Quite.

Politics and piety are becoming increasingly entangled as the human fertilisation and embryology bill passes through parliament…Brown put the interests of the Christian few over the rights of the many. Most people obviously disagree with a Catholic morality that puts the rights of the non-extant over those of the living…Brown’s about-turn has led many to conclude that the government’s front benches are becoming increasingly religion-led…The vice-like grip of Catholicism holds fast across large parts of the continent. Spain, Italy, Portugal and Ireland are just some of the countries in Europe that have been subjected to interference by meddling cardinals. Abortion is still outlawed in Ireland and was only recently legalised in Portugal. Anti-abortion campaigns have, almost without exception, been led from the pulpit. Catholicism has never taken a back seat; it has always actively interfered in democratic politics.

And there’s an oddly deferential tone to at least some of the press coverage of this fact, as I mentioned a couple of days ago. It’s treated as normal and uncontroversial and unexceptionable that ‘the Roman Catholic Church’ should be telling the UK government what to do. This is a very bad mistake. When the Catholic church interferes it does it in aid of a nasty reactionary agenda. It shouldn’t be politely curtsied to as if it were some benign foster parent.

Ruth Kelly’s contention, supported by other religious politicians, that she can separate her private morals from public policy does not stand up to scrutiny. During the passage of the legislation to ban discrimination in the provision of goods and services in 2007, she is reputed to have fought hard for Catholic adoption agencies to opt out of the requirement to place children with same sex couples. When it came to the crunch, her Catholic faith won the day. Should devout Catholics such as Kelly, Browne and Murphy be allowed on the government front bench in the light of their predilection to favour the Pope’s word above the government’s?

In a word: no.

The effort to ban hybrid embryos failed.

The Roman Catholic Church has branded the use of hybrid embryos as “monstrous” and says tinkering with life in this way is immoral.

So what? Who cares what the Roman Catholic Church says? The Roman Catholic church says a lot of things, and many of them are morally execrable. The Roman Catholic Church also does a lot of things, and many of those stink too. The Roman Catholic Church worries far too much about cells in dishes and far too little about existing, thinking people. The Roman Catholic Church gets too much respectful attention, and it gets this respectful attention by staging moral panics about things that are not morally significant. That’s a foolish arrangement.

And of course the Roman Catholic Church doesn’t think ‘tinkering with life’ is immoral. It has no objection to agronomy or antibiotics, for instance. It doesn’t mean ‘life,’ it means ‘what it chooses to think of as human life.’ It gets a rhetorical boost by calling it just ‘life,’ and it shouldn’t get away with it.

Nick Cohen looks at what happened with ‘Undercover Mosque,’ specifically the interesting question of why the police and the Crown Prosecution service saw fit to accused channel 4 of making stuff up.

Its undercover journalists infiltrated radical mosques. They recorded assorted preachers calling for the subjugation of women, the murder of homosexuals and Jews, the replacement of the ‘man-made’ laws of a democracy with the religious edicts of a theocratic state and the eternal damnation of Muslims who did not follow Wahhabi doctrine and infidels who did not accept the true faith.

Well…that’s racist stuff, right? That must be why the cops got involved.

Haras Rafiq of the Sufi Muslim Council, said: ‘Wahhabis and their offshoots are teaching Muslim youngsters that America and Britain are against them and therefore they need to get up and fight with them. The radicalising power of this ideology is extremely dangerous.’ Abdal-Hakim Murad of Cambridge University described Saudi influence as ‘potentially lethal for the future of the community’.

Oh. Maybe not exactly racist then.

The many who were foolish enough to believe the police’s accusations must have accepted that, for instance, Ijaz Mian, who preaches in Derby, was a good democrat. Only trick camerawork and sly editing had turned him into the man who appeared in the film raving: ‘King, Queen, House of Commons. If you accept it then you are a part of it. You don’t accept it but you have to dismantle it. So you being a Muslim you have to fix a target, there will be no House of Commons.’ Similarly, when Abu Usamah of the Green Lane mosque in Birmingham bellowed on air: ‘Take that homosexual man and throw him off the mountain’, his apparently murderous homophobia was not a genuine expression of his prejudice, but a Truman Show illusion.

No but – but – they’re just blowing off a little steam. They have genuine grievances. They’re upset about western foreign policy. So – exposing them is a crime of some sort. Has to be.

In the case of Channel 4, however, the CPS and West Midlands police have never condescended to explain their behaviour to the public. The National Secular Society wants an inquiry to force them into the open. Until we get one, the best explanation lies in Patani’s title: assistant chief constable (security and cohesion).

Oh, gawd – cohesion again. Cohesion and community, the dread words of the contemporary UK. (Over here it’s faith and family. Different alliteration, you see.)

Since 9/11, not only police officers, but New Labour ministers, the Home Office, Foreign Office and pseudo-left journalists and councils have sought to promote ‘cohesion’ by appeasing Islamist groups which aren’t quite as extreme as al-Qaeda…Elements within the government thought that if they could co-opt the Muslim Brotherhood and Jamaat-i-Islami and ignore their foul beliefs, they would isolate the terrorists to their right.

So you got years and years of sucking up to the all-male ‘leaders’ in the MCB. What. a. trainwreck.

South Asian and Middle Eastern women’s groups reported an increasingly widespread trend. Officials who should treat all women equally were deciding that where their community’s religious and cultural practices conflicted with the law, the law had to give way…A worker in a women’s group in the north, who requested anonymity for fear of reprisals, added she had been ‘appalled’ by an Asian ‘chief inspector who had offered to help a family track a girl down’. The report’s authors noticed that women’s groups appeared to have problems with one force in particular. It was the West Midlands police.

All for cohesion, nothing for women’s rights.

I suppose university administrators are simply legally barred from talking sense? I suppose they’re contractually bound to talk formulaic soothing dribbling beside-the-point feel-good bullshit? They can do no other?

