201. The New Atheism rocks

Comment #85684 by Russell Blackford on November 6, 2007 at 8:27 pm

The edit function doesn't seem to working today, so everyone will need to be very careful not to make too many typos. Eeek!

202. The New Atheism rocks

Comment #85677 by Russell Blackford on November 6, 2007 at 8:11 pm

I'll get in first - I wasn't, hmmm, entirely happy with how this turned out: some of the editing of this version, published in the magazine Australian Rationalist, wasn't my preference. But my only real gripe is that the word "moksa" (as I'd written it) was changed to "motsa". This makes no sense. Presumably, the magazine's spell-check program went mad or something.

203. Response to Theodore Dalrymple

Comment #85523 by Russell Blackford on November 6, 2007 at 4:04 am

Duff, no I'm definitely not a professor and I'm sure the prospect of ever being one is unlikely (and ever-receding). I do have a doctorate but no one would ever call me Dr Blackford, either - first names, please.

I agree with the commment by maton100 that Dalrymple must surely have meant something like "existential difficulties". I'm not actually fretting about this: while there are many people who would be left bereft if they lost their religious faith overnight, not that's not how it happens. If abandonment of religion is going to be gradual, as it will have to be if it happens at all, I don't actually agree with Dalrymple's comment.

But all I really want is for people to realise how dubious religion is and what a terrible basis it is for public policy.

I don't actually care all that much if some people cling to their personal faith, though I do reserve the right to think they are wasting their lives if it leads them to act in ways that are self-abnegating, or which deny them the pleasures of this wonderful, one-and-only life in the hope of the chimerical ones of a non-existent afterlife.

204. Response to Theodore Dalrymple

Comment #85372 by Russell Blackford on November 5, 2007 at 3:31 pm

It's true that there's not all that much originality in the arguments against God's existence. The details of the science have changed, but if you went back to the relevant articles in the monumental Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Paul Edwards in 1967, you'd find that it's pretty much all there. Even the ultimate 747 gambit is not entirely new, and RD has not claimed that it is (though I don't think this particular argument was developed in quite the same aggressive way by, say, Hume).

But that's not the point. The point is that we need popular, entertaining - yet intelligent - books to debunk religion for contemporary times. They should be up-to-date with the detail of the current science, laid out with a fair bit of elaboration, and relevant to contemporary policy issues such as the organised militancy of American Christian fundamentalism, the reactionary leadership of the Catholic Church, and the menace of radical Islam. We've been getting that, and should applaud the New Atheism (viewed as a wider publishing phenomenon rather than a monster with four heads).

I also think that Dalrymple is right if he thinks that, in contemporary circumstances, a sudden universal loss of religion would cause problems. That's a tragic situation - for too many people, religion is the only opiate. We really do need to try to change global economic conditions (not least in the US) to make people feel more secure and less embroiled in a day-by-day struggle just to survive.

205. The Turning of an Atheist

Comment #85076 by Russell Blackford on November 4, 2007 at 10:24 pm

Disclaimer: Antony Flew is not some obscure intellectual whom I'd barely heard of. He was one of the great contributors to philosophy of religion in the second half of the twentieth century. His work was one of the things - though certainly not the only one - that influenced me to abandon my own religious beliefs when I was about 19 or 20. So this strikes home a bit.

I wouldn't actually care if, at the height of his considerable powers, Flew had concluded that some sort of deism is the most likely world picture. I'm not totally close-minded about that; maybe he'd have been able to convince me, although I doubt it. In any event, the world could probably do with some high-powered advocates for the philosophical deist position, if only to liven things up.

If he had published a real book 20+ years ago, before his decline, presenting a powerful and forthright case for deism, it would have been welcome. He doubtless would have made a worthy contribution to philosophical debate.

Even now, if he had had enough clarity to produce his own book, with some kind of title and slant representing what seems to be his real position - rather than this travesty that has apparently been constructed by his "collaborators" as a cultural weapon - it might have been of some value.

From a selfish viewpoint, the scary part is that he's evidently in a very bad way mentally, and he's only about 30 years older than the likes of me (and PZ over at Pharyngula). Haha ... when you're 20, 30 years sounds like a looong time. Thirty years or so later, it seems like no time at all has passed. Worse, it seems that his decline may have started about 20 years ago. Eeek!

Still, this is surely some kind of dementia, not just the ordinary slowing down with old age.

The nasty part is how anyone could find it in themselves to take advantage of his situation in this way. Some people really are despicable.

In the end, it's terribly sad, even if he doesn't really understand what is happening to him. I think that's the main thing I'm feeling here ... sorrow for Professor Flew and his family.

I hope we all know where our anger should be directed.

