1. Ben Stein 1, Yoko Ono 0 in 'Expelled' copyright spat

Comment #188113 by Santi Tafarella on June 3, 2008 at 8:32 am

Border Collie:

I strongly disagree with you. There are many reasons to a see a film. One is to gain information. I intend to purchase the film when it comes out on DVD because I am interested in propaganda studies. I don't like Leni Reifenstahl's politics in the "Triumph of the Will"--but I have it on DVD. You need to know your opposition, and learn from what they are doing. In this case, the film's financial success will not be made or broken by a small group of agnostics/atheists who might be curious to see the film, but by the large group of fundamentalist Christians who might (or might not) flock to it. I hope that agnostics/atheists don't get into a group mentality similar to the far right regarding a Michael Moore film. Get out of your moral bubble of rectitude and see what the other side is saying.

2. Ben Stein 1, Yoko Ono 0 in 'Expelled' copyright spat

Comment #188098 by Santi Tafarella on June 3, 2008 at 8:17 am

When all of us argued and carried on about this last month I said that the way "Expelled" used "Imagine" was fair use and, though we don't like the film's content, it would be unfortunate if the court ruled against the film. We, as agnostics/atheists like to make films too, and "quote" religious images and music and voices to put commentary around. In an electronic age, you need to be able to take snippets from others and use them, otherwise you cannot have a vigorous debate. This is a victory for free speech in an electronic age. A loss here would have meant that corporations and megachurches could censor films by suing filmmakers that mock them or use images from their buildings.

3. The Child Preachers

Comment #164965 by Santi Tafarella on April 20, 2008 at 10:26 pm

MorituriMax,

I think that everything you say above is valid, but I'm just trying to make a straightforward argument made long ago by Kant: You ultimately can't predict the outcome of your actions.

In relation to kids, it means that it is not clear how a piece of information is going to roll around in a kid's head and shape them ten years from now. I think this is why the state should be reluctant to presume that it can direct the lives of children any better than parents.

I'm raising my kids secular, and sending one of them to a secular private school next year, but who knows how that will play out in their psyches.

After the Soviet Union collapsed, my understanding is that a lot of Russians immediately started practicing religion openly again.

And thirty five hundred years ago, the moment the monotheist Pharoah Akhenaten died, the people rapidly returned to their polytheistic practices.

I guess I'm calling into question whether there are easy linear, and highly predictable results, from social conditioning.

4. The Child Preachers

Comment #164444 by Santi Tafarella on April 20, 2008 at 9:09 am

Corylus:

The book, "Studying Poetry," that you recommended, I ordered from Amazon. Thanks for the help on the Blake/Watts connection.

5. The Child Preachers

Comment #164418 by Santi Tafarella on April 20, 2008 at 8:27 am

One additional thought on the child preachers. Who would you all bet has a more economically successful adult life: the African American child preacher, or an African American child, perhaps living next door to him, who spends time after school watching television?

My bet would be with the child preacher--and this is something we have to take into account. Fundamentalist religion, despite its overtly noxious surface message, may have great evolutionary advantage in the sense that it gives a child a space to practice social interaction and intellectual and social skills that are quite frankly, invaluable to human development.

Public speaking, public reasoning, a sense of how to sell things, and how business works (such as when to ask for money, and how to count it!). In short, these kids are getting an education.

And not just any education--they are getting an extraordinary classical education--in the sense that they are learning rhetoric and immersing themselves in the cadences of a classic text.

As they mature, surely they'll move on, if not completely, then to some extent. Everybody works out their own identity with the contingencies of existence that are put upon them.

I just think that we are better off living in a pluralist society, as opposed to one minutely directed by the state--secular or religious. I'm a liberal, okay?

One more example: Is this child abuse? A child is raised by an indulgent, very rich family. The child's every narcissistic need is met. They have four wide screen TVs in their bedroom, the best computers, and they are homeschooled. They are never asked to make anything of themselves. As adults, they live on a trust fund, and party nihilistically, and then, out of despair at the meaninglessness of life, get born again--and give all their money to building a fundamentalist megachurch.

I mean, should the state have taken this kid away from his parents? In other words, there are lots of ways that parents can screw up children.

6. The Child Preachers

Comment #164404 by Santi Tafarella on April 20, 2008 at 8:05 am

Morituri Max,

Likewise, an atheist family, or a secular state, may breed religious fanatics. I think that human beings are always moving toward the transcendent at some level, and always feeling empty and unfulfilled. This is probably part of our evolutionary heritage--stasis and being confused is death; restlessness and disatisfaction leads to greater life and holistic sense.

Thus we should not underestimate the effects that being raised in secular or atheist families have on a child's sense of "something missing", and the subsequent vulnerability of children to religious messages, especially ones that express great certainty. Human beings hate to live in a space of ambiguity, freedom, and doubt--they want certainty and someone to tell them what to believe. This is Dostoevsky's "Grand Inquisitor." It is the rare soul indeed who can function constantly, and with patience in the realm of existential freedom and "not knowing" things (ala Socrates).

7. The Child Preachers

Comment #164398 by Santi Tafarella on April 20, 2008 at 7:52 am

MorituriMax,

I agree with you that there is a North Korea quality to isolationist fundamentalist culture. I tuned into a fundamentalist radio station for about 20 minutes yesterday and was so depressed by the anti-gay madness and gross superstition that I could barely listen to it. The minister blamed the fires in California last year on God's judgment upon California for its tolerance of homosexuality and its attacks on homeschooling. It was really cultish and childish talk, and I wondered if the guy speaking had kids.

But then I think of how many people in the world have nutty parents, and survive them. A very ancient example is the Egytian King Tutankaten. His dad, Akhenaten, was history's first monotheist, and Akhenaten forced his whole kingdom to worship Aten, the sun god. Tutankaten was raised in this extreme environment, but when his dad died and he came to power, he changed his name to Tutankamen (losing the aten), and let people have polytheistic religious freedom again. In other words, a monotheist may end up raising a pluralist who has learned a good lesson from his or her parents' fanaticism.

8. The Child Preachers

Comment #163934 by Santi Tafarella on April 19, 2008 at 10:02 am

Podaar--

By the picture, I thought you were about thirty. My daughters have aged me about 10 years. Your kids and grandkids seem to be transforming you into Dorian Grey. Do you have a painting in a closet somewhere that's getting old for you?

9. The Child Preachers

Comment #163920 by Santi Tafarella on April 19, 2008 at 9:33 am

Podaar,

To finish the thought from my previous post: I would not choose any of the contingencies of my existence (loss of mom, born-again hell trip at 15 etc.)--but they are part of the grist for the mill of constructing my persona. The loss of my mother has given me an acute lifelong sensibility of the transiency of existence, and I devoured the King James language of the Bible as a kid--which led me to Shakespeare, and poetry--and now I teach college English. Would I have, in retrospect, wanted the state to remove me from my religious encounter for my own good? Not on your life. I learned more about human nature, and terror, and culture, and rhetoric by being (briefly) an evangelical, than I could have ever learned from just reading about it. I know religion from the inside, and it deepened my humanity, and made me a bit less judgmental of religious people than I might otherwise have been. But I wouldn't want to go through it again.

