651. Dogma

Comment #40748 by Russell Blackford on May 14, 2007 at 10:12 pm

I think this material is of interest to us in a different way from the latest review of The God Delusion or a new article from Dawkins or Dennett, etc. Brian is doing a good job of creating material that can (and does) reach a younger audience, and I think it's worthwhile for us to see what he's come up with. I wouldn't want the forum to be swamped with this material - I can understand that concern - but I do think it's valuable for some of it to be available to us here, as has been happening.

More generally, I congratulate Brian for creating it. From what I've seen so far, it's of high quality.

652. Is Christianity Good for the World?

Comment #40711 by Russell Blackford on May 14, 2007 at 6:50 pm

Thanks, Bonzai. Actually, this thread has some high level thinking from quite a few people. Kudos to everyone.

More generally, do we have a link to whatever Hitchens has said in reply?

653. Why Christopher Hitchens is not Great

Comment #40706 by Russell Blackford on May 14, 2007 at 6:29 pm

I seem to recall a while back predicting that someone would write a book called Hitchens is Not Great. Well, there's still time for someone like Professor McGrath to do it.

654. Furor over author Ayaan Hirsi Ali's visit stirs debate on religious freedom

Comment #40704 by Russell Blackford on May 14, 2007 at 6:24 pm

The only thing that surprises me is that Haynes is surprised. So many well-intentioned liberal thinkers just don't (easily) get how totalitarian and intolerant religion is at its base, and how much this still permeates Islam, which has never had its Reformation, let alone its struggle to accommodate itself to modernity.

Oh well, I guess he "gets it" now. But there's still this naive, touchy-feely view around that religion is something nice - if not actually true - so Islam must be nice, as well, give or take a crazy terrorist here or there who surely isn't a "real" Muslim.

655. Let us pray for the soul of Richard Dawkins

Comment #40281 by Russell Blackford on May 14, 2007 at 4:39 am

Oh dear, what can I say? Someone's been around with the inanity stick again.

656. Is Christianity Good for the World?

Comment #40201 by Russell Blackford on May 13, 2007 at 7:28 pm

I think we are seeing in some of the debate, and some of the discussion on the thread, the felt need to achieve some sort of absolute metaphysical explanation that goes beyond the empirical facts.

Hmmm, I'm sure there's a better way to put that. But I'm thinking of two things in particular. First, this idea that we might not have free will. It seems to me that nothing that has been said here suggests that we lack free will, except in a spooky sense that is incoherent anyway. Even if we were made out of ectoplasm, or something, it's difficult to see how that could give us the spooky kind of libertarian free will under discussion. Our actions would still be expressions of our motivational dispositions even if the latter were encoded in ectoplasm rather than in complex material structures. If they were not expressions of us, then we seem to be back to randomness, which is not free will. I believe in the existence of free will, but it's compatibilist free will. It's not some kind of free will all the way down below what we actually desire, value, and so on. That idea doesn't make sense. It implies some kind of radical self-creation.

Then there's this idea that it doesn't matter if there is pain and suffering unless the latter is somehow objectively wrong. But once again, this doesn't make sense. Even if God does not like pain and suffering (contrary to His image in the Bible), how does that make it objectively wrong? It just makes it disvalued by a very powerful being. It seems that some other very powerful being might have liked it - it's just a contingent fact that the deity who happens to exist has a particular set of values, just as it's a contingent fact that we evolved with empathy.

Yes, there may be intelligent Martians out there that did not evolve with empathy, but our moral systems exist to serve us, not to serve those Martians. I think this is a perfectly good answer, but there's this straining to want to be able to say the Martians are objectively wrong. I think we have to let go of that.

I should add, though, that 3legcat is onto something, in my view. Religions offer explanations of the world that are intuitive for creatures with our evolved psychology, whereas what science is actually finding out runs counter to our commonsense intuitions. Our intuitions are those of beings that evolved as social animals but did not evolve to be directly affected by, say, quantum level events, or to need to know anything about neuroscience.

E.g. it seems intuitive to us that we have found a final explanation whenever we discover intelligence and agency at work - which would, in fact, be a good place to stop for many social purposes. But we know that intelligence and agency are grounded in incredibly complex material organisation acting in even more complex ways, so it's not a stopping point at all as far as science is concerned. It feels as if we can stop there, however, making the God hypothesis emotionally satisfying for many people in a way that is far disproportional to its actual merit.

657. The meaning of freedom

Comment #40106 by Russell Blackford on May 13, 2007 at 5:57 am

As always you have to love those warm, cuddly traditional beliefs and values - such as the value of attempting to suppress women's sexuality.