(Edit: I've been seeing/receiving this from multiple sources today. Some more polished comments from me over here:


http://metamagician3000.blogspot.com/2007/11/turning-of-atheist.html )

206. The Transcendental Argument for God

Comment #85033 by Russell Blackford on November 4, 2007 at 3:42 pm

Well, the simple way to put it is "We can know that X is the case only if it happens that Y is the case." X is something very high-level that we are alleged to know, such as "free will exists", "morality is objective", "deductive logic works", "the universe exhibits regularity" etc. Y is something like "there is an all-powerful intelligence".

Often X turns out to be something rather dubious - to say the least, in some cases. For example, it strikes me as wildly unlikely that free will exists in the sense that must be meant, or that morality is objective in the requisite sense. Admittedly, these are things that we are inclined to say, pre-theoretically, but once we think about them it is hard to pin down how they can even be coherent claims, much less claims that we know to be true. If they are true at all, it is likely to be in some very modest sense (as with compatibilist accounts of free will or virtue ethics accounts of morality).

The interesting claims are that deductive logic works and that the universe exhibits regularity over time. To the extent that we do "know" these claims are true (and we need to be very tentative about just what that extent is), it's by no means obvious that the only explanation is the will of an all-powerful intelligence ... or even that this is a good explanation.

That kind of explanation is one that people may think they understand, since agency seems very familiar to them, but I doubt that anyone does understand it once we are talking about some kind of infinite, timeless agency and how it is supposed to affect things like logic. It is clearly something that many people find psychologically attractive and are inclined to say. But that's all.

207. Are the 'New Atheists' avoiding the 'real arguments'?

Comment #84869 by Russell Blackford on November 4, 2007 at 1:35 am

Edmund Standing did not waste his time studying theology. The more theology we all know, the better.

Yes, it's true that you don't need incredibly advanced knowledge of esoteric positions, in the manner suggested by Terry Eagleton, in order to identify what the traditional teachings are, and to be able to show that they are most likely false - the arguments for their truth cannot rationally justify commitment and the arguments for scepticism are very strong. RD is absolutely right about that.

Nor do you need to know all that much to grasp what is so miserable about the traditional moral views of Christianity.

RD didn't need to engage with a whole lot of super-subtle theological lore to achieve what was required in The God Delusion.

All that said, the more we know about the subtleties of various theological positions the more informed we are for debating the more subtle points that now arise in discussions post-TGD.

I don't think that any time spent studying theology is wasted, as long as it is not studied uncritically. It's the uncritical study of one or other theological position - or the indoctrination of people into such positions - that's the problem.

208. A House Divided: Hitch at Georgetown

Comment #84842 by Russell Blackford on November 3, 2007 at 11:00 pm

Tanglewood, you're missing something.

209. Was religion beneficial to the development of society? Is it now?

Comment #84833 by Russell Blackford on November 3, 2007 at 9:03 pm

cdhabecker, I do support provision for gay marriage, in current circumstances, but with a lot of reservations. The whole idea of marriage has a religious connotation that we should be stiving against.

I hope that a time will come when the state no longer recognises such a thing as "marriage" at all, and simply provides a body of law to ensure the welfare of children and sort out the respective rights of people (twosomes, threesomes, groups of siblings, communities of students, or whatever) who have lived in some mutual dependency, whether or not sex was involved. Of course, such a body of law already exists, even if it needs refinement.

There's no reason for the state to recognise one way of life (at the moment, heterosexual monogamy) over any other.

Of course, the religionists will oppose what I am suggesting tooth and nail: they just can't help themselves in attempting to use political power to try to impose their narrow concept of how people should live.

The point is that religion has always tried to impose its particular vision of the good life, via the power of the state or whatever political arrangements preceded it. The real advance began back in the 17th century when the authority of religion to do this began to come under challenge.

Religion didn't do much good that I can see, but we probably couldn't have avoided it so the idea of a world without religion in its history is moot. The Enlightenment reaction against religion's excesses has been beneficial, however.

You could say that religion has been necessary to reach the present point, but so have war, famine, plague, and natural disasters. Per impossibile, replay the tape of history without any one of those things, and nobody knows what would be result: it might be something worse than we have, or it might be something better. The trouble is, we can't really imagine our history in the absence of these various evils.

210. What the New Atheists Don't See

Comment #84802 by Russell Blackford on November 3, 2007 at 4:53 pm

Clappers, less us know how you fare.

When you get down to it, people like Dalrymple are elitists: they think that religion is good for people who are in some sense not ready for the truth. Now, at the risk of attracting ire from all sides, I have to say that I am not totally out of sympathy with this. But I immediately add that it's an uncomfortable position to take, and I'd be more impressed if Dalrymple expressed that discomfort.

To take a position such as Dalrymple's means condemning some people to an illusion on the basis that this will make them happier and better citizens than they might have been otherwise - albeit shut out of the truth. It's terribly patronising. Such a patronising attitude may actually be justified in some cases - Dalrymple has done a lot of work in prisons, and I'd be willing to bet that he could give us specific examples of people whose situations and entrenched igorance are such that they really might be better off with the illusion of religion than without it - but it's still patronising. To the limited extent that it's justified, it's a tragic situation.

