HOMAS article on ‘Sharia Law and globalization of political Islam’ was very clear.The apologists of all political shades,especially on the ‘Left’need to grasp this truth more quickly.The political ambitions of the neo-fascist Islamic state and its cohorts,must seen for what they really are and must be actively opposed by all freedom loving people for the sake of world peace.
Meera Nanda is a typical Indian “secularist”. When anyone, I repeat anyone anywhere writes anything anywhere that points out the intolerance & hatred in the Koran towards non-Muslims esp. idol worshippers such as Hindus, the Indian “secularists” are out in full force. Bear in mind, these are the same “secularists” that oppose a secular Indian Uniform Civil Code (UCC) which would have a one common code of law for all 1 billion Indians. True secularism will only flourish when “secularists” like Meera Nanda stop being apologists for ALL other fundamentalisms. Else, all they do is promote one kind of fascism over another all in the name of “secluarism”.
After reading Hindutva, California Textbooks and a Smear Campaign by Steve Farmer, I went back to see if B&W’s purpose had changed. I am happy to see the #1 purpose remains:
“to oppose …Pseudoscience that is ideologically and politically motivated.”
Therefore I wonder if B&W has lost its bearings.
Steve Farmer’s disdain for scientists and engineers is legendary; especially ones that prove him wrong by putting his weird theories to scientific test. Is Steve claiming that Stan Metzenberg a geneticist at Cal State at Northridge is unaware of what “every other researcher in population genetics” is? Further – is Metzenberg the geneticist less qualified to speak on DNA than Munger the physicist? Surely that is what he tries to imply in the article seconding Munger’s endorsement. Does Metzenberg’s name have to be parenthetically followed with “conservative” and Munger’s not because one agrees with Farmer and the other does not? This raises the second part of B&W’s #1 purpose – ideologically and politically motivated. That is what Steve Famer is – an ideologically and politically motivated pseudo-scientist.
In the past few weeks, a few cartoons published in a Danish Newspaper have aroused a storm of outrage amongst Muslim extremists. They have learned very well how to exploit political correctness, a mailed fist wrapped in velvet which seeks to limit public discourse only to those subjects and expressions which will not offend someone or other. The politically ‘sensitive’ make much of the decision of the Danish newspaper, and other European newspapers, to print these cartoons. But no mention is made of the choice by those offended to take offense–as if such offense were beyond choice, but a simple given. The debate is thereby not just conceded, but completely forbidden. It seems that Muslims are to be treated like children, whose delicate ears are too tender to be subjected to the conversation of adults. Behind the apparently sensitive, motherly aspect of the politically correct lurks a much older, more sinister figure: the European colonial who, taking up the White Man’s Burden, spares his less gifted brown charges from the rigour of civilized thought. The insult to Islam is not the cartoons, but the carefully orchestrated outrage of a few religious demagogues, who encourage this caricature of Muslims as infantile invalids too feeble to withstand the rough and tumble exchange of ideas so common in the West.
Totally agreed! Faith and reason are almost (if not) at odds with each other. That does not make it any less real. Faith, in its simplest terms, is a profound hope; belief in something which cannot be proven. Faith is that which you know, but cannot substantiate. Otherwise, it would be fact. :)
I would be interested to hear what Mr Schirmer “knows” which cannot be substantiated and which is not a “fact”. If he tells us would I then ‘know’ it in the same way?
I have no idea who Mina Ahadi is and when I goggled (h)er name, the bio would not come up. From some links, I gathered (s)he might even be a “communist”.
Whatever (s)he may be, (s)he is right. Those of us who take some pride in being a member of the species despite all our little problems should be shamed by what (s)he calls “political Islam”.
But for the cultural accident of the Enlightment, this could be the fate of a significantly diminished population of the planet most of whom would be living in misery.
It is time we recognized that we are dealing with species issues, not simply an issue of religious superstition. I for one would like to see our species live long and prosper rather than die with a whimper, even as I recognize that this is an heroic a priori assumption.
So Mina, whomever you are or whatever label you may have found, “you go girl”!
In re the article about how ‘many of us are alive today because of the modern ‘miracles’ wrought by science’ by Dr. Thomas R. DeGregori, a Professor of Economics at the University of Houston…
This is all well and good but why is so much that is done being done in secrecy!? Let the consumer know what is in their products and let them ‘vote w/their wallets’ as to whether they want to have any item that is designed to ‘help’ them. That is the fair and moral way to approach the subject. If any individual consumer finds that they have made a ‘mistake’ in their choice[s] then they have only themselves to blame – not government or some other ‘nanny’. [Unless, of course, they were lied to by the producer.]
The trouble now is that a change in the Holocaust laws now will look like a concession to the fanatics. The EU could have saved itself a lot of trouble by having shown a deeper commitment to free speech much earlier. Let’s hope they don’t become consistent by moving in the wrong direction.
In his exhuberence to discredit those of religious faith, honest faith as he rightly refers to it, one is reminded to examine one’s own epistemological closet, lest they find the bones of any dead, European, white males staring back at them.
The tradition of Western philosophy seems in this way to suffer from a kind of myopia. It is marked by a belief that precedes reason: namely that Truth is knowable by the human mind and also that it is morally Right that we should pursue it.
