November 29, 2007
In the News: Turkey Considering Prosecuting Publisher of God Delusion
In the International Herald Tribune:
A prosecutor is investigating whether to prosecute the Turkish publisher of a best-selling book by atheist writer Richard Dawkins for inciting religious hatred, reports said Wednesday.
Publisher Erol Karaaslan said Wednesday he would be questioned by an Istanbul prosecutor as part of an official investigation into "The God Delusion" written by the British expert in evolutionary biology.
The investigation follows controversy about free speech in Turkey after Nobel Prize-winning author Orhan Pamuk went on trial in 2005 over comments about historic abuses in Turkey.
Karaaslan could go on trial if the prosecutor concludes the book incites religious hatred and insults religious values, and faces up to one year in prison if found guilty, Milliyet newspaper reported.
The prosecutor started the inquiry into the book after one reader complained that passages in the book were an assault on "sacred values," Karaaslan said.
Posted by Robin Varghese at 01:40 PM | Permalink
Comments
Dawkins is accused of "inciting religious hatred" when it is believers in the various religions, not atheists who are full of hatred and intolerance. Religion is a mental illness to which millions are susceptible through early childhood conditioning. It is responsible for a large part of the suffering of people on this planet.
Posted by: Jared | Nov 29, 2007 2:17:47 PM
This case sure presents a bit of a quandry for the self-loathing western leftists who despise religion - Do they side with Dawkins' publisher, which would then insult the beknighted non-European oppressed "persons of color" who actually hold irrational religious beliefs (the Turks)? Or do they simply shut up, "pay no attention to that man behind the curtain" in the form of non-European religious fanatics, look away when Dawkins' publisher is led to the abbattoir and avoid being called names such as "neo-colonialists"?
My money is on the lefties shutting up, putting on their blinders, and saying things such as "well, it's part of their Turkish culture, and it's not appropriate for me to criticize them".
The lefties will then go back to their art galleries and marvel at the wonders of Piss Christ and Elephant Dung Virgin Mary, because it's a hell of a lot easier to insult a bunch of wimpy western Christians than taunt a bunch of angry Moslems!
Posted by: John Prester | Nov 29, 2007 3:05:51 PM
And in Sudan, a teacher is being jailed and could be whipped for allowing her 7 year olds to name a teddy bear "Muhammed." Torture, burnings, wars, suicide bombings,whipping - what a lovely thing religion has been throughout history.
Posted by: Jared | Nov 29, 2007 3:40:27 PM
Religion is child abuse. I agree with John on points of "cultural correctness" pabulum that has lowered the Left into mediocre relativism.
Call it like it is- religion is mental illness that should not be held in respect.
As Dennett has pointed out, until we break the spell of "belief in the belief" of religion, examination of this parasitic meme will be protected.
Posted by: Dave Ranning | Nov 29, 2007 4:07:05 PM
Dave, I completely agree. Religion is an insidious kind of child abuse as bad, or even worse than physical or sexual abuse. It destroys a child's ability to think logically and rationally about the world, and makes him or her susceptible to irrational claims from authority figures throughout life. Thank God for Richard Dawkins! (wait a minute...)
Posted by: Jared | Nov 29, 2007 4:31:07 PM
The level of comments here has fallen distressingly low.
Posted by: senderista | Nov 29, 2007 4:49:28 PM
"insults religious values."
Don't like it? Don't read it.
Posted by: chris plummer | Nov 29, 2007 5:19:39 PM
I wish the Turks would decide once and for all whether they really do aspire to join Europe as a modern secular state with freedom of speech and thought. If so they have to do away with this silly notion that insulting "Turkishness" or "sacred values" is criminal or even actionable.
Posted by: D | Nov 29, 2007 7:17:11 PM
Senderista, you said it.
To regard those Sudanese clerics who would flog a British teacher for allowing her very young students to call the class teddy-bear Mohammed on the basis of it being their favorite name as "mentally ill" is a disservice to everyone -- people who struggle with mental illness included.
To suggest that religious faith is tantamount to child abuse is to misunderstand what child abuse is. Hint: it's not what happened when you didn't like your upbringing or find yourself sub-optimally kitted out for a meaningful adulthood.
To separate religion from everything else that has historically occurred to put civilizations or individuals on a path to brutal and stupid actions is not a project that can be seriously entertained, whether in retrospect or in forecasting the future. History has shown us that gradually peoples (and people) leave behind their myths, replace them with others, all the while tending to inquire more and more deeply into the nature of matter and the question of first causes. This results in a world view with a mythology of its own, which renewed inquiry with better tools chips away at.
If this were the route away from both societal sickness and the anguish of individuals, we would all be living abundantly in an unthreatened biosphere, hurrying to rid our earth of nuclear weapons. Instead, at the behest of our leaders (talk about mentally ill), the most educated and "rational" among us build more weapons to point at new targets like Iran, and the bottom billion scrounge for mildewed rice and drink contaminated water. These are the fruits -- these, among others -- of our comparatively rational world: we face extinction; the builders of Chartres Cathedral feared only Hell.
Perhaps the day we achieve science without arrogance will be, as well, the day we achieve morality without faith. Until then, it can't be helpful to anyone to deride village Muslims and others for their "backwardness" when the most sophisticated among us can be moral savages blind to disastrous threats and tone- deaf to the human condition.
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Nov 29, 2007 7:46:00 PM
Elita-
"our leaders (talk about mentally ill), the most educated and "rational" among us build more weapons to point at new targets like Iran, and the bottom billion scrounge for mildewed rice and drink contaminated water. "
I agree they are mentally ill- but also ruled by superstition.
Our leader are elite's playing a last man standing scenario for a ever disappearing resource base, steeped in a superstition based economic and political system.
They are not "science or reality based"--
Elita-
You are 150 years behind the times in science- The Cartesian world of Descartes with it's mechanistic worlds of absolute freedom of God’s act of creation was quite some time ago.
Religion is child abuse.