Indeed, it seems ironic that Dalrymple calls Dennett "condescending". It is Dalyrymple who is condescending if he thinks that religion is somehow good or useful even though it's not actually true.

Surely what we want is to build a world where people don't get their sense of neaning from a whole bunch of false ideas, but in healthier ways. That may not be possible overnight, but a good place to start is by addressing the section of the public that actually buys books and thinks about these things. I.e., a good place to start is by doing exactly what RD is doing.

211. Rome playing politics

Comment #84797 by Russell Blackford on November 3, 2007 at 4:32 pm

Ya gotta love Grayling. Well said!

You have to scratch your noggin at the idea that introducing reforms to give the Catholic Church a less privileged social and political position in Spain is "persecution". You'd think that the Catholic apparatchiki would have a better understanding of what persecution really is, given the fine traditions of their organisation in refining and extending the practice.

212. Atheism is a religion and you're as bad as the fundamentalists

Comment #84795 by Russell Blackford on November 3, 2007 at 4:24 pm

A word to the wise, people. Threads like this have a quite specific purpose. Please, do not allow them to turn into trainwrecks as has happened with a lot of other threads lately.

Meanwhile, my more detailed thoughts about fundamentalism, for whatever use people may put them to:

http://metamagician3000.blogspot.com/2007/10/fundamentalism.html

213. Believe it or not, courtesy counts

Comment #84636 by Russell Blackford on November 3, 2007 at 1:47 am

V is very wise.

214. Jury Awards Father $11M in Funeral Case

Comment #84627 by Russell Blackford on November 3, 2007 at 12:43 am

This whole thing is ridiculous. It shows the absurdity of a court system that operates so much with punitive damages, especially when they are left totally at large for a jury to determine. Phelps, etc., are the lowest of the low, but nothing justifies this sort of unprincipled and ridiculous outcome in a tort case. I expect that the award will be cut back significantly on appeal. These monstrous punitive sums are a waste of everyone's time as they never seem to "stick" when challenged.

215. Atheists don't believe in anything

Comment #84605 by Russell Blackford on November 2, 2007 at 7:40 pm

Taken literally, this is just a crazy non sequitur. It doesn't follow at all. How does failing to believe in the existence of an all-powerful disembodied spirit that dwells outside of space and time entail that, for example, I also don't believe in the existence of, say, Martina Hingis? If it's just a way of claiming that atheists have no ideals or principles, then it's totally without foundation.

Perhaps all it means is "If you don't believe in God, you don't believe in my worldview." Well? So what?

216. Hitler, Stalin, Mao, etc. were atheists, and they were terrible! Answer that!

Comment #84591 by Russell Blackford on November 2, 2007 at 4:50 pm

The claim that Hitler was an atheist is untrue and intellectually dishonest. More importantly, however, the evils committed by all these people were committed in the name of comprehensive, dogmatic belief systems analogous to those provided by religion. Nazism, in particular, was a loopy system with weird, quasi-supernaturalist elements.

Most of us object to all such systems, whether or not they are technically religions. We would object to any such system becoming a comprehensive basis for public policy, whether it contained a deity, or a supernatural principle, or not.

As far as I'm concerned, the religions, such as Christianity, and the quasi-religions, such as Nazism, are just as bad as each other, and just as deserving of harsh examination. Enlightenment liberalism tells us to be suspicious of all such systems. When an Enlightenment liberal like me starts torturing heretics or conducting massacres, I'll take the criticism more seriously.

I'd actually be more concerned about the excesses of the French revolution, which show that even Enlightenment types can become visionary fanatics ... it's something we all have to guard against. Robespierre would be a more telling example than Hitler or Stalin. But those revolutionary excesses were small beer by comparison, and no such excesses have been committed in the name of, say, Thomas Jefferson or John Locke or John Stuart Mill.

217. Atheism is a religion and you're as bad as the fundamentalists

Comment #84393 by Russell Blackford on November 2, 2007 at 1:24 am

Fundamentalism is all about viewing a holy text as "literally" (a word that needs a lot of glossing) and inerrantly true - which is irrational when we know what happens. Religious fundamentalists end up making, and stubbornly clinging to, truth claims that fly in the face of what has been discovered through rational inquiry. No atheist who matters in the current debates is a fundamentalist, even by analogy.

Nor is any such person advocating a religion - basically a comprehensive and dogmatic system of belief that includes supernatural elements (gods, demons, ancestor spirits, supernatural principles such as karma, etc., etc.).

Some supposedly secular systems, such as Nazism and certain forms of communism, may well have been closely analogous to religion, or even to fundamentalist religion, but that is a different story. So sure, this kind of criticism by analogy can be made about various "secular religions", with their dogmas and irrationalities, but no such system is espoused by Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, or any of the other prominent critics of religion on the contemporary scene. Nor is such a thing espoused by me or by any of my friends, or by anyone whom I respect.