“How do things stand in this case?—these people who say no today, these outsiders, these people who are determined on one point, their demand for intellectual probity, these hard, strong, abstemious, heroic spirits, who constitute the honour of our age, all these pale atheists, anti-Christians, immoralists, nihilists, these sceptics, ephectics, spiritually hectic (collectively they are all hectic in some sense or other), the last idealists of knowledge, the only ones in whom intellectual conscience lives and takes on human form nowadays—they really do believe that they are as free as possible from the ascetic ideal, these “free, very free spirits.” And yet I am revealing to them what they cannot see for themselves, for they are standing too close to themselves. This ascetic ideal is also their very own ideal. They themselves represent it today. Perhaps they are the only ones who do. They themselves are its most spiritual offspring, the furthest advanced of its troops and its crowd of scouts fighting at the very front, its most awkward, most delicate, most incomprehensibly seductive form. If I am any kind of solver of puzzles, then I want to be that with this statement! . . . They are not free spirits—not by any stretch—for they still believe in the truth. . .”
-Nietzsche, Friedrich. Genealogy of Morals. 3rd essay, aphorism 25.
bwkaplan misses something obvious: No one believes the truth of every religion. Every devotee of one particular religion rejects the tenets of most religions. Therefore every believer has the problem of justifying this rejection. What test allows one to decide on one religion rather than another?
Worse, if Truth is not knowable to the human mind then one can believe in no religion, as they all claim to know the Truth.
Medical research is, unfortunately, at present, an inescapable necessity – I suggest people llok at January’s Scientific American, or access their web-site, for a discussion on this – and how the dreadful scientists are trying to reduce the numbers of animals used.
As for the terrorism practised by the ALF etc, they should, if convicted, be allowed free- with one small condition:
They can not obtain ANY prescription drugs, nor will any hospital or doctor be permitted to treat them – they’ll just have to do without.
Secondly, the press reports that a survey showing 40% of British muslims want Sharia to apply at least partially in th UK, coupled with the Iranian mullahs’ announcement that nukes are OK As long as they are used against the ungodly (ie us) should help convince people, that unless we are very lucky, we have got a very unpleasant war on the way ….
You have a laughable argument, based on a weak strawman. You claim “honest believers” admit faith is believing something “without regard to the absence of evidence/reasons to believe.” There are hardly any believers, honest or not, that would admit this, so your entire essay is built around a misrepresentation of those with religious faith! Here is a better definition of faith. “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” This definition comes from the book of Hebrews in the Bible, (Which billions of ‘honest believers’ believe to be the word of God) and specifies that faith is not believing something without evidence, it is knowing something is true even if you haven’t seen it with your eyes! You can have lots of evidence for your faith, having faith generally means that you believe/know something will happen even if it hasn’t happend yet (for Christians this could mean having faith in the second coming of Christ).
I was not at all addressing the hubris of religion, or any one religion. Whether its trappings are true or not is orthogonal to my point. What they all share is a desire to seek truth; this is an undercurrent to all religions, no matter what their particular totems or formalities entail.
This is exactly what Nietzsche was casting light on when he “revealed to them (atheists) what they could not see themselves.” That truth does not a value system create. It requires more than that, shall I dare say it, a pureness of spirit to seek the truth. And that should be something obvious to see. ;)
I haven’t read Dennett’s book yet so I’m basing these comments on a number of reviews and descriptions of his line of argument–not just the NYTimes review cited here which, admittedly, wasn’t so hot. From what I’ve read I gather that Dennett makes two objectionable claims: (1) that producing a naturalistic causal story about the origins and pervasiveness of religious belief shows that it’s unwarranted and (2) that there is a taboo on the scientific study of religious belief. I hope this is fair.
(1) It is true that you cannot show a belief to be false by explaining its origin, but it is clear you can show that holding the belief is not warranted by explaining its origin…If you believe buying stock in High Tech Miracle, Inc. is a good investment based on recommendation of your broker, and then you discover that your broker recommended it because he is an investor in the company and a beneficiary of its rising stock fortunes, you no longer have a reason to believe it’s a good investment–though it might turn out to be one, of course, but you no longer are warranted in believing that. [emphasis added]
You can show it’s not warranted for a given individual, x, if x has based his belief on a bad causal story–in the case of religious belief if, e.g. x bases his belief in God on the pervasiveness of religious belief across cultures and assumes, wrongly, that there’s no naturalistic explanation for that–and x has no other grounds for holding that belief (as, e.g. the Ontological Argument or whatever). My stock broker may be a crook with a vested interest in selling me High Tech Miracle, Inc. but if I’ve done independent research and based on that research believe that it’s a good deal my belief may be warranted anyway.
(2) What I find really way out is the claim that there’s a taboo on the scientific study of religion. By whom? Where is this taboo enforced? Biblical scholars spend lots of their time investigating archeological material to get at the origins of Biblical texts including the Dead Sea Scrolls, various apocryphal gospels and so on. They treat the Biblical texts they study in exactly the way that any secular textual scholar treats any ancient text. Church historians treat church history in the way that secular historians treat the history of any other institution. They’re quite happy to note the origins of Christianity as a Hellenistic mystery religion. No reputable mainstream Biblical scholar, church historian or theologian treats the Bible or the Church as sui generis or refrains from the kind of scientific investigation that secular historians, textual scholars or archeologists use when dealing with secular subject matter.
This kind of investigation and discussion isn’t esoteric and there’s certainly no conspiracy on the part of the clerics to avoid letting it out to the laity: it’s what every undergraduate who takes a standard religious studies course gets. In fact this is the stuff my kid got in the required religion courses at our local Catholic high school. So where’s the taboo? Where’s the spell that Dennett takes himself to be breaking?
