tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-69008709235769546132023-12-21T17:40:28.176+00:00Atheist MCSteve Bowenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15243178223616240845noreply@blogger.comBlogger248125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6900870923576954613.post-89862748127333420122020-02-29T11:19:00.000+00:002020-03-12T16:11:26.857+00:00Which is True. Christianity or Atheism?- An odd debate...<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I've been invited to take part in a debate at the University of Kent with the above premise... I have composed my opening statement for the event so thought I'd share it here.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijJokoVZQaqPpZ968yXDTSvoCZUaWvgGeGeoHbjahU3dUwVta5KKTON68ivxKhnijXwMfM6DEnbMFsriInt85b0RNVesJ7-VWY5wLwnAMXoih7bpWPTsjM3CnA0NIPfKlLjSyOShipWg8/s1600/grimond.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="194" data-original-width="259" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijJokoVZQaqPpZ968yXDTSvoCZUaWvgGeGeoHbjahU3dUwVta5KKTON68ivxKhnijXwMfM6DEnbMFsriInt85b0RNVesJ7-VWY5wLwnAMXoih7bpWPTsjM3CnA0NIPfKlLjSyOShipWg8/s1600/grimond.png" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">It may have crossed your minds, because it has mine, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>that the terms of this debate are a little
odd. Normally when you pitch one thing against another there is some implied
equivalence between them even if they are antithetical to each other. But Atheism and Christianity are not at all the same sort of
thing. True, they both have something to say about belief in some kind of deity
but there I think the similarity ends.</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Christianity after all is more than just belief that a deity
exists. For one thing it posits a particular kind of god with an interest in and
expectations of the human race but also it has acquired throughout its two
thousand year history a creed (well several actually) and inculcated itself
into the cultural narrative of the western world to such an extraordinary
extent that its influence pervades practically every aspect of society.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
Atheism however is really nothing more than an ontological
opinion. That gods do not exist.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I’m not intending to be provocative when I say gods (plural)
because despite whatever ecumenical sentiments proponents of the worlds
religions express there are many concepts of god, some of them mutually
exclusive and all to some degree incompatible in the way they are supposed to
interact with the world. And that’s if they do interact. Some definitions of
god are deistic, creator gods yes, but the kind that retire immediately they light
the blue touch paper.</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">So usually if somebody asks me if I believe in God my first
response is usually “what do you mean by God?”</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Given the usual theistic responses I will then go on to say
“no, I don’t believe in <u>that</u> god” because after all I am an A-Theist.
Give god an attitude, or claim to know what it wants or insist on your personal
relationship with it then I’m pretty sure it doesn’t exist.</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Sophisticated theologians like Paul Tillich, Alvin Plantinga
and David Bentley Hart will tell you that this is a naive concept of god. They
will talk of a “ground of being”, god as the “prime mover” or particularly in
Hart’s case as “being , consciousness and bliss”.</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Well, maybe but for one thing that’s not the sort of god the
average theist believes in and for another it’s hard to determine whether
reality would be any different with or without it. Since they are unfalsifiable
most Atheists I know remain agnostic about those types of god, as they do about
deistic ones although there are good philosophical reasons to assume they also don’t
exist.</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">So, the headline premise for tonight is “Which is True,
Christianity or Atheism?” From an atheist point of view this is an easy proposition.
There is, and has never been, objective evidence for the existence of any god
from any religion and so the burden of proof is not on the atheist to prove
that gods don’t exist. Since there is no empirical evidence of them the default
assumption is, or should be, that there aren’t any. If it can’t be proved that
there are -<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>then the Christian God
disappears along with all the others.</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">But Christianity has another problem<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>because it’s not enough to establish the one
thing atheism rejects. It also has to establish the truth of the<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>narrative peculiar to its understanding of
god. At a bare minimum evidence God’s incarnation in the person of Jesus
Christ, and his crucifixion and ascension for the salvation of human kind.</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Then, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>if you want to go
on to argue for the literal and fundamentalist truth of Christianity you’ve also
got to prove, against the overwhelming weight of empirical evidence, for the
inerrancy of Judeo-Christian scripture.</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">But let’s hold that thought for now…</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Thus far I’ve made no positive claims for atheism, and I may
not make that many. In the meantime I can tell you what it’s not – It’s not a
worldview, certainly not a religion and only in a vague sense is it a belief. I
say that because atheists are rarely walking around consciously disbelieving in
gods or especially, actively believing no gods exist. It’s a question that only
arises when we’re confronted by the presumption of others that they do.</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">But, being an atheist does tend to lead to other conclusions
about how the world might be.</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Almost by definition Atheists are philosophical naturalists,
understanding the world through an empirical lens and a broadly defined
scientific method. This tends, although not infallibly, to mean that they
reject all supernatural explanations of anything along with pseudo-scientific
concepts such as homeopathy for example.</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Atheism has no political allegiances although atheists on
the whole tend to the socially liberal. But you can find them all across the
political spectrum from Socialist to Libertarians. Ayn Rand for example was
famously atheist.</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Atheism has no creed or scripture (No, we don’t walk around clutching
copies of “The God Delusion”) Consequently you may think that atheists have no
“moral compass” nothing for the individual atheist to hang their ethics on. But
in fact they have exactly the same source that religion does, at least for the
fundamental principles, which is our shared human nature.</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">In contrast to the Abrahamic faiths which see humans as
fallen from some mythical state of grace, atheists understand we are an evolved
highly pro-social species with natural drives to be cooperative, maintain our personal
reputations and be empathetic to others. We already possess within us the basis
of morality and the more our circle of concern has expanded due to the growth
of society the more refined those instincts have become. [# Steven Pinker: The
better Angels of Our Nature]</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Yes, In pursuit of Sustenance, Security and Sex we’re also
capable of acts of cruelty and selfishness but ultimately we need each other.