It's not a criticism that need trouble me in any way; I'm sure most contemporary atheists can say the same.

218. You can't prove that you love someone, so don't expect proof of God

Comment #84388 by Russell Blackford on November 2, 2007 at 12:50 am

I have strong evidence that various people love me in their different ways. The people I have in mind have acted in ways that are consistent with this, and difficult to explain otherwise, for a long time now. Similarly, they have strong evidence that I love them.

As it happens, in the absence of a telepathic sense, there is some limit to how strong our evidence of other people's emotions can be. Indeed, I can think of people whom I'm sure love me ... but I'd like to know more about precisely how they feel. Some people may well experience something like that with me, though I'm as open with them as I can be. All this is normal and familiar.

But nothing like that applies to God. It's not that I see all this behaviour from Him and am puzzled as to exactly how He feels about me. I don't see Him at all. Where the heck is he?

There is simply no sensible analogy here.

Perhaps no precise analogy is intended, and the argument is merely one from radical epistemological scepticism. If so, fine. I can't prove I'm not a brain in a vat. I can't prove there is no malevolent demon constantly deceiving me. Of course there's a far-fetched sense in which I can't prove anything at all. In that sense, I can prove neither the existence nor the non-existence of God ... but nor can I prove that I live in Melbourne or that this coming Tuesday is Melbourne Cup Day. Everything is reduced to the same level of radical doubt.

But there's also a perfectly familiar and normal sense in which I have evidence that there is a computer in the room as I type ... but no evidence of a hippopotamus in the room.

Once we step away from crazy forms of scepticism, we do indeed have impressive evidence of some things (computer in room (check!); human beings evolved from earlier forms of life (check!); my favourite people love me (check!); etc.) and no evidence at all of others (hippopotamus in room (nope!); deity in room (nope!); Earth was created 6000 years ago (nope!); etc.). This is the relevant sense of "evidence" and "proof", not something that comes from the arguments of radical epistemological sceptics.

219. Believe it or not, courtesy counts

Comment #84316 by Russell Blackford on November 1, 2007 at 6:05 pm

All well said, Cartomancer. I tip my purely-metaphorical hat to your erudition. That said, much present-day Catholic moral teaching can be traced back through Aquinas to the uptight sexual hypocrite from Hippo, as you so aptly called Augustine. It would be salutary, methinks, if this were well-known - along with the fact that his values were so twisted and his actual arguments so ... silly.

220. The truth in religion

Comment #84296 by Russell Blackford on November 1, 2007 at 4:34 pm

Polkinghorne simply does not understand the concepts of omnipotence and beneficence if he thinks that that nonsense can get him out of the problem of evil. Either that, or he's intellectually dishonest.

221. Pope's 'morning after pill' speech criticized

Comment #84295 by Russell Blackford on November 1, 2007 at 4:28 pm

Well, most of us are a bit obsessed with sex and its pleasures during our teenage years and our twenties ... and the obsession then gradually wanes as we get older. Nature designed us like that, and there's nothing wrong with it. It's just a fact about human nature that we have to work with as rationally as we can, without trying to deny it or to demonise it.

The trouble with Catholic morality is that it is obsessed with sex in a bad way. It's always yammering on about how "sinful" the urges of "the flesh" are, redeemed only by their value for procreation. Our perfectly natural and healthy impulses are made out to be something about which we should feel guilt and shame, or even disgust. The human body and its beauty must be devalued, despised ... and preferably covered. Now that attitude truly is disgusting.

Really, it's difficult to read the salient passages in Augustine and Aquinas, or even a more modern document like Humanae Vitae, without reaching for the sick bag.

In short, Catholic morality is obsessed with sex not in a natural, healthy way, but in a pathological way.

222. Religion is not incompatible with Science: 'Non-Overlapping Magisteria'

Comment #84289 by Russell Blackford on November 1, 2007 at 4:09 pm

Concise version:

Three important points must be made:

1. Religion has never confined itself to making claims about morality and how we should live our lives - historically, religions have provided encyclopedic explanations of the world and our place in it, and they typically continue to do so. When religion does that, it invariably ends up making claims that are incompatible with science.

2. But yes, religion can insulate itself from any refutation by science. All it has to do is retreat to making unfalsifiable claims about a timeless, metaphysical god, existing somewhere beyond the universe. But once religion retreats that far, making no claims that could clash with any scientific evidence, we have every reason to dismiss it as irrelevant. Nothing can count for or against it, and it is of no earthly use.

3. To the extent that religion makes moral claims, it does so with no authority - and the morality it offers is typically miserable, cruel, and barbaric: the product of times and ways of thinking that have no relevance for the modern world. We are better off investigating morality in a rational way, which is the job of secular moral philosophy. Morality is not an area where religion exercises some kind of "magisterium". Its claim to be able to teach us moral wisdom is a sham.