658. Unintelligent Design

Comment #40061 by Russell Blackford on May 12, 2007 at 11:44 pm

Hi, Shuggy: "my" elect? :)

We were discussing Atran's views, not mine.

I must say, though, that your comment about Einstein tends to perpetuate the mythology about him. Try The Unexpected Einstein: The Real Man Behind the Icon by Denis Brian. Among other things, it criticises the myth of the "humble patent clerk" and explains that Einstein was always brilliant at maths and physics, though resistant to pedagogical authority. He would certainly have been able to fit into Atran's elite group who can understand science and get by without religion (except what Dawkins would call "Einsteinian religion", of course).

[I deleted a rantish para about "is" and "ought" because it's not very relevant.]

Again, I do suspect that there's probably a grain of truth someone in Atran's thinking - if only that religion had some kind of usefulness at some time in the past. But that doesn't mean that I'm supporting the overall thesis that I'm attributing to him. Some people on the thread see Atran as a kind of theological apologist. I don't think that's right, so I've laid out what I think he's really on about. I may be totally misinterepreting him, of course. If anyone knows his work well, maybe we'll get a better explanation than mine before the thread runs out of oomph.

659. French Muslim women opt for hymen surgical cons

Comment #40031 by Russell Blackford on May 12, 2007 at 6:35 pm

I don't doubt that male sexual jealousy enhances reproductive fitness, or did so in the environment of evolutionary adaptation. Yeah, maybe you were more likely to pass down your genes if you could manange to have sex with women who hadn't done it with too many other blokes and could be kept away from them. The more you can keep a woman's gametes to yourself - and keep them away from the semen of your pals Og, Gog, and Magog - the better, from the viewpoint of reproductive fitness.

But two points. First, we see these things that probably had some adaptive role being exaggerated to absurd extremes by culture. Even if I can understand a bit of male possessiveness as something programmed into our psychology, we see it being pandered to and magnified to crazy lengths - the way Islam deals with it being only the most obviously crazy. (And it's not just sexual jealousy that culture gets hold of and takes to crazy extremes. The fetishation of ridiculously narrow waists (Victorian England), ridiculously tiny feet (pre-modern China), ridiculously large breasts (contemporary US) is equally crazy, even though these cultural fetishes are all based sexual differences that it may, I suppose, be natural for men to pay some attention to. As with Islam's sexual rules, it's like a cultural version of the peacock's tail.)

Second, and more fundamentally, even if we have inherited certain psychological tendencies from our ancestors, that does not mean that they make us happy now (or even that they made our ancestors happy, as opposed to making them more likely to pass down their genes).

In the case of male sexual jealousy, I think it's more something for us men to try to repudiate and overcome than something to be proud of and build elaborate cultural institutions on. What sensible male in the modern world is interested in teaching sex to some virgin? Everyone has to start somewhere, with teenage fumblings and whatever, but you get beyond that. Give me a sexually experienced woman who knows what she's doing any day.

660. Unintelligent Design

Comment #40019 by Russell Blackford on May 12, 2007 at 5:17 pm

The way I see it, Atran is a kind of intellectual elitist. That is not necessarily a bad thing: I don't feel too much pressure to go around saying that, "We're all intellectually equal, blah, blah." The fact is, we are not all equal in such things as our ability to handle the truth.

Atran is like a utilitarian who says, "Shhhh, don't tell the masses about utilitarianism. Utility is more likely to be maximised if they follow a whole lot of moral rules mindlessly." In Atran's case, it's more like telling his fellow atheists, "Yes, atheism is good for us, but it's not good for the masses for reasons X, Y, and Z. Let them have their delusion as long as they don't stop us doing science."

He's not saying that there may be something true in religion afterall. As far as I can work out, he's a pretty hardline atheist. The idea is that religion persists because it's a kind of useful illusion.

I don't really criticise him for the elitism, as said above. Some kind of elitist theory that claims that there are certain truths which are only for an intellectual elite may well be true, for all I know! It's pretty insulting to everyone else, of course, but the fact that it's insulting doesn't make it false.

That said, it becomes an empirical research program to try to settle whether religion really has been as useful as Atran thinks, whether (if that is the case) it remains so, whether it would be disastrous if more than an elite minority saw through the illusion, and so on. I think that there is some evidence both ways and that there's probably some truth in what Atran is saying - religion may have persisted in the face of rationality partly for the reasons that Atran suggests. Maybe it has been socially useful in the past, and maybe it still is for a lot of people.

I'd like to think that it's only a small grain of truth there, but we need to look at evidence rather than believing whatever it is that we'd like to be true. My evidence that Atran is largely wrong lies in the success of modern secular countries and the fact that Atran has no good data - stretching over centuries - on what happens to secular societies in modern circumstances. We haven't seen modern Japan or Sweden collapse so far (though it's conceivable that it'll happen). The evidence, so far at least, is that we can get by just fine without much religion around, thank you very much.

