So Steve Paulson asks Taner Edis how he would assess the state of scientific knowledge in the Islamic world.

Dismal. Right now, if all Muslim scientists working in basic science vanished from the face of the earth, the rest of the scientific community would barely notice. There’s very little contribution coming from Muslim lands…Especially in military and commercial areas, they have put their emphasis on applied science rather than basic science. So there are lots of medical doctors and engineers in the Muslim world. But the contribution to scientific research is much lower.

Does it matter? Can’t they just import basic science from the rest of the world?

It permanently locks the Muslim world into a subordinate position in those aspects of modern life that depend on creativity in technology and science. And this is a huge swath of modern life…This is not a controversial statement in the Muslim world. Even the most conservative Muslim realizes that the Islamic world is at a severe disadvantage right now in science and technology. The West has done a much better job. And somehow, Muslims are going to have to do better.

This bit is really interesting and suggestive.

It was harder for science to achieve intellectual and institutional independence. This was not restricted just to science. In the Western world, the institution of law achieved a kind of autonomy from religion early on. Some historians argue that this was really a precursor to science achieving autonomy as well. In the Muslim world, law was never entirely disentangled from religion. Islamic culture has not been as supportive of intellectual independence for different areas of life.

Intellectual independence…It’s probably hard to exaggerate the importance of that for both personal flourishing and for healthy public goods of all kinds.

One of the features of medieval Islamic science that some modern Muslim thinkers want to revive is the way of perceiving the universe as a spiritual, God-centered place. This tends to work against the independence of science from religious institutions. It’s precisely this autonomy that helped science make the breakthrough in the Western world. In the Muslim world, this is still a relatively controversial concept.

If you see the universe as a spiritual, God-centered place, then you can’t have real intellectual independence – not if you take that idea seriously. If the universe is a God-centered place, then God calls the shots.

They talk about the ‘scientism’ charge – “There are a lot of people in the United States…who also complain about what they call “scientism” — the idea that science explains all there is in the world.”

You can find Muslim thinkers making similar pronouncements. “Scientism” and “reductionism” have become stock accusations in religious circles. I don’t know if there’s much more content here than saying, “I don’t like naturalistic ideas.”

Snicker. Yeah.

I’m reading Infidel. I’m going to have to treat you to some samples.

This one is on p. 94. She’s been taking classes at school with a very strict Muslim teacher (though one who urges the children to think, rather than merely shouting dogma at them). She has noted that ‘Something inside me always resisted the moral values behind Sister Aziza’s lectures: a small spark of independence.’ She was troubled by the gap between the demands of the Holy Writings and the reality of daily life; she had asked how a just God could want women to be treated so unfairly; she had noted that she continued to read novels.

A Muslim woman must not feel wild, or free, or any of the other emotions and longings I felt when I read those books. A Muslim girl does not make her own decisions or seek control. She is trained to be docile. If you are a Muslim girl, you disappear, until there is almost no you inside you. In Islam, becoming an indivuidual is not a necessary development; many people, especially women, never develop a clear individual will. You submit: that is the literal meaning of the word islam: submission. The goal is to become quiet inside, so that you never raise your eyes, not even inside your mind.

Devastating final sentence, don’t you think?

Hell and damnation.

Press freedom groups worldwide expressed horror at the “savage” killings of two prominent Somali journalists on 11 August 2007…Six journalists have been killed in Somalia so far this year, according to the National Union of Somali Journalists (NUSOJ). “This wave of attack of killing and injuring media people is an intentionally organised mission to silence [the] journalistic voice in Somalia,” the union said…CBC News said HornAfrik has criticised both the government and the militant Islamic opposition, and has been shut down several times in the past few months. Reuters said the station was shelled in April, apparently from Ethiopian positions…In 2002 Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE) gave its International Press Freedom Award to Sharmarke and HornAfrik’s two other founders, Ahmed Abdisalam Adan and Mohamed Elmi. All three had fled Somalia and come to Canada as refugees, but later returned to Somalia to start the station. The CJFE award recognised HornAfrik, the first independent radio network in Somalia, for persisting in the face of intimidation and threats…Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans frontières, RSF) urged Somalia’s transitional government to thoroughly investigate and punish those responsible for the killings.

They were all three safe in Canada, but they all went back to nightmare Somalia to try to make things better – and Sharmarke and Elmi were murdered for their pains. It’s appalling.