Long version: Go here

http://www.users.bigpond.com/russellblackford/gould.htm

223. Believe it or not, courtesy counts

Comment #84042 by Russell Blackford on November 1, 2007 at 4:14 am

There's a time and place for satire, mockery, and ridicule, but also a time and place for courtesy. I have no problem with that at all. I think I have enough sensitivity to tell the difference without the advice in the article.

The trouble is that so often it is the religious believers who go far beyond mere discourtesy, into emotional denunciation of those who oppose their cruel ideas. Worse, they frequently attempt to impose their cruel ideas by force - with considerable success. Every day, wherever we live, we see examples of all this. Who can blame us if we lose patience?

I should add that it is often the "saintly" writings of Augustine and Aquinas that are actually worst of all in promoting a horrible, miserable picture of humanity, morality, and our place in the world. Their books could also do with a bit of mockery.

224. Pope's 'morning after pill' speech criticized

Comment #83642 by Russell Blackford on October 30, 2007 at 6:56 pm

You guys just don't get it: the Great Queen Spider must be appeased.

(I won't give my usual lecture about Catholicism as a cult of misery, etc.; anyone who reads this site has seen it often enough by now.)

225. You can't be moral without God!

Comment #83072 by Russell Blackford on October 28, 2007 at 9:17 pm

You can be kind, loyal, tolerant, and non-violent without God. I don't even see the problem. Such characteristics can be justified in many ways, even by enlightened self-interest.

Of course, there's a problem as to why anyone would be motivated to follow the religionists' sick morality - which extols piety, faith, chastity, etc., as virtues - without brainwashing by priests and/or threats of Hellfire.

226. What's the evolutionary advantage of offering your place to an old woman on a bus?

Comment #83071 by Russell Blackford on October 28, 2007 at 9:07 pm

It would be stupid to think that there was an evolutionary advantage to offering places on buses back in the EEA, when buses didn't exist. The question should be, "What is the explanation as to why creatures like us, with our evolved psychology, are motivated to perform acts of kindness?" Once it's phrased that way, it's easy to see why there are numerous explanations, based in our evolved sympathies, in rational self-interest, in social contract thinking, or whatever. We may not be sure exactly which obvious explanation is the true one - or, more likely, which combination of them is best - but there's no mystery.

If the question is, "How did we evolve so as to be the sorts of creatures that flourish by being kind to each other?" then the answer has to be that no one knows the detail, without a time machine, but we have evolved as social and rational beings. There's nothing even superficially odd about such beings having evolved with natural propensities to feel sympathy for others of their kind.

A sense of mystery is created here only by an attempt - either stupid or intellectually dishonest - to saddle philoosophical naturalists with naive views that none of us actually hold.

227. Don't write off religion - it can be the key to a stable family

Comment #82833 by Russell Blackford on October 28, 2007 at 1:52 am

It's a stupid article. I think that much religion is absurd, authoritarian, and cruel - not because I'm projecting my own absurd, authoritarian, and cruel tendencies but simply because I've seen a lot of absurd, authoritarian, cruel religion with my own eyes.

I agree with Bonzai and others that the whole "moderates enable fanatics" trope is an embarrassment - I've never felt especially comfortable with it. The truth of the matter is that lots of people enable fanatics, and lots of people enable rather silly moderates. The enablers are often atheists.

We must all stop thinking of faith as a virtue or giving the impression that we do so. While we're on the job, we can stop pretending that humility, piety, sexual modesty, sexual jealousy, self-abnegation, submissiveness to religious authority, and chastity are virtues. These things are all vices (though some do have equivalent virtues such as having a proper and not obnoxious degree of pride, being capable of rational deferment of pleasures, possessing genuine self-discipline, being loyal and considerate to your lovers, etc). No one could consider the religious virtues to be real ones without childhood exposure to religious claptrap.

But all that said, the moderate or liberal religionists are not fanatics; some of them are on our side in important respects; they do not necessarily enable fanatics; and even when they do they have company from atheists who are overly respectful of religious and cultural traditions.

228. Debate between Christopher Hitchens and Dinesh D'Souza

Comment #81357 by Russell Blackford on October 24, 2007 at 4:10 pm

Just one thing: you can't measure who "wins" a debate in terms of audience support. On that basis, the believers will always win when an unbeliever goes into their den, and someone putting an "out there", unpopular position will always lose. It's very different from a political debate where much of the point is for each side to craft an electorally popular position.

You can only measure it either by the cogency of the arguments or by who was shown to be the better presented debater on the night (which often comes down to who had the nicest voice or the more confident body language, or who could project a likeable or somehow impressive personality) ... or by some subjective mix of the two. Hitchens usually wins in the sense of presenting an impressive package: solid, well-structured material; a forceful personality; and a beautiful speaking voice.

