Author: Ophelia Benson

Blimey. A reader emailed to tell me he’d tracked down the ‘April Fool’s leader’ in the Guardian that Anthony Andrew mentioned in his Guardian article that I commented on yesterday – got all that? It is a bit complicated – but then that’s how this sort of thing works. One article leads to another which leads to a comment which prompts an email – and so it goes. At any rate I read the leader, and boy it’s foolish all right.

There are many in the Muslim community whose warnings, through the early 1990s, of a radicalised generation fell on deaf ears. They would argue that Britain has not so much failed to integrate Muslims, as failed even to try…They argue that the response to setting up Muslim schools was too slow, and that boys’ vital religious instruction in mosques on Saturdays has remained in the cultural clutches of religious authorities back in Pakistan or Bangladesh. The resources were inadequate to promote a vibrant Islam of which these British youngsters could be proud.

So…’Britain’ is supposed to set up Muslim schools (quickly), give boys vital religious instruction in mosques on Saturdays (or perhaps merely fund it?), and promote a vibrant Islam? It is? Dang. I know the UK doesn’t have separation of church and state, I realize that’s a quirky Yank idea, but still…that does seem like asking a lot.

And then there’s this interesting observation:

The crucial ingredient which radicalises this kind of community disaffection into some individuals undertaking acts of extreme violence is the international context. It began with the slow international response in Bosnia, but now spans the globe from Chechnya and Palestine to France where the sisters cannot wear the hijab.

The sisters cannot wear the hijab. Anywhere, ever. It’s torn off them in the street, at the supermarket, in the café. Not. But it sounds so nice and unfair and discriminatory to say so.

But religious zeal is not confined to ‘vibrant’ Islam. There is also this bit of whimsy from the Los Angeles Times telling us what a good thing it is that George Bush is a religious zealot.

Even those who don’t share Bush’s religious convictions should see them as a good thing. His faith compels him to wrestle with ethical questions that less religious men might simply ignore. And his strong faith offers us visible guideposts by which we can evaluate his performance as president. Find me a commander in chief who lacks core convictions rooted in something greater than himself, and you’ll have a leader who lacks an identifiable moral compass and will, accordingly, be prone to drift off course.

Well, that’s blunt, at any rate. We know where we are. Less religious ‘men’ (and probably women too, but who cares what they do) ignore ethical questions that Bush wrestles with on account of his ‘faith.’ Ah. Interesting. Well, leaving aside the question of whether Bush really does seem to be an ethically thoughtful kind of guy, there is also the question of whether or not it is true that people who don’t share Bush’s ‘faith’ might simply ignore ethical questions. And the further question of what the authors mean by ‘something greater than himself’ – and the question of what Bush means by it, and what the rest of us might mean by it. It’s a nice vague phrase, isn’t it. But does it really mean something vague? Or does it mean something specific? To wit, a specific person, one God by name, with a particular (supernatural) character and history, known to us via a book named the Bible (a book named the Book). Since the article refers approvingly to ‘Judeo-Christian principles’ it seems fair to assume that it does mean that. So there we are, an exceptionally clear statement of the familiar implication: atheists lack an identifiable (you know, as in a lineup – that’s the guy, number two, with the beard!) moral compass and so will drift off course. It’s worth knowing that’s what they think.

A couple of brief items to follow up previous items in either News or Notes and Comment or both – she said pompously. My point isn’t to be pompous, it’s just to say that these items refer back to previous items as opposed to being new ones, just in case anyone wants to, you know, get a broad overview of er um –

Anyway. There is a long, detailed post by Chris Mooney on his blog, about Bush’s science advisor John Marburger and his response to the charges by the Union of Concerned Scientists that Bush administration has systematically distorted science. Mooney writes for The American Prospect and the Washington Post about these issues, so his blog is an excellent place to check for science coverage. He doesn’t think much of Marburger’s response.