I’m just guessing that the idea that there’s a taboo seems plausible to some of Dennett’s readers because they assume that American-style fundamentalism is paradigmatic Christianity and that most Christians are Fundamentalists who imagine that the Bible dropped down from the sky in the King James version and regard any critical assessment of Biblical texts or church history as blasphemous. But this is like the assumption by lots of the educated general public that philosophy is vague, incoherent, pretentious bs because they consider the paradigmatic philosophers to be Hegel, Sartre and the literati Sokal exposes in Fashionable Nonsense rather than the likes of Russell, Frege or Kripke and who, if they’ve heard of analytic philosophy, assume that it’s a peripheral, esoteric, minority enterprise.
So Islam is “a load of homophobic, backward, intolerant nonsense”? Broadly speaking, as a proud secular fundamentalist, I wouldn’t disagree. However, it is surely at best myopic and at worst somewhat disingenuous to argue that Islam is somehow unique in this. Homophobia may well be more prevalent among Muslims than, say, Christians, but the Qur’an certainly isn’t the only holy book to forbid homosexual sex – what about Leviticus? Also, there is no shortage of Evangelicals and Catholics who are quite convinced that practising homosexuals are sinners – and it’s only sex that the Qur’an forbids, according to the Wikipedia article Standing cites, with no mention whatever of mere homosexual feelings. This puts Islam in what is if anything a more tolerant position than current Catholic thought on the matter, which, besides forbidding homosexual sex, holds that homosexual feelings are to be discouraged. And yet I doubt Standing would argue that “gay Catholic” is an oxymoron. They certainly exist; many of them even become priests.
I started a blog a month ago to deal specifically with the subject of “gay Muslims”, but from an Islamic perspective. I think Edmund Standing’s article is worthy of some discussion, so look out for my feedback in the next day or so:
In response to the comments on philosophy in H. E. Baber’s last post, I wonder how many members of what he calls the educated general public have actually read Hegel? Or how many of those who have read Hegel have not even heard of Russell, Frege, and Kripke?
1.’However, it is surely at best myopic and at worst somewhat disingenuous to argue that Islam is somehow unique in this’.
I didn’t say anywhere in the article that Islam was unique in this.
2.’I doubt Standing would argue that “gay Catholic” is an oxymoron’.
Of course I would!
You may be interested to know that an article of mine outlining many of the horrors of the Bible, including its call to murder homosexuals, will be appearing on B&W soon.
Truth may not create a value system but without a willingness to seek the truth there can only be the worship of evil. As for the claim that religions “all share .. a desire to seek truth” , this claim is at issue here and needs justification.
If you consider what it must be like for a theist to believe for just one second, several patterns emerge. Namely, a corpus of beliefs that have to be taken axiomatically, a canon to be followed and a willingness to apply the formal structure of the canon to everyday virtuous living. The application of this canon and its validation are what its proponents seek; when they find them they believe they have found truth. More earnest believers would readily admit that they have found a way to validate what they already believed in the first place.
At any rate, this ethical validation is a different kind that that found in the formal structures of logic. The meaning is often existential in nature; in Wittgensteinian terms, the knowledge of when to stay silent, if you get my drift.
Regarding your question, based on your previous responses, I was left with the impression you were not a theist? I may have misunderstood you, and if I did, let me apologize in advance. But assuming you are not, why argue about ethical validation in theistic terms? Isn’t that what Nietzsche said,”God is dead.” for? By removing need for an idealistic ethical space, he affirmed man’s belief in himself, thereby subverting the need for all this good vs. evil claptrap.
Sterling, you seem to be arguing that religious beliefs are, or ought to be, both incorrigible and immutable. But of course, they aren’t. Martin Luther, in his 1521 Defense and Explanation of All the Articles, wrote: “But everyone, indeed, knows that at times they have erred, as men will; therefore I am ready to trust them only when they give me evidence for their opinions from Scripture, which has never erred.” Following your reasoning, if the Archbishop of Canterbury doesn’t wholeheartedly concur with Luther’s statement of absolute canonical literalism here, he isn’t even a Protestant, let alone an Anglican. Even if you’re right that Christians and Muslims are only *really* Christians and Muslims if they take their respective religious doctrines literally and unquestioningly and wholly, you seem strangely uninterested in the social utility of actually existing Christians and Muslims who–correctly or incorrectly–think otherwise. Your position, put starkly, seems to be: “Either be an intolerant literalist believer, or don’t be one at all.” As an atheist myself, I much prefer living alongside comparatively tolerant and “relativist” theists to living alongside their wild-eyed, fundamentalist country cousins. I’ll hazard you do as well. So what possible harm could there be in some earnest gay Muslim or gay Christian nudging their stubborn co-religionists away from the sloppy trough of scriptural literalism? Such nudging, after all, is the crucible in which intolerant literalists are slowly transformed into tolerant relativists. A secularist refusing to support such benign theistic efforts (on, of all things, logical grounds) strikes me as socially self-defeating. Aren’t you laboring here to make the perfect the enemy of the good?
This is one of the most unclear debates I have ever taken part in.
You claim “The application of this canon and its validation are what its proponents seek; when they find them they believe they have found truth” and later mention “this ethical validation “. I am confused. The first part seems simply to describe the well known psychological failing of only seeking confirmatory evidence for some truth claim. Ethics have nothing to do with it. Indeed I cannot see what sort of validation can be found in ethics or ethical behaviour. Let’s not confuse epistemology with morality.