From the Globe and Mail:

Somali associates of the two HornAfrik journalists expressed outrage, saying both deaths were part of a deliberate campaign against the media. “This wave of killing and injuring media people is an intentionally organized mission to silence journalistic voices in Somalia,” the National Union of Somali Journalists said…The men came to Canada as refugees from the civil war in Somalia. After some calm returned to the African country, they opened HornAfrik, the first independent radio network in Somalia, in December of 1999. Reuters journalist Sahal Abdulle, next to Mr. Sharmarke at the time of the blast, was lightly injured in the head and face…”Ali was a good friend. I have known him a long time. He was committed to getting the truth out. He came back from Canada to promote democracy and give Somalis a voice. Today, he paid the ultimate price,” Mr. Abdulle added.

From the Globe and Mail again:

I have long feared the arrival of news that one of “my journalists” had been killed…Unidentified men pumped bullets into Mahad’s head Saturday morning as he entered CapitalFM’s studios, where his talk show had enormous popularity for challenging human-rights abusers and warlords and extremists…HornAfrik is a beacon of media courage and integrity in Mogadishu and all Somalia…I have learned how absolutely critical a reliable, responsible news media is to stabilizing conflict-stressed states. My respect for media workers in those places is now boundless…Among the tributes to him flowing this week between trainers and African broadcasters who were at Bujumbura, Niyoyita Aloys of Burundi recalls that “at the airport, he told me he believed one day Somalia would recover peace. He told me he was not afraid of warlords. Unfortunately, he dies without seeing peace in Somalia.”

As Ross Howard implies in that comment about how critical a reliable news media is, it’s all part of the same picture – liberalism, the rule of law, human rights, peace. When it breaks down, it breaks down; you lose the whole damn thing, and life turns to shit. I’m reading Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s Infidel, and she lived through just this breakdown in Somalia. Some of it is hard to read – because it was so incredibly hard to live through.

‘We are all Hrant Dink,’ they said in Istanbul. We are all Hrant Dink, we are all Mahad Ahmed Elmi, we are all Ali Iman Sharmarke. We are all Ayaan Hirsi Ali, we are all Salman Rushdie, we are all Ibn Warraq, we are all Taslima Nasreen, we are all Tasneem Khalil. Back off – we’re connected.

So the West Midlands Police and the Crown Prosecution Service issued a joint statement condemning Undercover Mosque and announcing that the West Midlands Police had referred the documentary to Ofcom. The cops wanted the programme makers prosecuted for stirring up racial hatred. They seem to be slightly confused.

[T]he real story should have been about the alarmingly censorial and quite possibly libellous attack on investigative journalism. No matter, on Radio 4’s PM programme, it was Dispatches’ commissioning editor Kevin Sutcliffe who was subjected to a grilling, while Abu Usamah, one of the subjects of the documentary, was portrayed as a harmless victim…[H]ere is Usamah spreading his message of inter-communal respect and understanding, as captured in Undercover Mosque: ‘No one loves the kuffaar! Not a single person here from the Muslims loves the kuffaar. Whether those kuffaar are from the UK or from the US. We love the people of Islam and we hate the people of kuffaar. We hate the kuffaar!’

Who? The kuffaar – you know – everyone except ‘the people of Islam.’ You know, some five and a half billion people. We hates ’em! Because they are – kuffaar.

[L]et’s ask what conceivable context could make these quotes acceptable or reasonable? Was he rehearsing a stage play? Was it a workshop on conflict resolution? Or perhaps it was the same context in which a spokesman from those other righteous humanitarians, the BNP, might attempt to aid community relations by repeatedly stating that his followers ‘hate Muslims’.

Oh but that’s completely different. Hating the kuffaar is completely different from hating Muslims. It’s all about community cohesion, don’t you understand?

‘We hate the kuffaar’ is not a statement best designed for community cohesion, but whose fault is that – Abu Usamah’s for saying it or Channel 4’s for recording him?

The latter, of course. Duh.

Apparently what happened is, the police and the CPS tried to find out if prosecutions for crimes of racial hatred could be brought against the imams, decided they couldn’t, and by way of compensation, shopped Channel 4 to the broadcast regulators instead. That’s not actually their job, but never mind.

They had concluded that comments had been “broadcast out of context” and so they and the CPS had complained to Ofcom.They did not acknowledge, by the way, that at several points in the programme, the organisations and individuals concerned are given a right of reply, or that several moderate Muslim experts explain on air why they think the remarks shown are extreme. Do the West Midlands police side with Islamists against moderates?

Oh no no no no; good heavens no. Unless of course it seems like a good idea for community cohesion.

Let us, however, take the context point seriously. The context is, according to many of the preachers, that they are talking not about Britain now, but about the Islamic state that they seek…[E]ven if we accept that it is true, is it reassuring? The Islamic state envisaged by most of those featured is not an ideal, imaginary kingdom of heaven where the lion shall lie down with the lamb.

No it certainly is not. It’s an imaginary kingdom of hell where the lion shall persecute the lamb forever and ever amen.