Really, these debates prove nothing. Their merit is that they (1) sell Hitchens' book and (2) show that someone with an unpopular view such as atheism can put nonetheless articulate reasons in support of it ... and have the guts to do so in front of audiences that may not be sympathetic.

229. A new website addition: Debate Points

Comment #81350 by Russell Blackford on October 24, 2007 at 4:00 pm

Good initiative.

Don't forget that some work has already been done at Ask the Atheists

http://www.asktheatheists.com/

It's a resource to draw on.

230. War in Heaven: Hitchens Meets D'Souza on Home Turf

Comment #81104 by Russell Blackford on October 24, 2007 at 5:47 am

EarthChild, don't hold back - tell us what you really think. ;)

231. War in Heaven: Hitchens Meets D'Souza on Home Turf

Comment #81088 by Russell Blackford on October 24, 2007 at 3:39 am

On the "first 98,000 years" argument, I actually think this is very powerful. There is a real tension between the scientific picture of human origins and the providential image of the world offered by the Abrahamic religions, and Hitchens illustrates it well with this approach.

Will it convince the average believer to abandon her faith? No. No one argument will have that effect, and some Christians don't even accept the scientific account of human origins. Besides, many are not open to rational persuasion at all: they experience their faith as given rather than worked out or chosen, and never genuinely question it.

But it's still an unanswerable point that Hitchens makes. It's one that can be made with confidence by any of us, and some religious folks will feel its force and be troubled by it.

232. War in Heaven: Hitchens Meets D'Souza on Home Turf

Comment #81027 by Russell Blackford on October 23, 2007 at 11:24 pm

I wonder why it would be a bad thing if atheism were interpreted as a moral revolt, as well as an intellectual revolt? The atheist critique is, in part, a revolt against the presumed moral authority of religious leaders and institutions, and against the ethics of misery. That sounds good to me.

233. Interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Comment #80982 by Russell Blackford on October 23, 2007 at 8:02 pm

My thoughts, with those of some other discussants, continued over here:

http://metamagician3000.blogspot.com/2007/10/going-to-extremes.html

234. Devil of a problem

Comment #80702 by Russell Blackford on October 22, 2007 at 5:06 pm

Poor little devils. They really are such cuties. I'll enjoy my latte less for having read about this. :(

235. Interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Comment #80692 by Russell Blackford on October 22, 2007 at 4:33 pm

We really need those liberal Muslims - whose existence AHA acknowledges - to stand up proudly and declare unequivocally that they support Lockean tolerance and individual liberty, that they are glad to join the Enlightenment compromise, and that anywhere where Islam can be practised without persecution is already the house of Islam, not the house of war.

They can hardly do that if Western societies claim that we are at war with Islam itself - as opposed to some of us committing to a struggle against all forms of theocracy - and if we actually do start persecuting Muslims.

More generally, I was disappointed with this interview. I am predisposed to like and defend AHA, but she seemed to be all over the place. It didn't seem to be thought through, though she was given ample opportunity to explain her position.

Apart from the recommendation that we close Muslim schools, I couldn't see much there that was concrete. All the stuff about how terrible it is that our enemies (and the extremists concerned are, indeed, our enemies) express their hatred of us by burning our symbols left me thinking, "So what?" Yes, people who hate you will find ways of expressing it. And?

Otherwise, what Brian and EB are saying.

A final thought ... Richard may not be too happy with this being said, but I think a time is coming when he will have no choice but to distance himself from some of the pronouncements by his allies. Hitchens and AHA are making extreme claims about how the West should respond to Islam, in particular. Some of us smaller fry are troubled by them (it's not just people who've commented on this thread; PZ Myers is obviously quite worried about Hitchens, over at Pharyngula).

236. Interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Comment #80507 by Russell Blackford on October 22, 2007 at 2:56 am

Well, surely she doesn't think we are "at war" with those communities of "very liberal" Pakistani and Indian Muslims in the US, which she refers to. She denies that moderate Islam is the solution, but what are those liberal Muslim communities supposed to do if the US really does take up an official stance of warfare with Islam itself? That sort of stance isn't moral or tenable.

I've been a fan of AHA. I totally enjoyed Infidel, and I fully support her campaign against the barbaric elements in Islamic practice ... but when she claims, point-blank, that we're in a war against Islam itself, that's surely a dangerous exaggeration.

There's a struggle going on, largely an intellectual one, against religion in general, and against theocratic tendencies in particular, and we must confront those things with the power of our ideas. And I agree with her that new policies may be needed whereby we cease to extend so much tolerance to the intolerant. But talk of "war" against an entire world religion, without distinctions and qualifications, really worries me.

Sorry, Ayaan, but that's not something I'm signing up for.

237. Debate between Michael Shermer and Dinesh D'Souza

Comment #80430 by Russell Blackford on October 21, 2007 at 7:47 pm

I haven't looked at this yet, but from what y'all are saying D'Souza does have serious debating skills even though he's a total wingnut. I guess the best thing we can do is learn a lesson about what works in live debate and what doesn't. His debate with Hitchens should be interesting.