I suppose when they take the job they are issued with a box full of the correct words, and when they have to write a statement about something, they are strictly forbidden to do it without relying on the box for at least 60% of the content? The rest being taken up with neutral and necessary words like ‘is’ and ‘you’?

What’s in the box? Oh come on, you know.

…fully support the rights of our students and others within this community to express their concerns on this issue…many in the University community…the tolerant and inclusive values of the Washington University community…apologize for the anguish this decision has caused to many members of our community…a broad impact on American life and have sparked widespread debate and controversies…commitment to strengthening diversity and inclusiveness and to improving gender balance…students and faculty from all walks of life, from most systems of religious belief and political thought, and from all corners of the world…widely diverse individuals…stronger because disagreement…opportunity to speak as individuals…widely divergent agendas…dialogue and discourse…an institution that nurtures debate and tolerance…deeply committed…rebuild damaged relationships with members of our community…to make this a community so open, tolerant and inclusive…work together…all who live, learn, discover and create here.

It’s deeply moving stuff, isn’t it. So why does it make me want to kick someone?

Sneer sneer sneer sneer.

The tendency to lump together Muslim females in exile who have rather unsavoury views about Islam makes the voices of moderate females difficult to hear…Male exiles from the faith do not seem to attract the same sympathetic open-armed treatment as the damsel in distress…The most prominent of the “refuseniks”, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Irshad Manji and Wafa Sultan have caused a stir for allegedly being “brave enough” to criticise Islam and nail their colours to the west’s mast of values.

Interesting scare quotes on ‘brave enough’ – since all three women mentioned receive regular (and sincere) death threats. What exactly is Nesrine Malik expressing incredulity about, one wonders?

Wafa Sultan’s debut on al-Jazeera , where she bleated hysterically about the irredeemable retardation of the Islamic faith…[I]n marketing oneself as a Crusader speaking on behalf of the mute Muslim millions…[M]edia-courting one-woman-roadshows pitting themselves against the Muslim world do little more than create western media darlings…I should have a natural synergy with these women but I am appalled at how cavalierly they have appropriated the very limited opportunity to capture attention and raise awareness…

Aw – diddums – did the bad nasty talkative women grab your chance to ‘capture’ media attention? Well no wonder you have such a nasty way with words, then. No wonder you’re so full of sneers. Poor poor you.

Their personal histories exhibit a disturbing ruthless tendency to twist half-truths into a media-friendly tale of woe…This chameleonism offends me. Their abuse of the religion and its mores is unconstructive and gratuitous…when voices are heard, it is a tragic waste that they are pitched at a hysterical shriek supporting an irreconcilable “clash of civilisations” paradigm. What do these enlightened, brave souls hope to achieve?…[T]hey have robbed the Muslim woman of her independence and free will, pigeonholing and victimising her as a “Caged Virgin”…[T]elegenic articulate women cynically exploiting the naivety and polarisation of a terrorised post-9/11 world.

Unsavoury views, “brave,” bleated hysterically, Crusader, media-courting, cavalierly, ruthless, abuse, gratuitous, hysterical shriek, victimizing, telegenic, cynical. Nesrine Malik has a taste for shameless vituperation, and sexist vituperation at that. Sexist vituperation coming from women is doubly disgusting.

Wait wait wait wait – I don’t get it. I think this is exactly backward.

Clinton has benefited from a favorable gender dynamic that won’t exist in the fall. (In the Democratic primary, female voters have outnumbered males by nearly three to two.) Clinton’s claim to being a tough, tested potential commander-in-chief has gone almost unchallenged. Obama could reply that being First Lady doesn’t qualify you to serve as commander-in-chief, but he won’t quite say that, because feminists are an important chunk of the Democratic electorate. John McCain wouldn’t be so reluctant.

…What? Why is it supposed to be ‘feminist’ to think that being a first lady does qualify you to serve as commander-in-chief? What the hell is feminist about that? What is feminist about thinking ‘I am married to an important man’ is a qualification? That’s not feminist, it’s anti-feminist. Feminist is running on your own merits, not someone else’s. Parlaying wifehood into a career is not my idea of feminist. Using family connections and second-hand fame is not my idea of feminist. Riding on coat-tails is not my idea of feminist. Clinton is doubtless qualified, but the nepotism question makes her one of the last people in the country who should have tried for this particular job. I don’t feel one bit ’empowered’ as a woman by the fact that another woman is trying to use her marital arrangement as an elevator to the top.

Steven Pinker notes that Bush’s Council on Bioethics has put out a 555-page report called Human Dignity and Bioethics.

This collection of essays is the culmination of a long effort by the Council to place dignity at the center of bioethics. The general feeling is that, even if a new technology would improve life and health and decrease suffering and waste, it might have to be rejected, or even outlawed, if it affronted human dignity.

Yes where have we heard that before…from the archbishop of Canterbury, from the pope, from lots of meddlesome priests.

The problem is that “dignity” is a squishy, subjective notion, hardly up to the heavyweight moral demands assigned to it. The bioethicist Ruth Macklin, who had been fed up with loose talk about dignity intended to squelch research and therapy, threw down the gauntlet in a 2003 editorial, “Dignity Is a Useless Concept.”…Once you recognize the principle of autonomy, Macklin argued, “dignity” adds nothing.

Just what I said! Last November. Twice.

Macklin of course says it much much better.

To invoke the concept of dignity without clarifying its meaning is to use a mere slogan…Why, then, do so many articles and reports appeal to human dignity, as if it means something over and above respect for persons or for their autonomy? A possible explanation is the many religious sources that refer to human dignity, especially but not exclusively in Roman Catholic writings. However, this religious source cannot explain how and why dignity has crept into the secular literature in medical ethics.

Well, maybe it can, actually; words and concepts can cross borders.

Pinker goes on.

Goaded by Macklin’s essay, the Council acknowledged the need to put dignity on a firmer conceptual foundation. This volume of 28 essays and commentaries by Council members and invited contributors is their deliverable…And what it reveals should alarm anyone concerned with American biomedicine and its promise to improve human welfare. For this government-sponsored bioethics does not want medical practice to maximize health and flourishing; it considers that quest to be a bad thing, not a good thing.