In order to paint a picture of a series of scientific abuses by the administration, the UCS report relies heavily on previously published media exposes and interviews with disgruntled scientist-whistleblowers (many of them from within the government). By contrast, Marburger presents the government’s official line on each incident, which of course tends to minimize or ignore the whistleblower accounts. But by proceeding in this way, Marburger pretty much automatically loses the argument. He accuses the UCS of failing to “seek and reflect responses or explanations from responsible government officials,” but he never gives us any good reason why we should trust the administration, instead of all the scientists who have risked retribution by going public with their charges. Indeed, the mere fact that there are so many whistleblowers out there points to something systematic going on–namely, an unprecedented level of science politicization by the administration (precisely what UCS is alleging).

And this article by Melvin Konner is very good on the subject of sociobiolgy/Evolutionary Psychology we were talking about a few days ago, and the often automatic hostility to it in some quarters.

As the new field of sociobiology has emerged during the past quarter century, it has met with firm and unrelenting opposition from prominent liberal critics…It has also drawn opposition from a group of biologists on the left who have raised general scientific and philosophical objections and have had great influence in shaping liberal opinion. The scientific critics have included highly respected figures in biology: Ruth Hubbard, Stephen Jay Gould, Richard Lewontin, and Jonathan Beckwith, among others. None in this group had done direct research on human behavior when sociobiology first emerged in the 1970s. Nonetheless, they immediately perceived a grave threat to liberal values, and their opposition has persisted ever since. However respected the source, the criticism from this group has had little effect on the direction of scientific research: sociobiology is now firmly established as an accepted branch of normal science. As a result, liberal opinion about sociobiology has increasingly diverged from scientific opinion. If liberals are to understand why this has happened, they need to consider the possibility that Gould, Lewontin, and other prominent scientific critics were wrong in their attack on sociobiology in the first place.

So Konner explains how they got it wrong.

So is diversity maybe not such a hot idea after all? Always depending on what we mean by ‘diversity’ of course, and it can be very difficult to figure out exactly what people do mean by it. As is so often the case with fuzzy woolly words and ideas – which is exactly why they’re called fuzzy-woolly, obviously. But then are they called fuzzy-wooly enough? I’m not sure. I’m not sure it does get pointed out enough that people tend not to specify what they mean when they use the words, but rather, just use them to project an air of righonitude, of conspicuous virtue, of ostentatious morality. That’s understandable. Shock-jocks and Limbaugh-O’Reilly types like to sneer and mock, but ostentatious morality is not entirely a bad thing, not entirely a matter of self-flattery – even though it can often seem that way. It’s not as if ostentatious self-servingness, conspicuous ruthlessness is such a great idea. But still. Having said all that, it does too often seem that fuzzy-woolly ideas are the very kind needed to stimulate those feelings of self-love; that wool is inseparable from moral narcissism and vice versa; that one can’t get that happy glow if the ideas and words in question are too precise and clear and specific, because then one will be too aware of the ambiguities and difficulties and possible dangers of what one is talking about.

In other words, diversity sounds good (or at least it used to): it sounds like tolerance and inclusion and kindness and decency (or at least it used to). But then there we are again. Tolerance of what? Curry? Super. Brown skin? Couldn’t be better. People from all different parts of the world? Wonderful and enriching. Right. And – FGM? Child marriage? Polygamy? Honour killings? Errr, ummm…

And that complication seems to be getting some attention at last. The fact that diversity is not invariably a good thing is finally being noticed. That sometimes we want just one thing, not a variety of them. One law, for instance, not different ones for each ‘community’ so that Muslim fathers and brothers are allowed to murder their daughters and sisters if that’s their ‘culture,’ or indignant Hindus are allowed to threaten scholars who say something they don’t like, or (one can hope) Christian fundamentalists are allowed to veto science education in public schools. We could have ‘diversity’ in science education, and other branches of education too; we could have Mathematics 1, 2 and 3, with different answers for each, but we’ve mostly decided that’s not such a hot idea. So all-purpose diversity may well be a notion whose time has come and gone. Andrew Anthony thinks so.