Good grief, as if I don’t have enough to do, now I’m having to fend off the ravings of a reader who seems to have suddenly gone stark raving mad. Although there was, to be sure, always a whiff of madness…But now it’s more like an old overfull garbage can at the end of a hot August day. He’s pissed off because I wrote something (something very brief) about Ehsan Jami the other day; he’s been bombarding me with emails telling me how awful he thinks Jami is; the one he sent today was so rude and condescending and aggressive that I became irritated as well as bored, and told him to stop lecturing me. He sent an even ruder (and longer) reply, to which I replied sharply and, I would have thought and expected, terminally; now he’s sent me a sarcastic apology, and guess what the basic premise is? That I’m an overbearing woman who expects men to grovel at her feet. Honestly! This loon sends me a stream of scolding emails and when I tell him to knock it off, he plays the Angry Male card! It strains credulity.

I can’t resist giving you a sample, it’s so ludicrous. I don’t have permission, but he doesn’t have permission to keep pestering me, either, so the hell with permission. Read and admire.

And really, very humbly grovelling of course, touching the forelock, mistress, speaking for myself (if I may, with your permission), my gifts are not fit for being thus in public and so in private, as your magisterial self, if I may say so without seeming presumptuous, of course, can do so well. Us mere male servants, mistress, with your permission, find this almost impossible to do. It is a major weakness of mine, if you excuse my impertence of speaking of myself. A mere simpleminded male such as I has the shortcoming of saying what he thinks, presumptuous as that is, IMHO…However, if I DO make a sincere, humble effort, mistress, you see that even such a one as me, can be brought, humbly of course, to reason, and to adopt the proper position of a mere male when faced with a proud female, such as you, of such commanding presence also: cowering, crouching, crawling in sincere and humble supplication, thanking the powers that be for her kind attention…So it is truly most remiss of me to have doubted the noble words of the public spokeswomen of Ayaan the Blessed. And therefore I must most humbly beg for forgivenness, for daring to presume that one as I (a mere male, and a Dutch one at that, o horror) could possibly see (if I may breathe it: Dutch) things more clearly than you or Her, mistress, for stealing your time, for defiling your mood, for being the suffering subject of my tedious rudeness and relentless unpleasantness. I merely thought, humbly, that such a one as I – humbly begging forgiveness for the mere presumption mistress! – could conceivably be perhaps, humbly in supplication and on my bare knees, be able to, by the merest accident of time and place, of course without any reflection on my baseness, moved by the merest waft of coincident conjunctive chance of time and place – well, I beg forgiveness – … if truth matters, see things a bit more clearly, perhaps?

Pretty good, don’t you think?

Shiraz Maher escaped from Hizb ut-Tahrir
.

Islamism transcends cultural norms, so it not only prompted me to reject my British identity but also my ethnic South Asian background. I was neither eastern, nor western; I was a Muslim, a part of the global ummah, where identity is defined through the fraternity of faith. Islamists insist this identity is not racist because Islam welcomes people of all colours, ethnicities and backgrounds. That was true, but our world view was still horribly bipolar. We didn’t distinguish on the basis of colour, but on creed. The world was simply divided into believers and nonbelievers.

Identity defined through the ‘fraternity of faith’ is not racist, good, but it does divide the world simply into believers and nonbelievers (or infidels, kufr, apostates, heretics, misbelievers, traitors), which is at least as bad. Dividing the world into just two is both dangerous and malevolent for an obvious reason: it means that the not-us part is seen as The Enemy. That potential always exists for any kind of evaluation or preference or allegiance, but it’s a lot weaker when the allegiances are multiple instead of single. Beware the people who divide the world in two.

Why would a caliphate be such a nice thing?

Hizb ut-Tahrir regards this as the ideal form of government, because it follows what it believes are the laws of God as set out in the Koran, rather than laws designed by [humans].

Right. And that’s why we don’t regard a caliphate as the ideal form of government but rather as the ulitmate nightmare. It’s because the ‘laws of God’ are beyond appeal and rational analysis and reform in the light of new knowledge or improved morality, whereas laws designed by humans are not. In practice, of course, the ‘laws of God’ are sometimes revised or reformed, but in principle they can always be and often are declared inviolable as ‘God’ is inviolable. That’s what makes them so damn terrifying. They are, in principle, beyond rational debate. That’s not safe.

Buried assumptions at work.

I immediately begin trying out Dawkins’ appeal in polite company. At dinner parties or over drinks, I ask people to declare themselves. “Who here is an atheist?” I ask. Usually, the first response is silence, accompanied by glances all around in the hope that somebody else will speak first. Then, after a moment, somebody does, almost always a man, almost always with a defiant smile and a tone of enthusiasm. He says happily, “I am!” But it is the next comment that is telling. Somebody turns to him and says: “You would be.”

