The Atlantic’s rather boring Wunderkind Ross Douthat tells Jerry Coyne what’s what. He breathes heavily for some time in order to come up with the obvious point that many disciplines make various kinds of claims that are not scientific claims and that that’s all right.

One can reason productively about questions that cannot be resolved through falsification tests. If this weren’t the case, philosophy departments, historians, polemicists, and many social “scientists” would be out of business in a hurry.

Yes indeed; very true; well spotted. But…is it relevant?

Now of course religion is not a thing like political philosophy. But there are similarities between the way that belief operates in both religion and in politics. In making their case, an apologist for Christianity and an apologist for, say, liberal democracy are likely to draw on a similarly hodgepodge-ish set of claims – some philosophical, some historical, some scientific, some anthropological and some personal.

Ah, so that’s where you went wrong. Yes, sure, there are similiarities (though frankly not many), but they’re not the point. The point is that religions really do make literal factual truth claims, often with much heat and emphasis; religions do make claims about facts as well as values, and the factual claims are based on…nothing; they’re sheer invention. That’s the point.

At the very end of the piece, Douthat did an incredibly stupid thing, a thing which is more common than one might expect in this day and age.

[T]he standards of scientific rigor simply aren’t the only standards that there are for holding warranted beliefs. And if you applied Coyne’s “method of disproof” standard to every important question in life, you’d end up paralyzed by indecision – you’d never cast a vote or marry a woman, let alone choose which God to worship, or whether to worship one at all.

Oh look, there I was foolishly assuming he was talking to everyone, people in general, which would include me, only to get to the last sentence and realize he was talking only to men. It appears I was intruding the whole time. How disconcerting.

My friend Claire told me about Zentangle. It’s way exciting, and apparently can pretty much change your life from top to bottom altogether. It’s timeless, it’s portable, it’s empowering. Also it has benefits, which the Zentangle people list for you. Among them are ‘journalling,’ self esteem, modify behavior (I don’t know, that’s what it says!), anger management (oh I doubt that), home schooling (in what?), stretching, team building. Yes but what is it, you wonder? Something about drawing patterns. Who knew that was such a miraculous type thing?

This is my favourite part, which is on the Theory page:

Quantum

With no correct answer, Zentangle offers both a freedom and a challenge. Unlike crossword, jigsaw, or Sudoku puzzles, there is no predetermined right answer. You cannot fail to create a Zentangle. At first this freedom can be a bit unnerving. Soon it becomes a freeing and uplifting experience as you realize you can create never-ending, ever-changing “solutions.”

Did you know that was what ‘quantum’ meant? No, neither did I. But it is so.

Eluana Englaro has been in a coma for 17 years; a high court in Italy ruled last week that doctors could reduce her feeding and allow her to die.

But

Silvio Berlusconi, after consultation with the Vatican, has issued an emergency decree stating that food and water cannot be suspended for any patient depending upon them, reversing the earlier court ruling…Justifying his campaign to save Englaro’s life, the prime minister added that, physically at least, she was “in the condition to have babies”, a remark described by La Stampa newspaper as “shocking”.

Yes, it is. It is in fact one of the most repellent things I’ve heard in some time. It is (perhaps – I don’t actually know this) physically possible to cause babies to grow inside her and then to remove them after nine months – but so what? What difference does that make to anything? It’s already known that part of her body is still alive, but it’s also known that the part of her that makes her what a person is has been dead for 17 years – so what difference does it make that she could still be used as an incubator? There’s a combination of sexism and morbidity in that thought that makes the blood freeze.

The case has deeply divided Italian society and raised concerns over the influence of the Vatican. Yesterday Pope Benedict indirectly referred to Englaro in a message delivered to mark the World Day of the Sick, stating that society had a duty to defend “the absolute and supreme dignity of every human being” even when “weak and shrouded in the mystery of suffering”.

Oh the blindness of sanctimony. What dignity?! Where is the dignity in being kept around as an animated corpse? Where is the dignity in occupying a bed while having no mind? Where is the dignity in being a mindless brain-dead thoughtless dreamless hopeless lump of flesh? That’s not dignity. And defending that idea is not compassion – it’s a perverted backwards distorted idea of it which actually promotes suffering instead of preventing it.

Bastards.

Giles Fraser demonstrates Christian generosity and clear thinking.

Contributors to Thought for the Day mustn’t attack the beliefs of others. It’s a basic BBC rule. This is not a place where Christians can fire pot shots at Hindus or Muslims have a go at Judaism. Which is why it’s just not appropriate for atheists. Not that they haven’t important things to say. The problem is that atheism is defined by what it’s against, that it is not theism.

Even before we get to the substance, that passage is odd for a grownup writer. All those short sentences. When they could perfectly well be made into longer sentences. Surely Fraser is sophisticated enough to do that.

But leaving style aside, consider the content: the assumption 1) that atheism is fundamentally about theism as opposed to being about all kinds of things in the absence of theism and 2) that atheism has nothing to do but attack theist beliefs. That assumption is wrong on both counts, and especially so in the context of a program like ‘Thought for the Day’ which is about anything and everything, from a theistic point of view. There is no obvious reason why an atheist ‘Thought for the Day’ couldn’t be about anything and everything from an atheist point of view. Ronald Aronson’s book Living Without God is like that, for instance; it doesn’t attack theist beliefs, it discusses various issues and questions about life from a nontheist point of view.

