’s email address so I can try to persuade the theologian to change his mind, or at least find out why he won’t sanction posting of the video (Rabel, Haught, and I had all exchanged three-way emails before the debate, but I lost Haught’s address).  Rabel refuses to give me the email address because he wants to “stay out of it,” telling me that I can search for it online.  I find the address and email Haught, asking politely if he won’t change his mind about releasing the video, and, if not, requesting his reason.

• Unwilling to give up, I ask Rabel for a copy of the tape—offering to pay any expenses for it—so that I can edit out Haught’s part and just post mine.  Rabel refuses, saying that he “didn’t think that would work.”

• Haught responds to my email asking him to change his mind. His short response says that the event “failed to meet what I consider to be reasonable standards of fruitful academic exchange,” and that he would have no further comment.

Extraordinary! Rude, obstructionist, disobliging, uncollegial, unfair, not to mention obviously uncourageous.

And in an update, we learn that Rabel is even threatening Coyne with legal action.

UPDATE:  I have received an email from Dr. Rabel, asserting that I have instigated people to write him emails, and claiming that some of those emails have been abusive, calling him a coward and so on.  I did not of course ask readers to write any emails, nor did I provide any email addresses.  But if you write to Rabel or Haught on your own initiative, please be polite!  There is no point in name-calling in such emails; the issue is one of free inquiry, and if you expect to achieve a result (and you won’t anyway, I suspect), you have to be polite.  Anyway, Rabel has threatened legal action against me, so don’t make it worse!

I wonder if Rabel will threaten Coyne with further legal action because I said all this was rude,  obstructionist, disobliging, uncollegial, unfair, and obviously uncourageous. I don’t know – what do you think? Is it libelous to call a set of actions rude, obstructionist, disobliging, uncollegial, unfair, and obviously uncourageous? Or is it within the limits of free speech to call a set of actions rude, obstructionist, disobliging, uncollegial, unfair, not to mention obviously uncourageous. I think it’s only accurate to say these actions were rude, obstructionist, disobliging, uncollegial, unfair, and obviously uncourageous.

How tacky. I’ve disliked everything I’ve read by John Haught, and it turns out he’s a sore loser, too.

John Haught is suppressing the video of the debate he had with Jerry Coyne. He signed off on permission before the debate, but has now reneged, claiming he did poorly because of the presence of “Jerry’s groupies”, and that the event “failed to meet what I consider to be reasonable standards of fruitful academic exchange”. He got his ass kicked, in other words.

Bad, bad, very bad.

Dan Fincke hosts Philosophers’ Blog Carnival # 133. All you know-nothing peeps who think philosophy is just wankery, read and learn.

Just a few selected teasers –

• Thinking about the “vagueness” charge leveled against Occupy Wall Street, Benjamin S. Nelson, at Talking Philosophy explores virtues that listeners need to have before they can go blame communicators for failing to express themselves adequately.
• Andrew Taggart has an extensively detailed discussion of his Philosophical Counseling business (replete with FAQ), in which he explains both how it works and how he charges for it, makes for a fascinating read. It seems pitched towards potential clients so it also offers a glimpse not only at how one might do and charge for philosophical counseling but how one might advertise it.
• Being A Woman In Philosophy continues to chronicles the seemingly pervasive stomach-churning sexism in philosophy departments. This month there was the story of a male philosophy graduate student who walked into a room full of male graduate students and one female student, and loudly asked “Who’s read for the gang bang?” Read how the department handled it.
• Rust Belt Philosophy examines the extent of parents’ rights to decide what their children can learn in school in response to claims that because parents have great responsibilities for their children they have great rights to determine how they are educated in all matters. The occasion of the discussion is the question of sex ed.

Bon appetit.

Halloween wasn’t unalloyed fun for Libby Anne when she was growing up.

[Digression. Actually I don’t find it unalloyed fun myself these days. I don’t find all the corpses and graves all that funny, and they certainly are presented as jokey. It gets on my nerves, frankly. Just for one thing, isn’t it kind of mean to people who’ve had people die on them recently? And I don’t like all the cobweb stuff draped all over trees and shrubs and everything else within reach; they make whole blocks look junky. And I don’t like the ridiculous amount of outdoor decoration there is – it seems to be more every year. Used to was, a carved pumpkin or two were all that was thought necessary; now suddenly houses are as wildly festooned as they are for Christmas. It’s annoying because October is beautiful all by itself, it doesn’t need a lot of stupid dreck to brighten it up.]

It wasn’t fun for Libby Anne because it was too frightening.

I grew up believing that there were real witches who worshiped Satan and communed with demons. These witches were dangerous and powerful because they got actual power from Satan himself. We believed that God would win eventually, but that for the time being Satan had a great deal of power and dominion over the world. Witches could cause real pain, because they had real power.

…

Demons were very real to me. I believed that they were battling with angels in the air around us, every day, everywhere. They were generally invisible, but I believed that they could make themselves visible if they wanted.

…

I believed that Halloween was the main holiday for witches, and that they held secret meetings with demons, conducted animal sacrifices, and carried out Satan’s work. Halloween terrified me, because I could almost feel the demonic power climax with the holiday. While I loved our church’s harvest fest, Halloween itself was a holiday of fear.

That makes me a little angry. It sounds terrifying, and children shouldn’t be terrified that way. Religious freedom and all that, but it ain’t right.