By the way, I have two daughters who look to be close to your daughter's age--mine are 2 and 4.

10. The Child Preachers

Comment #163914 by Santi Tafarella on April 19, 2008 at 9:20 am

Podaar,

I think that indoctrinating children is overwhelmingly harmful--it injects a metaphorical poison into the child's bloodstream to which she has to process. Too much toxin might well kill somebody. That includes Blake, and Marjoe, and you and I.

Not to get too personal, but I lost my mom to leukemia when I was five--it was my grandmother who brought me to Kentucky to visit relatives when I was six--and where I put on the dirty-joke freak show. As a teenager, I got born again and went to church with friends. By the time I was twenty and in college I had dropped the religion-trip and had processed a great deal of psychological trauma--and survived it all. What I'm saying is that nobody escapes a similar tale of woe--if your parents don't "fuck you up" (as the Philip Larkin poem puts it), nature will, or a bad social institution will get you, at least for awhile. Innocence will be lost in some form through some fashion, and you'll have to wrestle your way into a clearing. The state cannot predict how the contingencies of each individual's life will play out, and so, in my view, the state should be extremely reluctant to interfere with the way a parent raises their children. I know there are extreme cases of abuse, and they have to be dealt with by the state, and I agree that child preachers--especially the kid at the abortion clinic--is drawing very close to an intolerable line. But Marjoe, and the African American teen, and the girl-artist described in the audio, for me, are just working with the contingencies of their peculiar existences.

11. The Child Preachers

Comment #163899 by Santi Tafarella on April 19, 2008 at 9:04 am

Corylus,

You said: "If we have enough sensitivity to understand art, then we should have enough sensitivity to do without it in a heartbeat, if it means that people (especially children) are saved from harm. I hope you agree with that."

You make a very good point--I'll have to think about that.

BUT I think that establishing harm here is very difficult, indeed. The mere fact that a thought might terrify a child might not constitute harm in the long run--and may actually lead a child into the contemplation of terror as such, and to a deeper understanding of parents, and the world, and the way the world works, as the child matures.

It's never pleasant to be conned or terrified--it is pleasant, indeed, to wake up to the nature of a con or terror, and to find oneself on the other shore.

Marjoe, for example, thought through his experience, and even married the hot actress Candy Clark. That's not a terrible way to land.

12. The Child Preachers

Comment #163868 by Santi Tafarella on April 19, 2008 at 8:11 am

I'd like to offer a brief anecdote from my own childhood. My mother's side of the family lived in Kentucky, and I had an older cousin who used to teach me dirty jokes. I was about six years old, and when we were visiting my relatives, my grandmother propped me up on the kitchen sink, gathered my relatives around, and they uproariously howled and laughed as I entertained the adults with the most vile, filthy jokes you can imagine. In retrospect, it might seem like child abuse, but I don't remember it that way. I don't think it hurt me, and I liked the attention, and I liked to tell jokes. There was a circus freak quality to it--a little kid with a foul mouth. But I loved to tell stories, and cut up for an audience, and it had a role in my development of a persona. The content of the jokes proved less important than the skills and social interaction that facilitated the telling. I think that this is largely what is going on with the kiddie preachers/artists here.

Marjoe is another example. Marjoe was a cad as an adult, but there's no evidence that I know of that his childhood damaged him--he seemed like a pretty stable, sensible adult, with a gift for bullshitting and good old American salesmanship. He seems (at least in the documentary about him) to have been able to articulate his childhood experience well, without any particular resentment. And I think he actually became an actor. Didn't he have a role in the classic 70s disaster film, "Earthquake"?

13. The Child Preachers

Comment #163860 by Santi Tafarella on April 19, 2008 at 7:46 am

Corylus,

Thank you so much for sharing that contrast between Blake and the Watts hymnal--that was a fascinating aspect to Blake's poetry that I've never heard before. I'll have to research that--I'm a big Blake fan. If you have a book to refer me to, I'd be much obliged.

As for the larger issue, doesn't the fact that Blake uses the Watts hymnal as a foil for his own creative genius make my point? Likewise, Sharon Olds?

In other words, aren't the bindings and loosings (to use Blakean language) of the circumstances of our birth and upbringing the way all of us generate persona? If there are no resistances, no threats to the psyche--how does one wrestle out an identity? In other words, Blake's Swedenborgianism was the foil for his development, as was the Watts hymnal for Olds, as is the black church for the boy featured in the audio.

I just question the presumption that the state can predict how a thought--such as hell--taught to a child, might play out in the development of the child. To remove a child from its parents on the grounds that "hell" is a bad concept to teach a child is, at least to me, dubious. Obviously, in Blake's case, the Watts hymnal and Christianity functioned to make Blake into an iconoclast, and in many senses an anti-Christian (see his proverbs from hell). We wouldn't be better off culturally, and Blake wouldn't have been better off in his development, if he were removed from the stresses of his religious environment.

I don't deny the damaging potential of religion to the psyche--what I question is the state's ability to direct culture in ways that result in better outcomes than the pluralistic free-for-all that we have in western democracies.

14. The Child Preachers

Comment #163842 by Santi Tafarella on April 19, 2008 at 6:54 am

Geoff,

One more quick thought, then I'll shut up and see what others have to say.

As to "Little Miss Sunshine," I wouldn't ban such competitions--even though I find them personally repugnant and would not put either of my daughters in a pageant.

I also wouldn't ban cheer leading classes--even though it reinforces sexual stereotypes.

I'm wondering to what degree you value cultural freedom--and how you would enforce bans on cultural practices. Would you jail parents who signed their kids up for a "Little Miss Sunshine" competition, or who taught their kids to fear hell?

15. The Child Preachers

Comment #163840 by Santi Tafarella on April 19, 2008 at 6:42 am

Irate atheist,

Sorry for throwing out four posts in a row, but I feel I should respond to your comment about Dostoevsky as someone who was just writing "fiction."

I suppose you are trying to be funny, right? You don't seriously believe that great poets and novelists have nothing to add to our reflection upon the human condition--or do you?

Is Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" just a book?

Does Shakespeare's Caliban in "The Tempest" teach us nothing about how it feels, and what it means, to be an outsider?

And do Dostoevsky's meditations on freedom really offer us nothing nutritious for our minds to feed on?

Is it really your position that art and fiction cannot inform the sensibility?

16. The Child Preachers

Comment #163837 by Santi Tafarella on April 19, 2008 at 6:21 am

And permit me to throw in one more quick thought. How is standing up in a church and giving a sermon different from standing up in a church and singing a couple of religious songs to a congregation?