This isn’t a soppy appeal to Rousseau but a fact of our social nature. Moral
norms become established as a result of society in general and would emerge
with or without religion.</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Another thing that Atheism isn’t – an ideology. Nobody
campaigns for atheism, no armies march with a capital ‘A’ on their banners,
nobody engages in terrorist acts or blows themselves up in the name of atheism.
No atheist ever called for the death of an atheist “apostate” or as far as I
know disowned a child for daring to be religious.</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">You will hear people say that atheist regimes have been the
most repressive and violent regimes the world has seen but the reality is
atheism has nothing to do with the usual examples they cite. Communist Russia
under Stalin was exactly that, Communist. Stalin supressed religion because it
was a threat to Communism not because he was ideologically wedded to atheism.
It’s not even clear if he was personally an atheist. Mao suppressed religion
for similar reasons and Pol-Pot set himself up as a god in his own right.
Suggestions that Hitler was an atheist and that Nazism was godless are so
laughable it is extraordinary the myth persists, perhaps the desire of the
Catholic Church to disown their complicity with both has something to do with
it.</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">This is not to suggest that individual atheists can’t be
evil, they are as capable of it as anybody is but atheism won’t be their <i>raison
d’etre</i>. In fact if you want to find a reason for evil it will be in the
dogmatic pursuit of some ideology, it will be done by someone who thinks they
are acting for a higher cause a higher power or some ultimate benefit that will
outweigh the immediate harm.</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Physicist Steven Weinberg famously said “<span style="color: #3c4043; line-height: 107%;">With or without religion, </span><strong><em><span style="color: #3c4043; line-height: 107%;">good people can</span></em></strong><span style="color: #3c4043; line-height: 107%;"> behave well and </span><strong><em><span style="color: #3c4043; line-height: 107%;">bad people can
do</span></em></strong><span style="color: #3c4043; line-height: 107%;"> evil; but </span><strong><em><span style="color: #3c4043; line-height: 107%;">for good people to do</span></em></strong><span style="color: #3c4043; line-height: 107%;"> evil - that takes religion.”</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: #3c4043; line-height: 107%;"></span></span><div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: #3c4043; line-height: 107%;">
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="color: #3c4043; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I would suggest that there
are also political ideologies that could be substituted for religion in that
quote. Religion can’t be blamed for everything - but atheism<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>is not such an ideology and indeed, in my
view,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>not ideological at all.</span></span></div>
<span style="color: #3c4043; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<br /></div>
</span></span></span></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: #3c4043; line-height: 107%;"><span style="color: #3c4043; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: #3c4043; line-height: 107%;">There have been attempts to
construct an “atheist movement” that have largely failed. Richard Dawkins,
evolutionary biologist and author of “The God Delusion” says </span><span style="color: #222222; line-height: 107%;">“Organizing atheists is a bit <b>like herding cats</b>; They are
on the whole too intelligent and independent minded to lend themselves to being
herded.”</span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: #3c4043; line-height: 107%;"><span style="color: #3c4043; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: #222222; line-height: 107%;"><span style="color: #222222; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I’ve met Dawkins who does
have an unfortunate arrogant streak and I think he could have left out the
claim to excessive intelligence<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>(although there is some correlation between academic qualifications and
atheism it’s really only strong in sciences where you might expect to find more
atheists anyway), but what is objectively true is that atheism is not by itself
a vehicle that builds communities. Ideas such as Atheism plus and Atheism 2.0
have come and gone as mainly on-line fads.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: #222222; line-height: 107%;">The “Atheist Church” founded
in 2013 by </span><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">Sanderson Jones and Pippa Evans enjoys some success with some
55 regular venues around the world offering a guaranteed god-free community
experience. I’ve attended a couple and they’re fun and informative taking<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>their cue from the Christian format (if it
ain’t broke don’t fix it) but using entirely non-religious music and readings.
I’m not sure it constitutes a movement but it serves a human need for society
without any necessity for gods.<br /><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">There is of course Humanism, which does tick all the
boxes atheism doesn’t. Humanist are atheists, with a utilitarian ethical
worldview that values human flourishing , diversity and happiness, Of course
not all atheists are Humanists. I am, and most atheists I associate with are
and it is a strong and growing movement. The cohesive factor is not so much
atheism as our shared human values and Humanists are pretty reliably socially
and community minded. Many people in the general population who class
themselves as “nones”, that is having no particular religious affiliation have
values that align with Humanism and in the UK they represent around 52% of the
population.<br /><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">So atheism, a mere ontological opinion about the universe we
inhabit, does not preclude any of the things we all<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>value about the human condition. Human
competency, Human imagination, Human responsibility and human values are part
of our shared evolutionary heritage and in my view overpopulating the universe
with supernatural deities only diminishes rather than celebrates that awesome
fact.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
Steve Bowenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15243178223616240845noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6900870923576954613.post-49147515148782369432017-03-21T15:56:00.000+00:002017-03-21T16:00:48.539+00:00On reading "Signature in the Cell"<br />
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I was recently prompted to read outside of my methodological naturalist’s bubble and delve into <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_C._Meyer">Stephen C Meyer’s</a> argument for intelligent design <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B002C949BI/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1"><i>“Signature in the Cell: DNA and the evidence for Intelligent Design”</i></a> . As a general principle if you want to argue against the misconceptions people hold it is not always enough to have mere facts at your disposal, it helps also to mine the source of their misunderstanding and the plausible quasi-scientific arguments of the likes of Meyer and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Behe">Michael Behe</a> are fundamental to those who would argue against naturalist theories of the origin of life.<br />
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The first thing to say about Meyer is that he is an extremely well qualified philosopher of science and there is very little in Signature in the Cell insofar as it relates to the actual molecular biology of DNA and its role in protein synthesis that I would argue with. In fact the opening chapters would make quite a good undergraduate primer on the subject. He correctly points out that a modern living cell is an incredibly complex machine of interrelated systems capable of transcribing information from the genetic code held in DNA and translating it into large functionally specific molecules such as proteins. He also, and equally correctly, observes that many of these proteins are necessary for the very processes of translation and transcription that the cell relies on to create them, in particular <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ribosome"> Ribosomes </a>, the RNA / Protein complex that “stitches” amino acids together to make other proteins. <br />