As individuals, atheists may have opinions. But on TftD I speak as a representative of a body of opinion that has a definable literature, a major place in world history and billions of adherents.

The stupidity of that first sentence is so obvious (whether it means he’s allowing us to have opinions or is conceding that we may be capable of having them) that I won’t say any more about it. But as for the rest: we too speak as representatives of a body of opinion that has a definable literature and a major place in world history, and if we don’t have billions of ‘adherents’ that will be partly because atheism isn’t about ‘adherence’ any more than it is about submission or veneration or spirituality or transcendence or any other of the pious sludge that theists like to pour over their commonplaces – and partly because theists won’t allow it. So if that sentence is offered as a reason to continue to exclude atheists from ‘Thought for the Day’ it’s a train wreck.

Then he gets downright snotty – but no more cogent.

I wish atheists would get a life and stop following believers wherever they go, demanding to join in. Perhaps they are incapable of leaving us alone. For atheism is parasitic upon religious belief, united only by what it is against. Just as TftD should not include religious fundamentalists denouncing heathens, so it should not include atheists denouncing believers. This is a place for a very different, gentler sort of reflection – and that’s why so many people continue to love it.

Yes and I wish theists would get a life and stop telling everyone to believe that which there is no good reason to believe. We wouldn’t ‘follow them around’ (which I take to mean disagree with them and/or dispute theistic monopolies of public media outlets) if they weren’t always telling us what to do or how to think or both. And to repeat, atheists are perfectly capable of engaging in gentle reflection, and I would even say (since this is not ‘Thought for the Day’ and I am allowed to be ungentle here) that we do it better than theists do.

In any case, Fraser himself points out that it is ‘a basic BBC rule’ that Contributors to Thought for the Day mustn’t attack the beliefs of others, so the rule would take care of any putative atheist propensity to attack the beliefs of others, thus there is no need to exclude them as a category in advance. So…what’s his point? Nothing, apparently, except to be rude and muddled about atheism. Once again theism shoots its own self in its own foot.

And Caroline Petrie is the same kind of thing. She refuses to stop thrusting her religion on patients. The trust says she can pray over them if they ask her to – but that’s not good enough, she has to force it on them unasked, blind to the discomfort that this would cause people who don’t happen to be like her.

“It is me, it is a natural thing for me to do,” she said. “If I am nursing, I would offer prayer to somebody and I am not going to change.”…Yesterday the mother-of-two said she would behave in exactly the same way: “I cannot divide my faith from my nursing care, I have to be the person I want to be.”

Note the Telegraph’s none-too-subtle nudge – she’s a mother of two, therefore she’s a nice warm normal person, who shouldn’t be expected to divide her ‘faith’ from her nursing. Note also the self-centered appeal to Being Me and having to Be The Person I Want To Be – note that it’s about her, not about other people.

The trust said:

“It is acceptable to offer spiritual support as part of care when the patient asks for it. But for nurses, whose principal role is giving nursing care, the initiative lies with the patient and not with the nurse. Nurses like Caroline do not have to set aside their faith, but personal beliefs and practices should be secondary to the needs and beliefs of the patient and the requirements of professional practice.”

But no, that’s not good enough. It’s up to Nurse Petrie to decide what patients have to put up with from her, it’s not up to her employers. Nurse P has god on her side.

“If they said ‘please don’t ask patients to pray’ then I am sorry, I can’t promise that, so where do we go from there? I would have to contact my lawyer.”

Because theism is mandatory and freedom from theism is not allowed, and if you don’t agree, we’ll sue. Got that?

And believers keep wondering why non-believers get irritated with assertive religion. It’s because of the assertiveness. It’s because of the assertiveness combined with the lack of plausibility. The two together make an unpleasant combination. Having people always rushing around trying to compel us to believe nonsensical things that there is no reason to believe…gets to be wearing, and annoying, and something bordering on a grievance. If they kept it to themselves, that would be one thing, but since they refuse – we get sick of the sight and sound of them.

Three separate pro-God advert campaigns on the sides of London buses are set to hit city streets. Buses adorned with the slogan “There definitely is a God” are from the Christian Party…The adverts, which are unrelated, come a month after the British Humanist Association placed “no God” slogans on buses across England. Those adverts, which read: “There’s probably no God: now stop worrying and enjoy your life” prompted complaints from the group Christian Voice and from individuals…The Trinitarian Bible Society…has chosen the message from Psalm 53.1, which reads: “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.”…The Russian Orthodox Church plans ads on 25 buses that read: “There IS a God, BELIEVE.”

Now…the atheist bus campaign was inspired by existing Christian ads on buses that asked “When the son of man comes, will he find faith on the earth?” (Luke 18:8) and gave the url of a website that offers this pleasant warning

for anyone who doesn’t “accept the word of Jesus on the cross”: “You will be condemned to everlasting separation from God and then you spend all eternity in torment in hell. Jesus spoke about this as a lake of fire which was prepared for the devil and all his angels (demonic spirits)” (Matthew 25:41).

