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

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

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

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

Just what I said! Last November. Twice.

Macklin of course says it much much better.

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

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

Pinker goes on.

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

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

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

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

The last paragraph makes the obvious and devastating point.

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

Exactly.

Read it and scream.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And that’s just one of many.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Priestly wisdom.

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

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

The Cardinal loses the thread quite easily, and quickly.

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

Then in the next paragraph –

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There are two possibilities for theists here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

If (BIG if!) that’s true, then

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Then the statement gets on to the bullying.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dear former class members of Science, Technology and Society:

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

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

University Diaries comments.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Okay maybe not so romantic after all.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sometimes people try to do the right thing and their very effort to do the right thing causes them to do just the wrong thing they meant to avoid. Sometimes that’s sad, other times it’s funny. Sometimes it’s part funny part irritating.

A Bradford man attacked and threatened after his family converted from Islam to Christianity was told by police to “stop being a crusader”…The No Place To Call Home report, by Ziya Meral, states apostates are “subject to gross and wide-ranging human rights abuses.”…The report, launched today, describes how the Pakistani community in Bradford reacted to the family’s conversion by shouting abuse and death threats, vandalising their house and car, attacking Mr Hussein and following his wife.

Really?! The entire Pakistani community in Bradford shouted abuse and death threats and followed Ms Hussein – that must have been something to see.

No, of course that’s not what happened, and it’s not what the Bradford Telegraph meant to say, but it was so busy trying not to offend anyone by referring to people without the c word that it did in fact, idiotically, say that. Block thinking taken to its logical conclusion – if some ten or twenty Pakistanis do something then that thing was done by ‘the Pakistani community.’ So much for precision, clarity, accuracy, and above all, fairness. Any Bradford ‘members of the Pakistani community’ who don’t approve of such behavior must be feeling very chuffed.

I know it’s old news that Seumas Milne is a buffoon – but all the same…

These are good times to be in the “moderate Muslim” business. If you press the right buttons on integration and “radicalisation” and hold your tongue on western foreign policy, there are rich pickings to be had…Latest in the ring is the “counter-extremism thinktank”, the Quilliam Foundation…The foundation – named after a 19th century British Muslim – is the creature of Husain and a couple of other one-time members of the radical, non-violent Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir. All three are straight out of the cold war defectors’ mould described in Saturday’s Guardian by the playwright David Edgar, trading heavily on their former associations and travelling rapidly in a conservative direction.

What is ‘western foreign policy’ when it’s at home? Does ‘the west’ have a unified and unanimous foreign policy? I don’t think so. Perhaps it’s just – western foreign policy, i.e. wicked because it’s western; wicked geographically and as it were ethnically. It belongs to ‘the west’ or to (as one might say) members of the western community, who are of course by definition enemies and oppressors of ‘the east’ (which is also called ‘the south,’ which confuses things slightly). In short, it’s a rhetorical phrase which is literal nonsense.

More interesting is Milne’s fond view of Hizb ut-Tahrir – the ‘radical, non-violent Islamist group.’ Radical is an ambiguous word, if only because people on the left usually use it to mean left-radical. But the real weasel word is ‘non-violent.’ Milne’s insinuation seems to be that Hizb ut-Tahrir doesn’t advocate terrorist violence as a means, therefore it is non-violent period. But that’s crap. You have only to read Hizb on itself to see that. What Hizb ut-Tahrir wants is a global society that is violent in the most up close way possible – a global society that coerces everyone in the smallest details of life by forcing them to obey stupid oppressive rules from the 7th century. If that’s non-violent, what would violent be like?