What if the African American boy had an extraordinary singing voice, and started giving concerts at his church? Is this child abuse?

One of my favorite poets is Sharon Olds. She is caustic, sexually graphic, often implicitly anti-religious, and thoroughly secular, in her poetic orientation. But she attributes her gifts as a poet to the Watts hymnal and her saturation as a little girl in its quatrains. Were her parents abusing her by exposing her in church to all that heaven and hell Bible stuff in the hymnal at a young age?

17. The Child Preachers

Comment #163834 by Santi Tafarella on April 19, 2008 at 6:12 am

As for the African American fourteen year old who preaches in his mother's church--I also think I'm on strong ground to say that this is not child abuse. Please keep in my mind that we do not live in a utopia, and that the "abuse" needs to be compared to its alternatives. I can imagine far worse fates for African American male teens than learning by practice the cadences of oratory within the confines of a black church.

Please recall that Western education once centered on rhetoric--going back to the Greeks and Romans. This young fellow is receiving an extraordinary classical education--learning how to craft messages and persuade audiences.

We end up sounding more ignorant than we imagine when we mock this genre of Western persona because it arrives in religious garb.

And please note the mother's aspiration for her child--that he might follow in the footsteps of King and Andrew Young--not Louis Farrakhan. And the evangelical hell message that the boy practices, I'd ask you to notice, is balanced with messages of love and community. When he matures, he may well abandon the harsher aspects of his religious upbringing and prove to be a real asset to his nation as a politician, an actor, or a professor with an engaging class instruction style.

18. The Child Preachers

Comment #163827 by Santi Tafarella on April 19, 2008 at 5:58 am

I'm on weakest ground with regard to the abortion clinic boy. If I were a sheriff, would I take the child into protective custody? I'd have to think about that.

I think I'm on strong ground, however, when it comes to the teen artist girl who "talks to god" and makes religious art, and whose parents encourage her mystic visions. The British narrator/reporter, in his flat, persona-less affect, struck me as thoroughly obtuse when it came to her. It's startling to hear a BRIT talk about a young artist who talks to God as "weird"--as if he's never read BLAKE! This is where, in my view, atheism misses the forest for the trees. Artists, especially gifted ones, are going to always be drawn to the sacred archetypal--and see the ghost of a flea, and their brothers' spirit leave their bodies at death--and think that god talks to them. To call parents who encourage their artistically gifted children's mystic visions as child abuse is to exhibit a breathtaking ignorance of Western artistic tradition and persona.

19. The Child Preachers

Comment #163727 by Santi Tafarella on April 18, 2008 at 10:13 pm

Styrer,

Sorry for not responding directly to your question. I'll do so now. I do think it is yucky and abusive to scare children with damnation. It's a very ugly trip to put on anyone, young or old.

BUT I am of two minds as to whether the state should ever intervene on this level. I think we should exercise extreme caution with regard to interfering with the way parents raise their children--even if they raise them in ways that we surmise to be psychologically harmful.

I also think that children are more resilient than we tend to give them credit for, and that adolescents need foils to wrestle against to come to maturity. If one is raised in a strict fundamentalist home one has a very interesting language to wrestle with as an adult, and to work oneself out of. That process of struggle with one's parents will not go away when the state becomes the parent. Then young people will wrestle against the state. You've read Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground, I presume. Dostoevsky's underground man wrestles his way to freedom. It is the old Oedipal overcoming of one's parents, and nobody escapes this process unscathed. Jacob has to wrestle the angel.

20. The Child Preachers

Comment #163714 by Santi Tafarella on April 18, 2008 at 9:09 pm

Styrer,
Okay. I listened. My initial position on this--it's weird, but it ain't abuse. Their childhood is not being stolen from them. Maybe some of the things that the rest of you say in response will change my mind, but for the moment, hear me out.

First, the kids are probably engaging in this behavior no more than a couple of times a week--and what they are getting is actually quite extraordinary. They are learning the cadences of oral speech, and how to make rhythm with language, and to structure rhetorical arguments, and tell good stories. They're also cultivating their intuitions about how to persuade audiences. This is no worse than a set of skills you might learn from doing another childhood activity, such as learning to play a guitar.

And think of how much better their reading skills are than the average adult, and how their cultural literacy is enhanced by knowing the Bible so well at a young age. The Bible, afterall, is one of the great texts of Western Civilization, and they've absorbed it. When they're adults their views will mature, and they'll decide what to do with their childhood experiences (become a novelist, a preacher, a politician, a saleman, a rhetorician, an English professor).

The kids are also learning how to project a persona--the great innovation of Western culture.

Anyway, this is my initial position.
Rip away.

21. The Child Preachers

Comment #163661 by Santi Tafarella on April 18, 2008 at 6:15 pm

Styrer,

I am at a computer without a speaker, so I cannot (at this moment) hear the audio. I'll listen later tonight. But while I'm waiting, what rights do you think parents should have? What constitutes indoctrination, in your view? Can parents teach their children about hell--or is that abuse?

I think teaching a child about hell is abusive, but I wouldn't take children from parents who teach their children about hell--or threaten them with hell.

Would you?

Also, I may be jumping the gun on the audio before I've heard it, but I surmise that there are some parents turning their eight year olds into little fire-breathing preachers. Is that the gist? And if so, would you also prevent parents from putting their little girls in beauty contests ala "Little Miss Sunshine?"

22. Yoko Ono, Filmmakers Caught in 'Expelled' Flap

Comment #163657 by Santi Tafarella on April 18, 2008 at 6:06 pm

phil rimmer and morituri max:

first, there's nothing i would quarrel with in regard to phil rimmmer's last post.

But I'm also curious about phil's name: Is that your real name, or are you a porn star?

As for morituri max: I'm not asking that you give the movie the benefit of any doubt--I don't think you should go easy on it. Maybe you shouldn't even see it. I'll just say that I will when it comes out on DVD, but strictly because I'm interested in propaganda and rhetorical studies.

Should we carry this conversation over to another more current article? I was thinking of commenting on the child preacher--or is there another topic you would rather go to?

I'm happy to keep talking if anyone still wants to talk to me.

23. Yoko Ono, Filmmakers Caught in 'Expelled' Flap

Comment #163653 by Santi Tafarella on April 18, 2008 at 5:54 pm

Mesomodel:

I agree with everything in your last post: IDers and creationists are mendacious. It can feel like arguing with flat earthers.

I can respect your impatience with stupidity, and maybe that's the function of these posts--to safely let off steam and say, "Well, isn't this cultural phenomenon BS! And isn't it refreshing to clear the air and say so!"

But I do think that however cathartic such gestures are, there is a danger of impatience lapsing into demonization of the "other."

I do notice quite a few Hitler analogies floating around the posts, and metaphors of elimination.

I also think there is a totalitarian temptation that accompanies all such rhetoric: "If religion is bad, then the world would be better off without it, and so we should set ourselves the task of eliminating it."