In other words the atheist bus campaign was in response to a theist bus campaign that was at once dogmatic and vindictive, in other words it was in response to a combination of assertive falsehoods and vicious threats. The bus campaign was mildness itself, and it included no threats at all, yet believers greet it with outrage and ‘offense’ and all the rest of the panoply of truculent religious self-pity, and then they get busy supplying more assertive dogmatic falsehoods. There definitely is a God, it’s only fools who think there is no god, there IS a god, BELIEVE (implied: or else).

We hear a lot about what is ‘offensive’; well as far as I’m concerned this is offensive. It’s offensive in its aggression, its dogmatism, its willful blindness to the need for good reasons to believe things, its determination to force its unreasonable and punitve beliefs on everyone else. I’m getting more and more and more and more sick of believers forcing themselves on us at every turn; I’m getting more and more sick of this assumption that we have no right to be free of anti-rational truth claims anywhere we go. Next thing you know they’ll be at the door with arrest warrants.

The Times tells us that at today’s ‘prayer breakfast’ in Washington Tony Blair said how d’you do to Obama and ‘spoke passionately of his own religious faith.’ Well I suppose people who go to something called a ‘prayer breakfast’ have to be prepared for that kind of thing, but really, can you think of anything more emetic first thing in the morning? Lolling about among the Froot Loops and pop tarts listening to Tony Blair speak passionately about his religious ‘faith’? Because I can’t. My idea of the right thing to do first thing in the morning is to drink coffee while scowling quietly and staring into space. I suppose one could get up early and get one’s coffee drinking and quiet scowling out of the way first – but even then, my idea of the right thing to do at that hour is to drink more coffee while reading in peace, it is decidedly not to go somewhere and see a lot of people and listen to a sentimental and credulous ex-prime minister talk nauseating eyewash about his ‘faith.’ Especially not if he does it with passion, godalmighty fetch me the sick bag.

Mr Blair…delivered an impassioned address to an audience of political and religious leaders, telling them of his “first spiritual awakening” when his father almost died when he was still a child…”‘I’m afraid my father doesn’t believe in God,’ I said. ‘That doesn’t matter,’ my teacher replied ‘God believes in him. He loves him without demanding or needing love in return.’ That is what inspires: the unconditional nature of God’s love. A promise perpetually kept. A covenant never broken. And in surrendering to God, we become instruments of that love.”

Oh, please. Of course ‘God’s love’ is ‘unconditional’; that’s because ‘God’ is imaginary so it is whatever anyone says it is because there is nothing to stop it being that because there is no real god to check such claims against. Blair’s teacher could just as well have replied ‘God believes in him and God hates him without demanding or needing hate in return.’ Or he could have said ‘God is a lobster and pickle sandwich.’ People say things about ‘God’; that doesn’t mean they’re true, and it’s a pretty ridiculous reason to get inspired – or at least it’s a ridiculous reason to stay inspired, and it’s a triply ridiculous reason to tell a bunch of adult politicians on the far side of the Atlantic about it, 45 years later. I can see how it would be very moving at the time, to a boy of 10, even if he didn’t believe it, because it was a compassionate and kind thing for his teacher to say. But then he should talk about his teacher, not about God. And at his age with his knowledge of the world he really shouldn’t talk crap about the unconditional nature of God’s love and a promise perpetually kept and a covenant never broken, because if God loves us all in that way then God has a funny way of showing it. Just ask some people in eastern Congo, or Zimbabwe, or Burma, or Darfur, or Gaza.

But even though he did not want to confuse “the realms of political and religious authority”, he now thought that faith, not secularism, held the key to inter-communal understanding. “Restoring religious faith to its rightful place as a guide to our world and its future is of the essence,” he said.

Back off, cowboy.

That’s so impertinent. So presumptuous. So backward. ‘Religious faith’ has no rightful place as a guide to our world because faith is the wrong way to think about the world. If you use ‘religious faith’ as a guide to our world then you set yourself up to get the world wrong, and how is that helpful? How is it of the essence? Why is it not rather of the essence to look at the world and see it as it really is, and then try hard to figure out how best to act in such a world?

Blair of course is the wrong fella to ask.

Simon Jenkins seems to like to show off a certain unreflective quality in his opinions.

I find distasteful the process by which an American clinic agreed to insert eight embryos in the womb of a disturbed mother of six. It is dangerous to all concerned. But I would not ban doctors from offering multiple embryo transfer or women from seeking it. The world still remains free for human error, just.

But if something is dangerous for all concerned, and 8 out of 9 of the ‘all concerned’ are future babies then children then adults, why does Jenkins so quickly and breezily say he would not ban anyone from causing multiple births? If mulitiple births cause greatly increased risk of premature birth and various kinds of physical and mental damage, as they do, then why not ban it? And what good is it to say, cheerily, that the world still remains free for human error? Error is one thing, deliberately risking the well-being of multiple babies is another. Accidentally tearing a shirt is not the same thing as intentionally risking congenital damage for one’s offspring.

Not good.

