Author: Ophelia Benson

Did you listen to that In Our Time with Julian and Anthony Grayling and Miranda Fricker? There was one bit near the end where it seemed to me Julian kind of pulled a fast one. I transcribed it. See what you think.

The thing about Rorty is that he does reject this idea of Truth with a capital T, as all the pragmatists do, and – but the thing is it’s not so much that he thinks it’s a philosophical mistake to think we can have that kind of truth, which represents the world – he does think that’s a mistake – but I think more importantly, he thinks it’s just not that important or relevant. And his attitude to philosophers who are very preoccupied with it like a lot of his British critics like Simon Blackburn and the late Bernard Williams is that these people really need to kind of grow up, and this preoccupation is irrelevant, because what matters for the spreading of liberal values, broadly liberal values, is not fundamentally whether or not we can show their truth value, as it were, in a traditional philosophical sense, it’s whether or not we can gain the kind of social solidarity and agreement which allows people to take them up and to share them and to live together – so again it’s that idea of trying to create political values – based on sharing – and truth is irrelevant. Who’s going to persuade someone to adopt, say, broadly western liberalism on the basis that ‘it is the Truth’? No one. Who’s going to get someone to share them on the basis that ‘look, this is how we can live together, this is how we can work, this is how we can get respect – maybe that stands a better chance.

No one, but calling western liberalism the Truth isn’t really the issue, is it? Liberalism is a set of political ideas; it’s a set of values; it’s not a set of facts. The question is not so much who is going to persuade someone to adopt liberalism by saying ‘it is the Truth’ as it is who is going to persuade someone that the Holocaust really did happen and that the gas chambers really were gas chambers, or who is going to persuade someone that the scientific evidence does not support ‘Intelligent Design’. It’s the is-ought gap, the facts-values gap, again. Miranda Fricker indicated that:

In a funny sort of way Rorty, who many – many fans and followers of the original pragmatists are pretty angry with Rorty for his co-opting pragmatism into a very relativistic-sounding programme – many defenders of liberal values, the same values as Rorty espouses, want to say ‘well hang on a minute, it may not be that we persuade others of liberal values by talking about truth, but my goodness, if you’re living in an oppressed state, you really care whether it was true that you were a spy or not when you’re sitting in prison, it really matters what is true and what is not.’ And so there is an unfortunate relativistic drift in Rorty’s co-option of pragmatism, and yet, he is partly responsible for bringing it all back to our attention, and bringing people to read it again, and I think it’s now being taught much more than it was for awhile. And if you pick up a reader on truth you’re much more likely to find something by James or Peirce than you were a few years ago.

It really matters what is true and what is not.

And that’s good because there’s this book coming out in a few months about exactly that – the fact that it matters what is true. Why Truth Matters, it’s called.

So, it seems to be a good day for out-there pronouncements by bloodthirsty authoritarian men. For horrible glimpses into the nasty fetid power-ravenous controlfreak minds of tyrannical shits.

Osama’s pious little wet-dream is not much of a surprise, of course. No surprise at all really. But still worth a passing kick.

Osama bin Laden wants the United States to convert to Islam, ditch its constitution, abolish banks, jail homosexuals and sign the Kyoto climate change treaty…Alcohol and gambling would be barred and there would be an end to women’s photos in newspapers or advertising. Any woman serving “passengers, visitors and strangers”, presumably anyone from air stewardesses to waitresses, would also be out of a job.

From air stewardesses to waitresses isn’t all that far – presumably that would also include doctors, nurses, dentists, teachers, many lawyers, checkout clerks, bus drivers – quite a range of jobs.

In the book the terrorist responsible for the deaths of 3,000 civilians in September 2001 says that killing the innocent is wrong.

Of course he does. Nothing easier – you just define the people you want to kill as ‘not innocent’ and the job is done. No problem, no cognitive dissonance. ‘If I hate them, they must be wicked, because I am good, so I wouldn’t hate them unless they were not good, so if they are wicked naturally they are not innocent, and besides I am good, so my killing them must be right, because I am good, so it can’t be not good, therefore, logically, they must be wicked. If they are chosen by (good) me to be killed, then necessarily they must be wicked, or otherwise I (good as I am) would not have chosen them.’ Airtight, you see.

And clearly so Pinochet thinks – with a pretty, devout, humble, spiritual thought.

Augusto Pinochet, the former Chilean dictator, has declared that God will pardon him for human rights abuses committed during his 17-year rule, according to newly released court documents. Asked by Chilean judge Victor Montiglio about the killing of 3,000 Chilean civilians during the military government, Mr Pinochet, 89, said: “I suffer for these losses, but God does the deeds; he will pardon me if I exceeded in some, which I don’t think.”

Heads I win tails you lose, you see. God does the deeds, so it’s none of me, but I suffer for these losses (note how compassionate I am, how sensitive, how good), but it’s that God fella wot done them, blame him. Anyhow he’ll pardon me if I went just a teeny tiny bit overboard in some – not all, mind you! No indeed, not all! Only some. He’ll pardon me if I went just a little bit mad with the fun – even though he’s the one who does the deeds. You see what I mean?