And to be clear, the idea that religions “all share .. a desire to seek truth” is factually incorrect. Any I am familiar with all claim to have found the truth already. One in particular is right now claiming the right to kill those who mock its claims.
You do not find validation in ethical behavior? You do not see that what a person ought to do, from their own view, would depend on what they know? This seems a curious position; I’d like for you to elaborate on it.
The original point, that you apparently have not addressed, is the desire to seek truth has more in common with theistic belief than most atheists or agnostics will readily admit. That there lies a psychological undercurrent, a “Yes!” to life, that cannot be found in religious canon anymore than in science or mathematics. Both require spiritual underpinnings, hence the phrase,”they are not free spirits…for they still believe in the truth.”
To be fair, I should have phrased the previous response as *proponents* of religion or given religion. I was not describing the motives of a religion *itself*, as that makes no sense. It was a grammar oversight, sorry.
‘what possible harm could there be in some earnest gay Muslim or gay Christian nudging their stubborn co-religionists away from the sloppy trough of scriptural literalism?’
Firstly, in the case of Islam, I can’t see that working. Secondly, religious moderates are a problem because, in holding on to aspects of essentially intolerant and irrational belief systems, while sugar coating them by cutting out the bits they don’t like, they still validate some of the metaphysical claims used to back them up. In doing so, they disable their ability to properly criticise their fundamentalist cousins, because they still accept that their religion contains ‘revealed’ truth. Only by rejecting wholesale the notion of ‘revelation’ can one logically justify rejecting the ‘nasty’ ideas found in religion. All the ‘good’ bits of religion (peace, love, charity etc.) are found in Humanism, so there is no need to stay in belief systems which contain so many vile teachings alongside the ‘good’ ones, playing games in which you cut out the bits that don’t fit with one’s ‘identity’, sexuality, ethical position, and so on. I think religious liberals are more worthy of scorn than fundamentalists because their position is so logically weak.
I’m not sure what’s going on in here at the mo. But – hey! – since when did that ever stop me…..
Is BWKaplan arguing that there is no possible case for objective truth? That, instead, all ‘truths’ are relative/subjective?
When Nietzsche said ‘God is dead’ did he mean the ‘creationist-myth’ God of Christian-Judaeo theism? Or did he mean the concept of anything/something beyond human perception was invalid/chimera?
Roger Penrose’s tour de force, The Road to Reality could not be construed as an apologia for any ‘creationist myth.’ It is nevertheless a resounding smack to all po-mo obfuscators: that there is indeed an objective reality, and the best route to discovering its laws (I’ll avoid the ‘truth’ word) is through scientific method.
That method is, nothwithstanding its rivlaries/feuds/human failings rooted in the ethic principle that Truth is not chimera, but Ideal, and that all are bound to pursue it…
Repressed memory? Isn’t that what Plato’s theory of ideas is about? We already know everything (e.g. the class of horse), but forgot it when we are born, and then spend our lives remembering (i.e. learning) stuff from observing the world (e.g. all those instances of horses).
“You do not find validation in ethical behavior? You do not see that what a person ought to do, from their own view, would depend on what they know? ” is a most curious misuse of the word “validation”.
“The original point, that you apparently have not addressed, is the desire to seek truth has more in common with theistic belief than most atheists or agnostics will readily admit.” is a total failure as an attempted refutation of the original argument because it is irrelavant
Religious ‘liberals’ (what are they exactly?) to be ‘scorned’?
I’d say the issue of ‘revelation’ is largely extraneous to the needs of your average church-goer/religous observant world-wide, excepting literal-minded Evangelicals.
I view all rituals (especially those of Christianity, the one I’m most familiar with) as forms of ‘shinto’ or ancestor worship. These rituals give people a sense of community/belonging and continuity with the past. I don’t see why anyone should be criticised for participating in them, just because |I do not.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but you seem to blame Christianity for homophobia. I’d say homophobia goes deeper, sadly, and Christian/Islamist/whatever teachings simply reflect that predjudice/phobia.
I mean validation as a psychological reinforcement. In the absense of a knowable, objective, ideal, ethical space, ethics in Nietzschean terms becomes an ever changing logos. Ethics becomes a science in that an objective truth is unknown and unknowable, a set of axioms have to be assumed and any working hypothesis can be thrown out or reinforced by evidence. Ethics then suffers the same epistemic straightjacket any science would; namely, the lack of an objectivity.
The defense of pure rationalism in ethics requires the denial of an irrational exhuberence to discredit falsehoods that are spread under the rubric of ‘blind faith’. So, was Nietzsche mad when he claimed “God is dead.”? In Zarathustra, those words were spoken by a madman, but this too is an instance of his profound irony. The will to discredit lies can not, in his view, be reduced to truth statements alone. I often chuckle to myself at staunch atheists, firm in their belief that faith is antithetical to truth. These pale-faced atheists owe a debt to their wayward parents, those Promethean believers in religion.
Thank you Mr. Weeks for your article on “The Passion”. I found it both informative and quite witty.
HOMAS article on ‘Sharia Law and globalization of political Islam’ was very clear.The apologists of all political shades,especially on the ‘Left’need to grasp this truth more quickly.The political ambitions of the neo-fascist Islamic state and its cohorts,must seen for what they really are and must be actively opposed by all freedom loving people for the sake of world peace.