When President Barack Obama launches his version of the faith-based initiative Thursday, he will expand the mission…He will also try to avoid the thorniest constitutional issues that beset the program for years under his predecessor. Mr. Obama’s approach to the federal faith office reflects his search for common ground on contentious social issues, and his willingness to dial back some of his campaign positions.

Okay…there shouldn’t be such a thing as ‘the federal faith office’ – that should be an obvious clanging embarrassing oxymoron, or else a symptom of lunacy or breakdown that should send everyone screaming for the hills. There shouldn’t be a fucking ‘federal faith office’ because the state should not be imposing ‘faith’ on people because ‘faith’ is a bad defective stupid wrong broken incompetent erroneous way to think. I’m sick of this crap. I’m sick of hearing ‘faith’ glorified on all sides at all hours of the day and night; I’m sick of being unable to escape the stupid mistaken pigheaded idea that ‘faith’ is 1) a good thing 2) morally superior 3) a sign of warmth and normality and all-around okayness; I’m sick of having religion dressed up as ‘faith’ as if that made it somehow less intrusive or coercive or obnoxious. I’m sick of it. It’s sentimental, it’s patronizing, it’s deceptive, and it implicitly denigrates rationality and critical thinking.

[T]he Bush plan was ensnared by constitutional questions about the separation between church and state, most notably whether an organization that received tax dollars can make hiring decisions on the basis of religion. As a candidate, Mr. Obama came down firmly against such hiring. But on Thursday, he will take a more nuanced position, saying that these issues should be decided on a case-by-case basis.

‘Nuanced’ – that’s more manipulation by wording, more ‘framing,’ more bullshit. Try that another way: ‘most notably whether an organization that received tax dollars can make hiring decisions on the basis of race. As a candidate, Mr. Obama came down firmly against such hiring. But on Thursday, he will take a more nuanced position.’ Maybe there are some issues on which we don’t want a more ‘nuanced’ position, maybe there are some issues where ‘nuance’ is just a sly way to bargain away other people’s rights. Consider this: an organization that can make hiring decisions on the basis of religion can exclude all women, because women’s subordination is religious doctrine for many ‘faith communities.’ Religious institutions are already exempt from various gender equality laws, meaning they are permitted to keep all-male clergy. That’s bad enough, and extending it to other kinds of hiring is worse. We don’t want nuance here, we want principle; we want Not One Step Farther; we want never again; we want equality is the law of the land. We want the state not to pay groups to treat some people as second-order citizens.

That approach will likely anger some on the left who were hoping for a clean break with the Bush policy. In a speech last July, Mr. Obama presented a more clear-cut view of how to draw the constitutional line. “If you get a federal grant, you can’t use that grant money to proselytize to the people you help and you can’t discriminate against them or against the people you hire on the basis of their religion,” he said then. But the new approach will please people like David Kuo, who was deputy director of the Bush faith-based office.

Yes no doubt it will, but why should we want to please people like David Kuo? Why should we keep forcing ‘faith’ on everyone? Why can’t we have the other thing now?

Kenneth Miller replies to Jerry Coyne on religion and science.

I made no argument that this happy confluence of natural events and physical constants proves the existence of God in any way—only that it could be understood or interpreted as consistent with the Divine by a person of faith.

Ah. Well sure it could, but lots of things could be understood or interpreted as consistent with the Divine by a person of faith. In fact the number of things that could be so understood and interpreted is, pretty obviously, staggeringly large. Persons of faith have no trouble coming up with the ability to understand and interpret whatever there is with whatever they want there to be; that’s what it is to be a person of faith. In short, that’s a pretty feeble standard.

Sam Harris gives a sardonic reading of the same passage:

That’s just the right note to strike with a neo-militant rationalist like Coyne. These people are simply obsessed with finding the best explanation for the patterns we witness in natural world. But faith teaches us that the best, alas, is often the enemy of the good. For instance, given that viruses outnumber animals by ten to one, and given that a single virus like smallpox killed 500 million human beings in the 20th century (many of them children), people like Coyne ask whether these data are best explained by the existence of an all knowing, all powerful, and all loving God who views humanity as His most cherished creation. Wrong question Coyne! You see, the wise have learned to ask, along with Miller, whether it is merely possible, given these facts, that a mysterious God with an inscrutable Will could have created the world. Surely it is! And the heart rejoices…

Heh. Exactly.

There was some discussion yesterday about whether support for the right to abortion entails having to support a right to fertility treatment. In particular the question was ‘[if you] see abortion as a woman’s right to control the reproductive functions of her own body’ then how is fertility treatment different?

My answer is that I don’t see abortion that way, not exactly. A right to abortion clearly can be described that way, but it doesn’t follow that therefore if one supports a right to abortion one also has to support a right to anything and everything else that can be described that way, and that’s why I don’t exactly see abortion that way. I don’t generally talk about a woman’s right to control the reproductive functions of her own body, and I think the reason I don’t is because I’m generally wary of talking about things in such broad terms, precisely because I’m not sure I do want to commit to supporting all the possible examples such broad terms could throw up. I do think women should have a right to abortion, and one reason I think that is that pregnancy takes place inside one woman’s body and that means abortion is much more her business than it is anyone else’s. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that I think everything that takes place inside one woman’s body is more her business than it is anyone else’s. I don’t think that about intentional (aimed at the usual outcome) pregnancy, for instance. Deciding to have a baby does in fact mean one has to, or ought to, cede some rights to the future baby. (That, incidentally, is one reason the right to abortion is important. If one isn’t prepared to cede some rights to the future baby, it’s probably better to stop the pregnancy than it is to go ahead with it.) I’ve never really agreed with the view that telling or urging pregnant women not (say) to do drugs is a violation of their rights, because I’ve always seen those rights as in tension with the rights of the future baby.