This interrelatedness and complexity forms one plank of his assertion that naturalistic processes cannot be responsible for the origin of life since even a minimally functional cell could not arise without a DNA code and the code could not be translated without specific decoding machinery. Then for further support he argues that there is no known mechanism by which a specific and information rich system can arise by chance alone. All such other know systems; computer code, written language etcetera have an intelligent source: us. <br />
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From these he builds a long and rather repetitive argument using <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abduction/"> abductive reasoning</a> to draw an <a href="http://www.informationphilosopher.com/knowledge/best_explanation.html"> inference to the best explanation </a> for the origin of life and specifically the information carried by DNA. He cites a number of statistical reasons why chemical theories of the origin of life are impossible, why chance cannot produce specified information and debunks the<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RNA_world"> RNA world hypothesis </a> as a precursor to a full blown DNA code. By systematically eliminating all possible natural explanations for life he seeks to establish that intelligent design is the only possible alternative. However, many of the assumptions he makes to suggest that a naturalistic origin of life is impossible are in my view flawed. <br />
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For example there is no necessity for a “minimally functional cell” to arise in one fell swoop and there is no necessity either for replication and metabolism to arise simultaneously or in the same place. There are credible <a href="http://sandwalk.blogspot.co.uk/2009/05/metabolism-first-and-origin-of-life.html"> metabolism first scenarios </a> in which thermodynamically favourable conditions can allow spontaneous simple metabolic cycles to emerge. It has been postulated that <a href="http://www.livescience.com/26173-hydrothermal-vent-life-origins.html"> alkaline hydrothermal vents </a> would have been one such favourable environment. Meyer also insists there are no fundamental forces of nature driving systems to self-organise and increase in complexity but in the last couple of years <a href="http://www.englandlab.com/curriculum-vitae.html"> Jeremy England</a> at MIT has developed a <a href="https://www.quantamagazine.org/20140122-a-new-physics-theory-of-life/"> thermodynamic theory</a> that suggests entropy actually favours organised and replicating structures as they are more efficient at energy dispersal. Combinations of replicators and metabolisers allows for the possibility of some kind of biological bootstrapping.<br />
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Meyer makes something of a schoolboy error when he argues that the active sites that confer the catalytic specificity to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enzyme"> enzymes</a> are so specific that a single amino acid out of place would render them useless. This is something like the classic anti evolution argument of “what use is half an eye?” The answer of course is more use than none as long as it performs the function to some extent. This is true of enzymes as long as they are more efficient at facilitating a particular chemical reaction than would be the case if they were absent, then natural selection will do the rest. In fact it is not even correct to say that enzymes are so constrained. In his book “<i>The arrival of the Fittest</i>” evolutionary biologist <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andreas_Wagner"> Andreas Wagner </a> concludes that no enzyme is really that special, in fact there are usually an astronomical number of alternatives that work and, interestingly, functional intermediates that allow for enzymes to mutate. He also demonstrates similar functional redundancies in the genetic code itself which added together make the probability of specific information bearing molecules arising randomly much greater than Meyer would have us believe. <br />
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It gets worse for Meyer when you consider that as things stand we only have one working model for how life is organised, life on earth. For all we know there could be many ways, with alternative molecules and alternative codes for complex evolving systems to arise. Like a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_sharpshooter_fallacy">Texas sharpshooter</a> he has drawn a bulls eye around one object out of many and made a miracle out of the fact he’s hit it. Should we ever discover extra-terrestrial life with the same familiar genetic code that would be a real argument against random processes and would bolster the case for intelligent intervention but personally I would bet against it. <br />
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A parable that Meyer returns to several times goes like this…<br />
<blockquote>
"Imagine a team of researchers who set out to explore a string of remote islands near Antarctica. After many days at sea, they arrive on an icy, windswept shore. Shouldering their packs, the team hikes inland and eventually takes shelter from the bitter cold in a cave. There, by the light of a small campfire built to cook their freeze-dried rations, they notice a curious series of wedgelike markings vaguely reminiscent of Sumerian cuneiform. It occurs to them that perhaps these scratches in the rock constitute some sort of written language, but dating techniques reveal that the markings are more than five hundred thousand years old…"</blockquote>
He concludes that in this situation once all of the other possible natural causes for the information rich markings are exhausted the researchers would reasonably conclude that an intelligent agent was responsible even though the marks predate writing by many millennia. He then equates this with the information rich genetic code and having (he believes) eliminated natural explanations arrives at the same conclusion. But, these two situations are not equivalent. For one thing markings in a cave would show evidence of tool use. The form and disposition of the rock would indicate whether it had been chiselled with bone, stone or metal implements for example and the marks would have had a <i>predetermined</i> meaning. DNA however is both the medium and the message; there are no fingerprints on it to suggest what mechanism was employed by an intelligent designer to forge a molecule that is self-replicating, prone to mutations and contains multiple redundancies in translation. It’s as if the researchers came across rock markings with no evidence of <i>how</i> they were made, which highlights one of the philosophical problems with the whole book. Meyers argument to a best explanation is really no explanation at all. There is no attempt to explain how the designer achieved this feat of molecular engineering, nor why it bothered. Meyer is of course a Christian so for him the answers would be theological, although he is at pains to tell us that intelligent design says nothing about the nature of the designer only that there must be one. <br />
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If, as many religiously motivated people are, you were predisposed to distrust naturalistic explanations for the origins of life this book would be convincing. It’s plausible, so if you were not scientifically literate or up to speed with the latest research into biological origins it could easily confirm your preconceptions. But approached sceptically there are many holes and logical non-sequiturs hiding in the narrative particularly in the latter sections where Meyer attempts to defend intelligent design as proper science. But it’s not enough to posit a cause that itself has no explanation. It’s a philosophical dead end unless you can define who or what the intelligent designer was or at least identify a line of enquiry that may expose it. Meyer denies it at length but it’s hard to distinguish “<i>signature in the cell</i> from any other god of the gaps argument.