Child abuse is the physical, emotional or sexual abuse or neglect of children by parents, guardians, or others. Many religious people believe in invisible sky daddy's that rule their lives. Mental illness is a common factor, with many abusers having personality disorder or other severe forms of mental illness.
These guardians are dangerous to their children and themselves.
Posted by: Dave Ranning | Nov 29, 2007 8:39:45 PM
I came across this thread after only just starting to read Dawkins’ The God Delusion. I am only a few chapters in but, so far, I have found the authors degree of intolerance to any form of theology to be surprising. I read for pleasure and information and came to the book as one might drop into the local for a quiet drink only to find myself in the middle of a bar room knife fight.
I suppose I consider myself to be “a bit of an atheist” but I’m not sure I’m this much of one. I wonder if the whole problem is that many of us in western cultures have come to view religion as a charming inconsequence in many ways. How different might it be where religion is still an integral part of ones life? Where it is not only the basis of law but is all of the law. Where it still determines the very reason for existence to a point where it is indivisible from life itself. Would we then forgive those who piss on the very flesh of all that we hold to be the body of life more precious than just our own? I tend not to think so.
I am going to carry on with the book mainly because I am interested to find out how I will feel on this subject at the end.
Posted by: Gordon | Nov 29, 2007 8:43:38 PM
It's interesting that this whole "child abuse/religion" discussion always seems to result in flagrant overgeneralizations.
Do *all* people who consider themselves religious, or whom others consider themselves religious, in *any* sense of the word "religious," abuse their children, in any sensible meaning of the term "child abuse"? I don't think I would go that far. Surely there are some very mildly religious, highly tolerant and broad-minded Unitarian-type parents who are perfectly willing to allow their children to grow up believing whatever they find believable. Are they to be condemned as child abusers? Come now.
And can't we come to an agreement (at least among the enlightened readers of this blog) that governments investigating publishers for publishing books and clerics flogging teachers for what their students call their teddy bears are completely unacceptable? I'm a leftist, I suppose, but I would condemn that kind of behavior in any country, no matter what its "ethic heritage." Sometimes I think the world learned nothing from the history of the Nazi era.
Posted by: JonJ | Nov 30, 2007 12:21:23 AM
It's interesting that Turkey's freedom of speech may be loosened in lieu of pressures to join the European Union.
Kinda exposes some hypocrisy, doesn't it? Are their laws based on God's will, or economic benefit?
Posted by: beajerry | Nov 30, 2007 12:43:56 AM
http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/11/29/jehovahs.witness.ap/index.html
Please tell me again why religion isn't child abuse.
Posted by: anon | Nov 30, 2007 8:52:11 AM
Dave,
I wouldn't go throwing around words like "mental illness" until you've gotten a little better handle on punctuation and spelling, especially when it comes to the names of long-standing members of this little community.
Sanity, in the end, is mostly breathing. What's the hurry?
Posted by: Chris Schoen | Nov 30, 2007 9:52:03 AM
"And in Sudan, a teacher is being jailed and could be whipped for allowing her 7 year olds to name a teddy bear "Muhammed.""
At least she won't be executed:
http://www.timesdaily.com/article/20071130/API/711300619&cachetime=5
But please, let us give more respect to these very sane and reasonable beliefs!
Posted by: anon | Nov 30, 2007 10:14:20 AM
Anon,
Who are you addressing? Nobody here has called the Sudanese clerics sane or reasonable.
Posted by: Chris Schoen | Nov 30, 2007 10:55:34 AM
Just one problem equating religion with child abuse -- to my eye, the main one -- is that, as an argument, it lacks cogency. It's up there with other catchy but almost meaningless equations such as "Happiness is a warm puppy." All I can answer to the latter is that happiness is probably not a cold puppy, but that in no way supports the original equation, because we are dealing here in hyperbole, metaphor, sloganeering, and extremely broad-brushed readings of human experience.
Anon, I have seen in your compendious comments under other threads that you are mighty fond of logic, so that when you make an argument that can be supported with ghastly anecdotal evidence ("Look, here's a cult that abuses children..."), but which, extrapolated to the world historical level, indicts as child abusers most people who have ever lived along with most who are living now, this drastic revision of what proper nurture is amounts not to a logical inevitability but to the kind of big moment one associates with revealed religion. In other words, its a sweeping opinion -- one that would be understood, if hardly assented to, by the kind of religious thinkers who know utterly and insist loudly that infidels must die.
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Nov 30, 2007 11:12:12 AM
Thanks, Chris, for suggesting to Dave that he spell my name -- among other words -- properly. It couldn't hurt his cause to look more careful.
Dave, about your comment of yesterday, addressed to me (I guess!), I only really mind one thing. Perhaps in order to take issue with its content, you have excerpted an incomplete sentence from an earlier comment I made. The excerpt:
"our leaders (talk about mentally ill), the most educated and "rational" among us build more weapons to point at new targets like Iran, and the bottom billion scrounge for mildewed rice and drink contaminated water. "
The sentence:
"Instead, at the behest of our leaders (talk about mentally ill), the most educated and 'rational' among us build more weapons to point at new targets like Iran, and the bottom billion scrounge for mildewed rice and drink contaminated water."
The incomplete sentence in the excerpt suggests I think our leaders are the most rational and educated among us, while also mentally ill. In what I actually wrote it is clear that I think the most educated and rational among us are scientists, who do terrible things at the behest of our dangerous leaders. The implication is that they should know better, and would know better, if science and rationalism amounted to promoting a better moral life than faith.
Dave, I make a lot of typos too -- everyone does. But thanks for being more careful when you quote me.
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Nov 30, 2007 11:48:47 AM
My neighbors teach their children that people come from Adam and Eve and that the world was created by God a few thousand years ago. I teach my 7 year old son that the universe is billions of years old and give him books that contain the evidence for this. Our neighbor's 8 year old child plays with my son, but once said to him we are "on the dark side". She, on the other hand, knows the truth. I consider that she is being psychologically abused by her ignorant parents into believing lies and delusions. Not only is she being abused, but she is learning to be intolerant of all those who do not share her "true" faith in Jesus. An 8 year old child is in no position to judge the validity of what her parents tell her. This is how the virus of religion is passed on from generation to generation. Is "religion equals child abuse" as sweeping generalization? Of course, but it is a true sweeping generalization.Please explain to me how teaching children lies and intolerance of those outside your faith is not child abuse.