That’s certainly not to say that I think the future baby’s rights trump all of the mother’s rights – but I think it probably trumps (should trump) some. A future baby has a much bigger interest in not being addicted to cocaine in utero than its mother has in continuing to use cocaine. So…in short, it’s not just a matter of absolute rights. It’s more complicated than that.

I think (though I’m not sure) one reason fertility specialists don’t treat people who already have children is because the treatment is so labor-intensive and expensive; I think that rule (if it is a rule) is a form of triage. That seems reasonable to me, in a world of limited resources. People who have children don’t really need fertility treatment so, other things being equal, they should go to the back of the line.

Simon Barnes says approving things about Darwin, David Attenborough, and evolution – but then he gets down to the real business of his piece, which is (you’ll never guess) chiding those pesky atheists. In fact the approving things turn out to be apparently just some throat-clearing en route to what really matters, which is chorus 3,987,281 of ‘fundamentalism/creationism is bad but those tiresome sciencey atheists are much much much worse.’

So much, then, for benign creation; let’s leave the creationists to fight that one out among themselves. But what of the legions of self-trumpeting atheists? What of Richard Dawkins, who had the arrogance to write a fat book about God without troubling to read up on theology, a discipline that includes many writers as subtle-minded as himself?

Yes what indeed. Let’s leave the creationists to sort each other and turn to the really fun bit, which is self-righteously demanding what business Richard Dawkins has writing about god when after all god is a subject for The Professionals despite the fact that amateurs are always telling us what to do and what to think in the name of this putative god. Let’s pretend that it’s arrogant for people to say why god is not believable but not for people to say why god is believable. Let’s leave clerics and their subjects alone but let’s really get in a huff about people who dispute truth claims that are based on no evidence.

No believer can prove that God exists: isn’t faith rather the point? And no scientist can prove that He doesn’t. You may believe that you have a soul. Professor Dawkins believes that you don’t. Both positions are equally tenable in that both are matters of belief, of faith. This stuff can be neither proved nor disproved, therefore it is nothing to do with science.

Proof and disproof (for the 9 millionth time) is not the issue; the point is that there is no evidence that there is such a thing as a ‘soul’ and there is plenty of evidence indicating that there isn’t. It’s just nonsensical to pretend that the existence of a soul is not an empirical subject at all, and equally nonsensical to pretend that there is no evidence that bears on the question. It’s even more nonsensical to conclude from the first nonsense that therefore belief that one has a soul and belief that one doesn’t are ‘equally tenable,’ because brute belief is not as tenable as belief based on reasons, such as inferences from evidence. I could decide to believe that I have the ability to fly, but such a belief would not be as tenable as the belief that I couldn’t.

It’s true that anyone can just decide to believe any old thing, evidence or no evidence – but that doesn’t mean that therefore there is nothing to be said about the content of the belief. That’s especially when the beliefs are not kept private but are trotted out in political and moral disputes, as of course they so very often are.

Eh? Really? Really?

It was a midwinter miracle; eight babies born to a single mother and every one of them delivered alive. For a nation enduring its deepest economic crisis since the Great Depression, the tale was a welcome relief from bail-outs and bankruptcies. But this weekend, as the journalistic pack chases an altogether darker dimension to the story of Nadya Suleman, the feel-good factor has suddenly vanished.

What ‘miracle’? What feel-good factor? What welcome relief? Was everybody turning handsprings and throwing confetti off the roof last week just because some fool had decided to whelp eight children at once and thus put them and herself at great risk and use up who knows how many hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical care that could have been more usefully spent on something else? I know I wasn’t; was anyone?

The BBC World Service was, to be sure. I did hear their coverage and I did frown in puzzlement at their exuberant tone. What on earth are they so pleased about? I wondered. But I thought it was some stupid journalistic thing, not a universal thing. I don’t know anyone who thought it was cute or clever or a good idea or ‘heart-warming’ – but perhaps that’s because I know only cold secular urban coastal nerds? Were all the Real Folks out there in the Authentic parts of the world weeping tears of joy over the (shudder) octuplets?

Far from being a heart-warming tale of wonder, the more that becomes known about the Suleman family, the more it seems something very disturbing has occurred. Public reaction has quickly turned from joy to shock and anger.

This guy is out of his mind. A heart-warming tale of wonder! Because a woman tries to imitate a dog and have a whole litter of humans! What is heart-warming about that? It’s freakish, it’s unusual, it’s somewhat disgusting, but what’s heart-warming about it? Who felt any joy about it, and why would anyone feel any joy?

[I]f the American public was looking for hope and inspiration in the face of tough times, the Suleman octuplets will have provided little in the way of light relief.