Perhaps we should carry our discussion over to a more recent article--the one on child preachers--since this is bound to generate posts calling for the state to intervene in parenting.

24. Yoko Ono, Filmmakers Caught in 'Expelled' Flap

Comment #163573 by Santi Tafarella on April 18, 2008 at 2:32 pm

Morituri Max,

I do think that you're being naive about how a "party line" can be reinforced in a group without there being any explicit "party rules."

Threatening people with being blocked as trolls, using scatalogical words to dismiss the opinions of others, declaring an unwillingness to listen to another, and blatently telling others to shut up--all of these are ways of badgering participants around to an informal consensus. And if you were to go back and look at what was said to me yesterday, numerous people engaged in precisely these gestures toward me.

There is a "culture" evolving around the posts at the Dawkins website, and I think that culture is often veering to the smug, the scatalogical, and the dismissive.

As for the articles that feature at this website, Dawkins and Josh are always the perfect gentlemen--and the articles posted are always interesting and thoughtful. I'm not referring to the website as a whole. I'm referring to the tone of some of the people who post beneath the articles.

I'm an American, and I'm married to a Brit (who took her PhD from the University of Warwick), and I'm not at all quesy about vigorous intellectual give and take. When my wife and I go to England each year we tend to be stupified by the degree of cave-in in England with regard to political correctness (closing plays that offend Muslims or Christians etc.).

I'm not asking people to be unusually polite on this site. I'm asking some of the posters to respond more thoughtfully and with less of a knee-jerk ideological reaction to anyone who veers from the point of view that they surmise to be the "right" one for atheists to take.

And I'm not trying myself to police the scatalogical on this site, but I'm exercising my turn in talking here to point it out as being a display of ignorance and to express my opinion that it is crass and unbefitting of a movement whose culture is presumably dedicated to understanding and reason.

25. Yoko Ono, Filmmakers Caught in 'Expelled' Flap

Comment #163543 by Santi Tafarella on April 18, 2008 at 1:44 pm

phil rimmer,
First, let me say that I respect professor mesomodel, and see nothing in his most recent post that I would quarrel with, and I can only speak for myself: a year from now I'll probably get the movie on DVD. I'm fascinated by propaganda, and I think it will be interesting on that level.

As for an example of something an IDer might say that I would find interesting, I may end up showing my ignorance here (I teach English not Science), but the fine tuning of the laws of the universe do seem to be a lucky coincidence indeed for us, and I think that the most reasonable way to account for this good luck is to postulate a multiple universe hypothesis. The physicist who postulates this (if I recall correctly, his name is Lee Strobel) suggests that if the universe spawns other universes with different physical laws, then our existence was inevitable at some point because all possible variable would have been tried sooner or later. But it is at this point that the religious believer can say, "Where's your experimental evidence for this?" And I think there is none--it is just a very good suggestion for explaining something that we don't understand well at this point.

A second example is the origin of life itself. Creationists have long laid down a heavy critique upon the primodial soup theory of life's origins, and if current research is any indication, scientists are now looking ever more intently at the possibility that life first evolved, not in a warm, watery environment, but in an icy environment (where ice crystals function as proto-cellular walls). This ice theory has been gaining ground for precisely the reason that creationists have always critiqued--warm liquid environments don't seem to generate sufficiently complex amino acids. Again, I'm not a scientist, but I would ask you to google the ice origin of life hypothesis and see if you can read about it.

Notice that creationists (in my two examples) are only half right--their hypotheses are not (in my view) the correct one, but in the part where they are right, it might do well to at least think about what they are saying.

I've always liked this quote (from, I believe, Tillich): "Why is there something when there might have been nothing?"

It is stupifying to think about, and a little humility on this score might suit us better. As Dennett has said in one of his books (and I'm just summarizing here): If we are alone in the universe, that is stupifying to contemplate, and if we are not alone, that is stupifying to contemplate.

I would say the same thing about the existence (or non-existence) of God.

26. Yoko Ono, Filmmakers Caught in 'Expelled' Flap

Comment #163423 by Santi Tafarella on April 18, 2008 at 10:36 am

podaar,
I'm not talking about mayors and state legislators, I'm talking about those on the skeptical side of things--going to see things and reading the books on the other side. If a skeptic becomes a non-skeptical religious believer by stepping over, and looking in a vulnerable way, at opposing arguments, then from my perspective they aren't all that skeptical to start with--if they can be conned by a film or religious book that easily.

But I'm just suggesting that people who call themselves devoted skeptics or atheists may try to insulate themselves in the skeptical community in the same way that Christians insulate themselves in religious communities. Based on the postings I see on this site, there are more than a few people commenting about things in a way that suggests to me that they simply have no tolerance for nuance, or really looking at things calmly and without scatalogical offhand dismissiveness.

27. Yoko Ono, Filmmakers Caught in 'Expelled' Flap

Comment #163408 by Santi Tafarella on April 18, 2008 at 10:08 am

Geoff,
I applaud your openness to read the flea books. I've read McGrath's material. He is, afterall, an academic at Oxford, and a mostly sincere fellow. I think that most of his arguments are disengenuous, but I think I make a decision about reading based on how serious the writer is, and where he or she teaches. I dilike Dembsky, for example, but he is smart. And if you're going to get a good counterargument, you'll probably get it from him.
In my experience with reading intellectual defenders of religion, I think the two most high-powered people on the other side are Alvin Plantinga and NT Wright. I've read both of them, found them wanting, but if you really want to hear the other side with its best possible arguments out there, those are the two writers you'll want to read.
As for the film, again I think that it is interesting for the study of propaganda, not because it is a place to encounter in-depth argumentation. It's like watching FOX news and noticing how the techniques being used to cast doubt and insinuation on Obama--it's an interesting exercise in media evaluation.

28. Yoko Ono, Filmmakers Caught in 'Expelled' Flap

Comment #163379 by Santi Tafarella on April 18, 2008 at 9:05 am

AllenW,
Oh, and I'm not a shill for the film. I can respect people's thought that they don't want to pay to see it (out of principle), and my guess, based on the reviews I've seen at Panda's Thumb etc, is that the film is pretty bad. But I tend to make up my own mind about films and books, and I tend to buy them without much compunction about whether I'm putting money into enemy hands. I just don't have that degree of Manichean worry about intellectual argument, and even propaganda. People who are sucked in by propaganda deserve to be sucked in by propaganda, but I find propaganda study fascinating in itself. That, for me, is the reason to see the film--as an exercise in seeing how the film manipulates an audience.

As for the NOVA video, I've watched it a couple of times, and am showing it at a Darwin celebration event at my college next year (in honor of Darwin's 200th birthday). So yes, I like the NOVA video a great deal, and of course understand that ID and the Discovery Institute are propaganda purveyors.