Posted by: Jared | Nov 30, 2007 11:57:24 AM
Jared, you sound like a perfectly decent guy, and I'm sorry your child was exposed to judgmental and parochial thinking on a play-date. If you took that opportunity to show your child what tolerance of opinions you don't agree with is, then it was a teachable moment. I'm sure you didn't tell him his playmate's people were crazy and backwards, putting their rotten trip on her and, by extension, on him.
That little girl will grow up to believe a lot of claptrap -- or not. I've been unfaired against by some "ardent" Christians, too, and it's anything but pleasant. I think they're backwards and frightened, but if they'll leave my civil rights and my human rights alone -- as I will theirs -- then it doesn't matter to me what their nasty metaphysics are. If, without cruelty or neglect, they raise their children to be law-abiding, productive and moral beings, all of which can be discerned by the actions of the children as they grow up, then -- sadly -- they can fill the kids' heads with all manner of woo, and it's not my business or the State's. We need to think awfully hard before we'd want it any other way.
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Nov 30, 2007 12:27:05 PM
Chris & Elatia---
Point well taken. I will try and be more mindful of my careless and sloppy style.
I agree the scientific community should consider the moral and physical implications of their work. The current Neuropod from Nature explores this, and examines the abuse of scientific work when it comes to warfare.
And yes, Jared, religion is child abuse, as you correctly pointed out.
Posted by: Dave Ranning | Nov 30, 2007 12:35:01 PM
Elatia, I could read your comments all day. To me they are like a thousand warm puppies. But you are really going to catch hell for writing that scientists do terrible things. Scientists only do wonderful things. By definition! Terrible things are only done by clerics, (and those who are in their mysterian sway.) Who never use science. Never have and never will. Other than that, great post!
Jared,
The term "sweeping generalization" refers either to a form of sloppy thinking, or rhetorical dishonesty. If you want to maintain that your formulation (Religion=Child Abuse) is true, you'll want to say something like "it's not a sweeping generalization, it's a finely reasoned argument," and then point to something more than a couple anecdotal examples (that goes for you too, Anon).
Parents poison their children with all sorts of horrible crap. Some teach that people with different skin pigments are evolutionarily inferior. On the other hand some teach humility, compassion and respect. Shockingly, some of these people refer to scripture as their authority for these teachings.
You don't need "religion" to mess up your kids, and you don't need to shun it to nurture them. If you want to speak out against hatred and intolerance, please do, but please don't tart up your argument with specious putdowns just to make yourself feel more important.
Posted by: Chris Schoen | Nov 30, 2007 1:01:15 PM
Chris-
Yes, children can be "poisoned" in may ways, it's just religion is one of the most prevalent and effective ways.
Elatia brigs up the essence of the problem. What rights do these delusional and dangerous people have within a society? How do we protect our fellow humans from harm, but still maintain the freest flow of actions and ideas? These are questions that need to be examined, and I don't pretend to have the answers.
Posted by: Dave Ranning | Nov 30, 2007 2:00:34 PM
Chris, your line "please don't tart up your argument with specious putdowns just to make yourself feel more important" is offensive, uncalled for and a sure sign that you are aware of the weakness of your argument. As for "sweeping generalization", it does not mean "sloppy thinking". Here is a defintion:
Sweeping Generalization: This fallacy is committed when a general rule is taken to be universal, and the possibility of an exception (or accident) is ignored (rather than the fact of an exception being ignored, which would be a Suppressed Evidence argument).
For example, "birds can [normally] fly" is a general rule, and doesn't imply that all birds (such as emus or penguins) can fly. To take this general rule and apply it to all birds would be committing a sweeping generalization. It follows from this that a sweeping generalization is something which is true is most cases. Most birds do fly. Most religious indoctrination is a form of child abuse. I am therefore using the term sweeping generalization correctly. It is well known that in a debate the first person to resort to insults has lost.
Posted by: Jared | Nov 30, 2007 2:14:47 PM
Jared (Post #1): "Religion is a mental illness"
Jared: "It is well known that in a debate the first person to resort to insults has lost."
My thoughts exactly.
Posted by: Carlos | Nov 30, 2007 4:26:39 PM
"Relgion is a mental illness" is not an insult, but a fact. People who talk to imaginary beings, feel the universe was created especially for them and think that they will go on living after death are, in my opinion, mentally ill. The worst thing is they pass this illness on to their children. If this is taken as an insult, I can't help that.
Posted by: Jared | Nov 30, 2007 4:39:15 PM
Jared,
But the interesting question, I think, is whether most religious parents perform a kind of indoctrination that could be called "child abuse."
My mother was a not-very-strong Quaker, from a multi-generational Quaker family. My father was completely unreligious (my mother once said that his religion was crabgrass, because he spent his Sundays pulling the weed from our lawn). My mother could be called a religious person, but not at all an "abusive" one. While she did take me to Sunday school when I was too young to resist her guidance, I don't feel that I was "abused" in any sense. And I certainly grew into a strong atheist. Of course I did not grow up in the kind of religious environment that intense evangelical and fundamentalist believers' kids live in, but a lot of people grow up in environments that are very different from this intolerant evangelical-fundy sort of picture that seems to be commonly thought of these days as typical of all religion. (In fact, I think you will find that a certain number of evangelicals and even fundamentalists are more tolerant than you might think.)
I would say that the flat statement that "religion is child abuse" is indeed a sweeping generalization, or as I called it, an "overgeneralization," because there are lots of people like my mother (including some with stronger religious convictions than she had). Unless you want to call them irreligious (and fundies probably would), you must admit that a lot of religious parents are not at all "abusive." What are the percentages of "abusive" and "non-abusive" religious parents? I have no idea, and I doubt that the people flinging the "religion=child abuse" slogan around have any idea either.