Well duh, but I have a hard time believing that anyone apart from reporters ever thought any octuplets would provide any hope and inspiration. What a dopy idea.

The story to date: bankers and financial fidgeters made a great many stupid reckless positively inebriated investments that depended on the ridiculous premise that real estate prices would go on inflating forever as if no living bankers had ever heard of such a thing as a bubble; to the astonishment of the experts, real estate prices suddenly stopped inflating and began to do the other thing with ever-increasing speed; trillions of dollars turned out never to have existed except in the imaginations of the ‘experts’; the US economy turned into a heap of rubble, and the economy of the rest of the world followed suit; the US government, guided by the savvy B-school president and his friend Hank Paulson, formerly of Lehman Brothers, one of the many burst bubbles littering the landscape, dumped $350 billion of public money into the banks with the promise of more where that came from and with no requirements for transparency or accountability or even telling anyone where all the money would go. Got that? Next act.

[E]mployees at financial companies in New York, the now-diminished world capital of capital, collected an estimated $18.4 billion in bonuses for the year. That was the sixth-largest haul on record, according to a report released Wednesday by the New York State comptroller.

That’s interesting, isn’t it? Employees at financial companies in New York are the very people who caused this global train wreck and the drastic impoverishment of millions, perhaps billions of people – and having brought off this feat of talent and dedication, they were rewarded with large bonuses by the very institutions that are being shored up by billions of public money (money which therefore cannot be spent on health insurance or education to name just two items). Rich, isn’t it? They’re financial wizards; that’s why they’re paid the Big Bucks; in their financial wizardry they make the global economy go pffffffffffffffffffft; so therefore accordingly as a result, they get some more of our money to make them that little bit richer and us that little bit poorer.

What could be fairer or more sensible than that?

That question is ironic. And yet, and yet…they don’t see it. They think they really have earned it, and deserve it, and should get it, and should go on getting it, and should not be told they should not get it.

“People come here because they want to work hard and get paid a lot for working hard,” one investment banker said Friday…“My bonus is ‘shameful’ — but I worked hard to get it,” said John Konstantinidis, a wholesale insurance broker.

They think they deserve it because they worked hard. I can think of a couple of problems with that right off the top of my head. One is that they are not the only people who work hard, yet very few people get the kind of bonuses that Wall Street hotshots get. The other is that one may work very hard in order to ruin everything, and it is not obvious why the mere working hard should merit truckloads of money.

“On Main Street, ‘bonus’ sounds like a gift,” he said. “But it’s part of the compensation structure of Wall Street. Say I’m a banker and I created $30 million. I should get a part of that.”

Say you’re a banker and you made $300 million dollars disappear – should you get a part of that?

Oh look, they’ve gone.

Buruma is at it again.

Dutch criminal law can be invoked against anyone who “deliberately insults people on the grounds of their race, religion, beliefs or sexual orientation.” Whether Mr. Wilders has deliberately insulted Muslim people is for the judges to decide. But for a man who calls for a ban on the Koran to act as the champion of free speech is a bit rich.

No, not exactly, and not necessarily. Being a champion of free speech does not necessarily mean being a champion of absolute free speech with no exceptions whatever. It can mean, for instance, defending free speech construed more broadly than to allow one anti-speech law but still more narrowly than to permit another. It’s not really particularly rich for Wilders to think, for instance, that the Koran has some dangerous content while Fitna does not. I (for one) think Fitna does have some dangerous content, but I think the Koran has more. I wouldn’t call for a ban on the Koran, for many reasons, but I think Buruma’s disdain is too easy.

Comparing a book that billions hold sacred to Hitler’s murderous tract is more than an exercise in literary criticism; it suggests that those who believe in the Koran are like Nazis, and an all-out war against them would be justified. This kind of thinking, presumably, is what the Dutch law court is seeking to check.

One, I think that reading is strained; I think comparing the Koran to Mein Kampf suggests that the Koran is like Mein Kampf. But two, which is more important, notice that Buruma says nothing to show that the Koran is not in fact like Mein Kampf. He says nothing to show that in the rest of the piece, either. Well – what if it is? If it is, then there may be a problem, right? If it is, then covering our ears and pretending it isn’t may not be the best idea. It wasn’t the best idea in the case of Mein Kampf and it may not be the best idea in the case of the Koran either. Yet Buruma seems to ignore that possibility.

One of the misconceptions that muddle the West’s debate over Islam and free speech is the idea that people should be totally free to insult. Free speech is never that absolute. Even — or perhaps especially — in America, where citizens are protected by the First Amendment, there are certain words and opinions that no civilized person would utter, and others that open the speaker to civil charges.

Yes; there are libel laws, for instance. But are there laws against ‘anyone who “deliberately insults people on the grounds of their religion [or] beliefs”‘? I don’t think so, because if there were they would probably be (and be found) unconstitutional. Do let me know if there are any such. If I’m right, it’s not a ‘misconception’ to think that free speech includes the idea ‘that people should be totally free to insult.’ Incite hatred against, no, perhaps not (depending on the circumstances etc) but just plain insult, yes. That is, indeed, part of free speech. Why? Well, because one might need to call some corrupt lying hack a corrupt lying hack, and there’s no way to have laws against insulting people while still protecting the freedom to call a corrupt lying hack a corrupt lying hack. In other words, free speech is a basic part of political freedom.