“Why?”

“Because you enjoy pissing people off.”

“Well, that’s true.”

It’s clear enough what we’re supposed to get from all that. One, it’s almost always a man who pipes up because men are pugnacious and competitive and obnoxious, whereas women are more tactful and co-operative and sweet and kind. Two, atheists are atheists because they enjoy pissing people off. Three, atheism of course pisses people off. Well, fuck that. I’m a woman, and I am not more tactful and co-operative and sweet and kind, as anyone who knows me will knock over chairs and hatstands in the rush to confirm. More to the point, I’m a woman and I hate like hell the idea that women are too nice to be atheist or rational or skeptical or anything else in that department of the store.

But more significant (and silly) is the assumption that atheism naturally and automatically pisses people off. That’s a very parochial assumption. Atheism does piss off a lot of people in the US, but the US isn’t the world, and in some places atheism is more boring and taken for granted than irritating. The existence of this unexamined assumption is one reason the ‘new Atheists’ are right that atheists need to speak up more.

Don’t forget, there is no compulsion in religion.

Lawmakers and members of a political party assaulted the exiled feminist author as she presented a translation of one of her novels in Hyderabad…Many Muslims have accused Ms Nasreen of ridiculing Islam…About 100 protesters, including three lawmakers, from the Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen party burst in, shouting that the author was “anti-Islam”. Ms Nasreen backed into a corner as objects rained down and she was threatened with a chair, witnesses said.

There is no compulsion in religion, but if an author is ‘anti-Islam,’ then men will throw things at her and offer to beat her with a chair, on the grounds that there is no compulsion in religion.

It’s quite understandable, of course, because people get incensed when someone is ‘anti-Islam.’

Muslim protesters assaulted the exiled Bangladeshi author and feminist Taslima Nasreen at a book launch in Hyderabad on Thursday, incensed by her repeated criticism of Islam and religion in general. Some radical Muslims hate Nasreen for saying Islam and other religions oppress women…On Thursday, lawmakers and members of the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen party attacked her at the press club in Hyderabad…An uneasy-looking Nasreen backed into a corner as several middle-aged men threw a leather case, bunches of flowers and other objects at her head and threatened her with a chair…Some of the mob shouted for her death.

That’s a pleasant mental picture, isn’t it? An ‘uneasy-looking’ woman (very brave of her to look merely uneasy – I would have been squalling in terror) backed into a corner by a lot of middle-aged men throwing heavy objects at her head and threatening her with a chair. And these are ‘lawmakers’! Lawmakers reminiscent of the great Representative Preston Brooks of South Carolina who approached Senator Charles Sumner while he was pinned at a desk and unable to escape and beat him over the head with a walking stick. That kind of ‘lawmaker’ – and that kind of brave man. Brave, pious, devout, holy, ‘good’ men ganging up and assaulting one woman because they dislike what she has written, and her desire for women’s rights. Women don’t matter, principles about not ganging up on people and not assaulting people don’t matter, principles about law and equal rights and peaceful discussion and justice don’t matter, all that matters is ‘Islam’ and taboos against disagreeing with what some pack of bullies think it is.

Never forget, Islam means ‘peace’ – oh and also ‘there is no compulsion in religion.’ Got that?

Ehsan Jami, a local council member for the Dutch Labour Party and a former Muslim, has been afforded extra protection since Monday this week…The local politician, who also heads a committee established to fight for the interests of former Muslims, was the target of a violent, physical attack outside a supermarket near his home in Voorburg last Saturday…Jami was knocked to the ground and kicked by a group of three men: two young Moroccans and one Somali. During the incidents, his attackers called him a ‘filthy homo’ and ‘filthy traitor’. Mr Jami’s advisor, Afshin Ellian, later pointed out that it was not the first time he had been physically attacked: “He’s also been threatened before, attacked or beaten up, and he reported this to the police too. This is the third time.” Afshin Ellian, an academic and columnist, is also being protected by the authorities.

Heading a committee to fight for the interests of former Muslims – well naturally he’s been attacked three times. Former Muslims aren’t even supposed to exist, so if gangs knock them down and kick them and call them filthy, well they’re getting off easy, that’s what.

Contradict yourself much? Melanie Phillips in the Daily Mail –

The big mistake is to see religion and reason as polar opposites. They are not. In fact, reason is intrinsic to the Judeo-Christian tradition. The Bible provides a picture of a rational Creator and an orderly universe – which, accordingly, provided the template for the exercise of reason and the development of science. Dawkins pours particular scorn on the Biblical miracles which don’t correspond to scientific reality. But religious believers have different ways of regarding those events, with many seeing them as either metaphors or as natural occurrences which were invested with a greater significance. The heart of the Judeo-Christian tradition is the belief in the concept of truth, which gives rise to reason. But our postreligious age has proclaimed that there is no such thing as objective truth, only what is “true for me”.