Steve Bowenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15243178223616240845noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6900870923576954613.post-77039184748240991822016-08-04T11:30:00.000+01:002016-08-04T11:30:10.400+01:00Is slavery "abhorrent" in Islam?It's been a while since <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p043gnwn">BBC's Thought for the Day</a> has motivated me to blog about it, but a recent contribution (link above) by Sughra Ahmed, the current president of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Society_of_Britain"> The Islamic Society of Britain</a> was such a blatant example of scriptural cherry picking that I can’t let it pass without comment.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Muslim Slave Trader</td></tr>
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The piece was ostensibly about <a href="https://modernslavery.co.uk/"> modern slavery</a>, a very real problem that Prime Minister Theresa May has recently <a href="http://www.theweek.co.uk/75067/uk-must-lead-modern-slavery-fight-says-theresa-may"> highlighted</a> as a priority for national attention by setting up a cabinet task-force, and Ahmed opens with this thought <br />
<blockquote>
” Slavery is a phenomenon I think of as something from long ago and a history I’m ashamed of.”</blockquote>
I waited for the admission that many religions, including Islam, had condoned slavery and that would be the source of her “shame”. But no…<br />
<blockquote>
“Slavery has also been a challenge for religious traditions and we know this through the example of prophets and religious texts. Prophet Muhammad, for example, put himself at risk when he freed those who were enslaved by people of the time. It was commonplace for powerful men to own slaves, in fact it was seen as a sign of wealth and stature in their communities. The story of Muhammad freeing the slave Bilal is the most famous and was a clear demonstration to those of the time, and those who read the story today, that slavery is abhorrent in Islam.”</blockquote>
“Slavery is abhorrent in Islam…”. Really? Lets test this glib assertion, based as it is on one cherry picked story about the African slave <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilal_Ibn_Rabah">Bilal Ibn Rabah</a> against several other Quranic verses and Hadiths.
<br />
<blockquote>
<a href="http://corpus.quran.com/translation.jsp?chapter=33&verse=50">Quran (33:50)</a> - <i>"O Prophet! We have made lawful to thee thy wives to whom thou hast paid their dowers; and those (slaves) whom thy right hand possesses out of the prisoners of war whom Allah has assigned to thee" </i></blockquote>
<blockquote>
<a href="http://www.usc.edu/org/cmje/religious-texts/hadith/bukhari/052-sbt.php#004.052.255">Bukhari (52:255) -Volume 4, Book 52, Number 255</a>: <i>The Prophet said, "Three persons will get their reward twice. (One is) a person who has a slave girl and he educates her properly and teaches her good manners properly (without violence) and then manumits and marries her. Such a person will get a double reward. (Another is) a believer from the people of the scriptures who has been a true believer and then he believes in the Prophet (Muhammad). Such a person will get a double reward. <strong> (The third is) a slave who observes Allah's Rights and Obligations and is sincere to his master."</strong></i></blockquote>
<blockquote>
<a href="http://www.islam4theworld.net/hadith/bukhari/41to45.htm"> Bukhari Volume 3, Book 41, Number 598:</a> <i>Narrated Jabir: A man manumitted a slave and he had no other property than that, so the Prophet cancelled the manumission (and sold the slave for him). No'aim bin Al-Nahham bought the slave from him.</i></blockquote>
These and other examples can be found <a href="https://www.thereligionofpeace.com/pages/quran/slavery.aspx"> here </a>.<br />
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The best you can say about Islam from a scriptural point of view is that it sees manumitting slaves as a nice thing to do that will likely get you brownie points with Allah (who,as we know, rewards good Muslim men with 72 perpetually virginal sex slaves in heaven) but it certainly doesn’t see it as a priority and by no means is slavery portrayed as “abhorrent”. Like the old testament a thousand years earlier the Quran accepts slavery as a normal part of the human condition and fundamentalists today are <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3716280/Yes-boys-sex-slaves-Outrage-British-Muslim-cleric-mosque-Cardiff-jihadis-radicalised-tells-teenagers-captives-permissible-Islam.html">convinced they are justified</a> in taking sex slaves from among their enemies.<br />
<br />
It does no justice to the victims of modern slavery or any favour to Islam in the west to deny the reality of what scripture teaches. Both the Quran and the bible are flawed texts with little moral authority when read without eisegesis, cherry picking and fallacious appeal to historical context. In the same way they promote discrimination, misogyny and intolerance they condone slavery in clear unambiguous language and Sughra Ahmed’s broadcast seems more an exercise in propaganda for Islam than a genuine attempt to discuss the problem in the modern era.