Just like the archbishops and cardinals. Never mind what the research could do to end horrible diseases, instead focus on the threat to ‘human dignity’ of research on cells in a petri dish.

Although the Dignity report presents itself as a scholarly deliberation of universal moral concerns, it springs from a movement to impose a radical political agenda, fed by fervent religious impulses, onto American biomedicine.

And then he goes into the details. It’s infuriating stuff; don’t miss it.

The last paragraph makes the obvious and devastating point.

Theocon bioethics flaunts a callousness toward the billions of non-geriatric people, born and unborn, whose lives or health could be saved by biomedical advances. Even if progress were delayed a mere decade by moratoria, red tape, and funding taboos (to say nothing of the threat of criminal prosecution), millions of people with degenerative diseases and failing organs would needlessly suffer and die. And that would be the biggest affront to human dignity of all.

Exactly.

Read it and scream.

For Abdel-Qader Ali there is only one regret: that he did not kill his daughter at birth. ‘If I had realised then what she would become, I would have killed her the instant her mother delivered her,’ he said with no trace of remorse. Two weeks after The Observer revealed the shocking story of Rand Abdel-Qader, 17, murdered because of her infatuation with a British solider in Basra, southern Iraq, her father is defiant. Sitting in the front garden of his well-kept home in the city’s Al-Fursi district, he remains a free man, despite having stamped on, suffocated and then stabbed his student daughter to death. Abdel-Qader, 46, a government employee, was initially arrested but released after two hours. Astonishingly, he said, police congratulated him on what he had done. ‘They are men and know what honour is,’ he said.

What honour is – something that makes it not only acceptable but actually praiseworthy to stamp on, suffocate, and stab to death a 17-year-old girl who is your daughter, a girl who hasn’t killed anyone or hurt anyone but has simply developed an affection for a male person.

It was her first youthful infatuation and it would be her last. She died on 16 March after her father discovered she had been seen in public talking to Paul, considered to be the enemy, the invader and a Christian. Though her horrified mother, Leila Hussein, called Rand’s two brothers, Hassan, 23, and Haydar, 21, to restrain Abdel-Qader as he choked her with his foot on her throat, they joined in. Her shrouded corpse was then tossed into a makeshift grave without ceremony as her uncles spat on it in disgust.

Oh, god, it’s so ugly I can’t stand to read it. I can’t stand it I can’t stand it – this world where men get together to murder women then treat them like garbage then spit on them. It’s so ugly. The hatred, the contempt, the disgust – for a young girl – their own relative. It makes me crazy.

‘Death was the least she deserved,’ said Abdel-Qader. ‘I don’t regret it. I had the support of all my friends who are fathers, like me, and know what she did was unacceptable to any Muslim that honours his religion,’ he said…’I don’t have a daughter now, and I prefer to say that I never had one. That girl humiliated me in front of my family and friends…I have only two boys from now on. That girl was a mistake in my life. I know God is blessing me for what I did,’ he said, his voice swelling with pride. ‘My sons are by my side, and they were men enough to help me finish the life of someone who just brought shame to ours.’

Men enough? What does he mean men enough? Because it took strength? No – she was down, her father’s foot was on her neck, they were three against one. Because it took courage? No – they were in no danger. What then? That men are supposed to hate women enough to kill them for no good reason, apparently.

He said his daughter’s ‘bad genes were passed on from her mother’. Rand’s mother, 41, remains in hiding after divorcing her husband in the immediate aftermath of the killing, living in fear of retribution from his family. She also still bears the scars of the severe beating he inflicted on her, breaking her arm in the process, when she told him she was going. ‘They cannot accept me leaving him. When I first left I went to a cousin’s home, but every day they were delivering notes to my door saying I was a prostitute and deserved the same death as Rand,’ she said. ‘She was killed by animals. Every night when go to bed I remember the face of Rand calling for help while her father and brothers ended her life,’ she said, tears streaming down her face.

And that’s just one of many.

Is there a problem with closed religious groups (and with closed groups in general)?

I commented on – or intruded on – a blog post about the Amish the other day. I didn’t set out to intrude, I thought I was just offering some data, but I got called a militant atheist and compared to Leninists (!) and generally told to fuck off, so clearly I was intruding. Must do better. But about the Amish…

I think there is a problem with closed religious groups (and closed groups in general). I think closed religious groups are incompatible with many of the rights in the UDHR. I think that’s why they are closed – and that’s the problem. Why are some religious groups closed? 1) So that outsiders won’t come in and 2) so that insiders won’t leave. There is secrecy, and there is restriction. Secrecy can cover up treatment of people that would not be acceptable in the larger (open) world, and restriction can make people unable to escape that kind of treatment.

What are closed religious groups like? What are they? Jonestown. Yearning for Zion Ranch. Heaven’s Gate. (I’m not sure how closed Heaven’s Gate really was. It was secretive, but I don’t think it was forcibly closed. It also didn’t have children. That makes a large difference.) Branch Davidians. The Amish.

They don’t let children go to school. Most of them subordinate the women, and keep them under observation. They don’t want their members to leave.

Not being able to leave is the key, I think. It’s the key because it is a violation of rights in itself, and because it motivates other violations of rights. Amish children who stay in school are much more likely to leave than those who quit school after the eighth grade. What does this mean? That children who know more about the world, and who have some qualifications beyond primitive farming, often choose not to stay, while children who don’t, don’t. In other words children who are handicapped – deliberately handicapped – for life in the larger world are more likely to stay, and the Amish want those children to be handicapped. Children who do stay in school have a choice; they can leave or they can stay. Children who quit school at age 14 don’t have a choice (or have much less of a choice); they have to stay.

Universal education is based partly on the idea that children should have choices of that kind. Closed religious groups that prevent their children from having choices of that kind are highly dubious.