But I'm prepared to look at the arguments and whatever evidence Atran has. If it turns out that his ideas actually have quite a large nugget of truth in them, I'll just have to put up with it. The truth doesn't have to be something nice.

661. The Debate: Can We Live by Reason Alone?

Comment #39803 by Russell Blackford on May 12, 2007 at 1:22 am

Well, it's pretty obvious that you don't need to do a lot of reasoning to have the dispositions of character that we call "moral virtue" - kindness, truthfulness, and so on. You might need to use reason to explain why human beings value these things and how we came to be the sorts of creatures that do so. But no one, including Dawkins, has ever claimed that everyone lacked those traits before the Enlightenment. No one has ever said anything that even implies something so preposterous. What's more, there are evolutionary explanations for us having at least some natural tendency to have some of those traits, as Dawkins himself has discussed in various places. Reason helps, particularly in discarding pathological or outdated moral norms, but that's all it does ... and of course Dawkins knows this (or something like it; he might not agree with the exact way I've expressed the idea). Sounds as if the psych guy was totally ignorant of Dawkins' work.

662. French Muslim women opt for hymen surgical cons

Comment #39747 by Russell Blackford on May 11, 2007 at 8:41 pm

Bonzai, I don't know much about the cultural situation in Japan, but from what's been stated here you are correct, i.e. religion is not the only means by which some attitudes to women's sexuality persist. That's worth knowing. (Although I see that it's now being said above that it's a thing of the past.)

It would be fascinating (at least to me) if those who understand the situation in Japan better than I do could tell us a little bit more about its history and its context in present-day Japanese attitudes to sexuality. This fetishising of virginity - even if it's dying out - goes along with a lot of openness about sex and sexuality, so how does it all fit together (as it were)?

663. French Muslim women opt for hymen surgical cons

Comment #39728 by Russell Blackford on May 11, 2007 at 6:32 pm

Religion is not the origin of the kind of male sexual jealousy that leads to the emphasis on virginity etc., but patriarchal cultural systems that make such a huge issue of it, and sex-obsessed religions that condemn "unchaste" behaviour by women by divine authority co-evolve.

Religion is not wholly to blame for the origin of such thinking, but it bears a huge part of the responsibility for the preservation of the most barbaric values to do with sex. Without religion, they would have little prospect of persisting in today's world. So without going overboard and branding religion as the root of all evil in sexual puritanism and barbarity, it's modern-day persistence is another reason to deplore the persistence of religion.

664. The Debate: Can We Live by Reason Alone?

Comment #39726 by Russell Blackford on May 11, 2007 at 6:21 pm

Not only can I not get it to play fullscreen, I can't get it to play very well at all. :(

Anyway, it's the wrong question. The obvious answer to the question as phrased is, "No."

Well, it's obvious if you're a good Humean like I am. Reason can tell us about the universe, etc., but we need our desires, values, emotional attitudes, etc., as well, and though reason can appraise these in certain ways, they cannot be determined all the way down by reason. Beyond a certain point, rational criticism of what Hume called "the passions" runs out, and reason is, if not exactly the slave of the passions, at least no more than their high-level advisor.

I doubt that Dawkins would deny this ... or if he would on the basis of some Kantian argument, it isn't something he's ever emphasised.

The better question would be, "Can we live without the supernatural?" The clear answer to that one is, "Yes."

I suppose I'm playing word games a bit, given what was probably meant, but there is an important point here. You can be an atheist, you can have an entirely naturalistic worldview, you can place great value on reason and the life of the mind, but none of that means that you thereupon live some kind of bloodless existence based on "reason alone", which is neither possible nor desirable. Did any of this come up?

665. God . . . in other words

Comment #39565 by Russell Blackford on May 11, 2007 at 6:35 am

Veronique, I'm just adding a lighter touch. I am sometimes one of the worst offenders when it comes to producing long rants. In Ms Gledhill's case, I guess I'm poking fun at her a bit for her eagerness to get Dawkins to agree with some of her ideas, but it's meant to be gentle fun, not offensive. After reading a few things by her, I actually find myself feeling quite warmly towards her.

666. God . . . in other words

Comment #39463 by Russell Blackford on May 10, 2007 at 7:00 pm

There's a very nice journo called Ruth,
With theories of Ultimate Truth.
She tested them on
A scientific don
Whom she's always admired, since youth.



(If Ms Gledhill is still reading, I hope she'll take this little contribution in the right spirit. It just somehow came to me as a summary.)