Right – so – religious believers have different ways of regarding Biblical miracles, good, but our postreligious age has proclaimed that there is no such thing as objective truth, only what is “true for me”, bad. Hmmm.

Have you read Allen’s article on PBS and Einstein’s wife? PBS is extremely irritating. It’s doing a bad thing. It’s ignoring its plain duty and responsibility. It’s not doing its job properly. It’s sneaking around. First it was stalling and delaying and making excuses, and now it’s sneaking around. It’s being bad. It has not only failed to take down the Einstein’s Wife website, despite the advice of its own ombudsman and despite telling Allen ‘We are looking for additional scholarly review to help us know how to proceed in making sure that the web site content is as accurate as possible,’ it has now commissioned Andrea Gabor to rewrite it. That’s like commissioning Michael Behe to rewrite The Origin of Species.

As Allen shows by quoting what three knowledgeable Einstein specialists said to him about the website and the ‘Einstein’s Wife’ documentary, PBS could very easily have found the best possible ‘additional scholarly review’ if it had asked for it, but instead of doing that, it asked a highly unscholarly journalist who is a partisan of the very (evidence-free) fantasy that is in dispute. PBS ignored the scholars who have the evidence on their side, and went with a hack who has none and doesn’t know how to evaluate evidence in the first place. This seems to me to be something resembling malpractice. PBS is supposed to be, in part, an educational site; it is not supposed to pass off made-up stories as ‘documentary’ truth; nor is it supposed to urge them on schools and teachers.

It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the fact that PBS have commissioned to re-write their “Einstein’s Wife” web pages someone so lacking in the scholarly credentials that should be a requisite for such an undertaking indicates that they are intent on preserving the essentials of their deeply flawed website, with its Lesson Plans that come close to being a brainwashing exercise…In the words of Robert Schulmann, who has knowledge in depth of the relevant material, it is unconscionable that PBS be a party to distributing dubious historical claims as classroom material to teachers and students, whose task it is to instruct and learn the proper use of evidence and respect for historical sources.

Annoying, don’t you think?

I wish this oceanographer thought so. He cites the story in a lecture on Science, civilization and society:

In recent years evidence found in personal letters between Einstein and his first wife Mileva Einstein-Maric suggests that Einstein developed the core ideas of relativity in close collaboration with her but did not mention her contribution anywhere and possibly actively suppressed her name from his paper on special relativity.

Allen asked him about that evidence (as well as about several other things) – only to be told this:

“Please cite the evidence …” “Please state what evidence you have …” – if it would only be as easy as that. Evidence is always helpful, but it is not always sufficient to find the truth.

But Professor Tomczak himself says in the lecture, as we’ve just seen, that ‘evidence found in personal letters between Einstein and his first wife’ etcetera etcetera; Allen merely asked him to cite the evidence he mentioned; once you have mentioned evidence, it doesn’t do to brush off requests for the evidence in question. You can’t say ‘evidence suggests’ and then raise a mocking eyebrow at requests for citation. That’s absurd. Imagine a trial lawyer attempting that. ‘We have evidence that my client was seven thousand miles away at the time.’ ‘Please present the evidence.’ ‘I won’t I won’t I won’t.’

The professor says other odd things too, which Allen points out neatly, one two three and so on. I don’t want to diss the professor, who is not PBS, after all – but I do find his reply interestingly…non-responsive. It’s an object-lesson in how not to argue straightforwardly. He shifts the goalposts, he wonders what Allen’s motivations are, he wonders what Allen thinks about Mileva Marić, he says Marić provides an illuminating example for the conditions of women at the beginning of the 20th century; none of which answers any of Allen’s questions.

It is clear – at least to me – that Allen’s painstaking investigation of “evidence” represents one end of the spectrum of opinions about the Maric case. But I do not understand what he wants to achieve with it.

What does Professor Tomczak want to achieve by putting scare quotes on ‘evidence’ as if there were something peculiar about painstaking investigation of such a thing? But even more, what is a scientist doing saying he doesn’t understand what another scientist wants to achieve by a painstaking investigation of evidence? What a very strange thing to say. He wants to find out if there is any evidence or not; he wants to investigate some truth claims that are in the public domain and in fact popularized in various media, such as Andrea Gabor’s book and the tv documentary. It’s sad and a little bit alarming that a scientist would find that hard to understand.

Best of luck, Haluk Ertan.