His logic isn’t quite as strong as Osama’s, but it has that touch of compassion that makes it so moving.

Everything that I did, all that I carried out, all the problems I had, I dedicate to God, all this I dedicate to Chile because this permitted that the country was not communist and arose as it is today.

Ah well – you see. Who can blame him now, after a generous gesture like that? Everything he did, he dedicates it to God. How very, very sweet. That would be the God that murders tens of thousands of people in Kashmir to give a message to Musharraf, I take it, and the God who kills hundreds of people in New Orleans and Mississippi to – what was it? Give the US a message about Darwin, was it? Or was it lesbians? Disobedient women? Something like that.

Okay, good. Great. I can do that too. I’ll dedicate some stuff to God. Here you go, God. Every single person killed or horribly injured by terrorists this year; every single person killed or horribly injured by terrorists throughout history (that’s a highish number, I should think); every person killed or horribly injured in every war; every person who dies in pain; every animal that dies in pain; every person and animal who suffers pain while alive –

Gosh, that seems to be a rather long list. God is frantically signalling that he can’t write that fast, and isn’t altogether sure he wants the dedication anyway.

He’s a funny guy though, isn’t he. Can’t stand poofters, but is terrifically fond of mass murdering thugs and tyrants. How odd. Me, I prefer queers.

Okay so these seventeen archbishops. All tied up in knots they are. All frantic and agitated and unhappy. Tearing their episcopal hair, rending their purple robes, chewing their anglican nails. And for why? For because that the Archbish of C isn’t being harsh enough toward non-heterosexuality. That’s why. Okay – why? Why is that a reason? Why are they so agitated about non-heterosexuality? Why does it upset them? Why does it worry them? Why do they think it’s so terrible?

They don’t really say. Maybe it’s too much to expect them to, in a letter to the Archbish, since they probably expect him to know. But still – since religious types never do seem to manage to come up with real – rational, universalizable, non-theist, non-authoritarian – reasons for the worry, it’s too bad they don’t.

They do make some attempt –

The Second Letter of Peter, which you quoted in terms of our participation in the divine nature (1.4) describes division in the church uncannily like the false leaders in our Communion today: “For, uttering loud boasts of folly, they entice with licentious passions of the flesh men who have barely escaped from those who live in error. They promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption; for whatever overcomes a man, to that he is enslaved.” (II Peter 2.18-19)

So presumably they are there saying that sexuality is slavery because of its power? But that won’t do as a reason, obviously, because it’s not as if same-sex sex is overpowering while other-sex sex is not. So that doesn’t really amount to a reason. People who get all tied up in knots about non-heterosexuality do have such a hard time coming up with real reasons – they always just end up with ‘God says,’ and that is not a reason, it’s simply a command. Basic vocabulary: a command is not the same thing as a reason, a reason is not the same thing as a command.

We appreciated your acknowledgement of the “overwhelming consensus” of the Church in time and space in believing that sex is intended by God for married couples only and therefore that same-sex sex is unacceptable and cannot be described as “holy and blessed”. You stated that you as Archbishop must stand with this consensus. We are most grateful for your unequivocal words. We wonder, however, whether your personal dissent from this consensus prevents you from taking the necessary steps to confront those churches that have embraced teaching contrary to the overwhelming testimony of the Anglican Communion and the church catholic. We urge you to rethink your personal view and embrace the Church’s consensus and to act on it, based as it is on the clear witness of Scripture.

Similar (though not identical) problem. ‘Intended by God’ – apart from all the other problems with that, some of which are of doubtful relevance here since the letter is addressed to an archbishop, it assumes that the writers of the letter know what is intended by ‘God’. Tricky. Very tricky. The evidence is contradictory and patchy.

In short it’s hard to escape the conclusion that all this kind of thing is just more Amplification, as Simon Blackburn says [pdf].

But equally perhaps ‘God exists’ functions largely as a license to demand respect creep. It turns up an amplifier, and what it amplifies is often the meanest and most miserable side of human nature. I want your land, and it enables me to throw bigger and better tantrums, ones that you just have to listen to, if I find myself saying that God wants me to want your land. A tribe wants to enforce the chastity of its women, and the words of the supernatural work to terrify them into compliance.

Or I don’t like poofters, and I can throw bigger and better tantrums – I can tell the Archbishop of Canterbury what’s what – if I claim to know what’s intended by God. It’s hard not to think that the Global South archbishops just don’t like people who go in for ‘same-sex sex’ and use God as an enforcer. And this is one of the many many reasons religion is such a regressive, narrow, stifling way to think. In any other context, a two or three thousand year old book is judged on its merits. It may well be taken to be full of wisdom, to have much to teach us, to be well worth reading and learning from – but for secular, rational, communicable, universalizable reasons, not for magical or ineffable or supernatural ones. For discussion-continuing reasons, not for discussion-ending reasons. What an airless, parched, small, blank little world the world of Authority is.