Posted by: JonJ | Nov 30, 2007 4:51:19 PM
The Pope has weighed in. Have fun.
Posted by: Ruchira | Nov 30, 2007 4:53:04 PM
Jared,
When I'm aware of the weakness of an argument, I tend not to make it. Whether that makes me humble or oblivious is not my judgement to make.
Generalizations, sweeping or otherwise, can be constructed from any premise. Sometimes they end up being shown to be true, sometimes not, but the very act of induction itself is not some kind of crucible of truth. In fact it almost always invites error, since the world prefers not to fit into our tidy categories.
Your example of flying birds is not as illustrative as you'd like it to be. An important part of the definition of a bird is "a thing that flies." The counterfactuals, like penguins, are descended from birds that once flew; they've moved on to bigger and better things, but they haven't forgotten where they came from. So we're just a hair's breadth away from tautology here.
Generalizing from robins and sparrows that all birds fly would prove "true" in the sense you mean it-- predominantly, but not exclusively true. But generalizing from ostriches, emus, kiwis, rheas, cassowaries, or penguins that "no birds fly" would not be true in any meaningful sense. Nor would the generalization "anything that flies is a bird."
It seems clear enough to me that, having pre-defined "religion" as a toxic, viral mechanism of hate and intolerance, you find it a matter of some ease to "prove" the truth of it with selected case studies. But we can play duelling counterexamples all day. I'd put forward Dorothy Day and the Buddhist monks of Burma, you'd respond with, perhaps, Pastor Ted and Torquemada. Neither one of us would be treading any new ground, but it might be fun, if you have some time to kill.
We hold a high standard for child abuse because it compels us (as a society) to interfere with one of our most cherished liberties: to live privately as a family, clutching at whatever happiness and fulfillment we can muster. Merely disapproving of someone else's belief system is not enough cause to break up a family. If it were child abuse to make your kids intolerant, neurotic, irrational, or emotionally volatile, we'd almost all of us be wards of the state.
Unless you think that every child that grows up in a church/mosque/synagogue-attending home is going end up psychotic, your religion=child abuse formula is just reckless hyperbole. I don't think you'd get much argument from anybody in virtual earshot that there are some mean and nasty strains of fundamentalism out there. But to isolate your own in-group as the only sane going-concern puts me in mind of the Douglas Adams character who put up a shed on the beach; the four interior walls of the shed were actually the exterior walls of "the asylum." It's a charming idea as a piece of political theater, but just a tad immodest if taken too seriously, wouldn't you agree?
Posted by: Chris Schoen | Nov 30, 2007 5:37:50 PM
Let's go all in on this one. Sorry for all the big words: Spe Salve/Inglese
Posted by: Carlos | Nov 30, 2007 7:04:22 PM
Hey Carlos:
You weren't happy with my Reuters version?
Posted by: Ruchira | Nov 30, 2007 7:30:55 PM
Always better to read the original, but I appreciated the link.
Posted by: Carlos | Nov 30, 2007 8:17:38 PM
Chris, my comments weren't addressed to anyone in particular.
Perhaps I need to preface all of my comments with the following: Not all religion is bad. Some things besides religion are bad. Not all religious people are insane. Some people who aren't religious are crazy. And so on and so forth. Let's not get into these lame arguments about not making the proper qualifications of "some" or "sometimes". What I usually mean by "religion causes X" is that "religion causes X because religion is defined by qualities A,B,C and A,B,C directly caused X". If you'd like to counter-argue, it needs to be of the form "A,B,C didn't cause X" or "A,B,C don't define religion", not in the form "aspect D of religion didn't cause X" or "this other thing causes X too". Because I'll agree with those last two statements--however, they are beside the point.
Let's examine the main cause of the following:
* Turkish publisher's prosecution
* Jehovah's Witness's suicide
* Sudanese execution call
There may be other contributing factors, but these seem to me to be the direct result of
* insulting religious values
* interpreting the Bible to mean no blood transfusions
* using the prophet's name for a teddy bear
i.e., religion, religion, religion. And these are not inconsequential things; the last two are literally life and death.
Now, the neighborhood church's quilting group didn't cause any of these things. I agree. Some instances of religion are benign. I agree. But that's beside the point. Agreed?
I gather your view, Chris, is the something like: "Yes, but there are some good parts of religion. Let's keep those and throw out the bad parts."
The problem with this is simple. How do we determine is good and which is bad? How can we justify these revisions? The logical justification for the good stuff is exactly the same as the justification for the bad stuff: the Bible or the priest (or whatever religious text or authority). The ultimate justification, of course, is not a reason at all but the dangerous and irresponsible notion of faith.
Instead, our justification should be based on evidence, and thus our conclusions should always be tentative, always be open for debate and revision. And if we do admit that religion doesn't tell us how to distinguish good from bad, then it should stop being a source of morality.
Elatia,
"If, without cruelty or neglect, they raise their children to be law-abiding, productive and moral beings, all of which can be discerned by the actions of the children as they grow up, then -- sadly -- they can fill the kids' heads with all manner of woo, and it's not my business or the State's."
I disagree: children have rights--their parents don't "own" them. I'm curious why you say that we can interfere in cases of cruelty or neglect, but not when they fill their heads with woo? Isn't the whole point that we (as a society) have a duty to intervene on behalf of the child's well-being? You seem to agree that we are responsible for the child's physical well-being--but shouldn't we also then take responsibility for the child's mental well-being?
PZ Myers said it succinctly today: "Religion is a bad thing. It encourages people to believe in things that are not true. It really is as simple as that; we'd be better off if people valued truth over comfortable delusions."
Posted by: anon | Nov 30, 2007 9:06:43 PM
I have been burnt several times trying to defend atheism and rationality. This is one case where I cannot articulate very well what is on my mind but I know on which side I would rather err.
My question here is directed towards Elatia and Chris Schoen whose opinions on most other matters I tend to agree with.