I often think that William Dembsky would make a good Othello in a Shakespeare production.

Having said that, I read the other side's books, and see their propaganda films, because they do actually stimulate thought, and function as a foil to my own ideas. And some of them, however irritating or however bad you might think their motives are, sometimes say interesting things, and occasionally--and I stress the word occasionally--make a worthwhile observation.

I just think that the skeptic community should take, as a role model, people like Michael Shermer, who actually listens carefully and respectfully to his opponents, and works with nuance, as when he blurbed for D'nesh D'susa's book on Christianity. I personally can't stand D'susa, but I like to see Shermer's openness and willingness to talk without demonizing or dismissing people out of hand.

29. Yoko Ono, Filmmakers Caught in 'Expelled' Flap

Comment #163370 by Santi Tafarella on April 18, 2008 at 8:46 am

AllanW,
I assume that you're not Allan Watts--he's been dead for quite a few years, yes? Perhaps you are his reincarnation (that's a compliment, by the way)?

In any event, I'm okay with being sassed, but I would ask you to check and see how many people yesterday, in a hostile fashion, threatened to get my account blocked for trolling, or said they wouldn't listen to me, or told me to shut up, or addressed me with scatalogical language. I understand--it's the internet, and this is how they behave on the fundamentalist sites, and the far right and left political sites, so why should I be surprised that the Dawkins site should be different?

Of course, the reason I might expect something different is because I assume that there is actually something special about thoughtful nonbelievers. Maybe I'm wrong about this. Every movement, I suppose, attracts "enthusiasts" of the dogmatic persuasion. As Christopher Hitchens says, you can't always choose your allies.

But I think it's rather small of you to not simply admit that you were wrong to treat a fellow skeptic to such an obnoxious display of contempt. It really is not in accord with our movement to be impatient with nuance. Also, scatalogical dismissal is not an argument. All that I tried to do yesterday is introduce a bit of doubt and nuance into a discussion that seemed, at least to me, a bit hyterical and one-sided.

30. Yoko Ono, Filmmakers Caught in 'Expelled' Flap

Comment #163046 by Santi Tafarella on April 17, 2008 at 10:29 pm

Christopher Davis,

Thanks for the bit of support--I felt pretty put upon, trying to express my opinion on this site today. I usually don't post comments, but I've followed the website since its inception--i think it is one of the best on the web.

But man, there are a lot of smug, impatient, intolerant people posting here, quick to flame you with scatological vindictiveness if you don't tow the party line. I'm pretty shocked. Perhaps I'm naive, thinking a site devoted to free thinking attracts, well, free thinkers.

I feel like I've had to establish my "street cred" at every turn--that yes, a free thinking agnostic of 25 years can also think that it's ok to quote Imagine in a film, that maybe people should see the film, that maybe, just maybe, it might make an important point or two. The vitriol these very suggestions aroused is stupifying to me. People started imagining that I must be a troll--and detected all sorts of subtle evidence of unorthodoxy toward the atheist cause.

Two other things I noticed: People are obsessed with metaphors of elimination--everything is "BS" and crap that need to be eliminated, pushed down, cleansed from the system. IDers are repugnant. I would say that there is a lot of soft bigotry going on here, except that it doesn't seem all that soft.

The glee that maybe Yoko Ono would sue and stop the film from getting into theaters struck me as creepy. And calls for seeing shades of gray invariably led people to make analogies with the KKK, Nazism, and Hitler: "You wouldn't support a Nazi movie, would you?" etc.

Scatalogical obsession and fascist analogies accompanied by no-nonsense resolve. Is this the kind of person attracted to Dawkins' ideas? Isn't it ironic that people with strong black and white world views are attracted to a writer who, I think it is fair to say, spends a great deal of time opposing fundamentalism?

I think that it's time to turn the tables on those posting at this website who are intolerant of diverse points of view. I, myself, am going to start pushing back. I think it's very unhealthy for the skeptical movement to function in an atmosphere of disrespect and intolerance, and scatological smugness.

31. Yoko Ono, Filmmakers Caught in 'Expelled' Flap

Comment #162997 by Santi Tafarella on April 17, 2008 at 7:40 pm

MPhil,
I like that distinction in your last post--and agree with it. I agree that the gospels are grossly antisemitic in places, as is Paul in 1 Thessalonians.

But I would also suggest that 19th century Social Darwinists translated science (unjustifiably) into a social ideology, and that social ideology set forth judgements about many things (capitalism is good, for example). A misuse of science? Yes. A historical phenomenon to ponder, especially as we think about evolution and social policy in the 21st century, yes again.

Think, for example, of contemporary "evolutionary psychology." There is a good deal of "is" in this field that is tempting to translate into "oughts" (such as sex roles are "natural"). This is the move that I think we have to think very carefully about.

If this particular ID movie provokes public discussion of these issues, and makes us vaguely uncomfortable and irritable, then it can't be all bad. It's always good to be put a little off balance, don't you think?

32. Yoko Ono, Filmmakers Caught in 'Expelled' Flap

Comment #162989 by Santi Tafarella on April 17, 2008 at 7:05 pm

MPhil,

Of course, I agree with you that Darwin is not responsible for Nazi eugenics. There's no simple, linear cause-effect relation between ideas and history. There never is.

One of my favorite evolutionists is Stephen Gould. I saw one of his last talks before he died (at a Cal Tech conference hosted by Michael Shermer). Gould was a lifelong liberal, with strong socialist leanings. Obviously, his beliefs about evolution didn't determine his politics. Evolution does not, logically, lead to any particular beliefs or policies. But this is not to say that people don't use evolution as justification for policies, and sometimes use evolution to convince others of policies. You can call it misuse whenever this happens, but it does happen, and we should think about it.

I think that this whole discussion recalls for me the way that Christians distance their faith from atrocities. "Yes," they say, "Hitler appealed to Christian anti-semitism, but he was mis-using the gospels. The gospels aren't anti-semitic, and true Christians would never hurt Jews."

When we try to keep a long distance between evolution and eugenics, we're engaging in the same gesture. In the case of evolution, I think it is sensible. In the case of Christian anti-semitism, I think it is less sensible, though I can't articulate the distinction to myself at this time.

33. Yoko Ono, Filmmakers Caught in 'Expelled' Flap

Comment #162982 by Santi Tafarella on April 17, 2008 at 6:43 pm

MPhil,
Thanks for giving me a bit of defense. I appreciate your fairness. I don't have a considered opinion (at this point) about the relationship of eugenics and social Darwinism. If someone wants to refer me to an academic book by a historian on the subject, I'd appreciate it. As to the cause of the Holocaust, I think we should not forget the long history of Christian antisemitism in Europe. My initial position is that the Nazis exploited both Christian antisemitism and eugenics, mixed with half-baked notions about the "survival of the fittest" into a toxic racist stew. I'm tentative about all of this--I'm just suggesting that it is not cut and dried. Let's keep talking and thinking.