One of the shibboleths of multiculturalism was that different communities needed to be treated differently. Ultimately, though, the aim must be to be treated the same. In this respect, it’s important to see that the difference between the posture of fashion and politics of fascism is the same in all communities, regardless of what they wear. One will pass, the other needs to be sent on its way.

And Rwanda wants to outlaw the very idea of ethnic identity – which seems like a very sane plan.

This country, where ethnic tensions were whipped up into a frenzy of killing, is now trying to make ethnicity a thing of the past. There are no Hutu in the new Rwanda. There are no Tutsi either. The government, dominated by the minority Tutsi, has wiped out the distinctions by decree…That new thinking has its critics — those who say that denying that ethnicity exists merely suppresses the painful ethnic dialogue that Rwanda requires. But the government insists that if awareness of ethnic differences can be learned, so can the idea that ethnicity does not exist.

Differences are all very well, but it’s a tad over-optimistic to assume that they’re always just a source of joyous enrichment and mutual exchange. Often they’re a pretext or motivation for slaughter, instead. Maybe it is time to start minimizing them instead of obsessing about them. Martha Nussbaum discusses some possible ways to do that in an essay on liberal education.

I might change or expand one sentence in the Science and Religion In Focus, because I’ve had some email and blog comments on it. It is a tad assertive. ‘The side that has it wrong, that ignores evidence and logic and just believes, never shuts up.’

Mind you, I think it’s true, but I can see why it needs justification. But the fact is religion does have a special epistemic status, which surely even believers are aware of if they’re honest about it. Believers are not usually embarrassed to talk of belief or faith in their religion – to talk of religious belief or faith – as opposed to knowledge. They must realize there’s a difference between ‘faith’ and knowledge, surely. Just for one thing, knowledge, paradoxically enough, is provisional and revisable in the light of new discoveries and evidence, whereas faith has nothing to do with discoveries and evidence but floats free of them. Faith isn’t really about epistemology at all, it’s a choice, a decision, an act of will. It’s a matter of commitment and loyalty rather than investigation and judgment. It also of course has a great deal to do with tradition and community and solidarity, training and conditioning. Religion is local and specific, knowledge is universal and general. If it’s not, then it’s not knowledge, it’s something else.

It’s for these sorts of reasons that I argue that religion has no right to reproach non-religion, that theists have no basis on which to chastise atheists. But they do it anyway. This is my point in comparing the two sides and declaring them asymmetrical. There are people who claim that the arguments and evidence on the theist side are just as good as those on the other side – but if that were true why would the word ‘faith’ ever be used at all?

One site an emailer sent me a link to offers the argument from design and the anthropic principle. Steven Weinberg discusses this idea and its flaws in his essay ‘A Designer Universe?’ And even besides what Weinberg says – I don’t see why you’ve solved the problem by positing a Divine Intelligence that made it all happen, because you still end up in the same place despite all that running. What made the Divine Intelligence happen? Surely it requires explanation just as much as that which it is supposed to have designed, doesn’t it? That’s the well-known infinite regress that the argument from design always does get into.

And a completely different question is what the hell kind of deity would that be anyway. Is that the one people have in mind when they go to church or say God bless Amurika? I don’t think so. What makes them think it’s anything other than a giant computer? Is a giant computer something to pray to and worship and love?

No. Come on. Everybody knows that’s not what people mean when they talk about God. By God they mean the kind loving all-powerful Daddy in the sky who watches over them and sympathizes when they’re hurting. In bad moments most of them wonder why, if he’s so kind and loving, he set things up this way, so that there’s so much hurting to do. We’re always told how consoling religion is, but I don’t know, believing in someone who chose to make a world with so much pain and fear and sorrow in it doesn’t seem all that consoling to me. More like terrifying.