667. God . . . in other words

Comment #39115 by Russell Blackford on May 10, 2007 at 2:51 am

Well, Ruth Gledhill seems from this to be a nice and thoughtful person, someone I could enjoy talking to.

I wonder what her take would be on my personal "hot-button" issues - would she find a way to rationalise a batch of quasi-religious objections to stem-cell research, therapeutic and even reproductive cloning, etc., or would her specific views genuinely be untainted by religious ideas of hubris, violating God's order, and so on? If all her beliefs really just use "the wrong language" ... well, I would agree with RD that they use the wrong language, but I could happily live with that.

668. Fortune-telling no longer in the cards in Philly

Comment #39097 by Russell Blackford on May 10, 2007 at 1:48 am

This is not good at all: at best, it's offensive paternalism; at worst, it's an attack on "unchristian practices" (as Reg put it above),and thus a little bit of theocracy in action.

If people enter into consensual arrangements for such nonsense as fortune telling, that's up to them. The state has no proper role in trying to stop it.

669. Better God-fearing than sneering

Comment #38766 by Russell Blackford on May 9, 2007 at 6:19 am

Evangelical Christians now say:
The old covenant has passed away,
So please don't use your knife,
Or a rock, on your wife
(Though it's still a foul sin to be gay).


***

It's marvellous how concisely the limerick form can sum up all the salient points.

670. Better God-fearing than sneering

Comment #38735 by Russell Blackford on May 9, 2007 at 4:42 am

There once was a British reviewer
Who was ever so sweet if you knew 'er.
She hated to sneer,
Or to leer, or to jeer,
Or appear like a godless wrongdoer.




AND ANOTHER ONE AS A TREAT...

The Guardian likes to inherit
Reviewers who, quick as a ferret,
Will defend the obtuse
And opine about Zeus,
So it's there you'll find Stephanie Merritt.

671. Review of The God Delusion

Comment #38691 by Russell Blackford on May 9, 2007 at 1:10 am

Um, the comment by Gordon Brown was about philosophers of religion, not about religious philosophers. There's an overlap but also a huge conceptual difference.

One of the hats that Richard Dawkins wears these days - and it actually fits him rather well - is that of a philosopher of religion. Daniel Dennett wears the same hat, though he doubtless prefers his huge philosophy-of-mind sombrero. Similar for Bertrand Russell (Dawkins' obvious predecessor). The philosopher of religion hat was, or is, worn by other critics of religious belief mentioned in this thread, such as the distinguished atheist philosopher Graham Oppy.

Philosophers of religion are the very people who produce the serious intellectual critiques of religious faith, and have done so since Epicurus and Lucretius in antiquity, through Hume and other thinkers of the Enlightenment era, to contemporary times (with people J.L. Mackie, Michael Martin, and the abovementioned Oppy). I would have thought that the enterprise of philosophy of religion would be just about the last one that would be dismissed by people who participate on this site. The efforts of Hume, Russell, Oppy, and all the others mentioned have nothing to do with angels and pinheads.

(Thanks to the folks who made kind comments, btw.)

672. Review of The God Delusion

Comment #38553 by Russell Blackford on May 8, 2007 at 3:28 pm

This was in the pipeline for a while - I wrote it before a lot of those "bad" reviews were published, or at least before I saw them. I've also since seen Dawkins explain his position in various forums. Looking back at it now, I pretty much stand by it. My own concern about it, in retrospect, is that I may have distorted his actual position on the "child abuse" thing.

Btw, Logicel, re that last para. It's not really the last para. If you look at the printed version, the last para is more like one of those "boxes" with an interesting fact or observation. Cosmos always asks its reviewers to put something like that at the end, and the format is such that it's transparent in the printed magazine. Yeah, it does look at bit odd when the online format makes it look like a para of the review proper (which actually ends with the penultimate para, as printed here).

673. Those fanatical atheists

Comment #38454 by Russell Blackford on May 8, 2007 at 6:51 am

Tolerance: It's worth developing new theories, attempting to give them mathematical rigour, and finding out ways of testing them.

Moreover, there can sometimes be periods in the history of science when it is not foolish to believe in a new theory ... because the old theory is in crisis, the new theory seems likely to explain the facts, and has a lot of promise, etc. In those situations, reasonable minds can differ and you can't really criticise people too harshly for having hunches. That was probably the situation right up until 1620, or even later, with the heliocentric theory - Galileo was convinced of it, even though some of his theorising (e.g. about the tides) was wrong and his evidence was not overwhelming. Still, the embarrassments of the geocentric theory were such that it's hard to say he was foolish. Perhaps we are at a similar stage with evolutionary psychology - it's very difficult to get really good corroboration of some of the ideas, but I have a hunch that some of the main ones will turn out to be correct, and even if I am wrong I don't think in all the circumstances that this hunch is a foolish one - though I do think it would be foolish to go too far out on some of the available limbs.