Meera Nanda is a typical Indian “secularist”. When anyone, I repeat anyone anywhere writes anything anywhere that points out the intolerance & hatred in the Koran towards non-Muslims esp. idol worshippers such as Hindus, the Indian “secularists” are out in full force. Bear in mind, these are the same “secularists” that oppose a secular Indian Uniform Civil Code (UCC) which would have a one common code of law for all 1 billion Indians. True secularism will only flourish when “secularists” like Meera Nanda stop being apologists for ALL other fundamentalisms. Else, all they do is promote one kind of fascism over another all in the name of “secluarism”.
After reading Hindutva, California Textbooks and a Smear Campaign by Steve Farmer, I went back to see if B&W’s purpose had changed. I am happy to see the #1 purpose remains:
“to oppose …Pseudoscience that is ideologically and politically motivated.”
Therefore I wonder if B&W has lost its bearings.
Steve Farmer’s disdain for scientists and engineers is legendary; especially ones that prove him wrong by putting his weird theories to scientific test. Is Steve claiming that Stan Metzenberg a geneticist at Cal State at Northridge is unaware of what “every other researcher in population genetics” is? Further – is Metzenberg the geneticist less qualified to speak on DNA than Munger the physicist? Surely that is what he tries to imply in the article seconding Munger’s endorsement. Does Metzenberg’s name have to be parenthetically followed with “conservative” and Munger’s not because one agrees with Farmer and the other does not? This raises the second part of B&W’s #1 purpose – ideologically and politically motivated. That is what Steve Famer is – an ideologically and politically motivated pseudo-scientist.
Again I wonder if B&W has lost its bearing.
Azam Kamguian in Why Islamic Law should be opposed?http://www.butterfliesandwheels.com/articleprint.php?num=71
made excellent sense when he wrote it in 2002, and it makes even more sense in light Islamic hysteria about the Danish satirical cartoons.
In the past few weeks, a few cartoons published in a Danish Newspaper have aroused a storm of outrage amongst Muslim extremists. They have learned very well how to exploit political correctness, a mailed fist wrapped in velvet which seeks to limit public discourse only to those subjects and expressions which will not offend someone or other. The politically ‘sensitive’ make much of the decision of the Danish newspaper, and other European newspapers, to print these cartoons. But no mention is made of the choice by those offended to take offense–as if such offense were beyond choice, but a simple given. The debate is thereby not just conceded, but completely forbidden. It seems that Muslims are to be treated like children, whose delicate ears are too tender to be subjected to the conversation of adults. Behind the apparently sensitive, motherly aspect of the politically correct lurks a much older, more sinister figure: the European colonial who, taking up the White Man’s Burden, spares his less gifted brown charges from the rigour of civilized thought. The insult to Islam is not the cartoons, but the carefully orchestrated outrage of a few religious demagogues, who encourage this caricature of Muslims as infantile invalids too feeble to withstand the rough and tumble exchange of ideas so common in the West.
Totally agreed! Faith and reason are almost (if not) at odds with each other. That does not make it any less real. Faith, in its simplest terms, is a profound hope; belief in something which cannot be proven. Faith is that which you know, but cannot substantiate. Otherwise, it would be fact. :)
I would be interested to hear what Mr Schirmer “knows” which cannot be substantiated and which is not a “fact”. If he tells us would I then ‘know’ it in the same way?
I have no idea who Mina Ahadi is and when I goggled (h)er name, the bio would not come up. From some links, I gathered (s)he might even be a “communist”.
Whatever (s)he may be, (s)he is right. Those of us who take some pride in being a member of the species despite all our little problems should be shamed by what (s)he calls “political Islam”.
But for the cultural accident of the Enlightment, this could be the fate of a significantly diminished population of the planet most of whom would be living in misery.
It is time we recognized that we are dealing with species issues, not simply an issue of religious superstition. I for one would like to see our species live long and prosper rather than die with a whimper, even as I recognize that this is an heroic a priori assumption.
So Mina, whomever you are or whatever label you may have found, “you go girl”!
Sam Taylor
In re the article about how ‘many of us are alive today because of the modern ‘miracles’ wrought by science’ by Dr. Thomas R. DeGregori, a Professor of Economics at the University of Houston…
This is all well and good but why is so much that is done being done in secrecy!? Let the consumer know what is in their products and let them ‘vote w/their wallets’ as to whether they want to have any item that is designed to ‘help’ them. That is the fair and moral way to approach the subject. If any individual consumer finds that they have made a ‘mistake’ in their choice[s] then they have only themselves to blame – not government or some other ‘nanny’. [Unless, of course, they were lied to by the producer.]
dann
“Let’s defend unconditional freedom of speech.”
This is what Mina Ahadi says in “Freedom of Speech is not for Sale”.
It’s always what Dworkin asks for when he says European laws against Holocaust denial be repealed.
Let’s hear from the staff at B&W.
Is it to be free speech for everyone, or not? And please, no pretending that the issue is “complex”. Free speech is free speech.
I see you posted an essay by Dworkin!
The trouble now is that a change in the Holocaust laws now will look like a concession to the fanatics. The EU could have saved itself a lot of trouble by having shown a deeper commitment to free speech much earlier. Let’s hope they don’t become consistent by moving in the wrong direction.
Responding to George Felis,
In his exhuberence to discredit those of religious faith, honest faith as he rightly refers to it, one is reminded to examine one’s own epistemological closet, lest they find the bones of any dead, European, white males staring back at them.
The tradition of Western philosophy seems in this way to suffer from a kind of myopia. It is marked by a belief that precedes reason: namely that Truth is knowable by the human mind and also that it is morally Right that we should pursue it.