If Mr. Wilders were to confine his remarks to those Muslims who do harm freedom of speech by using violence against critics and apostates, he would have a valid point. This is indeed a serious problem, not just in the West, but especially in countries where Muslims are in the majority. Mr. Wilders, however, refuses to make such fine distinctions. He believes that there is no such thing as a moderate Muslim.

But Mr Buruma is perhaps making one fine distinction too many. That is because violence is not the only problem, and it’s either evasive or naïve of Buruma to imply that it is. There are Muslims who do harm freedom of speech by using laws or UN human rights bodies or rhetoric or threats of violence or social pressure against critics and apostates – so it’s just way too easy and too comfortable to pretend that the only problem is with actual overt physical violence. It’s hard to believe that Buruma has been paying too little attention to be aware of this.

Presumbably he’s worried about stirring up hatred of (and violence against) Muslims in general, and that is of course a valid worry; but he shouldn’t be evasive, because there are other valid worries in play.

I went into Bartell’s (a drugstore chain; think Boots if you’re in the UK, but not as nice) yesterday, and was skimming along an unfamiliar aisle when I stopped, amazed. There in front of me dangling from those little rods that packages dangle from, were packages of Foot Detox Pads. Kinoki Cleansing Detox Foot Pads, to be exact. They’re real! Sense About Science didn’t just make them up!

There were before and after pictures on the box: clean white pad, then grubby brown pad. Yes but as Sense About Science points out, the pads contain vinegar and herbs and they make the feet sweat: the brown is from moisture and vinegar and herbs, it’s not a nice brown smear of toxicity.

There’s a box on the back with a disclaimer.

Note: These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.

So it’s just some kind of mysterious ritual then. Okay.

Underneath the box is a different kind of advice.

It is best to consult a qualified alternative medicine professional or holistic practitioner to determine your personal detoxification needs.

Oh yes? What does that mean? What is a qualified alternative medicine professional? What is a qualified holistic practitioner? What do alternative medicine professionals and holistic practitioners learn during the course of their qualification training that teaches them how to determine anyone’s detoxification needs? Since biologists and chemists are unable to find any evidence of such a thing as a detoxification need, one has to wonder exactly what professionals and practitioners are trained to look for, and with what tools. Do they do sciency-looking taps and listens and probes? Do they produce sciency-looking instruments that are actually just mock-ups of some kind? It would be very interesting to know.

Update: I forgot to say, they cost $19.95. For some worthless bits of vinegar-soaked gauze!

Now this one I wasn’t even going to ask for, not yet, because it’s so early and there’s so much to do – but here it is anyway.

President Obama wants a fresh approach to toppling Robert Mugabe and is discussing with aides an unprecedented, US-led diplomatic push to get tough new UN sanctions imposed against the Zimbabwe regime.

They will have to put pressure on Russia and China to (at least) abstain from vetoing sanctions – but perhaps that’s not an insuperable obstacle now. Good luck.

A commenter has been telling us lately (but with no actual checkable references) that Obama is not all that intelligent because he got only Bs at Harvard. Since all the commenter has offered in response to a request for references is that somebody said that on a (nameless) BBC documentary last week, there’s no need to pay any attention, but in looking for something else I happened on an interesting piece about Obama’s student days from last February. There’s not much about having an average mind (there’s nothing, actually) and there is a fair amount of the other thing. Of course the reporter could be a raving fan and have simply thrown all the ‘average mind’ stuff into the trash can – but for what it’s worth, some people remember Obama as being quite clever.

Mr. Obama wrote that he learned of a transfer program that Occidental had with Columbia and applied. “He was so bright and wanted a wider urban experience,” recalled Anne Howells, a former English professor at Occidental who taught Mr. Obama and wrote him a recommendation for Columbia…Mr. Obama displayed a deft but unobtrusive manner of debating.“When he talked, it was an E. F. Hutton moment: people listened,” said John Boyer, who lived across the hall from Mr. Obama. “He would point out the negatives of a policy and its consequences and illuminate the complexities of an issue the way others could not.”…The professor, Roger Boesche, has memories of him at a popular burger joint on campus. “He was always sitting there with students who were some of the most articulate and those concerned with issues like violence in Central America and having businesses divest from South Africa,” he said. “These were the kids most concerned with issues of social justice and who took classes and books seriously.”

No mention of B grades, or of mediocrity. The memories could be fallible, they could be shaded by the present, but for what they’re worth, there they are. And at least that’s a checkable reference, which ‘a BBC 4 documentary last week’ is not.

Responsible, careful, sensible, loving parenthood.

Kara Neumann, 11, had grown so weak that she could not walk or speak. Her parents, who believe that God alone has the ability to heal the sick, prayed for her recovery but did not take her to a doctor. After an aunt from California called the sheriff’s department here, frantically pleading that the sick child be rescued, an ambulance arrived at the Neumann’s rural home on the outskirts of Wausau and rushed Kara to the hospital. She was pronounced dead on arrival. The county coroner ruled that she had died from diabetic ketoacidosis resulting from undiagnosed and untreated juvenile diabetes. The condition occurs when the body fails to produce insulin, which leads to severe dehydration and impairment of muscle, lung and heart function.