So I think the decision in Wisconsin v Yoder was unfortunate. Douglas wrote the only dissent (and it was only a partial dissent; the decision was unanimous).

The Court’s analysis assumes that the only interests at stake in the case are those of the Amish parents on the one hand, and those of the State on the other. The difficulty with this approach is that, despite the Court’s claim, the parents are seeking to vindicate not only their own free exercise claims, but also those of their high-school-age children.

Well exactly, except that should have been a real stumbling block, not just a gesture at one. The Amish (adults) want the Amish to continue, and a lot of Americans who like the idea of having a few buggys and bonnets around want them to continue too. But the price of doing that is allowing generation after generation of children to be handicapped. We don’t fancy that when it’s Yearning for Zion Ranch. Why do we think it’s okay for the Amish?

Ruth Irene Garrett doesn’t think it’s okay.

To many outsiders Amish life seems simple and peaceful – but for Ruth Irene Garrett it was a prison with rules based on fear…Born into an insular Amish community in Iowa, Ruth says she always felt trapped by the rigid way of life which avoids all dealings with the outside world and keeps boys and girls apart…She went to an Amish school until she turned 14 — the age when most Amish children leave their studies to begin working on their families’ farms. Boys work in the fields while the girls focus on quilting, sewing, cooking, milking, cleaning and gardening…Ruth said women were second-class, subservient and discouraged from speaking their minds…Ruth said the Amish rarely smile or laugh, and believe if something is funny then it is bad. She explains in the book: “They take their religious, agrarian life seriously, living by the motto that the harder it is on earth, the sweeter it is in heaven.”

So they make life on earth nasty on purpose, thinking that will make it sweeter in heaven – an unfortunate misunderstanding.

I think pluralism is good up to a point – but I think human rights are one good way to determine what that point is. (I think smiling and laughing is another. Imagine life without laughter. Just imagine it. Imagine finding nothing funny, ever. Imagine thinking funniness is bad. Imagine hell on earth.) I think it’s fine for people to light out for the territory, to run away from home and have adventures (provided they don’t leave their own children behind, like Pilgrim), to drop out of the mainstream, to simplify, to set up communes, to join a kibbutz. I don’t think it’s fine for people to subordinate women, and I don’t think it’s fine for them to handicap their children.

Priestly wisdom.

[I]n Britain today there is considerable spiritual homelessness…Many people have a sense of being in a sort of exile from faith-guided experience…To some extent this is the effect of the privatisation of religion today: religion comes to be treated as a matter of personal need rather than as a truth that makes an unavoidable claim on us.

Yes. That’s because it’s not a truth that makes an unavoidable claim on us. It sounds pretty to say that, but it isn’t true. (The ‘unavoidable claim’ is largely a matter of childhood imprinting. People who aren’t imprinted don’t experience the claim as unavoidable.)

The Cardinal loses the thread quite easily, and quickly.

‘Pope Benedict knows,’ he said, ‘that religion is about truth and not social cohesion.’ A very accurate remark I think. TS Eliot once observed that it was a dangerous inversion to advocate Christianity not because of its truth, but because of its benefit.

Then in the next paragraph –

One of the aims of the Christian religion is to create and foster a culture and society in which human beings flourish and God is glorified by his presence in a holy people.

So, it’s a dangerous inversion to advocate Christianity because of its benefit, but one of the aims of the Christian religion is to create and foster a culture and society in which human beings flourish. Ooooookay. Just throw everything and hope that something sticks, eh.

I wanted religion to be seen to be open to the questions of those who do not believe; those who call themselves agnostic or atheistic. As always, the interesting question about atheism is ‘what is the theism that is being denied?’ Have you ever met anyone who believes what Richard Dawkins doesn’t believe in? I usually find that the God that is being rejected by such people is a God I don’t believe in either. I simply don’t recognise my faith in what is presented by these critics as Christian faith.

Which bits? The Resurrection? The Trinity? God as all-powerful and perfectly benevolent? Which bits don’t you recognize? But there’s no point in my asking because (of course) he doesn’t say. He’s like Chris Hedges that way – atheists do this that and the other, with never a shred of documentation offered.

God is not a fact in the world, as though God could be treated as one thing among other things to be empirically investigated, affirmed or denied on the basis of observation. Many who deny God’s existence treat God in this way, and they simply don’t know how to ask the proper question about God. God is why the world is at all, the goodness, truth and love that flows into an astonishingly complex and beautiful cosmos…

What, exactly, does that mean? Is it anything other than pretty but empty talk? What does he mean? Does he mean just that God is the fact that the world is at all? If so then I believe in God. If he really means ‘God is why the world is at all’ then what does that mean? Why would it not be just a nice phrase that’s easy and pleasant to say but doesn’t actually mean anything?

I know it seems tediously village-atheist to say things like that, but what can we do? People – priests and theologians – will say things like that, and get respectfully reported by the BBC for doing so, so what can we do other than try to figure out what is meant, and if we can’t figure it out, ask why people say things that don’t seem to mean anything? If you say ‘God is why the world is at all,’ then what is ‘God’? If I said ‘Ranesh Pronunu is why the world is at all,’ you’d wonder what Ranesh Pronunu was, wouldn’t you? You wouldn’t think that sentence explained what Ranesh Pronunu is – you would think it created a new mystery rather than solving an old one. So why is that supposed to tell us what God is? You tell me.

Is human identity and purpose a clue to God’s reality? Yes, because in our response to truth and love we are what God brings about as the expression of his overflowing goodness…

Oh, crap. Tell that to the people in Burma, tell it to the people in Zimbabwe and DR Congo and Darfur and Somalia and Bangladesh and Gaza. Tell it to the women of Saudi Arabia and Iran and Afghanistan. Tell it to sick people, people in pain, bereaved people, frightened people. Tell it to animals being torn apart by leopards or foxes or rats. Overflowing goodness nothing.