What is it that you find objectionable with the atheist point of view? Is it the way Jared and Dave Ranning (or for that matter Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens et al) present their case, their shrillness, "sweeping generalizations" and tone? Or is it the argument itself that you object to?
Like Jon J. I was born in a household where my mother was a gentle believer and my father an atheist. In fact the extended family contained a good mix of both persuasions. My exposure to religious texts, rites, rituals was quite extensive and pleasurable. I still remember my mother's lovely domestic shrine where she offered a chaste prayer every Thursday evening and on High Holidays. The chanting, the incense and later the "blessed" sweet offering that she distributed were rituals we all enjoyed. Neither parent tried to persuade either me or my sister to tilt toward belief or non-belief. But my sister and I (both non-believers in our adulthood) looked outside the home and saw the toxic effects of religious orthodoxy on the plight of women, lower castes and vitiation of the political process. I was born in independent India but my parents and my parents in law lost their ancestral homes in the bloody partition of India brought about by sectarian carnage. In adulthood, having weighed matters for ourselves we found no good reason to become believers. Turning away from religion was made easier by the non-hypocritical, courageous, ethical and even humorous life style of atheist elders.
Had my sister or I been preached to constantly and been told from early childhood that not believing in god would condemn us to eternal suffering, we may not have had such an easy path to our choice. I don't know if that would have amounted to child abuse but it certainly would have contributed to irrational fears, no different than faulty messages about sex, gender hierarchy or the caste system.
So, let me ask Chris and Elatia that for those of us who sincerely believe that it is harmful to fill up our children's heads with things we ourselves are not sure of and will never be able to prove, how can you ask us to not flinch when we see little children smugly learning things on the basis of which at least some will look down on others, consider themselves "chosen people," deem others unclean and likely to burn in hell or be compelled to wage holy wars? Will it be okay with you if we continue to believe that even if it is not child abuse, it is at least harmful like poor nutrition consisting say, of a steady diet of fried food even when it is served lovingly?
It is easy to pick through the china cabinet of religion and point to its exalted qualities. But the truth is that outside the enlightened west (and even there) religion as a basis for politics and social justice is an instrument of oppression and curtailment of rights. Individual religiosity for peace and therapy is not what most atheists find repulsive. It is the collective tribalism which infringes on rational discussions of public policy that cuts us to the quick.
Where do you draw the line? When an atheist is sexist, racist or a homophobe we can safely call him or her a jerk because he has nothing to hide behind except his / her personal proclivities. But when the religious do the same, we look at the scriptures and try to "understand" where they are coming from and cultural relativism sets in.
As for scientists and other rationalists having offered nothing better in terms of morality and ethics, I do not agree that it is the case. I don't think a serious debate has occurred in the public square. And even if they haven't, do we keep looking back at a flawed model to carry us through life? If my car keeps blowing up after every thousand miles, should I keep going back to the dealer for the same model just because a better car is not yet on the market? Or should I put myself through some inconvenience and try walking?
So is your anger just at our "unpolished" tone and that we haven't yet built the Cadillac of our conviction or do you object that we dare to not belive and wish to seek a better vehicle?
Posted by: Ruchira | Nov 30, 2007 9:54:02 PM
Anon,
You will never find me agreeing that "religion" can be understood as entirely distinct from other cultural forces at work in causation -- that's just not my reading of history. The most florid, horrifying instances of religiosity run amok, from the slaughter of the Cathars ("Kill them all -- God will know His own.") to 9/11, demand to be understood in a more nuanced way if they're to be understood at all. If that were not so, then we could get up a Red State faction right here, and declare that 9/11 was caused by Islam's sway over primitive minds, when it is far likelier that not-so-primitive but quite canny minds used Islam most treacherously to figure forth their own rageful and apocalyptic visions.
I'm not an apologist for religion -- as absurd a position to be in as that of a "foe of religion" -- I'm just a reader of history who tries to avoid the simple-minded in favor of more accurate if less easy answers. Your quotation from PZ Myers shows that, if he is involved in a similar struggle, today was not one of his more victorious days. Because "it" is really not as simple as that.
Now, about society's obligations to children when the adults who raise them fall down on the job of making them smart and free. The day that you and I can disrupt a family for raising superstitious, incurious children is actually the very same day that ardently religious citizens can march in on you and me and and fix us for raising our families Godlessly. The only difference is -- which faction is ascendant? Freedom of religion encompasses the freedom not to be religious, and in a week of teddy-bear floggings and insults to Turkishness, we should be happy and grateful that that is so. Even if the Jehovah's Witness who died needlessly -- we would say -- made strange use of his Constitutionally guaranteed freedoms, they were his, and he was free to misuse them. Where you and I are doubtless in agreement here is that it would be extremely abusive of a child's rights and his young mind to teach him "Creation Science" in school. But that's a whole different legal and moral argument.
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Nov 30, 2007 10:09:17 PM
Ruchira, you and I were writing at the same time.
Don't know about Chris, but I came to this blog later than you, and it may be my personal metaphysics are not yet apparent to all via inference. I am a non-religious person brought up in a non-religious way, but that is not to say I don't believe all kinds of things for which the evidence is highly dubious. At least I know it. And, I went to a Catholic school, which for a time was where a good education could be had in my Bible Belt city. I never became a non-believer by decision or by some other more gradual process -- I just never actually believed most of what I heard under the heading of religion. But I found it extremely interesting, and still do.
It would be very hard to love art and music and literature and yet find religion trivial or offensive or dispensable with. Karen Armstrong -- none too religious herself these days -- wrote about 15 years ago in _A History of God_ that if a human were not called homo sapiens, he might just as easily be called homo religiosus, for God-seeking is what we do. Those who see a vastness, a grandeur and a totality to science are doing it, too -- they are allowing themselves to be borne up by what they find infinitely precious, and they experience awe. They should be careful, then, not to deride the religious experience, for they are in their own way partaking of it whenever they lose the power completely to describe or convey intellectual rapture, whenever they feel like falling to their knees.