String theory? Well, it's at least worth trying to knock it into the best possible shape. I do think that anyone who insisted on its correctness would be foolish, though, and cosmology overall is not in crisis even if it has some big issues still to deal with.

Religious beliefs? The whole drift of Christian theology has not been in the direction of trying to knock it into shape so that it can be tested empirically. Indeed, the drift has often been in the other direction, to make the whole thing as immune to any possible empirical falsification as possible. The God of the Abrahamic theologians has become increasingly remote and abstract. It looks to me like an unfruitful research program. In those circumstances, any loop-hole for those who bet on promising new theories does not apply. In any event, that is not how believers justify themselves ("I can't corroborate this new God theory but it has a lot of promise and I have a hunch that it's right").

Unless, of course, we have in mind the more literal, fundamentalist versions of religious belief, which, quite simply, have been falsified already.

674. The New Atheists loathe religion far too much to plausibly challenge it

Comment #38434 by Russell Blackford on May 8, 2007 at 4:58 am

On the killing people for their beliefs thing, we have very powerful reasons, I think, for adhering to a principle of freedom of thought and belief. Societies do best if they operate with that principle, we ourselves want the freedom that is protected by such a principle, and so on. It's a great principle to write into any country's constitution, and I think that any statements that undermine it in the slightest should be made with the utmost care. I'm not sure that Sam Harris has always been careful enough for my comfort (I feel no need to agree with him on every single point; he and I and the rest of us here are not herd animals).

However, while freedom of thought and belief is a principle that we have such incredibly powerful reasons for adopting and supporting, that does not mean there could never be even more powerful reasons on the other side. There could, at least in theory, be someone whose view of the world is so warped and so fixed, and who is so capable of doing great harm and willing to use that capability, that the rest of us have little choice but to kill him (it's much more likely to be a "him" than a "her"), or at least lock him away for life. I'm not going to cease advocating the principle of freedom of thought and belief, but there are no moral formulae that express absolute and timeless truths, and it doesn't help to pretend that there are. It comes down to the need to protect those things which we most cherish - this includes our own freedoms, but it also includes our lives, and the lives of people we love.

Of course, while I would go out of my way, in almost any conceivable set of real circumstances, to defend a religionist's freedom of thought and belief (and their expression), and to oppose any attempts to suppress it (let alone suppress it by the use of deadly force), various kinds of Abrahamic religionists have a dismal record for what they are prepared to kill over - not just in principle in some hypothetical extreme situation, but in everyday practice. Think, for example, of killing people for having the wrong sexuality, loving the wrong person, "dishonouring" the family, satirising certain religious ideas, committing "apostasy" or "heresy", etc., etc.

675. The New Atheists loathe religion far too much to plausibly challenge it

Comment #38331 by Russell Blackford on May 7, 2007 at 4:16 pm

In case no one else has made this point - I only skimmed the thread, and will read it more carefully later - I loathe journalists who evidently fancy themselves as wordsmiths, but produce split infinitives.

Ugh!

676. Those fanatical atheists

Comment #38078 by Russell Blackford on May 6, 2007 at 11:24 pm

I think that Richard Dawkins usually seems gentle and urbane ... almost to a fault. I don't understand the "fingernail on blackboard" comment, or why such comments are so often made about him. Otherwise, great article.

677. Unholy row at clergy soccer game

Comment #38076 by Russell Blackford on May 6, 2007 at 11:16 pm

*Dies laughing.*

678. How multiculturalism is betraying women

Comment #37818 by Russell Blackford on May 5, 2007 at 9:05 pm

Pippini, I agree with some of your points, but there's no need to shout. As far as I can see, most people here are happy with tolerance, pluralism, and the idea that many cultures are welcome in Western societies as long as everyone accepts some basic values, such as freedom of belief and expression, non-violence, the equality of women, and the rule of law. To me, that's what multiculturalism is about, so I accept it happily.

However, there is a stronger form of so-called multiculturalism that we sometimes see, and which is sometimes manifested in court rulings and official documents. This idea is that all cultures and traditions, no matter how violent or repressive, are equal, equally deserving of respect, and beyond satire or criticism.

We just have to be careful of how we define our terms. If multiculturalism is the first thing I described, and the second thing should be called something else, then I think most reasonable people would embrace multiculturalism while worrying about the "something else". However, the something else certainly exists, whatever term we use for it. Personally, I'd like to find another term, or at least call it something like "vulgar multiculturalism".