If Christians really believed in the mystery of God, we would realise that proper talk about God is always difficult, always tentative. Why are atheists so clear about the God who is rejected? A God who can be spoken of comfortably and clearly by human beings cannot be the true God.

Why? No, really, why? If this God is overflowing with goodness, why does it want to make a mystery and a secret of itself? If it’s such a good thing, why does it hide? I’m dead serious about that. (I’m dead serious about all of it.) If it’s such a good thing, why does it hide? There’s no reason for it. The only reason, of course, is because it’s not there, so the priests have to say it’s hiding. That’s a rather cruel hoax, I think.

I kept going on arguing in that discussion at CfI yesterday, and in doing that I tried to boil down the point of contention to make it as clear as possible.

There are two possibilities for theists here.

1) There is a god who is transcendent, outside of nature, outside of the universe.

2) There is a god who is descendent, inside nature, inside the universe, and who makes things happen in our world.

There are different things to say about each. About 1, nearly everyone would agree that it’s not possible to offer evidence that such a god does not exist. But theists fail to draw the rest of the obvious conclusion: for the same reason that it’s not possible to offer evidence that such a god does not exist, it’s not possible to know anything at all about such a deity, therefore there is literally nothing to say about it. If it’s outside, it has nothing to do with us, and we have nothing to do with it, and there’s just nothing to say. There’s fantasy, of course, but fantasy can be about anything and everything, and most theists don’t consider theism to be fantasy.

About 2, agreement is much less likely – but that’s mostly because theists smuggle in aspects of 1 in order to defend their belief system. They hang on to 2 by claiming (literally nonsensically) that 2 has the attributes of 1 but is still the god of 2. Well, that’s a cheat. You can have 1, or you can have 2, but you can’t have both in one. You can’t combine them. It’s not like blending carrots and ginger to make soup. Your god has to be either 1, or 2; it can’t be both.

Once that is realized (and that of course is the snag, because theists and pretend-skeptics simply refuse to realize it), then it becomes clear that 2) is in fact entirely subject to all sorts of empirical inquiry. It’s also subject to common or garden skepticism, in which one declines to believe every blagger who claims there is an invisible magical being up in the sky answering prayers and punishing sinners.

That was yesterday. What I want to know is, is it wrong? The guy I was arguing with seemed to think that you can combine them – and that puzzles me; I don’t see why it’s not obvious that you can’t. G. probably knows, but he’s busy with other things.

The only reason I can think of for people to think you can combine the two is that they are thinking of ‘outside of nature’ as analogous to outside a house, or a room, or a city, or a country. You can be outside all of those and still make things happen inside them. You can be outside a house and throw rocks at it, or set it on fire, or paint it, or shout at people inside it.

But I don’t think that’s relevant to this god stuff because when theists say god is outside, beyond, transcendent, they don’t mean something analogous to outside a house or a city. We know this because they also say that god therefore can’t be tested by the methods of science, and that doesn’t apply to outside a house or a city. This outsideness is a special kind of outsideness that (usefully) confers total immunity from testing and questioning on this god. Well if it’s going to do that, it has to be a kind of outsideness that can’t be combined with being in the world and acting on it – because if it can be combined with being in the world and acting on it, it’s no longer some special magical kind of outsideness, it’s just geographic outsideness which is compatible with occasional (or frequent) visits. And a god that pays visits is back to being one that can be tested. So we still (as far as I can make sense of all this) have the same incompatability. If the god is ‘transcendent’ and permanently beyond human knowledge and testing – then it’s 1, and it can’t also be 2.

Can it? I don’t see how it can; am I missing something?

Our friend Chris Hedges was on Point of Inquiry last week, and his performance is being discussed at the CFI forum. I couldn’t resist joining in a couple of times – the latest time because of one of those ‘science has nothing to say about god because god transcends nature’ arguments, or pseudo-arguments. Those always annoy me. I thought I would share.

I’m not seeing my error, I’m afraid. Christian dogma, at least, posits a god who exists outside of nature but who acts in time and space without inhabiting that time-space.

Yup uh huh sure. A god who exists outside of nature but can meddle with it any old which way but it still exists outside of nature because that way believers always get to say (and say and say and say) that science can’t inquire into this god because this god (so conveniently) exists outside of nature. That’s called having it both ways. Or in the vernacular, cheating. God is magic and special and Outside so science can’t investigate it, no no, go away; but on the other hand god answers prayers, sends hurricanes to punish the wicked, loves us all, hates the sin (but not the sinner), etc etc etc.

If (BIG if!) that’s true, then

a. how is this god at direct odds with science?…and
b. how would we ever use the tools for probing the physical world to investigate this mysterious god?

Big if indeed. Why should anyone think that is true? And notice how very convenient ‘b’ is. Doesn’t that convenience make you a little suspicious? If not it ought to.

Every time I hear one of the Big Atheists railing that God is antithetical to science, I scratch my head. I’m not arguing FOR a god—just that there can be no possibility of disproving something that exists outside of the only system we have. Not only can we neither prove nor disprove such a god’s existence, science itself has nothing to say on this subject.

Well there’s no possibility of disproving anything; disproof is much too high a standard – and the ‘Big Atheists’ of course know that perfectly well. ‘Antithetical to science’ doesn’t mean ‘capable of being disproven.’ Of course we can neither prove nor disprove such a god’s existence (and, again, the ‘Big Atheists’ know that). But as for science having nothing to say on the subject – well that depends on your acceptance of the bizarre and (as I said) suspiciously convenient idea that god is outside nature but active inside it. I would say that that’s just plain impossible, frankly. Either you are outside nature or you’re not; you can’t be both. If god is outside nature we know absolutely nothing about ‘it’ – whatever it is. We certainly don’t know that it’s called ‘god’ or whether or not it created the universe. We know nothing, so there’s little point in talking about it. There’s especially little point in talking about it in a dogmatic way. Christian ‘dogma’ about an inside-outside god that disappears when science is in the room and comes back when it’s time to frighten sinners – is a pathetic evasive joke.