My problem with Dawkins -- other than with one or two of his personal characteristics, which are tedious, and which he shares with many other stellar academics -- is his fantasy that his thinking on religion is wholly rational. You don't need to read Dostoyevsky, only to watch "Star Trek," to know that utter rationality is not what humans do. Utter rationality is a construct, along with perfect justice and absolute fairness: we need to strive for these things knowing they will not be achieved, but that in striving our humanity is brought forth in ways that will almost certainly never make us ill with remorse. Dawkins did say something highly, attractively rational in an interview not long ago -- he admitted that the most anyone could ever really be was agnostic. No, he wasn't backing down from his atheism -- just clarifying that sticky point about not being able to prove a negative.
If it sounds like I'm defending religion, I'm defending it on the basis of its being an innate aspect of the human experience, not a whimsy that can be extirpated, and certainly not a strand in the chain of causation that can be teased out and separately blamed for the awful things done in its name. Hideous things have been done in the name of love and in the name of honor, yet no one suggests love and honor should -- and will -- cease to bind or motivate. Who to blame, then? For things go wrong, wrong, wrong when faith and love and honor come into play. When this happens, why do we not blame fear, and greed and vanity? That would locate the problem where it belongs, in our own flawed hearts.
As for cultural relativism -- yes! don't we all bend over backwards trying not to condescend to, and execrate, people or whole cultures we find primitive and harmful. Maybe we're trying to correct the attitude that we associate with colonialism. It's a struggle, seeing people who are not like you, who represent and cleave to things that you hate and perceive as disastrous to them, as nonetheless not worse than you. But it's a struggle we have to be fit for, because, historically, seeing them any other way is a prelude not to helping them but to destroying them.
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Dec 1, 2007 12:27:13 AM
Elatia,
I agree with a lot of what you have to say, but I think that calling religion "an innate aspect of the human experience" is going a little too far.
It seems clear to me that it is perfectly possible to live a completely non-religious life, in the ordinary sense of "religion," from cradle to grave. Many people do. If so, religion can't be called "innate" -- it's not "born into" Homo sapiens like, for example, the capacity for speech.
True, all sorts of emotions and irrational mental functionings are "born into" us, but to call all of them "religion" is to stretch the denotation of the word so far that it loses most of its meaning. Religion, I would say, very roughly, is the belief that there is some sort of supernatural being or beings with magical powers to take care of us and provide miraculous salvation from the ills of life, from diseases to droughts to death itself. In that sense of religion, it is not impossible (in the modern word, with a secular culture available at least in the more favored parts of the world) to live without religion.
True, we humans need the emotional side of life, and all of the art, music, and so on that goes with it, besides "pure reason." But I would argue that what reason can do is make it clear that it is very hard, to say the least, to assert that a Supreme Supernatural Being exists without committing numerous mistakes in reasoning. And many people (perhaps even most people) really don't attach that much importance to avoiding mistakes in reasoning, which is why the belief in the Supreme Being continues to thrive even in this era of science.
What we do with our lives after we reach the conclusion that the existence of a Supreme Being is illogical is what the secular way of life is all about. In other words, atheism to me is a purely theoretical, philosophical matter. I would fully endorse Goethe's saying: "Gray, dear friend, is all theory, and green life's golden tree." If anyone wants to cling to a poetical, artistic sort of religion because it gives their life a meaning they can't do without, be my guest. Just don't try to tell me it's a correct description of reality. I'll trust rationality to give me that.
By the way, it occurred to me the other day, while listening to Bach's B minor Mass, that the close connection that many people want to assert between art and religion is very questionable. What occurred to me was that one can fully appreciate the beauty of Bach's music without the specific words that are usually sung to it. The music would be exactly the same if one substituted some purely Darwinian or Dawkinsian or Hitchinsian text (there's an alarming thought!). Similarly, one could take any Crucifixion painting or Pieta from the Renaissance, etc., and attach a story to it along the lines of "here is a depiction of the sad story of a martyr to the sacred cause of Rational Enlightenment executed by religious fanatics," and it would still be the same painting. (Again, I suppose, a horrible idea. I apologize to art lovers everywhere!)
Posted by: JonJ | Dec 1, 2007 1:36:52 AM
Thank you Elatia for your thoughtful reply.
The mistake here is the all-or-nothing scenario we suspect the other of promoting. Anon explained it quite well in his comment above mine.
The fact actually is that most atheists or rather agnostics, because the former can be a dogma too, do not so much scoff at honor, love, wonder and quirky personal beliefs which can be irrational and can sometimes lead to mayhem. It is attaching those emotions to the workings of an agreed upon mythical presence one can neither prove nor disprove and which then provides a shield for our own gifts, frailties or our crimes, that is troubling.
Humans will never be perfectly rational - that would be quite inhuman. Why then do we need to conceal that by hiding behind the skirts of an imaginary infallible force which gives us the license to couch our irrationality behind the veneer of "rationality?" Perhaps it is the religious who consider irrationality an imperfection. Organized religion is actually a very systematic and "rational" discipline if you leave god out of it. It is about power and control - even if individual religiosity/ spirituality is not. But not much individualism is permitted under conventional religion, is it? Apostasy, heresy and "cultish" tendencies are sins. And all the answers are in the Books.
I doubt also that "rational" automatically means simplistic or lacking nuance - no matter what PZ Myers says. Everyone in fact is not looking for a simplisitic and comforting final answer. Perhaps there is none. May be life is all about wonder, mistakes, missteps and quest. The non-believer is more likely to be at peace with that scenario than the devout for whom the final word came long ago and was set in stone.
I also don't think that rationality is on the ascendency. Perhaps in western Europe and Japan. Even in Europe the collapse of the USSR has led to new found religiosity in eastern Europe. India after independence, under the leadership of rationalists (but dreamers) like Nehru truly wished to follow the secular path. Sectarian distrust and orthodoxy are far greater among the educated urban young than was common during my youth. And what about the middle east? Or even the US? Was wearing one's faith on one's sleeve such a common political, public practice just two or three decades ago? So I don't really know which trend is gaining ground, Messrs. Dawkins, Dennet and Hitchens notwithstanding.