Steve Bowenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15243178223616240845noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6900870923576954613.post-61128746437211389332016-01-07T22:03:00.000+00:002016-01-09T11:29:16.504+00:00Accommodating Religious Practice<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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The Joint Council for Qualifications, which represents UK exam boards has recently announced that heavily subscribed <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3387163/GCSE-levels-set-rejigged-summer-Islam-s-holy-month-Ramadan-account.html">GCSE and A level exams will be held a week earlier</a> this year to accommodate Muslim children who may be observing Ramadan and fasting during the main exam period.<br />
<br />
This strikes me as a correct and humanistic thing to do primarily because the children and young people affected are at an age when personal, peer and parental pressure to conform will be very strong and their capacity to make well informed pragmatic choices about religion and religious practice may not be fully developed. The system should protect children from their own and their parent’s follies at this critical stage in their education so far as is practicable given fasting is a known and obvious risk factor for reduced performance in this growing minority.<br />
<br />
This is not, to my way of thinking, about “creeping sharia” or religious privilege but about maximising the potential of a future generation of productive individuals. But…<br />
<br />
…as a society we should be wary about giving the signal that religious practice, that’s any religious practice of any faith tradition, is an inevitable consequence of belonging to a religion. Religion and the practice of it is always a choice in a secular democracy and should not be unquestioningly pandered to in the same way we should accommodate race, gender or disability. Adult believers ought to be expected to accept the consequences of their decisions to impair their performance, career choices, health and opportunities by practicing their religion if that is the result.<br />
<br />
It could be argued that as a formerly Christian country, British Christians are privileged in that national holidays are arranged around their festivals and this is true at least to the extent that the pagan and agricultural cycles they usurped still mark the rhythms of this country’s life. But it would make no difference to minority faiths if those holiday seasons were based on any arbitrary calendar that ignored their own traditions and just as Hindu or Muslim countries would not alter their calendars to accommodate Christians there is no reason for the UK to do so.<br />
<br />
So, good on the exam boards for helping Muslim children maximise their potential with this small concession that will not adversely impact other children as long as they plan their revision to the timetable given (which they should be doing anyway). But let’s beware of making this a wider principle by privileging religious beliefs with a status they do not merit.
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<a href="http://stevebowen58.blogspot.co.uk/2010/07/religion-is-disabling-for-muslim.html">Related Post</a>Steve Bowenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15243178223616240845noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6900870923576954613.post-41669399390761634832015-11-24T12:06:00.000+00:002015-11-24T20:27:42.097+00:00Religion as a HypothesisMy friend Rob has a “niggle” with the quote from <a href="http://freethoughtblogs.com/greta/">Greta Christina</a> at the top of this blog which says <br />
<blockquote>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIEVDrtbP5WIoYED79uAGEOUnJPxTyXuGAP5eg-xP-6jFTGjKvOo3nm66NRSpy-Pyb9ioPlpp2CQd4U5-QI79CgLdIh3MYOrNxfVJEEvXNrtqjZHU3mwx685k1RS2MsvQCnWlMX269ouc/s1600/test+tube.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIEVDrtbP5WIoYED79uAGEOUnJPxTyXuGAP5eg-xP-6jFTGjKvOo3nm66NRSpy-Pyb9ioPlpp2CQd4U5-QI79CgLdIh3MYOrNxfVJEEvXNrtqjZHU3mwx685k1RS2MsvQCnWlMX269ouc/s1600/test+tube.jpg" /></a>"Religion is a hypothesis about the world: the hypothesis that things are the way they are, at least in part, because of supernatural entities or forces acting on the natural world. And there's no good reason to treat it any differently from any other hypothesis. Which includes pointing out its flaws and inconsistencies, asking its adherents to back it up with solid evidence, making jokes about it when it's just being silly, offering arguments and evidence for our own competing hypotheses...and trying to persuade people out of it if we think it's mistaken. It's persuasion. It's the marketplace of ideas. Why should religion get a free ride" </blockquote>
He doesn’t have a problem with the substantive intent of the quote, which is to point out that religion should not be privileged or protected from criticism, but disagrees with the specific premise that religion is a hypothesis.
Like many philosophical debates a lot of this comes down to semantics. If Greta has said religion is a conjecture, an opinion or an idea about the world her intent would have still been clear and to the extent that <i>hypothesis</i> and even <i>theory</i> are used colloquially it seems to me to be largely uncontentious.
However it is true that <i>hypothesis</i> has, within science at any rate, a specific meaning. The OED takes as its primary definition <br />
<blockquote>
<a href="http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/hypothesis">A supposition or proposed explanation made on the basis of limited evidence <i>as a starting point for further investigation</i></a></blockquote>
and as such needs to be open to falsification.
Also, it should be said that Greta does not say a hypothesis is all that makes up religion. In fact when asked her response was <br />
<blockquote>
"Sigh…I didn't say religions were ONLY a hypothesis. Yes, it has historical resonance, cultural importance, etc. The point is that the thing religions specifically center on -- namely, a belief in supernatural entities or forces with an effect on the natural world -- is a hypothesis. And yes, as such, this hypothesis should be able to be subjected to scrutiny and questioning just like any other, and should not be afforded any special respect or protection.”</blockquote>
So to what extent if any can religion be said to be a scientific hypothesis open to falsification and to what extent would religion retain relevance at all should any part of it be proved false?