“Turkey is now the headquarters of creationism in the Islamic World. This is no longer only Turkey’s problem, it is now the problem of the whole civilized world,” says Haluk Ertan, a professor of molecular biology at Istanbul University. He’s one of a handful of Turkish scientists who have been working to counter creationism’s spread in the country.

But if you package pseudoscience nicely enough, it will win.

In the past year, BAV has blanketed several European countries and the US with its glossy “Atlas of Creation,” a lavish 768-page tome weighing more than 13 pounds, sending it to scientists, professors, journalists, and schoolteachers…”Every Islamic bookshop I know of stocks Harun Yahya’s material. It is so glossily produced. It is very attractive and very colorful and outclasses everything else,” says Inayat Bunglawala…”It is having an effect. Even among Muslim medical students there are a number now who are speaking out against Darwin.”

Oh well, doctors don’t need to understand biology.

The series includes titles such as “The Dark Spell of Darwinism” and “Why Darwinism is Incompatible with the Koran.” Oktar’s brand of creationism is not only religious, but also political and even messianic, seeing most of the world’s ills – terrorism and fascism among them – as stemming from Darwin’s theory of evolution…”Folks, there is no such thing as what you call evolution. If there was, it would be in the Holy Bible or the Koran,” added Oktar…”Scientifically speaking, the whole Harun Yahya corpus is a bunch of nonsense, but it is unfortunately very popular,” says Taner Edis, a Turkish physicist who teaches at Truman State University in Missouri. Professor Edis says the success of the Harun Yahya books, at least in the Islamic world, can be attributed to a need for harmonizing modern life with traditional Islamic beliefs.

Sure. The success of a lot of bullshit and nonsense can be attributed to a need for harmonizing fundamentally incompatible things. That’s why people go in for bullshit and nonsense: because they want to harmonize things they want to believe with some obtrusive bit of reality. The reality won’t give way to prayers or persuasion or gentle little dances and passes in the air, so the only thing left to do is harmonize. Then once people get their teeth into harmonizing, they want to pass the harmonization on to schools and universities and the mass media, and pretty soon the entire population has learned that there’s no such thing as evolution because it’s not in the Koran. Maybe if we all work really hard, in a few generations the whole population of the earth will be as ignorant as it was ten thousand years ago. Yee-ha.

Sorry I’m a little quiet. You can thank the spambot, for one thing – it deposits comments (porn ads) on an old N&C, and I have to remove them. The number of comments has been steadily rising; it doubled between yesterday and today. Yesterday I had 8 pages to delete, today it’s 18. It’s a slow process – click ‘check all,’ click ‘delete,’ then wait, then click yes, then wait; repeat. 17 times. It’s slow, because I don’t have broadband. I can do other things at the same time, but it’s jerky and interrupted. Deleting 18 pages takes a very long time.

Anyway, it’s just as well for me to be quieter. I’ve learned that JS has to pay more the more I talk. It had been my understanding that B&W didn’t increase costs, but that was wrong. I have to find some skeptical organization or other that would like to affiliate with B&W and bankroll it in the process. (I tried to insist that I was the one who should pay, but I got nowhere.)

202 spam comments left to delete. 7 pages. More than half finished. That’s only an hour wasted.

Ah well that is reassuring. The Grand Mufti of Egypt explains about apostasy and stuff.

[F]rom a religious perspective, the act of abandoning one’s religion is a sin punishable by God on the Day of Judgment. If the case in question is one of merely rejecting faith, then there is no worldly punishment. If, however, the crime of undermining the foundations of the society is added to the sin of apostasy, then the case must be referred to a judicial system whose role is to protect the integrity of the society.

Excellent. From a religious perspective, no earthly bastards will punish you for apostasy, it’s only God who will. Of course, God will presumably do a pretty thorough job of it, being a jealous and tyrannical kind of shit, but no matter, that’s a few years off probably, unless you get run over by a bus tomorrow. The important thing is that the mullahs and the cops aren’t going to push your door down and take you out for execution right this second. Unless, of course, they are – on account of you done added the crime of undermining the foundations of the society to the sin of apostasy, and that we don’t allow, so up against the wall mothafucka. Because the thing is the sin is God’s business and God will deal with it as and when necessary, but the crime is a whole nother story. The thing is, the integrity of the society has to be protected from the likes of thinking doubting questioning mind-changing you; understand? The integrity of the society is the important thing, not selfish little you and your selfish individualistic atomistic consumerist idea about wanting to think for yourself and make up your own mind and not be compelled to ‘believe’ what you don’t believe. Got that? You don’t matter, the integrity of the society does. No yous matter; all the yous added up don’t matter; what matters is the society and its integrity – in other words its uniformity of thought. Integrity of the individual, poison; integrity of the group, divine Utopia. See? It makes perfect sense if you look at it in the right way.