34. Yoko Ono, Filmmakers Caught in 'Expelled' Flap

Comment #162976 by Santi Tafarella on April 17, 2008 at 6:35 pm

Das Squid,
With all due respect, your jumping the gun on me. Feel free to check my book reviews at Amazon.com. You can see by the dates on the reviews that I've been a non-believer for a long time. Check the Hitchen's "God is not Great" one. Mine is the lead review. I don't have the time or energy to troll or be connected to a movie like Expelled, shilling for it. I think its interesting to talk to fellow non-believers, especially when we don't see eye to eye. I learn something from them. As for all the cussing directed toward me, I'll let the webmaster determine who is behaving in a proper way.

35. Yoko Ono, Filmmakers Caught in 'Expelled' Flap

Comment #162969 by Santi Tafarella on April 17, 2008 at 6:17 pm

Morituri Max,
You may be right. The movie may well be not worth the energy to see. I can respect that. I personally think that it will be crap. I still intend, when it comes out on DVD a year from now, to buy it and give it a look. I bought that stupid Penguin video, too. I was curious to see why religious people liked it. I'm always curious about what the far right is up to. If it's crap, it's crap. If it says things that I find outrageous, absurd, and irritating, so what? Maybe I can show a scene in a class to illustrate a logical fallacy to my students. I just think that the heavy-handed "sue them to stop it!" crowd, and "they'll never get my 8 dollars!" crowd, and the "this is BS!" crowd is acting like, well, fundamentalists.

Why are we, as atheists, so wedded to an implicit orthodoxy, and narrow range of opinion on these posts here at the Dawkins site? Can't we have a little less predictable, and less polemical, discussion?

I take a back seat to no one with regard to my secular and humanist commitments. I've been an unbeliever for a long time. But even you got ugly in your polemics with me: You said that if I can't see it like the rest of you here, "you really have no business even commenting on the film in this forum. Or perhaps next you'll tell us that you don't think the Holocaust happened because that Genius President of Iran has proven it never happened?"

That's a gross ad hominem attack, equating my observations with Ahmadinejad (sp?). That's really ugly. I, of course, would never deny the Holocaust, and just this past year showed "Shoah" at my college as an extracurricular presentation. And yes, I teach at a secular college.

36. Yoko Ono, Filmmakers Caught in 'Expelled' Flap

Comment #162953 by Santi Tafarella on April 17, 2008 at 5:51 pm

Mesomodel,

Once again--and I'm having a hard time understanding this impulse in you--you've dismissed an entire field of historical inquiry as "a horse beaten" too many times, and as "BS." Then you send me to the briefest dismissive article by pz myers, who is not a historian, and who sets up a straw man, that "Darwin led to Hitler," which he then summarily knocks down. I agree that Darwin did not, in some linear and reductionist way, lead to Hitler. That's easy.

BUT this shouldn't constitute the end of the discussion as to how evolution and eugenics interact. Nor should we ignore, because it is uncomfortable to think about, how evolution has been used by social Darwinists in the 19th century. Nor should we end discussion as to the role that social Darwinism has played in Eugenecist circles, both in the United States and in Germany, in the 20th century. Eugenics is a live option in the 21st century, and people who favor it in the future will no doubt make sophisticated appeals to evolution. Evolution and eugenics needs to be thought about, and not summarily dismissed as a question beneath contempt. It does need to be talked about. Maybe the ID movie deals with it in a sensationalist way, or makes outrageous claims about it, but you don't know until you see it. It might be interesting and thought provoking to see this particular religious salvo in a discussion that deserves attention.

37. Yoko Ono, Filmmakers Caught in 'Expelled' Flap

Comment #162935 by Santi Tafarella on April 17, 2008 at 5:24 pm

Aquaria,

John Lennon's song contains explicit religious and political content. In a digital age, of course people should be able to "quote" it, and offer content around it that implicitly or explicitly critiques its message. We live in an era in which the laws surrounding intellectual property need to be relaxed in this regard. Let the filmmakers test the limits, and push these limits, outside court and in court, because they are doing all of us a favor--a favor for free expression.

I do, however, agree that if the film used the Imagine song for merely aesthetic purposes and atmospherics, then it is infringing on the copyright. But this seems to be the opposite of the case. My guess is that the film is using it as an illustration of seductive secular aspiration, and then the film constitutes a critique of that aspiration. Lennon's song has always been a siren anthem for the secular left--and has long been one of my favorite songs. But critiquing it in this way seems to me a fair use that the internet community should support. Why are so many of you chomping at the bit to see Yoko Ono sue in this regard? Sensibly, we shouldn't want such a suit to win.

38. Yoko Ono, Filmmakers Caught in 'Expelled' Flap

Comment #162909 by Santi Tafarella on April 17, 2008 at 4:46 pm

AllanW,

You've made a malicious insinuation about me--suggesting that I'm a troll, and "arse-gravy."

I simply ask you, if you are a fair minded person, to go to Amazon.com and look at the book reviews that I have done over the years. You'll find that I'm an agnostic/atheist who has reviewed positively a number of books by non-believers. My review of Christopher Hitchens' "God is Not Great" is the lead review on that book, and it received over 2000 positive hits. I gave the book five stars and made a strong case for it. I do not attend church. I don't believe in God. When asked, I tell people either that I'm an atheist or an agnostic (depending on my mood). I was an evangelical in my teens, and I have sympathy for evangelical culture, if for no other reason than that so many of my relatives and friends have remained religious, where I have not. I simply believe in being open minded and talking about things in a vulnerable way. I don't think there should be a limus test for acceptable atheist/agnostic discussion. I think that being a contrarian lends itself to the discovery of truth. One of my favorite books of all time is Daniel Dennett's "Freedom Evolves." I'd appreciate an apology.

39. Yoko Ono, Filmmakers Caught in 'Expelled' Flap

Comment #162886 by Santi Tafarella on April 17, 2008 at 4:08 pm

Mesomodel,

You're saying that you are not a skeptic--but an ID-denier. In other words, for you the issue is closed, period. Your mind is made up. On this broad claim, I share your view (ID does not strike me as having any correspondence with the world as it appears to be, and I doubt that there will ever be any evidence that comes in that would change my mind about this).

But does this apply to all ancillary claims made in the film? And if so, how can you know them exactly unless you see the film? For example, the trailers for the film suggest a link between evolution and eugenics, accompanied by provocative fascist images. I find the link overstated, but surely you don't think that there is NO link whatever, historically, between 19th century social Darwinism and the intellectual currents of the 20th, including those in Nazi Germany. It's not a pleasant thing to contemplate, but it is not entirely fallacious to have a discussion about this. And the only place to have this discussion is in the realm of analogy, metaphor, and appeals to historical facts. One can disagree on these matters without being disagreeable. This aspect of the film, it seems to me, deserves open discussion.

