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.

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 … Read the rest

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 … Read the rest

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

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 … Read the rest