According to Rob religion cannot be falsified on its own terms.<br />
<blockquote>
”[…] I would say that religion is *not* an hypothesis (in the same way that *science* and philosophical naturalism are not hypotheses) as evidence cannot be adduced one way or the other. Furthermore, no one comes to religious belief by considering the so-called empirical claims of religion. All religions are self-contained metaphysical systems which resist in their own terms any falsification on empirical grounds.”</blockquote>
But do we have to accept religion on its own terms? True, if allowed to get away with their own apologetics religions immunise themselves against disproof. Christianity has had two thousand years of practice making God’s intent, ability and mode of operation in the world as inscrutable to investigation as possible and Islam built apophasis into itself from the outset but from an empirical point of view prayer (for example) either works at some statistical level of significance or it doesn’t. If it doesn’t we are entitled to conclude that either the deity it is aimed at doesn’t exist or at any rate does not perform as expected by the petitioner. Rob says <br />
<blockquote>
”In one of our FB exchanges you certainly said that issues like petitionary prayer and miracles are where religion intersects with the empirical and so provide us with the ability to evaluate religious claims. If prayer fails and there is no evidence for miracles then, if I understand you correctly, the whole edifice falls for all the assertions of religion are logically founded on the truth of the basic claims---like the claim that there is a supernatural being who is *causing* things to happen in the world.”</blockquote>
Here I think Rob is inferring too much. That we can say with a reasonable amount of certainty that miracles and prayer are un-evidenced is only to say that these particular claims of religion do not need to be taken seriously by non-believers. It does not prove that gods do not exist but may suggest the believer may be mistaken about the attitude of the particular god being petitioned. The hypothesis that gods can be swayed by prayer to intervene is falsified and that particular claim should rationally be rejected.<br />
Whether the “whole edifice” of religion should fall based on this depends very much on the store individual believers put on particular claims. I agree that not everyone “comes to religious belief by considering the so-called empirical claims of religion” but some do surely. Does an adult converting either from a religion of birth or from previous agnosticism really ignore the supernatural premise behind their new belief? I doubt it.<br />
For many believers religion is a heuristic device. Shorthand; for moral behaviour, cultural identity and normative values and for these people no amount of hypothesis testing is going to dent their faith, largely because from their point of view it’s irrelevant. But people do lose their religion after putting all their faith in unanswered prayer. They may still believe in a god: Just not one that cares about them.<br />
If you spend a great deal of time, as both Rob and I do, thinking and reading about religion it is easy to become convinced that religious belief is typified by theologians who understand the sophistication and complexity it has evolved over the millennia but a short trawl through Christian blog sites, particularly those found in the US, should be enough to disabuse anyone of the notion that a significant number of the faithful aren’t literalists. This kind of belief is so specific and so rooted in empirically testable claims that to suggest it is not a hypothesis seems to me to be perverse. The six day creation, a global flood, the exodus from Egypt are all factual claims and have all been debunked by cosmology, geology and archaeology. None of that happened and the only way that this kind of belief can be maintained is by denying any agency to science at all which is what many do (while still using smartphones). If these people had to confront their cognitive dissonance by tackling their religion head on I doubt they would retreat into the “self-contained metaphysical system” of question begging that modern theology offers. They would have to abandon their religion wholesale which is why they rarely admit the scientific evidence.<br />
So yes, religion is in part a hypothesis and can in part be falsified even if this depends on the particular truth claims of the specific religions and the extent to which these are held to be truths by individual believers. Religion and religious belief can transcend the empirical by substituting literalism for allegory and understanding ritual as culture not magic and to the extent that some have done this they are impervious to scientific enquiry, although how far they can do this and still be legitimately called a religion may be a discussion for another day.
Steve Bowenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15243178223616240845noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6900870923576954613.post-10543778921638835242015-03-03T16:00:00.000+00:002015-03-05T12:09:14.476+00:00John Gray strawmans new atheism...again.Philosopher and polemicist John Gray has a <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/03/what-scares-the-new-atheists">lengthy piece in the Guardian</a> titled “What Scares The New Atheists” which in his usual straw manning style attempts to argue against his own cartoonish concept of secular humanism.
<br />
<blockquote>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8-171hIjQ35KH4v4_0P8I1xTor5LwaE_Qr8__Gdt4Oy3oXLnF86CxiIdyzOpSAry4LfDR8WNTBPe1y_SUioFDWzhtjMAnQ-BeSg1nyIYDJO6VIz8NaD_ySLUFd4D0-9b4c876HOAyCGk/s1600/scarecrow.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8-171hIjQ35KH4v4_0P8I1xTor5LwaE_Qr8__Gdt4Oy3oXLnF86CxiIdyzOpSAry4LfDR8WNTBPe1y_SUioFDWzhtjMAnQ-BeSg1nyIYDJO6VIz8NaD_ySLUFd4D0-9b4c876HOAyCGk/s1600/scarecrow.png" /></a>"The belief that the human species is a moral agent struggling to realise its inherent possibilities – the narrative of redemption that sustains secular humanists everywhere – is a hollowed-out version of a theistic myth. The idea that the human species is striving to achieve any purpose or goal – a universal state of freedom or justice, say – presupposes a pre-Darwinian, teleological way of thinking that has no place in science."</blockquote>
I am certain that Dawkins, arch new atheist and author of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Selfish_Gene">the selfish gene</a>, is under no such illusion and neither am I. Humans are moral agents in the sense that we make judgments about good and evil, right and wrong, but we are not striving towards a pre-conceived or pre-ordained evolutionary goal. What humanists do say, in contrast with the monotheisms, is that humanity is not fallen and in need of salvation but rather as an evolved pro-social species we have the resources and disposition to collectively improve our own wellbeing.<br />
<br />
Gray, like many New Atheist bashers, also misses the point about our beef with religion.<br />
<blockquote>