679. Your favorite book in the last 25 years?

Comment #37584 by Russell Blackford on May 5, 2007 at 6:37 am

Damn, this thread brings home to me how many of my favourite books were written before 1982.

I've read a lot of the books mentioned above, but few have really bedded down with me yet as among my all-time favourites. Guns, Germs, and Steel is one.

I could cheat and say the "original" version of Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein. Otherwise, Neuromancer by William Gibson. Of course, I love everything I read by Richard Dawkins or I wouldn't be here. Will think about some others later.

680. Richard Dawkins in the Time 100

Comment #37227 by Russell Blackford on May 3, 2007 at 6:56 pm

Given that Behe actually does believe the things he believes (it's easy to forget this), I think we should assume good faith - to use a Wikipedia expression. From his perspective, he is simply being gracious, not doing anything unfair or underhanded. I agree with Bonzai that there's no need to attack him personally.

681. How multiculturalism is betraying women

Comment #37004 by Russell Blackford on May 3, 2007 at 5:30 am

Biblebeltheretic: That's okay, you're quite entitled to disagree with me. Maybe I'm wrong, and will learn something. :)

But I didn't actually mean what I evidently came across as meaning. Sorry about that. I wouldn't fear condemning this specific kind of behaviour, since no one sane is actually going to defend domestic violence against women. But I was kind of free associating from this to more general issues where I get that kind of sinking "is it really worth saying this?" feeling. Maybe I'm the only one who ever has it.

I'll give another example or two. I'm sure that some of the people whom I talk to irl already feel that I am too loud and opinionated; however, I actually feel a bit inhibited, in many (public or private) situations, about saying what I really think about, say, the Jyllands Posten cartoon controversy (my views are along the lines of "Support Denmark!"), or my opposition to religious vilification laws. I guess I am prominently pc enough in other ways (e.g. I'm very strong on gay rights) to get away with this without it being thought that I am a racist, but my views on those issues are seen as highly provocative in some circles, and if not racist at least naively playing into the hands of racists. There's this whole thing going on among well-meaning humanities intellectuals, literary folks, etc., that to be critical of a religion or a culture equals being critical of its adherents/members which, in turn, equals being critical of them on some kind of racist basis, or similar.

Does that make more sense? It may not - I'm feeling stupid tonight.

Also, the fear I'm talking about may only be felt by people who are themselves basically pc intellectuals (as I guess I am, really, when viewed at a sufficient distance to get perspective). We can get hung up by the post-colonialist etc, etc, anxieties of our peers. On the other hand, I think that we have a responsibility to speak up, so it's a fear we need to overcome, even if it sometimes doesn't make us friends or win us kudos in our peer groups.

682. How multiculturalism is betraying women

Comment #36988 by Russell Blackford on May 3, 2007 at 4:06 am

Apart from the ridiculous solicitude that we are all expected to show to religious belief, one of the HUGE problems in public discussion is the widespread (and perfectly rational) fear of being condemned as a racist if you are critical of other cultures, or aspects of them. And of course, it's true that there can sometimes be an element of racism hiding behind certain opportunistic attacks on the practices of a despised group. I, for one, feel inhibited about what I say in many situations, as I have no wish to be seen in the same light, or even branded as a racist.

Nonetheless, we must be prepared to try to discuss traditional cultural practices, with all their ugly aspects, in good faith. Overcoming our fear of doing so may be even more important than overcoming our fear of being perceived as "disrespectful" to religion.

683. Now Muslims Get Their Own Laws In Britian

Comment #36729 by Russell Blackford on May 2, 2007 at 5:37 am

Bonzai, you say you disagree with me ... but I'm genuinely puzzled, because cannot see a single point that you make that disagrees with what I said in my post. Well, except perhaps the last sentence of your first para, which is, with all respect (as you know, I like your contributions), a non sequitur.

As a more general point, we will not win the struggle against supernaturalism in the courts or by legislative restrictions. We are just going to have to win hearts and minds with our ideas and whatever eloquence we can muster. If the supernaturalists want to do something that is perfectly legal for anyone else to do, which may be the case here - I'm not sure because the article is so badly written - I am not going to try to invoke the power of the state to stop them.

As another example, I'm not going to advocate enacting laws to prohibit parents from teaching supernaturalist beliefs to their children, even though I don't like it. What I am going to advocate is simply that we stop going out of our way to make the parents feel comfortable about it. I will also strongly advocate that the state cease subsidising it with funding and tax concessions to such bodies as supernaturalist schools.