And it may well be that a few professors over the years have been discriminated against because of their religious beliefs. It may not be a conspiracy, but it may occur on occasion. And if the film brings some attention to this, then it may serve to right an injustice that may have been done to a few. I've been on my share of hiring committees at the college level, and I can say that biases have to be attended to, and combated, because we are, after all, human beings capable of prejudice. It can't hurt to have this discussion, can it?

40. Yoko Ono, Filmmakers Caught in 'Expelled' Flap

Comment #162830 by Santi Tafarella on April 17, 2008 at 2:12 pm

Mesomodel,
My use of the word "skeptic" seems to have set you off in the same way that the word "bitter" set off Rush Limbaugh. But I was using the word skeptic as a noun (or at least meant to). I was trying to say that the skeptical community should see the film--not that they should go in thinking the film is going to persuade them of the bulk of ID's message. You got on your high horse and proceeded to flog a straw man, then made a flamboyant defense of your commitment to evidence and reason (isn't that ironic?) and moral product purchasing. I noticed, however, that in talking about environmental purchases that you fudged a bit--saying that you avoid products that do not cause "excessive pollution."

As for the ID film, why is this an either/or proposition with you? Can't you concede that you might leave the film with a bit of fresh cultural insight, and maybe even an isolated point or two on which you might conclude, "Maybe in this regard, the makers of the film are on to something that I should stay sensitive to"?

And let's not be coy here--epistemology is a part of reason, and we do not all start with the same epistemological premises. Maybe you disagree, but rhetoric in the public square is also a form of reasoning, though not exactly like that done in scientific journals. Conceptual metaphors, for example, obviously play a role in framing debate, but you can't put metaphors under scientific scrutiny and draw conclusions about which metaphors are superior to others. I think that we have to keep talking to one another, and going to each others' propaganda films.

41. Yoko Ono, Filmmakers Caught in 'Expelled' Flap

Comment #162794 by Santi Tafarella on April 17, 2008 at 1:22 pm

Shaden,
If you have aesthetic issues with a film--I can respect that. Perhaps the film is not your cup-of-tea, or you read a particularly harsh review from a movie critic that you respect. But you are setting up, not an aesthetic preference, but an ideological preference. What's wrong with seeing a movie in which you have substantial intellectual disagreement? isn't there pleasure in seeing views different from your own--and if so, why is it bad to pay a filmmaker for that pleasurable service?

42. Yoko Ono, Filmmakers Caught in 'Expelled' Flap

Comment #162786 by Santi Tafarella on April 17, 2008 at 1:02 pm

Vaal,
I agree with you that most people exposed to creationist propaganda never transcend it intellectually. But what makes you think that if they had never read Duane Gish or seen an ID film at church, that they would have any greater inclination to intellectual things, or science? I read an article recently that said that one in four Americans read NO BOOKS last year, and the average American read no more than 4-7 books a year--most of it popular crap (ramsey cookbooks and Left Behind novels). Just who, exactly, do you imagine is persuaded by evolution? It's the small number of the population that reads and thinks and has the intellectual capacity for reading and thinking. Period. This movie, I agree, confirms prejudices. But don't imagine it's causing any substantial damage. The damage is long past. It's already happened. The film is just a symptom--and thus something worthy of reflection by skeptics. It's like buying a National Inquirer at the grocery store.

43. Yoko Ono, Filmmakers Caught in 'Expelled' Flap

Comment #162778 by Santi Tafarella on April 17, 2008 at 12:49 pm

I'm willing to concede your KKK point. I wouldn't contribute.

BUT I do think that, in this instance, with a mass produced film in which fundamentalists will make or break its financial success, that skeptics should see it and think about it. And perhaps it makes a few good points that you might actually agree with--how do you know if you don't go see it? Why the rigidity--and purity? I suppose that you support numerous evils everyday, from child labor to environmental pollution, just by casually going around walmart and buying a few things. Are you really that fastidious and narcissistic to imagine that your 8 bucks thrown down at a movie is going to make a difference to anything?

And how many times have you turned on the TV to watch a sensationalist news report? Aren't you rewarding the networks every time you watch the advertising that goes with sensationalist news reporting? Or do you leap off the couch, and out of principle, refuse to watch Sean Hannity on the Reverend Wright--or anything on Brittney Spears?

Don't you sometimes buy a National Inquirer in a grocery line to get a take on the culture? Are you thereby supporting horoscopes and Nostadamus prophecy articles by doing so?

I remember, a few years back, trying to persuade an old high school friend, who has remained a fundamentalist and strong political conservative, to go see Fahrenheit 911 with me (Micheal Moore's film) and go have coffee afterwards, and talk about it. He wouldn't, and for the same reasons that are being given here for not seeing the ID movie (it's propaganda, it supports evil blah blah blah).

This is no way to behave in a democracy. And the IDers, however irritating, should not be compared to the KKK. Sorry, they just shouldn't.

44. Yoko Ono, Filmmakers Caught in 'Expelled' Flap

Comment #162756 by Santi Tafarella on April 17, 2008 at 12:07 pm

I don't want to necessarily be in the position of defending a film that I find intellectually ridiculous. BUT I think that the overly fussy--"I would never pay money to see this film, and would never encourage others to see it"--position is obnoxious to hear from free thinkers. The free thinking community is so small that no film will be made or broken on our attendance. Seeing the film, however, gives us an opportunity to think about the broader culture, and how arguments are made. FOX news irritates me, but I still watch it at times. I want to know how the larger pop culture absorbs messages, don't you?

I find the response to this film among some of you at this site as creepy as the way that fundamentalists talk about the films of Michael Moore. Nothing is more noxious for a democracy, than for people to simply shut down to one another's messages (and even propaganda) because they think that they constitute "cancers" or "excrement." We'd live in a better world if we didn't cast such invective, and instead critiqued one another's propaganda, media, and persuasive gestures.

Full disclosure: I grew up in a home that literally had a bookcase filled with young earth creationist books. I read them all as a teen--and my experience with them was that they functioned as a foil for thinking about science. I actually thought my way clear of fundamentalist creationism by grappling with it, and because it functioned as a foil for thinking through bad arguments, I actually feel (in retrospect) that my exposure to such material helped me develop a lifelong love for science. I've been an agnostic for about 25 years now--so I take a backseat to no one on this site who might regard me as insufficiently "pure" in my agnosticism.

What I mean to suggest is that such films as the recent ID one, far from making science less interesting to people, might provoke their own reflections. Somewhere in the audience might be a teenager who watches the film, and then stumbles on a pro-evolution web site, and starts thinking through the issues, and ultimately becomes an evolutionary biologist. Yes, I know. There might be a teenager in the audience who might as well swing the other way. But I'm a big fan of Blake, who said (in paraphrase): Those whose desires can be thwarted, never had much desire to start with. Likewise, those whose intelligence can be thwarted, never had much to start with.