“How do things stand in this case?—these people who say no today, these outsiders, these people who are determined on one point, their demand for intellectual probity, these hard, strong, abstemious, heroic spirits, who constitute the honour of our age, all these pale atheists, anti-Christians, immoralists, nihilists, these sceptics, ephectics, spiritually hectic (collectively they are all hectic in some sense or other), the last idealists of knowledge, the only ones in whom intellectual conscience lives and takes on human form nowadays—they really do believe that they are as free as possible from the ascetic ideal, these “free, very free spirits.” And yet I am revealing to them what they cannot see for themselves, for they are standing too close to themselves. This ascetic ideal is also their very own ideal. They themselves represent it today. Perhaps they are the only ones who do. They themselves are its most spiritual offspring, the furthest advanced of its troops and its crowd of scouts fighting at the very front, its most awkward, most delicate, most incomprehensibly seductive form. If I am any kind of solver of puzzles, then I want to be that with this statement! . . . They are not free spirits—not by any stretch—for they still believe in the truth. . .”
-Nietzsche, Friedrich. Genealogy of Morals. 3rd essay, aphorism 25.
bwkaplan misses something obvious: No one believes the truth of every religion. Every devotee of one particular religion rejects the tenets of most religions. Therefore every believer has the problem of justifying this rejection. What test allows one to decide on one religion rather than another?
Worse, if Truth is not knowable to the human mind then one can believe in no religion, as they all claim to know the Truth.
Two subjects …
1: Animal Rights?
Medical research is, unfortunately, at present, an inescapable necessity – I suggest people llok at January’s Scientific American, or access their web-site, for a discussion on this – and how the dreadful scientists are trying to reduce the numbers of animals used.
As for the terrorism practised by the ALF etc, they should, if convicted, be allowed free- with one small condition:
They can not obtain ANY prescription drugs, nor will any hospital or doctor be permitted to treat them – they’ll just have to do without.
Secondly, the press reports that a survey showing 40% of British muslims want Sharia to apply at least partially in th UK, coupled with the Iranian mullahs’ announcement that nukes are OK As long as they are used against the ungodly (ie us) should help convince people, that unless we are very lucky, we have got a very unpleasant war on the way ….
You have a laughable argument, based on a weak strawman. You claim “honest believers” admit faith is believing something “without regard to the absence of evidence/reasons to believe.” There are hardly any believers, honest or not, that would admit this, so your entire essay is built around a misrepresentation of those with religious faith! Here is a better definition of faith. “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” This definition comes from the book of Hebrews in the Bible, (Which billions of ‘honest believers’ believe to be the word of God) and specifies that faith is not believing something without evidence, it is knowing something is true even if you haven’t seen it with your eyes! You can have lots of evidence for your faith, having faith generally means that you believe/know something will happen even if it hasn’t happend yet (for Christians this could mean having faith in the second coming of Christ).
Responding to Paul Power,
I was not at all addressing the hubris of religion, or any one religion. Whether its trappings are true or not is orthogonal to my point. What they all share is a desire to seek truth; this is an undercurrent to all religions, no matter what their particular totems or formalities entail.
This is exactly what Nietzsche was casting light on when he “revealed to them (atheists) what they could not see themselves.” That truth does not a value system create. It requires more than that, shall I dare say it, a pureness of spirit to seek the truth. And that should be something obvious to see. ;)
I haven’t read Dennett’s book yet so I’m basing these comments on a number of reviews and descriptions of his line of argument–not just the NYTimes review cited here which, admittedly, wasn’t so hot. From what I’ve read I gather that Dennett makes two objectionable claims: (1) that producing a naturalistic causal story about the origins and pervasiveness of religious belief shows that it’s unwarranted and (2) that there is a taboo on the scientific study of religious belief. I hope this is fair.
(1) It is true that you cannot show a belief to be false by explaining its origin, but it is clear you can show that holding the belief is not warranted by explaining its origin…If you believe buying stock in High Tech Miracle, Inc. is a good investment based on recommendation of your broker, and then you discover that your broker recommended it because he is an investor in the company and a beneficiary of its rising stock fortunes, you no longer have a reason to believe it’s a good investment–though it might turn out to be one, of course, but you no longer are warranted in believing that. [emphasis added]
You can show it’s not warranted for a given individual, x, if x has based his belief on a bad causal story–in the case of religious belief if, e.g. x bases his belief in God on the pervasiveness of religious belief across cultures and assumes, wrongly, that there’s no naturalistic explanation for that–and x has no other grounds for holding that belief (as, e.g. the Ontological Argument or whatever). My stock broker may be a crook with a vested interest in selling me High Tech Miracle, Inc. but if I’ve done independent research and based on that research believe that it’s a good deal my belief may be warranted anyway.
(2) What I find really way out is the claim that there’s a taboo on the scientific study of religion. By whom? Where is this taboo enforced? Biblical scholars spend lots of their time investigating archeological material to get at the origins of Biblical texts including the Dead Sea Scrolls, various apocryphal gospels and so on. They treat the Biblical texts they study in exactly the way that any secular textual scholar treats any ancient text. Church historians treat church history in the way that secular historians treat the history of any other institution. They’re quite happy to note the origins of Christianity as a Hellenistic mystery religion. No reputable mainstream Biblical scholar, church historian or theologian treats the Bible or the Church as sui generis or refrains from the kind of scientific investigation that secular historians, textual scholars or archeologists use when dealing with secular subject matter.
This kind of investigation and discussion isn’t esoteric and there’s certainly no conspiracy on the part of the clerics to avoid letting it out to the laity: it’s what every undergraduate who takes a standard religious studies course gets. In fact this is the stuff my kid got in the required religion courses at our local Catholic high school. So where’s the taboo? Where’s the spell that Dennett takes himself to be breaking?