Check out Hanan Dover, who made lots of comments on that ‘Muslim Village’ discussion of Habib. She’s not rabid enough for some of the commenters there, but she’s rabid enough for (I hope) most people.

So, what do Islamic Scriptures say about homosexuality…just from these verses we can deduce that Islam forbids any sexual relationship other than between man and woman, and even then, it must be within a marriage. In a hadith, Abu Hurairah (ra) reported Allah’s Messenger (pbuh) said: ‘Four types of people awake under Allah’s anger and go to bed under Allah’s displeasure.’ Those who were listening asked: Who are they, Messenger of Allah?’ He replied: ‘Men who imitate women, women who imitate men, those who have sex with animals, and men who have sex with men.’

And so on and so on and so on, complete with all the (ra)s and (pbuh)s and the rest of the robotic bullshit.

There is no changing the Quran. The Quran is a perfect guide for humanity. Human law nor science is above Allah (swt)…And this brings into light the difference between what homosexuality means in Islam and what homosexuality means is in the modern world…There is Wisdom in Allah’s rulings and they do not change and He only gives us these restrictions for the benefit of humanity. So, it should be crystal clear even literally clear that Islam forbids homosexual behaviour…Can you be a Muslim thief, or a Muslim paedophile, or a Muslim rapist? No, as you cannot attach what is inherently sinful in Islam to the religious identity as it goes against what a Muslim is. You can call yourself a Muslim psychologist, a Muslim doctor or a Muslim teacher as these can all co-exist as long as they adhere to Islamic principles, but homosexuality does not.

Dover is a Muslim psychologist. Something tells me she’s not a very good psychologist – and as Bronwyn Winter pointed out, she was suspended ‘from her post as a lecturer in psychology at UWS because of her homophobic views and practices (she has also expressed anti-Semitic and anti-feminist views). Suspension is an extreme measure, only possible when evidence has been found to support allegations of serious misconduct, such as misuse of university funds or serious breach of the University Code of Conduct.’

It will be interesting to see what, if anything, UWS does about Habib’s course. Insh’allah they’ll tell the imams and the imams’ supporters to go away.

And there’s the statement of the Australian National Council of Imams.

The Australian National Imams Council is a body that represents the Muslim Imams of Australia and through them the community of Muslims in Australia. Currently there are 94 Imams in the Council and they are drawn from all the States and Territories of Australia. We are responsible for a variety of matters including the Appointment of the Mufti of Australia and the issuance of legal rulings for the benefit of Muslim Australians.

Oh yes? But we always hear that Islam is not like religions that have official centralized clergy who can speak as authorities – so in what sense is the ANIC ‘responsible for’ the issuance of legal rulings? How do all these legal rulings work when crowds and flocks of people issue them while no one has any actual authority to issue them? They seem to be binding yet not authoritative. How does that work? And why does anyone put up with it?

Notice also the announcement that ‘through’ the imams of Australia the ANIC ‘represents’ the community of Muslims in Australia. But it doesn’t. People can’t ‘represent’ people in that way. We don’t get to represent other people just by saying we do. The other people have to agree. Not just fail to object; actually agree. Otherwise this boast of representation is just hot air. I might as well claim I represent all American kuffars. I could make the claim, but that wouldn’t make it true.

Then the statement gets on to the bullying.

[W]e would like to place on the record our deep concern with regards to a course taught at the University under the course name ‘Women in Arabic and Islamic Literature’. The course structure and content has involved repeated and unjustified attacks upon Islam by the lecturer and a course reader that is seriously flawed. The reader promotes a very negative view of Islam and especially women in Islam. It does not represent normative, traditional Islam as practised by the overwhelming majority of the Muslim Population in the world today and through fourteen centuries of Islamic history…We would appreciate a reassessment of this course, its content and the manner in which it is taught so that it more accurately reflects the actual and not imagined teachings of Islam. And to truly reflect the normative teachings of Islam which is best placed under the Centre of excellence in Islamic studies.

No doubt you would. But the content of the course is the business of the University of Western Sydney and Dr Habib. So piss off.

I hope that is more or less what the UWS tells them.

‘Communities’ demanding a veto on the content of university courses. Not just ‘communities’ of course; religious ‘communities.’

Students, community members and the Australian National Imams Council have complained about the content of the course, Women in Arabic and Islamic Literature, being taught at the National Centre of Excellence for Islamic Studies. They say it gives a negative view of women in Islam.

‘Community members’ have complained. Yeah, and other ‘community members’ haven’t complained, so what are we supposed to conclude from that? Who knows.

Homosexuality is forbidden in the Koran for both sexes. Dr Habib has also been accused by Muslims for Peace of teaching that it is not obligatory to wear the hijab, that the Hadiths (sayings of the Prophet Mohammed) are just Chinese whispers and that Muslim scholars can be ignored because they are males.

Has she? Well good for her! Go Dr Habib; you rock.

The imams council does not believe the course represents the normative traditional Islam as practised by most of the world’s Muslim population. “The subject’s emphasis on sexuality and its explicit sexual content is not reflective of normative Islam, which is what we thought the National Centre of Excellence for Islamic Studies would attempt to portray,” ANIC president Sheik Moez Nafti wrote.

That’s interesting. But the National Centre of Excellence for Islamic Studies is part of a university, not part of a mosque, so what you thought is (let us hope) fundamentally beside the point.

A nasty little outfit called ‘Muslims for Peace’ offers its opinion.

Today, the board of management of the so-called ‘Centre of Excellence for Islamic Studies’ (Centre of Kufr) meets in Melbourne…The Imams manifestly fail to protect our Muslim youth from this evil Centre, by demanding — at the very minimum — that the pro-Lesbian lecturer of the Unit in question is dismissed from the Centre and her Lesbian Studies course abolished…Muslims For Peace has been virtually alone in calling upon all Muslims associated with this accursed Centre, at whatever level — academics, administrators, students or whatever —to immediately disengage from the Centre. Now that its wicked nature should be crystal clear for all to see, Muslims should fear Almighty Allah and break all connections with this diabolical Centre of Kufr.