238. Debate between Michael Shermer and Dinesh D'Souza

Comment #80409 by Russell Blackford on October 21, 2007 at 5:14 pm

The scary thing is that our culture (or at least American culture) gives D'Souza oxygen at all. I can't even take his views seriously, though I loathe their political implications. The man lives in another universe.

239. The greatest debate

Comment #80404 by Russell Blackford on October 21, 2007 at 4:37 pm

Some weeks back, I attended a session where Phillip Adams was talking about atheism (with a few others), and I managed to talk with Adams briefly at his book signing afterwards.

He seems to agree with Dawkins about almost everything, but thinks that religion can be benign. He makes quite a point about how the grassroots Catholic religious are not necessarily anything like their arch-conservative leaders, such as the pope and Cardinal Pell - which is doubtless true. I wish his tone was more reflective of the fact that he is almost 100 per cent with Dawkins on the detailed issues. In the talk, he seemed to want to distance himself from Dawkins - but then agreed with Dawkins on point after point. I don't think he appreciated it when I half-jokingly chided him about this.

None of which is to imply that anyone on the freethinking "side" has to agree with all the views of anyone else. Zeus knows, I'd have to be distancing myself a long way from Hitchens' views on Irag and Islam.

240. Christopher Hitchens at AAI 07

Comment #80209 by Russell Blackford on October 20, 2007 at 6:38 pm

The trouble is that the Hitchens ploy responds to something that's very vague and unsatisfactory, such as the rhetorical question, which we've all seen theists use, "Where do you get your morals from without God?" or "Doesn't morality need a metaphysical basis?"

In fact, this is multiply ambiguous. On some interpretations, there is no simple and accurate answer to the question: there are contentious fields of philosophy and psychology largely devoted to examining the naturalistic bases of morality. Someone who wants a simple answer now may well be emotionally unwilling to give up theism if she wrongly thinks it can provide the answer.

Of course, theism fails to do so. First, its attempts are technically inadequate (would that it were rhetorically sufficient for Hitchens to say the one word "Euthyphro"). Secondly, the actual morality it provides is typically pretty nasty, once you step outside it. I've become fond of saying that Christian morality stands to genuine morality as cancer stands to health.

I still like Hitchens' ploy. Yes, it's a bit of rhetoric, a bit of a tactic, but it does force the theist to clarify what is really being put ... and any answers given to it will show how the religious ideas of morality are not necessarily the commonsense ones. If the only supposedly "good" things they can do that we can't are things like praying for others, we don't seem all that badly off without their deity.

I'm getting some good discussion of the Hitchens/McGrath debate, where this also came up, over on my own blog now if anyone is interested. http://metamagician3000.blogspot.com/2007/10/hitchens-at-his-best.html We have the leisure there to try to tease out some of the associated philosophical issues.

241. God's honest truth?

Comment #80099 by Russell Blackford on October 20, 2007 at 12:59 am

I think that Andrew Brown's heart is in the right place and he just kind of got the wrong end of the stick. I'm now hoping that this observation will win me the RichardDawkins.net Best Mixed Metaphor of the Week Prize (sponsored, one hopes, by the Templeton Foundation).

242. Christopher Hitchens at AAI 07

Comment #80095 by Russell Blackford on October 20, 2007 at 12:06 am

All right, Riley, if you're on our side I apologise to you. I was unnecessarily mean.

But you are coming across as trying to get your point accepted and win an argument, rather than trying to understand why Hitchens might have good reasons to use this ploy, and what might be a better ploy if there's a problem with this one. You say that there are various distinctions. I agree. But that makes life almost impossible for the atheist debater, as the theists know. By the time you sort out what the hell the theist challenge means, out of all the things it might possibly mean, the attention span of your audience is up, as is your fifteen seconds. And if you answer the question "How can you have moral knowledge without God?" they'll say they really meant "How can morality have a metaphysical underpinning without God?" If you answer that, they say they really meant something else again, such as "How can you explain people's sense of obligation without God?" or "How can you guarantee there won't be dramatic moral breakdown without God?" And of course if you can be seen to be "misinterpreting" the question, it shows you don't get it.

It seems to me that Hitchens has a debating tactic that at least throws the onus back onto the believers to explain themselves. It may not be entirely fair - though you still have to convince me of that - but in any event, neither is the tactic that it answers. The theists know very well how shaky their meta-ethical position is, and that all they are doing is causing confusion by asking a massively ambiguous question. It's a cynical tactic.

Please tell us how you would handle it. I'm not just being rhetorical, though I do wonder how much better at this you'd be than Hitchens; I genuinely want to know.

Some of us may well find ourselves playing the same role as Hitchens does in these public debates, albeit at a more local level rather than strutting the world stage like he does, and every genuine tip helps.