Hizb-ut-Tahrir is a political party whose ideology is Islam. Its objective is to resume the Islamic way of life by establishing an Islamic State that executes the systems of Islam and carries its call to the world. Hizb-ut-Tahrir has prepared a party culture that includes a host of Islamic rules about life’s matters…As for the resumption of the Islamic way of life, the reality of all the Islamic lands is currently a Kufr household, for Islam is no longer implemented over them; thus Hizb-ut-Tahrir adopted the transformation of this household into a household of Islam. With regard to determining whether a household is Islamic or not, this is not dependant on whether its inhabitants are Muslims or not, but rather in what is implemented in terms of rules and in whether the security of the household is in the hands of the Muslims, not the Kuffar…Hizb-ut-Tahrir is not a spiritual bloc, nor is it a moralistic or a scientific bloc, but rather a political bloc that works towards the management of the Ummah’s affairs as a whole according to Islam.

And so on and so on. Milne is an idiot if he genuinely thinks that is ‘non-violent.’ It seems to be common knowledge that Milne is indeed an idiot (useful or otherwise) – and he does a brilliant job of demonstrating that by equating people who ‘defect’ from Hizb-ut-Tahrir with cold war defectors and also by calling their direction ‘conservative.’ What the fuck does he think Hizb is – liberal? Progressive? Left? Can he seriously think that a party that wants everyone to live under a regime in which Islam dictates every single aspect of their lives, and calls everyone who doesn’t want that ‘Kuffar,’ not conservative? Can he seriously think that fleeing from that nightmare vision is to travel ‘in a conservative direction’?

In particular, they want to put Islamism – an extremely broad political trend that stretches from the Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development party to al-Qaida – beyond the political pale.

And Milne thinks that’s a bad thing. And he thinks (apparently) he’s a left-winger. It beggars belief.

More on that Moyers-Nussbaum interview. As always when Nussbaum talks about religion, there are squashy places. The interview is like a pear with a lot of bruised spots.

[W]hat I love are [Roger Williams’s] metaphors for the way that freedom is taken away. I mean, there are two metaphors. One is the imprisonment of the soul. And the other, even deeper, is the rape of the soul. And he keeps saying it’s soul rape when people try to get people to believe something that they don’t really believe. So the only way we can avoid doing that kind of violence to conscience is to give it lots of space to unfold itself. Not just [not] persecuting people, but really bending over backwards to be sensitive to their religious needs.

I don’t think that’s true – depending on what she means by trying ‘to get people to believe something that they don’t really believe.’ If she means trying to force people to believe something by pure command, then – well, then I still don’t agree, but I disagree less than I do with the alternative. I agree that that does a kind of violence to people’s mental lives (I wouldn’t call it ‘conscience’ because I think Nussbaum is using conscience to mean religious belief, which is a stealthy way of privileging religion), but I don’t agree that bending over backwards is the only way we can avoid it; we can just not try to force people to believe something by pure command. But if by trying ‘to get people to believe something that they don’t really believe’ she means argument of any kind, then I don’t think that does do violence to people’s mental lives, or their consciences, and I don’t believe there’s any need to avoid doing that. I’m afraid she might mean that – which would be depressing.

[W]hat our whole history has shown is…that people can get along together and respect one another, even though they have differences about religion, because they can recognize a common moral ground to stand on. They can recognize values like honesty, social justice, and so on.

Well, yes and no. Or up to a point. Or sometimes but it depends. In short, that’s too easy. Some people can sometimes get along together because they can recognize a common moral ground – but not all people and not always. ‘Social justice’ for instance – people disagree about what social justice is, and lots of people are convinced it means nothing but taking all their money away and giving it to coke-addled women with 57 children, so that they hate the very sound of it. The people at Yearning for Zion ranch don’t recognize a common moral ground with people like, say, me. (And the history of the US isn’t entirely one of getting along, I have to say. A little spat called The Civil War comes to mind. So does slavery, so does the genocidal policy toward Native Americans, so do various other quarrelsome moments.)

And George Washington wrote a letter to the Quakers saying, “I assure you that the conscientious scruples of all men should be treated with the greatest delicacy and tenderness.” And what he meant is you’re not going to have to serve in the military. And I respect that. And unless there’s a public emergency, we’re just not going to do that kind of violence to your conscience. So, I think we have understood that lesson.