"Though not all human beings may attach great importance to them, every society contains practices that are recognisably religious. Why should religion be universal in this way? For atheist missionaries this is a decidedly awkward question. Invariably they claim to be followers of Darwin. Yet they never ask what evolutionary function this species-wide phenomenon serves. There is an irresolvable contradiction between viewing religion naturalistically – as a human adaptation to living in the world – and condemning it as a tissue of error and illusion. What if the upshot of scientific inquiry is that a need for illusion is built into in the human mind? If religions are natural for humans and give value to their lives, why spend your life trying to persuade others to give them up?"</blockquote>
Apart from the fact that both Daniel Dennett and Richard Dawkins have speculated endlessly about the evolutionary utility of religion and both concede it may have or have had survival value the target for criticism is rarely private faith. New Atheism was spawned for Sam Harris by 9/11 and for Dawkins by the rise of creationism in the U.S and it is the indulgence of religious thinking in the public and political sphere that is the objection. It is true that arguing for secularism and a scientifically informed public policy comes with collateral damage to the privately religious if they cannot live with the resulting cognitive dissonance but this is surely not a new experience for them and the determinedly faithful will continue to be faithful whatever.<br />
<br />
A slightly more interesting observation that Gray makes is about the assumption of an inevitable triumph of liberalism <br />
<blockquote>
"The conviction that tyranny and persecution are aberrations in human affairs is at the heart of the liberal philosophy that prevails today. But this conviction is supported by faith more than evidence. Throughout history there have been large numbers who have been happy to relinquish their freedom as long as those they hate – gay people, Jews, immigrants and other minorities, for example – are deprived of freedom as well. Many have been ready to support tyranny and oppression. Billions of human beings have been hostile to liberal values, and there is no reason for thinking matters will be any different in future."</blockquote>
Here at least he is not wrong in his characterisation of humanist thought as most of us do believe that liberal values <em>should</em> prevail which is why we agitate for evidence based thinking and maintain that religious intolerance is irrational. Humanist’s belief that liberal values are worth promoting and arguing for is as integral to our philosophy as homophobia is to a Westboro Baptist and far from thinking success is inevitable we are more than aware of the conflict we face. Stephen Pinker gives some cause for optimism in his well-researched and quantified book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Better-Angels-Our-Nature/dp/1491518243">The Better Angels of Our Nature</a> in which he charts quite convincingly a general declining trend in conflict and intolerance over millennia of history but even he doesn’t make a teleological case for this continuing without concerted effort.<br />
In fact Gray unintentionally makes the point himself.<br />
<blockquote>
"This is, in fact, the quintessential illusion of the ruling liberalism: the belief that all human beings are born freedom-loving and peaceful and become anything else only as a result of oppressive conditioning. But there is no hidden liberal struggling to escape from within the killers of the Islamic State and Boko Haram, any more than there was in the torturers who served the Pol Pot regime. To be sure, these are extreme cases. But in the larger sweep of history, faith-based violence and persecution, secular and religious, are hardly uncommon – and they have been widely supported. It is peaceful coexistence and the practice of toleration that are exceptional."</blockquote>
Ignoring the first sentence where once again he is attacking a construct of his own imagination the fact that totalitarian ideologies emerge both politically and religiously to supress liberalism is what the culture wars are all about. Of course some people will always think they know better how others should live their lives and nobody thinks they know this better than the religious.<br />
The claim is also made that despite the efforts of secularists religiosity is, in many places, on the rise but I suspect this is cause and effect. As secularism, particularly in the west, has become accepted by liberal religion the faithful at the extremes have become marginalised and much of what we are seeing is a backlash. The fundamentalists are more vocal, more visible and sometimes more violent than previously because their worldview is no longer passively accepted even by the moderates of their own faith. Whether this is a tide that can be turned is debateable but for those of us who do not want to live in theocracies it is worth the attempt.<br />
Yes, humanism has its origins in theism, or at any rate in post enlightenment deism, but that is not where it lives today. Humanism, which incidentally is not as synonymous with the new atheists as Gray would have it, is a secular scientifically literate philosophy with ethical principles founded in a deeply pragmatic utilitarianism. It is no longer concerned with human exceptionalism - we know our evolutionary place better than most – and in fact humanism actively fights attempts by the church to reclaim the term <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_humanism"> “Christian humanism”</a> since it is contrary to the modern movement entirely. It is entirely possible I suppose that some future scientific discovery could make racism, anti-Semitism, homophobia and misogyny intellectually justifiable, but frankly I doubt it. Science has no moral arc but facts, at least when viewed through the lens of utilitarianism, do <a href="http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Stephen_Colbert">have a liberal bias</a>.<br />
<br />
So to Gray’s parting shot <br />
<blockquote>
"More than anything else, our unbelievers seek relief from the panic that grips them when they realise their values are rejected by much of humankind. What today’s freethinkers want is freedom from doubt, and the prevailing version of atheism is well suited to give it to them."</blockquote>
One can only assume that he is unaware of the dangers that humanists, secularists and liberals are subjecting themselves to in theocracies around the world. They are being <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-31656222">assassinated</a> or <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/raif-badawi-the-saudi-arabian-blogger-sentenced-to-1000-lashes-may-now-get-the-death-penalty-10077877.html">arrested, flogged and executed</a> merely for promoting the idea that all people should be treated equally against the prevailing religious dogmas. Even if we would like to think that a liberal view of moral progress is inevitable we know it isn’t. But it’s a rational goal for those who, like Gray himself, understand that “Considering the alternatives that are on offer, liberal societies are well worth defending” and surely, if they’re worth defending they are worth expanding.