There’s also of course the familiar irritating boilerplate about women – equal but not the same blah blah blah so actually they have higher status than men which is why they’re not allowed to leave the house or the country without permission from a man.

Islam adopts the perspective of gender equality, but it does not endorse the idea of gender equivalency. Islam affirms the difference between the natural dispositions and constitutions of men and women. Women have the ability to bear and nurse children, whereas men do not, so there is a lack of equivalency in regards to the physical and psychological make-up of men and women…

Therefore…you know the rest.

Research misconduct is in the eye of the beholder; so is evidence; so is replication; so is falsification; so is peer review; it’s all, all in the eye of the beholder. Knowledge is power, therefore I don’t need to make sense.

[T]he firing of Churchill reveals a very pernicious kind of exclusionary dogmatism in scholarly research and writing and media reporting. The firing of Professor Churchill for alleged research misconduct…ignored all Indigenous evidence and perspectives that are critical of Eurocentric versions of the history of the European invasion of the Americas. Research misconduct is in the eye of the beholder. Euroamerican teachers and scholars have taught and written for several centuries that Columbus discovered America. That is a more profound and easily provable case of research misconduct than anything of which Churchill has been accused.

Gary Witherspoon confuses teaching the content of a textbook with research, which is odd, since he is apparently an anthropologist, so one would assume he must have learned at some point along the path to becoming an anthropologist what research is and what it isn’t. Maybe he has a bad memory, maybe he’s just forgotten what research is. Couldn’t someone tell him though?

The whole article goes on in the same vein, citing what a 1987 textbook said, what an 1864 Rocky Mountain News article said (that’s not a typo – 1864, a century and a half ago), what Ben Nighthorse Campbell said about the massacre that the Rocky Mountain News misunderstood a century and a half ago – all apparently in aid of the point that research misconduct is in the eye of the beholder. In other words, these other people over here killed ten people and ate them for lunch, so why are you making such a fuss about my killing one person and eating her for lunch? In other words, it’s infantile and jaw-droppingly stupid. It’s also a pretty brazen example of epistemic relativism in all its tinsel glory.

I wrote this on Thursday but the database broke while I was writing it, so it had to wait.

Norm has an additional thought on my murmurings about truth and the harm principle and enforcement on Point of Inquiry.

The non-enforceability of any responsibility there is not to teach children untruths must surely follow, in liberal societies, from not having public bodies issuing pronouncements as to what is – officially as it were – true and untrue. Even on matters where there is a scientific consensus, that consensus is left open to challenge. But more relevantly, on matters of ethics, politics, metaphysical outlook, there’s no official truth that could be enforced.

Hmmmm. I’m not sure that’s quite true, actually – although it is mostly true. But I think it’s mostly true in part because of…well, a kind of stealth, or evasion, or (not to put too fine a point on it) concealment. I think to some extent liberal societies and public bodies conceal the degree to which they do in fact rely on implicit but binding official truth that can be and is enforced, on matters of ethics and politics at least, even if not on those of metaphysical outlook. ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident’ you know – it was a public body that issued that pronouncement, and it does colour much of US politics to this day.

I think it could be argued that there is some official truth that could be enforced, that lies behind various laws and policies – at least in the US. Maybe it’s the Supreme Court that makes this seem to be the case; maybe the non-existence of either a Supreme Court or a constitution in the UK means that Norm’s claim is more plausible there than it is here. For instance I think it is something of an official truth here that ‘separate but equal’ is a deeply suspect formula; I also think that possible official truth tends to foster others – about history, and official lying and bullshitting, and (paradoxically) the fallibility of the Supreme Court itself; about the kind of bullshit people will believe when they want to defend their prejudices or privileges or both.

In fact the truth (if I may call it that) that ‘separate but equal’ was a self-serving lie was indeed enforced, with federal marshals, in Little Rock. Enforcement was exactly the issue. Eisenhower and Kennedy both wanted very badly not to have to do the whole enforcement thing; they really didn’t want to have to enforce that truth on people who wanted neither to hear it nor to act on it; but in the end they both had to. There is a limit to our liberalism in that sense; fortunately.

Sorry things went silent for a few days: the database broke, and Jeremy was in New York, so unable to fix it until today. Give the man a nice round of applause (or you could tell him how impressive his biceps are).

Sastra said several interesting things in a comment on Leaving Amherst.