Very good that ‘Muslims for Peace’ has been virtually alone in this campaign of epithet-hurling and heresy-sniffing. Very good that this group (or is it a ‘community’?) is a minority, one hopes a very small minority. Unfortunate that anyone at all thinks that way. People who label other people as evil, accursed, wicked, diabolical and all mixed up with ‘kufr’ are nasty and also dangerous. That kind of language tends to work people up to the point of violence. Browse some more on this horrible site and you will find your stomach turned. The very next article for instance.

But we must also be clear about the nature of evil itself. In most Muslim countries, drinking alcohol is rightly considered to be bad. But what about those who drink the blood of people? – not literally, but by causing the deaths of thousands of innocent people, including women and children, as a result of their policies; are such acts any less evil? In Pakistan, Afghanistan, Kashmir, Iraq, Egypt and many other places, Muslims are murdered by the kuffar in connivance with Muslim rulers.

Muslims are murdered by the kuffar, and that’s what counts. The world is divided into good people and bad people, and we apportion our moral thinking accordingly. ‘We must be clear about the nature of evil’: we must be convinced that ‘kuffars’ are evil and we are good; we must not care about all people or all sentient beings, we must care only about Muslims and call everyone else ‘the kuffar.’ Muslims for ‘Peace’ indeed.

There’s a lot more dreck about Habib’s course on the page; they’ve made quite a vendetta about it. The discussion at Muslim Village is interesting (in a nasty bullying way), and so is Bronwyn Winter’s article.

I hope you’re not bored with Priya Venkatesan yet, because I’m not. She’s the mother lode, so to speak.

Tyler Brace asked her if it was true that she called the students fascist demagogues, and she said no never, not true.

I went into class after that whole clapping incident, and I said. ‘What you did was horrific. What you did was really bad.’ Not bad, I didn’t accuse them of being bad, I said what you did was unacceptable. They started arguing with me. I said fine. You think you know everything. You think you know everything without the knowledge base to boot, without the training, you think you have a command of all the knowledge in the world at this stage in your life, then I’m sorry, that is fascism and that is demagoguery. When I made the two words fascism and demagoguery I looked at the picture on the wall. I made sure that I did not look at the students, and that I did not make any personal attacks on them.

Isn’t that cool? She didn’t call them fascist demagogues, all she did is say when you do what I’m saying you did, that is fascism and that is demagoguery – and she was very careful to look at the wall when she said it, so they would know it was nothing personal. There’s semiotics for you! Or something.

The fact of the matter is that by being so arrogant about their command of knowledge about arguing with me about every point that I was making and that’s really arrogant. That’s very arrogant because frankly, and I’m not trying to be an academic elitist, but frankly, they don’t even have a B.A. They’re freshmen. They’re freshmen.

Yeah. And they just don’t have the rich knowledge that she has, which shines through in everything she says and writes. You have only to read the full interview (endless as it is) to see that. She’s erudition itself. She knows a really really lot and they don’t.

[T]he fact of the matter is that I have the PhD in literature, I make the assessment if someone has talent for philosophy, literary theory, and literary criticism. A student might say, well, the hell with you I’m still going to become a literary critic, I had to do that, there were people who criticized me while I was a student, you’re not a good writer or whatever, but I said well I’m still going to go ahead with my goals, but I never made any personal attacks on them…

Ya…but you should have listened to them though. They were right. You’re not a good writer. And I wouldn’t trust your opinion on who has a talent for philosophy, either. Literary ‘theory’ you can decide if you want to, but philosophy? I don’t think so.

I made the argument that in many cases science and technology did not benefit women, and if women were benefiting science and technology, it was an aftereffect. It was not the goal of science and technology. It was a very feminist claim, and you may not agree with it. But that was Merchant’s argument…But there was one student who really took issue with this…science and technology, women really did benefit from it, and to criticize patriarchal authority on the basis that science and technology benefited patriarchy or men, was not sufficient grounds for this type of feminist claim. And he did this with great rhetorical flourish; it was very invective, it was a very invective sort of tone.

Aw, that’s a shame. I suppose he was another one who has no talent for philosophy.

Okay I take it back, it’s not funny, it’s disgusting. Read the interview – in Dartmouth Review, a notoriously right-wing paper, and by god she’s giving them ammunition.

Read her dropping names and explaining that students are not familiar with these earth-shaking names and so that’s why they get everything wrong and don’t understand how right she is.

it’s kind of interesting that when you are trained in graduate school, it’s sort of like, you know, you’re trained in this kind of—I don’t want to say it’s political—you must be aware that most college campuses are very liberal…and the training which you receive, it’s very much slanted toward a particular political point of view…In other words, talk about, you know, in French theory—we talk about Lacanian psychoanalysis. Lacan was a very radical psychoanalyst, but he’s considered almost like a god, Jean-François Lyotard… Bruno Latour—highly regarded in the field of science and technology studies. But these students aren’t aware of the framework in which I was training. They’re not; they’re just coming into college. So right there, there’s a discrepancy between what I know and how I was trained and their worldview.

In short, they haven’t been trained to worship her gods, so there’s a discrepancy. They haven’t joined the church of Lacan and Lyotard and Latour, so they don’t know what she knows, poor things.

They were concepts that were part of the field, and I was trying to bring it to the table. It offended their sensibilities, because the whole course of “Science, Technology, and Society” was about problematizing science and technology, and explaining the argument that science is not just a quest for truth, which is how we think about science normally, but being influenced by social and political values…This type of argumentation—the reason I did that in the context of expository writing, I thought “by reading arguments, they will learn how to form arguments, think better, and write better.” That was my goal, because when you think better, you write better.

True. So go back and learn to think better. Learn to think instead of dropping names. Then you’ll write better and also talk better. Right now you’re in a bad way.

Is it another Sokal hoax? It is a massive con, right? It can’t be for real? Priya Venkatesan is too good to be true, isn’t she?