Posted by: Ruchira | Dec 1, 2007 1:47:59 AM
Anon,
I don't know why, but I like you. Let me say here (and as a preface for my response to Ruchira to whom I will respond separately) that I don't agree that it is a simple matter of separating the good and bad parts of what we keep sloppily referring to as "religion." What we are actually referring to is metaphysics, from which no one is free, from which no one can be free. If you think a Dawkinsian worldview escapes the need for metaphysics you aren't reading closely enough. The selfish gene theory, which to this day continues to be the underpinning of all Dawkins' writing, including TGD, is as much mythography as science.
To say that justification for any given idea must be based on evidence is to forget that at the bottom of every idea is a system into which that idea is integrated. There must be a bottom, a foundation, for more complex propositions to rest upon. For Dawkins (and so many others) that fundamental idea is atomism. It's such a major underpinning to modern rational thought that it's hard to see it as a fundamental mythology or metaphysics, but when one examines it systematically, in comparison to other metaphysical schemes, one can begin to consider it as an argument rather than a given, and this is where history, philosophy and anthropology come in handy.
Here I must pause to say there's really no reason for me to try to re-articulate what Elatia has already said so well, except for the improbable chance that the cut of my rhetorical jib is more accessible to you. And I can elaborate on any of these concerns if you wish, but it's late, and I don't want to second guess which parts you'll want to quibble with.
I am not arguing, and would never argue, for an appeal to authority. I am in unconditional support of each individual being the best possible agent of her or his actions. But, as Elatia wrote above, we are, in this culture free to choose our worldview. In the US, in particular, we are encouraged in our founding documents to pursue "happiness," which is not the word I would choose, but it gets the point across that we all must work out personally what shape this might take.
I believe it would be better if Turkey did not prosecute, or persecute, publishers of any book, by Dawkins or anyone. And I believe the Sudanese effort to punish the English schoolteacher who well-meaningly named the teddybear Muhammad is indefensively naive and ignorant to the realities of a global world. But national sovereignty does still count for something, and there is a difference between disapproving of something, and demanding the whole world conform to one's views. As for the JW boy, I'm a subtle shade less comfortable than Elatia with considering an 8th grader the master of his own fate, but if we imagined for a moment that he was safely beyond the age of majority, the question of whether he had the right to live or die on his own terms would become moot. We might consider him a fool, but not a victim. At some point all children become adults, and responsible for themselves. Whether we are first generation atheists, like myself (or Richard Dawkins), half first-generation like Ruchira or JonJ, or 2nd generation like Elatia, we are all beneficiaries of the decision made somewhere along the line to consider for ourselves what is best. If religion was the horrible virus some would cast is as, we'd all be animists like our great-great-great-etc. forebears were. We all, as adults, make our bed and lie in it.
Posted by: Chris Schoen | Dec 1, 2007 3:07:41 AM
Ruchira,
Being an atheist, I assure you have no problem with the atheist point of view. But atheism does not mean anti-religionism, it just means non (Or, I suppose, anti-) theism. In the end I'm probably something of a constructivist-Taoist-panpsychist, whatever that might mean.
You write that "religion as a basis for politics and social justice is an instrument of oppression and curtailment of rights." About which social institution is this not true on some level? Which social institution is immune to exploitation and manipulation? It pleases no one that reads these words that persons in power employ a religious foundation to foment fear and cravenness, but that doesn't make "religion" evil any more than bludgeoning people with hammers makes hammers evil. And we must concede that no small number of so-called rationalists found themselves just as suceptible to manipulation in the wake of 9-11, or the French Revolution, or whatever. As a species, we are overwhelmingly prone to tribal instincts; the fact that the specific profile of these instincts embodies one cultural motif or another should not confuse us over the true nature of these responses.
Your personal experience of Hindu nationalism notwithsranding, I think if you explored the global literature of religion you'd find that atheists have no monopoly on the "non-hypocritical, courageous, ethical and even humorous life style." Examples from every tradition abound--Zen Buddhist, Sufi, Vedanta, Shamanist, Christian, Hebraic, Stoic, Neo-Platonist, animist, rationalist, &c &c. In any walk of life there are generous hearts and small shrivelled ones to be found if one is prepared to penetrate the generalizations. Why are we so quick to cast out James Watson as an apostate of the scientific-rationalist worldview, and so hesitant to embrace any number of wise and noble mystics, whether poets, prophets, or crackpots? What are we so afraid of?
Posted by: Chris Schoen | Dec 1, 2007 3:44:35 AM
Interesting comments all.
It makes me appreciate living in a society that practices (in theory at least) freedom of religion. If America could only add 'silence of religion' to that practice, we'd be just perfect.
Posted by: beajerry | Dec 1, 2007 4:33:18 AM
After a couple of days I’m now about half way through Dawkins’ God Delusion. (Sorry, I know that’s a bit slow but I have to keep my finger on the line and my lips keep moving which is off-putting.) Anyway, I was interested in the statistics involved in Dawkins’ tentative estimate of the number of planets that might support life. He writes: “Suppose it was so improbable as to occur on only one in a billion planets.” Using that same improbability to estimate the likelihood of a birth of a messiah does this mean that we might expect there to have been at least 6 messiahs born during human history? And, given the exponential rise in population, might we assume that at least 4 ½ of them were born during the last 200 years? Further, should we expect 2 ½ of them to be wandering around as we speak?
This causes me some concern particularly where, in Australia where I live, there is a dire shortage of water but in any one of the many thousands of bottle shops* in Oz you can’t move for bottles of cheap wine.
Is this a clue?
* for bottle shop, read off-licence or liquor store
Posted by: Gordon | Dec 1, 2007 4:56:38 PM
Elatia,
I agree that we should take a careful and nuanced view when examining religion, but that doesn't mean that we can't tease out general patterns.