As for joining a kkk parade, no I would not. But I might watch one from the sidewalk, and then go home and blog a critique of what I saw.

45. Yoko Ono, Filmmakers Caught in 'Expelled' Flap

Comment #162717 by Santi Tafarella on April 17, 2008 at 10:43 am

In the film, "The God Who Wasn't There," a polemical film against Christian fundamentalism, a portion of Mel Gibson's film is shown without permission. In the article, Ono's lawyers state clearly that there is probably not much they can do about a brief playing from "Imagine." And that's the way it should be. The producer of "The God Who Wasn't There" had a polemical (and propagandistic) purpose, and made money on the film. This is what the creationist ID film is doing. Let them do it. And go see the film. And do so precisely for the reason that you want to support financially free speech. The film is not a "cancer" on the body politic--it is an expression of free speech. The world is not better when ideas are not put out there--it is worse. The film is, based on the trailers, full of stupidities, but it has value as a cultural product, and it adds to reflection upon our culture--it does not detract from it.

46. Yoko Ono, Filmmakers Caught in 'Expelled' Flap

Comment #162701 by Santi Tafarella on April 17, 2008 at 9:43 am

Let me be clear: Just because people make money from a film does not mean that they relinquish their free speech rights. If the movie-makers cannot quote "Imagine" for the purpose of critique, then you have abridged their freedom of speech. I think that it is extraordinarily short-sighted of the agnostic/atheist community to want to shut down an expression of speech (however repugnant to us). In an electronic age, images and songs function as conceptual metaphors. If you can't "quote" them to one another, and subject them to critique and parody, then you cannot have an open and unfettered dialog. If I go on youtube, and "quote" the lyrics of a Christian song, and then put a counter message around it, I am not stealing the song, I am exercising free speech in a digital age. Likewise, in a textual age (the twentieth century), I could quote from a book without infringing its copyright.

47. Yoko Ono, Filmmakers Caught in 'Expelled' Flap

Comment #162695 by Santi Tafarella on April 17, 2008 at 9:22 am

In this case, there should be no lawsuit against the makers of the film. Why? Because they only used a brief portion of "Imagine," and with the intent of critiquing the message of the song. We might disagree with the filmmakers' position on evolution and atheism, but we should protect their right to "quote" media freely (for the purposes of critique) in the public square. Otherwise, we would have to say that websites like Media Matters should not be able to use FOX News clips without permission from Fox News.

48. The Art of Creating Controversy Where None Existed

Comment #159946 by Santi Tafarella on April 13, 2008 at 1:04 pm

An interesting route into reflecting on rhetoric and sophistry is to read Aristophanes' ancient comedy, "The Clouds." It's really quite thought provoking. Socrates, like contemporary science, is slandered throughout the play. He is accused of being a violater of the wisdom of the masses and common sense, with his head in the clouds (hence the play's title). I'd have to go back and look at it again, but there might be a lot of striking similarities between the sophistries of that play and contemporary creationism. At the end of the play, Socrates' school is burned down. There is an anti-intellectual vibe at work throughout the play. It's a "comedy," but is actually quite disturbing, especially at the end.

49. Atheism's Wrong Turn

Comment #93511 by Santi Tafarella on December 3, 2007 at 10:14 am

black wolf,
i agree with you. we should have a bill of rights. the larger society should not have "restrictive marriage, sexuality and labor laws based on religious doctrines." but here's where the child issue gets tricky: people should have the right to join communities that regulate sexual behavior, work habits, and contact with the outside world.

I'm thinking, for example, of the Amish. The Amish have kids. And the kids should not be taken away from their parents because the state thinks that the Amish community raises children badly. I would not raise my kids in an Amish community (I have two small children), but I also recognize that children raised in an Amish community have a very interesting "cultural language" to wrestle with for the rest of their lives, one that has certain things that are richer than the language that I raise my own children in. Let freedom ring. In other words, let children work with the language-cultural foil they've accidentally inherited from their parents, and let them wrestle their way out of bad cultural forms. The grossest evils the state can reasonably regulate (such as blatant physical abuse), but teaching kids creationism, or teaching them in a homeschooling environment, or raising them in a rural religious community, or scaring them that they will go to hell if they abandon their parents' religion, as repugnant as these practices may seem to us, should be allowed. And one reason they should be allowed is that human beings need cultural foils to wrestle with, and to overcome or embrace for themselves.

I simply don't buy the easy, deterministic childhood brainwashing model. I think that Freud has taught us that children wrestle oedipally with their parents' values, and after wrestling with them, either embrace them or overcome them. Jacob has to wrestle with the angel. It's a process that shouldn't be arrested in a free society. As tempting as it is, those of us who embrace secularism and atheism should imagine a world, not without religion (ala john lennon), but of a world of benign religion and irreligion--in other words, a world of maximal diversity, without any particularist language (including our own) triumphant and dominating the way everybody thinks. This involves a commitment to checks and balances on power, and to resist temptations to restrict freedom of thought.

50. Atheism's Wrong Turn

Comment #93454 by Santi Tafarella on December 3, 2007 at 7:14 am

Brian,
One other thought. It is extremely presumptuous of us to assume that the state can direct the intellectual and emotional development of children in ways that will result in an outcome better than parents. An example: William Blake, the Romantic poet, was raised in a cult, a Swedenborgian household, and yet he used his exposure to this curious cultural language to generate an enormously imaginitive artistic product. The world would not have been a better place without Blake, and Blake's imaginitive use of Swedenborgianism, and we could not have predicted his use of it in advance of its occurance.

A world of atheists would make a lot of interesting things in the world. Blake's poetry is not one of them. In other words, how human beings use the foil of the contingencies of their upbringing to make something of their lives is not something we can predict in advance. We should want world-view eccentricity, and religious and non-religious diversity in the world, just as we want species diversity and language diversity in the world.

Let me offer one more example: Most everybody who visits Dawkins site (me included) hates young earth creationism. It's factually wrong. It's stupid. But think of what it has brought into existence, and the service it has rendered. By its very existence, it has provoked a number of websites and books by important scientists who attempt to explain, in as clear a prose as possible, how scientists think about science, and why they think evolution is true. In other words, creationism has functioned as a foil for a great deal of real good to come into the world, and as we speak there are smart young people reading this literature who wouldn't otherwise have become biologists, who might now switch their major out of sheer fascination with the subject.

In short, creationism may function for biology in the way that Richard Nixon functioned for journalism school. Remember Nixon's famous quip to journalists (on his first retirement from politics): "You won't have Nixon to kick around anymore." And Woodward and Bernstein, in uncovering Watergate, spawned a whole generation of young journalism students. In other words, the psyche needs foils and resistences to develop, like King Leer who says: "No, no, this way lies madness!"

If the state steps in, and takes the psychological and emotional foils of childhood away from children in the name of protecting them, you may be stunting their growth. Viva weird species diversity!