I’m just guessing that the idea that there’s a taboo seems plausible to some of Dennett’s readers because they assume that American-style fundamentalism is paradigmatic Christianity and that most Christians are Fundamentalists who imagine that the Bible dropped down from the sky in the King James version and regard any critical assessment of Biblical texts or church history as blasphemous. But this is like the assumption by lots of the educated general public that philosophy is vague, incoherent, pretentious bs because they consider the paradigmatic philosophers to be Hegel, Sartre and the literati Sokal exposes in Fashionable Nonsense rather than the likes of Russell, Frege or Kripke and who, if they’ve heard of analytic philosophy, assume that it’s a peripheral, esoteric, minority enterprise.
Responding to Edmund Standing:
So Islam is “a load of homophobic, backward, intolerant nonsense”? Broadly speaking, as a proud secular fundamentalist, I wouldn’t disagree. However, it is surely at best myopic and at worst somewhat disingenuous to argue that Islam is somehow unique in this. Homophobia may well be more prevalent among Muslims than, say, Christians, but the Qur’an certainly isn’t the only holy book to forbid homosexual sex – what about Leviticus? Also, there is no shortage of Evangelicals and Catholics who are quite convinced that practising homosexuals are sinners – and it’s only sex that the Qur’an forbids, according to the Wikipedia article Standing cites, with no mention whatever of mere homosexual feelings. This puts Islam in what is if anything a more tolerant position than current Catholic thought on the matter, which, besides forbidding homosexual sex, holds that homosexual feelings are to be discouraged. And yet I doubt Standing would argue that “gay Catholic” is an oxymoron. They certainly exist; many of them even become priests.
I started a blog a month ago to deal specifically with the subject of “gay Muslims”, but from an Islamic perspective. I think Edmund Standing’s article is worthy of some discussion, so look out for my feedback in the next day or so:
http://gaymuslims.wordpress.com/
In response to the comments on philosophy in H. E. Baber’s last post, I wonder how many members of what he calls the educated general public have actually read Hegel? Or how many of those who have read Hegel have not even heard of Russell, Frege, and Kripke?
In response to Owen:
1.’However, it is surely at best myopic and at worst somewhat disingenuous to argue that Islam is somehow unique in this’.
I didn’t say anywhere in the article that Islam was unique in this.
2.’I doubt Standing would argue that “gay Catholic” is an oxymoron’.
Of course I would!
You may be interested to know that an article of mine outlining many of the horrors of the Bible, including its call to murder homosexuals, will be appearing on B&W soon.
In reply to bwkaplan:
Truth may not create a value system but without a willingness to seek the truth there can only be the worship of evil. As for the claim that religions “all share .. a desire to seek truth” , this claim is at issue here and needs justification.
Responding to Paul Bower,
If you consider what it must be like for a theist to believe for just one second, several patterns emerge. Namely, a corpus of beliefs that have to be taken axiomatically, a canon to be followed and a willingness to apply the formal structure of the canon to everyday virtuous living. The application of this canon and its validation are what its proponents seek; when they find them they believe they have found truth. More earnest believers would readily admit that they have found a way to validate what they already believed in the first place.
At any rate, this ethical validation is a different kind that that found in the formal structures of logic. The meaning is often existential in nature; in Wittgensteinian terms, the knowledge of when to stay silent, if you get my drift.
Regarding your question, based on your previous responses, I was left with the impression you were not a theist? I may have misunderstood you, and if I did, let me apologize in advance. But assuming you are not, why argue about ethical validation in theistic terms? Isn’t that what Nietzsche said,”God is dead.” for? By removing need for an idealistic ethical space, he affirmed man’s belief in himself, thereby subverting the need for all this good vs. evil claptrap.
Somebody…just shoot me.
Sterling, you seem to be arguing that religious beliefs are, or ought to be, both incorrigible and immutable. But of course, they aren’t. Martin Luther, in his 1521 Defense and Explanation of All the Articles, wrote: “But everyone, indeed, knows that at times they have erred, as men will; therefore I am ready to trust them only when they give me evidence for their opinions from Scripture, which has never erred.” Following your reasoning, if the Archbishop of Canterbury doesn’t wholeheartedly concur with Luther’s statement of absolute canonical literalism here, he isn’t even a Protestant, let alone an Anglican. Even if you’re right that Christians and Muslims are only *really* Christians and Muslims if they take their respective religious doctrines literally and unquestioningly and wholly, you seem strangely uninterested in the social utility of actually existing Christians and Muslims who–correctly or incorrectly–think otherwise. Your position, put starkly, seems to be: “Either be an intolerant literalist believer, or don’t be one at all.” As an atheist myself, I much prefer living alongside comparatively tolerant and “relativist” theists to living alongside their wild-eyed, fundamentalist country cousins. I’ll hazard you do as well. So what possible harm could there be in some earnest gay Muslim or gay Christian nudging their stubborn co-religionists away from the sloppy trough of scriptural literalism? Such nudging, after all, is the crucible in which intolerant literalists are slowly transformed into tolerant relativists. A secularist refusing to support such benign theistic efforts (on, of all things, logical grounds) strikes me as socially self-defeating. Aren’t you laboring here to make the perfect the enemy of the good?
Sorry, Standing, for calling you Sterling below. I must have silver on the brain or something.
In reply to bwkaplan:
This is one of the most unclear debates I have ever taken part in.