Of course I would want the same standards applied to my own family--again, I don't own my children. (I don't actually have any children.) I'm curious why you say they can "fix" us for raising our children godlessly. In fact, I think a rational outlook leads to a healthier life, and would be eager to prove that in a courtroom. If someone believes that this isn't the case, that it harms my child's mental well-being, then I'd love to see the evidence.
Things don't suddenly become relativistic and arbitrary when we insist on basing our policies and beliefs on evidence.
Chris,
I strongly disagree with your comments on "metaphysical foundation", but we've argued this at length in other threads and I'm not interested in restarting it here. However, there was an article a few weeks ago about this very thing, "Taking Science on Faith" by Paul Davies:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/24/opinion/24davies.html
I think that is roughly your position, while my rebuttal is stated eloquently by many:
http://www.edge.org/discourse/science_faith.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/27/opinion/l27science.html
I hope this provides some insight.
Posted by: anon | Dec 2, 2007 12:38:40 AM
Adding to Anon's comment. The hubris and arrogance of individual scientists notwithstanding, science has in place the best system of checks and balances which transcend geographic as well as cultural boundaries. (Wish our government could emulate even a fraction of that practice.) Not that good science does not occasionally fall by the wayside and pseudo science does not gain prominence. But these are rare cases and nothing exposes fraud, deceit and sloppiness better than rigorous peer review. We all shake our heads every time a drug is recalled and the results of a longstanding study is overturned. In fact it should actually be reassuring that scientific findings are under ongoing scrutiny and review.
When was the last time that a church, temple or mosque issued a retraction, revision or recall?
Posted by: Ruchira | Dec 2, 2007 12:58:52 AM
Anon,
I think we had a miscommunication. You wrote:
"Of course I would want the same standards applied to my own family--again, I don't own my children... I'm curious why you say they can 'fix' us for raising our children godlessly. In fact, I think a rational outlook leads to a healthier life, and would be eager to prove that in a courtroom. If someone believes that this isn't the case, that it harms my child's mental well-being, then I'd love to see the evidence."
My point was that a government that would police how we raised children into the intimate reaches of the mind, and demand of a family that a certain philosophical orientation -- whether rationalism and music camp or astrology along with compulsory marijuana use -- be programmed into child rearing, is a government that over-reaches. Once you do away with certain freedoms -- of speech, of religion, including the freedom to practice no religion -- you may be the one who ceases to hear speech that is odious to your ears, you may be spared the sight of children raised in ways that are hateful to you, OR a man who feels exactly the opposite from you about what words should never be said or child-raising ideas implemented may be the one whose agenda is served. The point is, freedom is drastically reduced, and your values cannot always be ascendant. If today you can legally insist that your erring neighbor raise his child as a secular humanist, and call the police if he does not, then tomorrow it could be just exactly the other way around.
What I meant by "fixing" you and me for how we might godlessly raise our children -- it was a grim joke, along the lines of our "fixing" other families who displease us. If you don't want a Wahhabist legally coming after you for neglecting your children's spiritual life, then you should be very uncomfortable hoping to go after him for dwarfing his children's intellectual life. Society is always moving between progressive and conservative trends and ideas. Freedom of speech, religion and association is your best defense against persecution -- whoever you are, whatever you stand for.
Anyone who cares whether children are being intellectually badly served, their futures and their mental liberties compromised, should look at what a mess our schools are. There, they will see young people who have been throw into boiling oil -- so to speak. Save those children, why not?
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Dec 2, 2007 1:51:43 AM
One would only hope Ruchira, but the volumes of books that could be filled with Science, once embraced, reviewed and accepted and fully integrated into society that is now known to be dangerous and frequently fatal claptrap might outweigh the worlds store of Holy Writ.
A quite recent example, to put the lie to the notion that these things are now behind us, was the theory of Eugenics (if some of you still hold to it, you are wise to keep silent). At the time, it was widely embraced in the scientific community. Popular Magazines and Peer Reviewed Journals both acclaimed its revolutionary findings and its grand promise for a brighter future for mankind.
Per anon's hopes for our future, some nations started removing children from their parent's control so that they could more fully integrate the wonderful new ideas without distortion from superstition and unacceptable mythologies.
In this country, no expense was spared to propagate the practices called for into those segments of society the proponents saw as most in need of their services. New medical techniques greatly increased the safety and efficiency of the remedy and the convenience and personal benefits were loudly acclaimed.
I don't recall seeing a retraction from "Science," but I do know millions of people were murdered in an attempt to fulfill the promise of this theory and many millions more died putting a stop to it. I know that even today, in this country, the intent of its practitioners is still being fulfilled largely unchanged as evidenced by the ethnic identities of those groups who are most encouraged to benefit from the promises of abortion.
Posted by: Carlos | Dec 2, 2007 10:21:43 AM
Carlos -
1. On eugenics and pseudoscience, I don't see what there is for a scientist to 'retract' here regarding the idea of eugenics itself. The idea that we can change the traits of humanity probably isn't pseudoscience. Do you seriously doubt that it's possible to make people more musical or less prone to heart disease or better at doing calculus in their heads? Science doesn't become pseudoscience merely because its ethical implications may be troubling. With the recent advances in genetics, I suspect we're soon going to be able to do all sorts of weird and wonderful things to the body and mind of man.
2. Regarding abortion and race, have you considered that rates of contraception usage might happen to vary by ethnicity as well? Indeed, google reveals that they do. Why on earth would you want the CDC to formulate policy in ignorance of such data?
Posted by: D | Dec 2, 2007 10:58:41 AM
Thank you for that link, D. It would have better served my purposes had I thought it through.
Says there that Black women are nearly twice as likely to use sterilization as a birth control method than another
kindtype, with Hispanic women 30% more likely to follow the same course.Chart
Doubtless the acolytes of St. Sanger couldn't be more pleased.
Posted by: Carlos | Dec 2, 2007 11:17:31 AM
"With the recent advances in genetics, I suspect we're soon going to be able to do all sorts of weird and wonderful things to the body and mind of man."
Spoken like a true Fordian.
Posted by: Carlos | Dec 2, 2007 11:25:14 AM
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