243. Report on Hindu god Ram withdrawn

Comment #80082 by Russell Blackford on October 19, 2007 at 10:12 pm

Well, I have actually done some (quite limited) formal study of Eastern philosophy, and have studied some of the Hindu and Buddhist texts. I do think that there are reasons for secular thinkers to engage with this material, but there are a lot of competing priorities. No one person can do everything.

244. Report on Hindu god Ram withdrawn

Comment #80058 by Russell Blackford on October 19, 2007 at 7:18 pm

82abhilash, that's a nice description of what we might hope religion could transform itself into. There's another barrier, though, which is just that the moral content is often pretty undesirable, even after you strip away the supernatural elements.

Still, there's some scope to reinterpret the various religious traditions and turn them into something more credible and beneficial than they have been historically. That's what we have to hope for, I think. We can expect people to give up on supernaturalism; we can even expect them to reinterpret and develop their cultures; we can't expect them to desert their cultures totally.

245. Christopher Hitchens at AAI 07

Comment #80047 by Russell Blackford on October 19, 2007 at 6:18 pm

Hitchens' point is clear enough, and I'm starting to think we have a new pet troll that y'all are feeding. Or at least someone so literal-minded and pig-headed that talking to him intelligently is like talking to a brick wall. Sometimes the point is made and there's no more to say; the interlocutor either "gets" it or doesn't.

246. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #79913 by Russell Blackford on October 19, 2007 at 2:56 am

I can't believe that anyone in this age would defend theism for its supposedly superior ethics or morality. Theistic religions have usually been cults of misery. What they call virtue - submission, piety, self-abnegation, asceticism, sexual modesty - I call vice. That's not to deny that cockiness and other kinds of undue pride, for example, are also vices ... but overall this is one area where religion definitely does not have the high ground. Religion asks us to feel awe at the wrong things (such as non-existent superbeings), rather the right things (such as the beauty of our lovers). It asks us to find the wrong things (and people) impure. In some cases, it relies on morally shocking ideas such as blood sacrifice for "sin".

By and large, religious morality is a pathological distortion of genuine morality. Religion stands to morality as cancer stands to health.

To find a worthwhile morality, we need to clear religion away.

247. God's honest truth?

Comment #79880 by Russell Blackford on October 19, 2007 at 12:13 am

I largely agree with the analysis by George Orwell, I mean Eric Blair. I don't like religious indoctrination, but I don't think it's the kind of thing that it's up to the state to prohibit. There's a difference as I said in my previous comment. We need to find other ways to phase it out of our societies ... though a good start would be refusing to fund non-state schools and particularly "faith schools" that propose to indoctrinate children - it's one thing to prohibit something, another merely to refuse to fund it with taxpayers' money.

At the moment, though, outside of Scandinavia, we're still at the consciousness raising stage.

I disagree with EB about at least one thing: I actually do think that at least some kinds of religious indoctrination are clear and serious forms of child abuse. They might not be kinds that are amenable to state prohibition, but they are nonetheless abusive, and I'm prepared to call a spade a spade on this. I'm thinking, in particular, of stories about supernatural terrors, such as Hell, to which children are often exposed in all earnest by parents.

248. Atheistic Denomination Struggles To Fill Void Left by Founder's Death

Comment #79854 by Russell Blackford on October 18, 2007 at 6:16 pm

I suppose I'm part of that "rabble"; I'm not super comfortable with Epstein, as I've said previously. But it's all in the detail. I'm not necessarily uncomfortable with Humanistic Judaism itself. On the contrary, I think it's an interesting "experiment in living" and much may yet be learned from it.

249. God's honest truth?

Comment #79843 by Russell Blackford on October 18, 2007 at 5:38 pm

Sinbad does, indeed, have a point. This goes further than I would want.

At the same time, why oh why can't journalists get it right with Dawkins' position? He has never said anything remotely like what is attributed to him.

People in general seem to have great difficulty in understanding the simple concept that there is a difference between one's own moral views and one's political views about what moral views should be tolerated in a liberal society. The class of things that I (or Dawkins, or whoever) consider politically intolerable may be much narrower than the class of things that we disapprove of or consider morally bad. That's what liberalism is all about.

250. Debate between Christopher Hitchens and Alister McGrath

Comment #79543 by Russell Blackford on October 17, 2007 at 4:07 pm

Some of you really are mean. E.g., if McGrath was nervous, so what? If that's the case, he should be praised for having the courage to do something he was nervous about. In any event, I make a point of drinking a lot of water if I'm speaking in public even if I'm not especially nervous. Otherwise my voice will end up getting hoarse.

Northern Bright, you're no doubt correct if you found McGrath to be mendacious in his books - I haven't read them. But I've now seen a lot of him in action and I do think that he is pretty scrupulous in the presentations I've seen. It'd be interesting to see him without Dawkins or Hitchens present of course. He did give a talk in Melbourne not long ago - to a church audience - but I couldn't face going along. I probably should have.