You claim “The application of this canon and its validation are what its proponents seek; when they find them they believe they have found truth” and later mention “this ethical validation “. I am confused. The first part seems simply to describe the well known psychological failing of only seeking confirmatory evidence for some truth claim. Ethics have nothing to do with it. Indeed I cannot see what sort of validation can be found in ethics or ethical behaviour. Let’s not confuse epistemology with morality.
And to be clear, the idea that religions “all share .. a desire to seek truth” is factually incorrect. Any I am familiar with all claim to have found the truth already. One in particular is right now claiming the right to kill those who mock its claims.
Responding to Paul,
You do not find validation in ethical behavior? You do not see that what a person ought to do, from their own view, would depend on what they know? This seems a curious position; I’d like for you to elaborate on it.
The original point, that you apparently have not addressed, is the desire to seek truth has more in common with theistic belief than most atheists or agnostics will readily admit. That there lies a psychological undercurrent, a “Yes!” to life, that cannot be found in religious canon anymore than in science or mathematics. Both require spiritual underpinnings, hence the phrase,”they are not free spirits…for they still believe in the truth.”
To be fair, I should have phrased the previous response as *proponents* of religion or given religion. I was not describing the motives of a religion *itself*, as that makes no sense. It was a grammar oversight, sorry.
dan dragna:
‘what possible harm could there be in some earnest gay Muslim or gay Christian nudging their stubborn co-religionists away from the sloppy trough of scriptural literalism?’
Firstly, in the case of Islam, I can’t see that working. Secondly, religious moderates are a problem because, in holding on to aspects of essentially intolerant and irrational belief systems, while sugar coating them by cutting out the bits they don’t like, they still validate some of the metaphysical claims used to back them up. In doing so, they disable their ability to properly criticise their fundamentalist cousins, because they still accept that their religion contains ‘revealed’ truth. Only by rejecting wholesale the notion of ‘revelation’ can one logically justify rejecting the ‘nasty’ ideas found in religion. All the ‘good’ bits of religion (peace, love, charity etc.) are found in Humanism, so there is no need to stay in belief systems which contain so many vile teachings alongside the ‘good’ ones, playing games in which you cut out the bits that don’t fit with one’s ‘identity’, sexuality, ethical position, and so on. I think religious liberals are more worthy of scorn than fundamentalists because their position is so logically weak.
I’m not sure what’s going on in here at the mo. But – hey! – since when did that ever stop me…..
Is BWKaplan arguing that there is no possible case for objective truth? That, instead, all ‘truths’ are relative/subjective?
When Nietzsche said ‘God is dead’ did he mean the ‘creationist-myth’ God of Christian-Judaeo theism? Or did he mean the concept of anything/something beyond human perception was invalid/chimera?
Roger Penrose’s tour de force, The Road to Reality could not be construed as an apologia for any ‘creationist myth.’ It is nevertheless a resounding smack to all po-mo obfuscators: that there is indeed an objective reality, and the best route to discovering its laws (I’ll avoid the ‘truth’ word) is through scientific method.
That method is, nothwithstanding its rivlaries/feuds/human failings rooted in the ethic principle that Truth is not chimera, but Ideal, and that all are bound to pursue it…
Repressed memory? Isn’t that what Plato’s theory of ideas is about? We already know everything (e.g. the class of horse), but forgot it when we are born, and then spend our lives remembering (i.e. learning) stuff from observing the world (e.g. all those instances of horses).
In reply to bwkaplan:
“You do not find validation in ethical behavior? You do not see that what a person ought to do, from their own view, would depend on what they know? ” is a most curious misuse of the word “validation”.
“The original point, that you apparently have not addressed, is the desire to seek truth has more in common with theistic belief than most atheists or agnostics will readily admit.” is a total failure as an attempted refutation of the original argument because it is irrelavant
I’m not quite sure what Edmund Standing wants.
Religion to be outlawed?
Religious ‘liberals’ (what are they exactly?) to be ‘scorned’?
I’d say the issue of ‘revelation’ is largely extraneous to the needs of your average church-goer/religous observant world-wide, excepting literal-minded Evangelicals.
I view all rituals (especially those of Christianity, the one I’m most familiar with) as forms of ‘shinto’ or ancestor worship. These rituals give people a sense of community/belonging and continuity with the past. I don’t see why anyone should be criticised for participating in them, just because |I do not.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but you seem to blame Christianity for homophobia. I’d say homophobia goes deeper, sadly, and Christian/Islamist/whatever teachings simply reflect that predjudice/phobia.
Responding to Paul,
I mean validation as a psychological reinforcement. In the absense of a knowable, objective, ideal, ethical space, ethics in Nietzschean terms becomes an ever changing logos. Ethics becomes a science in that an objective truth is unknown and unknowable, a set of axioms have to be assumed and any working hypothesis can be thrown out or reinforced by evidence. Ethics then suffers the same epistemic straightjacket any science would; namely, the lack of an objectivity.
The defense of pure rationalism in ethics requires the denial of an irrational exhuberence to discredit falsehoods that are spread under the rubric of ‘blind faith’. So, was Nietzsche mad when he claimed “God is dead.”? In Zarathustra, those words were spoken by a madman, but this too is an instance of his profound irony. The will to discredit lies can not, in his view, be reduced to truth statements alone. I often chuckle to myself at staunch atheists, firm in their belief that faith is antithetical to truth. These pale-faced atheists owe a debt to their wayward parents, those Promethean believers in religion.