But that won’t do as a lesson, because that example won’t do as a general principle, because it’s an easy one. It’s no good trying to make a case for policy X by offering the easy examples and ignoring the hard ones. It’s no good at all, because the problems don’t arise with the easy examples, they arise with the hard ones, so citing the former and ignoring the latter is entirely the wrong thing to do. It’s like saying ‘the bridge is strong enough because look, this bicycle made it across,’ when cars and trucks and buses are also going to be crossing the bridge.

In short it’s a cheat. The problem is, the Quaker scruple is much too easy to ‘respect.’ Most people do understand and respect and sympathize with conscientious scruples about killing people, even if they don’t agree with particular instantiations of them. But that is not the case with all religious ‘scruples’, to put it mildly. Saudi authorities have ‘scruples’ about allowing women to do almost anything without written permission from a male guardian. I don’t respect that. I don’t think it should be treated with any delicacy and tenderness at all; I think it should be reviled. The Vatican has ‘scruples’ about condoms which cause it to forbid all Catholics to use them, which to the extent that it is obeyed will inevitably cause the deaths of countless women and children. I feel absolutely no need to treat that stupid, irrational, ill-founded ‘scruple’ with delicacy and tenderness. I think it’s vicious, obstinate, and murderous.

And the fact that Nussbaum picked an easy example instead of a hard one tips her hand, because if she picks an example that atheists and secularists can understand just as well as theists can, then she’s not really talking about religious scruples at all, she’s just talking about scruples. What is specifically religious about scruples against killing people? Nothing. So what does religion add to the scruples that mean we should treat them with the greatest delicacy and tenderness? Nothing. At least nothing that I can think of – do tell me if you can think of any.

No, I think it’s one or the other but not both, whereas Nussbaum wants to pretend it can be both. I think it’s either a good scruple whether you’re religious or not, or it’s a bad scruple. I can’t think of any that are good scruples that are also necessarily religious. Can you?

Do atheists crave a replacement for church?

Atheism’s great awakening is in need of a doctrine. “People perceive us as only rejecting things,” says Ken Bronstein, the president of a local group called New York City Atheists. “Everybody wants to know, ‘Okay, you’re an atheist, now what?'”

Nah, thanks – I’m not in need of a doctrine. In fact the very idea is kind of…how shall I say…idiotic? Part of the point of being an atheist is not having to sign up to a ‘doctrine.’ It’s not a matter of thinking those other doctrines are no fun but our doctrine is just the ticket. It’s a matter of not liking doctrines in the first place.

The most successful movements in history, after all—Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, etc.—all have creeds, cathedrals, schools, hierarchies, rituals, money, clerics, and some version of a heavenly afterlife.

Yes…but atheists don’t want creeds, hierarchies, clerics, or fairy tales about the afterlife. I’m down with pretty buildings, schools are good, some rituals are okay if I always have a right of refusal, money is just fine if anyone wants to give me some, but the rest of it is a good deal too churchy for me, thanks.

The article goes on to give a toe-curling picture of pseudo-church (Secular Jewish church; go figure) that illustrates just why the idea is so unappealing. Singing secular hymns…noooooo thank you.

When Tim Gorski, a Texas physician, approached Paul Kurtz, an influential atheist who now chairs the Center for Inquiry, an atheist think tank, about his plans to start the North Texas Church of Freethought in the nineties, Kurtz discouraged him, on the grounds that atheists don’t need church.

Just so. Tim Gorski should have started an atheist think tank, instead. Did I ever tell you about the library at the Center for Inquiry? Biggest library of free thought in the country, or the world, or something. I liked to wander around it drooling slightly.

Dennett sees value in atheism’s great awakening, in the energy and money that come from organizing, but he counsels caution. “The last thing atheists want to see is their rational set of ideas yoked up with the trappings of a religion,” he says. “We think we can do without that.”

Although, as I mentioned, money and pretty buildings are always gratefully accepted if offered.

“In the larger war against supernaturalism, frankly, it doesn’t help to fraternize with the enemy,” [Dawkins] says.

Fraternize with or imitate.

Martha Nussbaum talks to Bill Moyers.