Dear former class members of Science, Technology and Society:

I tried to send an email through my server but got undelivered messages. I regret to inform you that I am pursuing a lawsuit in which I am accusing some of you (whom shall go unmentioned in this email) of violating Title VII of anti-federal discrimination laws. The feeling that I am getting from the outside world is that Dartmouth is considered a bigoted place, so this may not be news and I may be successful in this lawsuit. I am also writing a book detailing my eperiences as your instructor, which will “name names” so to speak. I have all of your evaluation and these will be reproduced in the book. Have a nice day.

Read the whole article; it’s full of rich stuff like that.

University Diaries comments.

I’m fascinated by the fact that a remedial writing class – which is essentially a class in 8th grade English – was called ‘Science, Technology and Society.’ Why not ‘Real Estate for Beginners’ or ‘Molecular Biology’ or ‘Torts’ – why Science, Technology and Society? Because it’s all part of the Grand Plot of pomo whack jobs to infiltrate Our Institutions Of Higher Learning? Because people who teach remedial writing are allowed to call it anything they like? Or what? I’d love to know – and meanwhile it makes me laugh like a drain. (Sad for the students though, since she can’t write herself. ‘whom shall go unmentioned’ indeed – Hey Teach, I gotta go to the jon and smoke a dooby!)

How romantic. It makes me go all sentimental. Is it the same for you?

She screamed, kicked and scratched at the man, but he brought three male friends, a driver and two backup abductors to ensure she couldn’t escape. More young men in a second vehicle trailed, on the lookout for witnesses who might try to halt the brazen afternoon capture. But Ms. Edieva knew that no Chechen would rescue her that September day nearly three years ago. Well versed in Chechnya’s bride-abducting traditions, she understood she was caught up in a centuries-old ritual in which her captor, a suitor she had frequently rebuffed, was going to force her to marry him. “I told him I hated him,” she said, but he smiled. “It doesn’t matter if you love me or hate me,” he told her calmly. “I want you, and you are going to be my wife.”

Ahhhh – isn’t that sweet? That’s real love, that is. He doesn’t care if she loves him or hates him. He doesn’t care if she’s happy to marry him or miserable. He doesn’t care if she’s happy or miserable period. He doesn’t give a good god damn what she feels, he just wants her, as one might want a chair, or a hamburger, or an inflatable doll. Have you ever heard anything so touching?

Young women are snatched from bus stops, on their way home from school and sometimes out of their own yards. A shocking video with clips of men dragging screaming young women, their books, purses and cellphones sent flying, is a popular YouTube posting. Authorities in the two restive republics routinely turn a blind eye to the violent practice, preferring to depict it as a romantic tradition…Some claim the practice has a fairytale quality and many young women dream of being abducted by a handsome man. “It’s a sign that [a man] really loves her,” said Mariyat Muskeeva, a cultural liaison officer with the Chechen local government. “If a woman can tell her children that their father kidnapped her, it’s a great love story.”

So true. In much the same way, OJ Simpson said that if he had killed his wife, it would have shown how much he loved her. That is just so, so sweet. The more violent a man is toward a woman, the more he ignores what she wants and imposes his will on her instead, the more like a thing he treats her, the more unmistakable he makes his love. Like that guy in Austria for instance – now that’s what I call romantic.

Most women interviewed across Chechnya and Ingushetia disagreed, saying they felt no affection from the men who stalked them and shoved them into waiting cars…Women’s roles in these tradition-bound societies are largely submissive and they perform the lion’s share of household tasks. They are expected to act demurely in the presence of men and to eat at separate tables…Despite the official line that bride abduction is largely stage-managed by the young lovers themselves, scores of young Chechen and Ingush women told similar stories of abductions followed by hours of agonizing negotiations, often with complicit relatives.

Okay maybe not so romantic after all.

Funny how ‘religion’ often seems to manifest largely as an unappeasable loathing of women. How the very first item on the agenda seems to be punishing women for being women, and terrorizing women for the crime of existing, and telling women what to do and killing them if they don’t do it.

The 19-year-old Iraqi was, according to her father, murdered by her own in-laws, who took her to a picnic area in Dokan and shot her seven times. Her crime was to have an unknown number on her mobile phone. Her “honour killing” is just one in a grotesque series emerging from Iraq, where activists speak of a “genocide” against women in the name of religion…

She has an unknown number on her phone, so let’s kill her. Her life is worth nothing, our rage is worth an infinite amount.

Beheadings, rapes, beatings, suicides through self-immolation, genital mutilation, trafficking and child abuse masquerading as marriage of girls as young as nine are all on the increase…[R]ecent calls by the Kurdish MP Narmin Osman to outlaw honour killings have been blocked by fundamentalists. “Honour killings are not actually a crime in the eyes of the government,” said Houzan Mahmoud, who has had a fatwa on her head since raising a petition against the introduction of sharia law in Kurdistan. “If before there was one dictator persecuting people, now almost everyone is persecuting women…It is difficult to described how terrible it is, how badly we have been pushed back to the dark ages. Women are being beheaded for taking their veil off. Self immolation is rising – women are left with no choice. There is no government body or institution to provide any sort of support. Sharia law is being used to underpin government rule, denying women their most basic human rights.”

I wonder if Seumas Milne considers that kind of thing ‘non-violent.’

The new Iraqi constitution, according to Mahmoud, is a mass of confusing contradictions. While it states that men and women are equal under law it also decrees that sharia law – which considers one male witness worth two females – must be observed. The days when women could hold down key jobs or enjoy any freedom of movement are long gone. The fundamentalists have sent out too many chilling messages. In Mosul two years ago, eight women were beheaded in a terror campaign…”We urge the international community, the government to condemn this barbaric practice, and help the women of Iraq.”

It’s not just according to Houzan Mahmoud that it’s contradictory to say women and men are equal under law and that sharia must be observed. Women and men are not equal under sharia, so of course it’s contradictory.