I seldom comment, but read Butterflies & Wheels regularly, and I’m terribly grateful that Ophelia is not only as interesting and provocative as she is, but is a ‘she’ as well. I’ve noticed a distinct “gentleman’s agreement” among the women I know that we really should not disagree. What I call “Thanksgiving Table Diplomacy” promoted around the calendar – avoid controversy and pass the potatoes, bringing up all the lovely things we have in common. “It’s more important to be nice than ‘right.'” Women are supposed to be supportive and reassuring. No debate; no disagreement; no honest discussion of contrary views, unless it is to “celebrate our diversity.” That’s a sign of spiritual maturity, evidently. Even in a discussion group.

Yeah – I know the kind of thing. I blame the ‘Women’s Ways of Knowing’ crowd (as well as anyone else I feel like blaming). This is one reason I am so stroppy (or so interesting and provocative as Sastra put it). I have to be stroppy, I have to compensate for all those women who make themselves into marshmallows!

As the only secular humanist among neo-pagans, New Agers, and Spiritual Seekers, it’s hard. They love to jabber about their beliefs, and back them up with heavy combinations of pseudoscience and postmodernist “all paths to truth are valid” — all paths, except, evidently, rational skepticism, which is apparently the egotistical, narrow, mean one.

I know – being the only fan of reason among woolly thinkers is hard. We learned quite a lot about that from the students at the seminar.

I am a bit of a convention junkie, and have gone to a fair amount of Council for Secular Humanism events. I have yet to do one of the CFI summer sessions, though, and when I found out OB and JS were on the program I was ready to bite myself in frustration. I can’t afford it yet! So you have to do it again!!! I have all your books!!!! Please — even if it’s a Boy’s Club (I was there for the grand opening of the new building, impressive as all get out).

A Boys’ Club is certainly not all it is – and it clearly is a lifeline and a source of hope for a lot of people in small conservative towns in the Bible Belt. Maybe we will do it again – if we’re asked.

I don’t work in an occult bookstore. But it seems as if all the liberal adult women in my area who read, think, and enjoy interesting discussions on topics other than their kids and their busy schedules are “spiritual but not religious” — and this is the catalyst for most of the “deeper” discussions…I live in a small town in a conservative area of the Midwest. I take what I can get.

Many of the students were in exactly that situation, if you swap ‘the South’ or ‘Texas’ for ‘the Midwest,’ and that fact produced a shift in Jeremy’s thinking. We have a running disagreement over the whole subject of what he calls ‘religion-bashing’; it always ends up in the same place: he tells me he just can’t empathize because it’s not like that in the UK; he can intellectually grasp why religion seems threatening in the US but he can’t feel it. I tend to find this slightly exasperating, because I don’t quite see why grasping it intellectually isn’t enough; but anyway he is now able to empathize somewhat more because of his experience over the two and a half weeks at CfI. He got friendly with several people from small towns in conservative areas, and he got a much better sense of how terrible it can be. And at the welcoming dinner that opened the second module – the one at which he was supposed to give opening remarks, the one we were so late for because of lingering too long in Seneca Falls – all the participants were asked to stand up and say a little about themselves; there were several new people who gave rather impassioned accounts of conservative small town life. When it was time for JS to say his few words he said he was feeling rather sheepish – about his long-standing inability to empathize. He meant it, too – he found the whole thing quite moving. So did I, so did Julian; I think so did everyone.

Jonathan Derbyshire points out a problem with anti-foundationalism for people who have moral and/or political commitments. First he quotes John Holbo in a post I would have commented on then if I’d had time –

The real problem is that Rorty’s torn between a ‘Pyrhhonist’…anti-foundational epistemology and a progressive politics, in which he would like to demand lots of social changes, for the sake of social justice. His reformist reach exceeds his justificatory good conscience. He really thinks he’s right, but doesn’t think he can give his opponents rational grounds that they are compelled to accept.

Then he adds:

In other words, Rorty’s philosophical views prevent him from justifying or defending his progressive politics – and that’s politically problematic. So it’s not just that political liberalism needn’t line up with philosophical pragmatism or anti-foundationalism: if our fundamental liberal values don’t rest on certain substantive moral commitments – if, in other words, we’re prohibited from regarding those values as true – then are they really values at all?

To put it another way: if we don’t think we can give our opponents rational grounds that they are compelled to accept, then we have a problem, and the very first thing we need to do is recognize it rather than trying to conceal it or minimize it. I’m not sure myself that we can give our opponents rational grounds that they are compelled to accept, but I see that as worrying rather than cheery, and in either case I think it’s disastrous to pretend that there is no difficulty. But that’s what anti-foundationalists often do. They pretend that ‘we can all agree’ on certain basics and that that’s enough really. But in fact we can’t agree even on certain basics, and it’s a terrible idea to pretend that we can, because then we lose track of the fact that there really are people (lots of them) who truly don’t share our commitments to human rights or equality or women’s rights or whatever it may be.