684. Now Muslims Get Their Own Laws In Britian

Comment #36665 by Russell Blackford on May 2, 2007 at 1:28 am

If it's a voluntary private arbitration system, I don't see how it can be stopped, any more than you could stop two people in a commercial dispute from agreeing to abide by the opinion of the local imam, or the local vicar, or a stray barrister, or someone from the chamber of commerce. There are already numerous alternative dispute resolution arrangements going on outside of the real legal system, and this is usually thought of as a good thing to take pressure of the courts, deliver a less formal and expensive venue, etc., etc. We may not much like it being done in this particular context, associated with notoriously patriarchal religious authorities, but I don't see how we can consistently stop them, and only them, from setting up a system of unofficial alternative dispute resolution.

In my opinion, the principled role for the state with these things is to give them no official recognition at all, either to support them (financially or otherwise) or to try to suppress them. Treat it exactly as if it were a commercial service offered by, say, a barrister looking to make a buck by offering mediation services to litigants. That rules out any charitable status or other official concessions.

In some cases, where the courts need to give their imprimatur before an actual outcome can be implement, that kind of outcome can be scrutinised, but that's not the same thing as the state trying to stop the whole process.

Of course, if it's more than that (i.e. if it is going to get any official recognition as part of the UK legal system, or if it is made compulsory) I'll be the first person to oppose it. Well, not literally - since I'm from Australia, not the UK - but I'd certainly oppose it in my own country.

685. Now Muslims Get Their Own Laws In Britian

Comment #36628 by Russell Blackford on May 1, 2007 at 7:31 pm

The article is too sensationalist and short on substance for me to draw any conclusions one way or the other. I'd hate to see this system of courts get any official recognition. However, if it's all really little more than a system of voluntary private conciliation and arbitration, with the outcomes subject to the oversight of the ordinary court system, it might not be bad; it might even do some good, depending on all the details.

Sensationalist (and possibly misleading) journalism is another problem for Western societies - it's not as if sectarianism is the only one.

686. Religion & Culture Panel

Comment #36432 by Russell Blackford on May 1, 2007 at 5:20 am

Hmmm, the observation by Professor Dawkins has me wondering.

I can easily imagine the sort of audience that we'd get at the annual writers' festival, here in Melbourne, might respond in the same way - partly because Hitchens is pretty much persona non grata with the literary community here, as a result of his position on Iraq, but also because there is a solicitous attitude to religion among such people, even if they have no supernaturalist beliefs of their own. As far as I can work out, that attitude seems to be connected with all the usual post-colonial anxiety about not undermining traditional belief systems, being "sensitive" to people's faith, especially if it's people from non-Western cultural backgrounds, etc.

687. Religion & Culture Panel

Comment #36413 by Russell Blackford on May 1, 2007 at 4:24 am

Liveliest Crib, did you transcribe all that? If so, I'm impressed. Or is there a transcript somewhere?

688. Huge rally for Turkish secularism

Comment #36028 by Russell Blackford on April 30, 2007 at 2:02 am

Denoir: I quite candidly stated that my view was based on limited experience of Turkey. From your (rather patronising) reply, anyone would think that I'd expressed myself in some dogmatic manner, when the exact opposite is the case.

That said, I'm well aware of the election results you referred to, but lots of people vote for political parties for all sorts of confused and confusing reasons. It's difficult to draw inferences from something like that. I'd love to see some decent qualitative research addressing whether those rural folks really want something like the Taliban regime imposed on them.

Still, you may be right ... and in any event, I don't doubt that the educated, urban, Westernised people in Istanbul and Ankara have a real problem. On the other hand, Turkey is still a helluva lot better than the other Muslim nations of the Middle East - those people in Istanbul and Ankara are never going to accept a theocratic regime easily.

689. Pundit Christopher Hitchens picks a fight in book, 'God is Not Great'

Comment #36016 by Russell Blackford on April 29, 2007 at 11:21 pm

I suppose journalists will soon be using the word "antepenultimate" with the meaning of "the very most ultimate". ;)

There's probably a word they could use for "even more ultimate than antepenultimate", but I don't know what it would be. Any ideas?

690. Huge rally for Turkish secularism

Comment #36010 by Russell Blackford on April 29, 2007 at 9:29 pm

Denoir, don't you think it's a bit of an exaggeration to say that a majority of Turks yearn for an Islamic theocracy? I've never seen any solid evidence of that ... and my own guess is that it's far from being the majority view in Turkey. Admittedly, my guess is based on anecdotal evidence, i.e. from quite a small amount of time spent there. But I'd be amazed if support for an Islamic theocracy was the majority view. That isn't to say that the majority of Turks are fully secular, but there's a lot of pride in the modern country's secular tradition, and there's also a huge group of Muslims who may take their religion seriously but are socially and politically moderate.