[I]f you look into the religions, they have this deep idea of human dignity and the source of dignity being conscience. This capacity for searching for the meaning of life. And that leads us directly to the idea of respect. Because if conscience is this deep and valuable source of searching for meaning, then we all have it whether we’re agreeing or disagreeing. And we all ought to respect it and respect it equally in one another.

Hmm. I would say, as usual, it depends what kind of ‘respect’ is meant. There are, as usual, different possible levels of respect – recognition respect, substantive respect, and so on. In one way I agree with that (and so, it might surprise many people to know, does that notorious ‘fundamentalist’ atheist Richard Dawkins): I do respect the search for meaning and related projects, I do respect the desire for something more than the purely greedy or trivial or selfish. In another way I’m not sure I do agree with it – though I’m not sure enough that this really is another way to say flatly that I don’t agree with it. I respect the search for meaning, but then my respect goes wobbly if the search is carried on with the wrong equipment, or with self-imposed handicaps, or if it’s declared successful too early. My respect thins out to the vanishing point when the idea boils down to saying ‘people crave meaning therefore God exists’ or ‘people crave meaning therefore it is a crime to say there is no reason to think God exists and any old lies are okay to tell about people who commit that crime.’ Nussbaum doesn’t mean that, obviously; I suppose I’m just registering some caution about the idea because a lot of very vehement and inaccurate critics of ‘new’ atheism do resort to the ‘search for meaning’ defense in just that vituperative way.

Moyers later points out that many conservative Christians believe that ‘without a belief in a supreme being, a person, an atheist, can’t be a moral agent.’

I know they think that. But I think they really should look more closely at the ethical reasoning of people who are agnostics and atheists. And I think it’s obvious that lots and lots of people in this country are– are deeply ethical, do have a sense of the ethically obligatory and of the depth and real requirement of ethical norms, while not connecting that to a divine source.

Yes, I think they should too, but I’m not very optimistic that they will. But I would certainly be pleased if they did, and if Nussbaum’s book gets some of them to do that, very good.

One more bit of Hedges, because Eric mentioned that his (Hedges’s) theological training left him befuddled by the idea of ‘original sin,’ and I was planning to quote him on sin anyway if I got the time. Pp 13-14:

We have nothing to fear from those who do or do not believe in God; we have much to fear from those who do not believe in sin. The concept of sin is a stark acknowledgement that we can never be omnipotent, that we are bound and limited by human flaws and self-interest.

Stark, staring bullshit. Could hardly be more wrong. Obviously there is no need whatever to believe in ‘sin’ to be aware that we can never be omnipotent and that we are bound and limited by human flaws and self-interest. Really it’s mostly non-theists who are aware of that in the most thorough way, because theists mostly believe that we will ultimately be ‘redeemed’ or ‘atoned’ in some way. The rest of us just think we are deeply flawed animals and that’s all there is to it.

The concept of sin is a check on the utopian dreams of a perfect world. It prevents us from believing in our own perfectibility.

But the ‘new’ atheists Hedges is railing at dream no dreams of a perfect world, nor do they believe in human perfectibility – so clearly they don’t need the ‘concept of sin’ as a check on their non-existent dreams and beliefs.

To turn away from God is harmless…To turn away from sin is catastrophic…The secular utopians of the twenty-first century have also forgotten they are human.

And Hedges provides quotations to back up this assertion where? Nowhere. Because there are none, because the assertion is false.

We discard the wisdom of sin at our peril. Sin reminds us that all human beings are flawed…Studies in cognitive behavior illustrate the accuracy and wisdom of this Biblical concept.

Wait – what? It’s catastrophic to turn away from sin because without the concept of sin we don’t realize that humans are flawed, but on the other hand, studies in cognitive behavior (not to mention mere experience of life and humans and ourselves) offer evidence that we are flawed, so we don’t need the concept of sin after all. The man blows his own argument (or rather his baseless claim) without even noticing he’s done it. Where was his editor while all this was going on? Where was Hedges’s brain?