Severe dehydration and impairment of muscle, lung and heart function – meaning that was one sick kid, one very visibly, obviously, unmistakably sick kid, one suffering sick kid. And all her parents did for her was to pray, despite of course knowing perfectly well that there are such things as telephones and ambulances and doctors and medicines. For days and days they hung around with a sick, wasted, feeble child, and did nothing about it (prayer doesn’t count).

About a month after Kara’s death last March, the Marathon County state attorney, Jill Falstad, brought charges of reckless endangerment against her parents, Dale and Leilani Neumann. Despite the Neumanns’ claim that the charges violated their constitutional right to religious freedom, Judge Vincent Howard of Marathon County Circuit Court ordered Ms. Neumann to stand trial on May 14, and Mr. Neumann on June 23.

So they killed their child, by refusing to get her medical help which would have saved her life, and they’re defending themselves by talking about their ‘religious freedom.’ They’re not lying on the ground banging their heads and wailing, they’re not crying aloud ‘How could we have been so stupid and callous?’, they’re not sobbing and telling their dead daughter how sorry they are – they’re insisting on ‘religious freedom.’ Freedom to what? Freedom to watch your 11-year-old child become unable to walk or breathe or move or speak and do nothing to help her because you have the freedom to believe that ‘god’ will rescue her even though you refuse to avail yourself of the actual tools to help her? That’s a pretty strange sort of freedom to defend, especially after such an outcome.

“The free exercise clause of the First Amendment protects religious belief,” the judge wrote in his ruling, “but not necessarily conduct.” Wisconsin law, he noted, exempts a parent or guardian who treats a child with only prayer from being criminally charged with neglecting child welfare laws, but only “as long as a condition is not life threatening.” Kara’s parents, Judge Howard wrote, “were very well aware of her deteriorating medical condition.”

Well that’s great! Wisconsin law allows parents to treat a sick child with only prayer as long as the sickness is not life threatening! So mere suffering or pain is not reason enough to make medical treatment mandatory. How disgusting. The ‘religious freedom’ of parents is more important than the relief from suffering of their children? Brilliant.

Investigators said the Neumanns last took Kara to a doctor when she was 3. According to a police report, the girl had lost the strength to speak the day before she died. “Kara laid down and was unable to move her mouth,” the report said, “and merely made moaning noises and moved her eyes back and forth.”

Yet her parents still did nothing.Like the Oregon parents who ‘were charged with criminally negligent homicide in the death of their 16-year-old son, who died from complications of a urinary tract infection that was severely painful and easily treatable.’

As Lucretius said (as I’ve quoted before), tantum religio potuit suadere malorum.

Another one, from last July.

Police in Atlanta have been investigating the death of a 25-year-old Pakistani woman, who was allegedly murdered by her father in the name of family honor. She wanted out of an arranged marriage, but her father thought a divorce would bring shame to the family.

And he also thought that the ‘shame’ that Sandeela Kanwal would ‘bring’ to the family was more significant than her life was. He thought the ‘shame’ was so important that it justified murdering his own adult daughter. Instead of thinking of it as something regrettable and painful but as a speck of dust compared to the value of his daughter – he thought the opposite – he thought his daughter was worth much less than this comparatively trivial shame. That’s an incredibly ugly fact, which never seems to get enough attention in the coverage of these things. He thought a fundamentally social, neighbor-heeding feeling was more important than his own daughter was; he thought it was so important that it motivated him to strangle her to death with a bungee cord – all so that the neighbors wouldn’t snigger at him.

“He admitted to actually taking the life of his daughter,” says Sgt. Stefan Schindler, a 13-year veteran of the Clayton County Police Department. “And the reason he took his daughter’s life,” says Schindler, “by his own words was that she wasn’t being true to her religion or to her husband.”…Schindler says Rashid told him that killing his daughter was a right given to him by God — and that God would protect him.

So ‘God’ is someone who wants women to be killed for wanting to leave men they never chose for themselves in the first place. In other words, yes Virginia, God does hate women.

Shahid Malik is a local representative of Atlanta’s Pakistani population and one of the very few willing to speak about the Rashid case. “This thing hurt the Muslim community, Pakistani community,” he says. He says that the killing has nothing to do with Islam, but that Rashid has little education and comes from a small village in Pakistan where tribal traditions are strong…”Whatever this case is or not, this is not an honor killing,” he says. “It is not based on Pakistani law. Chaudry Rashid loved his daughter.”

No he didn’t. People need to stop saying that. People who love their daughters don’t murder them; people who murder their daughters don’t love them. You don’t get to do both. You don’t get to murder your daughter and still pretend you loved her.

Begner hopes the state doesn’t make this about Islam or ethnicity. This death could have happened, he says, in any culture, with any family.

Well anything could have happened, but is it likely? Is it customary ‘in any culture, with any family’ to murder an adult daughter because she wants to divorce a husband who was not her choice to begin with? I don’t think so.