I still have high hopes for Turkey.

691. Pundit Christopher Hitchens picks a fight in book, 'God is Not Great'

Comment #35829 by Russell Blackford on April 29, 2007 at 2:57 am

It all helps to change the climate. Even if not too many people read it who don't already agree with its message, it starts to create a space for others to criticise religion ... or simply to express their opposition to it or their scorn for its teachings. The indirect effects of a few people as prominent as Hitchens being prepared to speak out could be enormous.

I think the same is the case with other unpopular causes. It doesn't take many people dissenting from the popular wisdom - especially if those people already have high profiles - to produce a truly significant impact.

692. New Noah's Ark ready to sail

Comment #35820 by Russell Blackford on April 29, 2007 at 1:46 am

This time round, don't forget the unicorn.

693. We aim to misbehave

Comment #35614 by Russell Blackford on April 27, 2007 at 9:33 pm

Damn, I was hoping this would be about a more amusing form of misbehaviour than being "rude" to the occasional passing theist. The thread could surely have involved strong drink, ribald poetry, and nudity in the presence of a sheep.

694. Evolution Booklet

Comment #35595 by Russell Blackford on April 27, 2007 at 7:09 pm

I think it did a good job, and dealt with many tricky issues in ways that seemed accurate. I don't expect a pamphlet like this to be written from my particular hardline naturalistic viewpoint. I'd love to see this in the hands of millions of teenagers, who could make up their own minds about whether religion is really necessary, or really able to insulate itself from scientific findings.

I assume the Bryan Appleyard who was interviewed is the famous neo-Luddite science journalist. If so, I didn't know he was a Buddhist. That might explain a thing or two.

695. Iran arrests 300 'insufficiently veiled' women

Comment #35346 by Russell Blackford on April 27, 2007 at 12:15 am

CDG, I understand exactly how you feel. In fact it's worse - I've encountered plenty of these pomo pc types who go beyond mere cultural relativism about sexual mores into positively embracing sexual puritanism. I call them the local Taliban. Don't get me started ... I'll post this quickly before it turns into a rant.

696. Bill O'Remix

Comment #35053 by Russell Blackford on April 26, 2007 at 5:09 am

I thought it was hilarious: it summed up the whole thing so well, with the supposed interviewer haranguing the person he's meant to be interviewing, doing so in a sort of over-the-top, mouth-disconnected-from-brain manner - while the bemused interviewee just gives a wry smile at the buffoonery he's confronted with. Isn't that about what actually happened? Fortunately, Dawkins does a good wry smile.

697. Study: Religion is Good for Kids

Comment #34961 by Russell Blackford on April 25, 2007 at 6:08 pm

I don't doubt that there's something in this. The kind of folks who are regular church-goers may well make better parents, and have better behaved kids, than the kind of folks who make up the majority, i.e. people who probably believe in God, blah, blah, but don't have lives that are structured around any kind of belief system or community activity or whatever.

It would be interesting to compare the experience of parents who belong to neither group but are devoted to the life of reason.

698. The God disunion: there is a place for faith in science, insists Winston

Comment #34732 by Russell Blackford on April 25, 2007 at 2:47 am

Sigh. I have a lot of time for Lord Winston. From here, he looks to me like yet another intelligent person who probably has no supernaturalist beliefs of his own but admires and likes lots of nice, moderate folks who do have such beliefs (in whatever gentle watered-down form). I can understand that - we all know such people and don't want to offend them or see them upset. I can kind of sympathise with them. Then again, I'm not going to go out of my way to advocate their interests.

None of that takes away the point that there has been too much solicitude towards religious belief and it's time that some heavyweight intellectuals stood up and said so, whether as passionately as Dawkins or more gently like Dennett. I feel like calling what Winston is doing trahison des clercs, but I can't bring myself to say it that unequivocally - I'm too much a fan of this guy. I just wish he'd kept out of this fight.

699. Vote for the Time 100 - Are They Worthy?

Comment #34625 by Russell Blackford on April 24, 2007 at 6:10 pm

^I dislike George W. Bush, but it's rather odd seeing him trailing behind various athletes and entertainers of little real consequence. Meh.

I also find the pros and cons rather odd. Often the "con" is a basis for possible criticism (from some viewpoint or other) but has nothing to do with how influential the person is. Take - as one that I randomly noticed - Phillip Rosedale. How does the fact that Second Life contains sex and gambling make him less influential, as opposed to more likely to annoy wowsers and puritans?

700. Shout your doubt out loud, my fellow unbelievers

Comment #34608 by Russell Blackford on April 24, 2007 at 4:43 pm

Sorry, Mind Rebel, but I'm just not buying the whole noble savage thing.