Steve Bowenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15243178223616240845noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6900870923576954613.post-50821629258643229372015-02-26T17:16:00.001+00:002015-02-26T19:49:54.612+00:00Free speech in the balanceIn a <a href="http://comres.co.uk/polls/bbc-radio-4-today-muslim-poll">recent survey</a> of 1000 British Muslims conducted on behalf of the BBC it was found that 80% of those asked found cartoon depictions of their Prophet Mohammed <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-31293196">“deeply offensive”</a>. Also a substantial minority (27%) thought that violent reprisals for such offense can be justified. A follow-up vox-pop on Radio 4’s Today program featured several Muslim voices from Bradford exclaiming they felt “extremely <i>personally</i> offended” by disrespect to their “beloved prophet” and if we take these statements at face value and allow that sentiment really does run so deep within British Islam we have got a real problem for liberal democracy in this country.<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1pfaMtvwX4Oyx7D_O2CLtR90vfZPVEmXb3Sj3BbuIF_ArYwREWb0oovdyXiypR5ta4gr3Q3vpndPZFfpdSD3NghSiJGTwyZ3SCo8jZ0oonxCO1o8rwJbsMwWFZm3MFgs9WfJV6xF1TTY/s1600/speech.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1pfaMtvwX4Oyx7D_O2CLtR90vfZPVEmXb3Sj3BbuIF_ArYwREWb0oovdyXiypR5ta4gr3Q3vpndPZFfpdSD3NghSiJGTwyZ3SCo8jZ0oonxCO1o8rwJbsMwWFZm3MFgs9WfJV6xF1TTY/s1600/speech.png" /></a>Difficult as it is for someone like me to empathise with personal distress over such abstract offenses as blasphemy and criticism of long dead self-styled “prophets” the fact that a substantial proportion of a growing minority feel that way is not to be ignored. These people are not just going to “get over themselves” any more than the clinically depressed can just “cheer up”. Reverence for Mohammed is integral to their upbringing and psychology and constantly reinforced within their ethnic and religious cultures; change, if any, will be generational and not to be expected short term. So is it up to us as a society to accommodate Muslim sensitivities and if so how can we do so without compromising freedom of expression?<br />
It’s easy to forget that blasphemy <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blasphemy_law_in_the_United_Kingdom">was a crime in this country</a> until 2008 and I for one have no desire to revert to any legal suppression of religious criticism. In any event such laws often come with unintended consequences and one person’s blasphemy is another’s sincerely held belief as the <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/pakistan/11251848/Pakistani-Christian-woman-sentenced-to-hang-for-blasphemy-makes-last-appeal.html">abuse of such laws in Pakistan against Christians</a> there illustrates. Neither is it possible to legislate for offense generally as we are all occasionally offended by something.<br />
In the normal way of things very few of us go out of our way to be deliberately offensive unless we feel we have good reason, one of which may be the imposition of another’s taboos in our own space. It is certainly not to be expected that a Christian, Jew, Hindu or atheist should respect Mohammed or any part of Islam that does not inform their own belief system. Islam and all it entails is an idea which in a free society we are entitled to reject and if within it we see inherent dangers we have an obligation, let alone the right, to be critical. When extremists insist that non-Muslims must not portray the prophet and back that injunction with threats of violence the only response is to do that very thing, which is why I fully supported <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everybody_Draw_Mohammed_Day">“Everybody Draw Mohammed Day”</a> and while it’s unfortunate that as collateral damage a large number of Muslims who may abhor violence are offended I see very few alternatives to this tactic. I don’t think I am unnecessarily victim blaming to suggest that the way for mainstream Islam to avoid Charlie Hebdo style provocation is to rein in their own extremists.<br />
Should we have the freedom to indiscriminately ridicule religion in the public square? Here the answer is categorically yes, but whether we should routinely do so, except as a response to a threat to that freedom I think is a question of taste and good manners. Where I do think such ridicule is perfectly acceptable is in the arts, literature and in our private spaces including our own social media accounts. In order for people to be offended in these places they must be actively seeking offense by choosing to read that blog or book and watch that play or TV show or go to that exhibition. It’s not an imposition or discrimination to say to Muslims that if they don’t like this or that speech they should ignore it. We all avoid exposing our minds to ideas we find offensive and I regularly block social media feeds that I find distasteful due to racism or sexism even though I don’t believe it’s a particularly good thing to exist solely in a bubble of our own beliefs.<br />
It’s a feature of all religions that their adherents demand respect for their beliefs and given the power and opportunity insist that everyone abides by their rules. It took a long time to tame Christianity in this country and put it into its proper place, subservient to law and in the private sphere (mostly). Islam is going to have to learn to occupy those same social spaces and be prepared to be offended on occasion. The more Islam becomes part of the fabric of Britain it will be measured by its ability to withstand satirical criticism; that is the trade-off for living in a democracy. Muslims have the right to protest and voice their anger if they think real boundaries are being crossed because they enjoy the same right to speech as everyone else. They have every right to point out the offense, but no right not to be offended.
Steve Bowenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15243178223616240845noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6900870923576954613.post-26577677085502080792015-02-24T13:51:00.001+00:002015-02-24T13:56:58.387+00:00One of our own?When fanatics kill others in the name of their “beliefs” those beliefs are usually religious, sometimes political or territorial, sometimes all of the above and the one thing atheists have always been able to say about themselves is that nobody has ever killed in the name of atheism. This hasn’t stopped others trying to pin the crimes of Stalin Mau and Pol Pot on atheism but these charges are specious, a-historical and deny those dictator’s totalitarianism as sufficient motive. Which is why the <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2948803/Man-arrested-3-shot-death-North-Carolina.html">horrific shooting of three young Muslims</a> by self-avowed atheist Craig Hicks is causing such consternation and debate among the atheist community.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUNTiOjrRQyOlFq7vf-BV3Ljdjk_rQ5Tcm5s37IgNu_EkZ5BMBVHPPtv-fQEcOJ-bExObAUH_R4cFknNvDQr2i8qZYWrQQF_DnlPwuLWBmkfXfT99UZK_7SUO1gil1k6WXOXOtYGMvxho/s1600/Chapel+hill.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUNTiOjrRQyOlFq7vf-BV3Ljdjk_rQ5Tcm5s37IgNu_EkZ5BMBVHPPtv-fQEcOJ-bExObAUH_R4cFknNvDQr2i8qZYWrQQF_DnlPwuLWBmkfXfT99UZK_7SUO1gil1k6WXOXOtYGMvxho/s1600/Chapel+hill.jpg" /></a></div>
Deah Barakat, his wife Yusor Abu-Salha and her sister Razan Abu-Salha were gunned down last Tuesday in a condo about two miles from the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill</blockquote>
<blockquote>
There have also been questions over whether Hicks' anti-religious stance - which he freely shared on social media - had also been a factor in the murders.<br />
On a Facebook page in his name, Hicks shared a number of anti-religion posts. A banner about 'anti-theism' is prominent on his page.<br />
Hicks posted a photo from United Atheists of America on February 8, which has the title 'why radical Christians and radical Muslims are so opposed to each others' influence when they agree about so many ideological issues'. </blockquote>
His Facebook page would not have raised any red flags to atheists active on social media and I have expressed such sentiments myself and shared similar articles to provoke discussion or sometimes just to provoke. In fact I would say his online presence is much like any other activist atheist, with possibly a tad more anti-theist sentiment than those I engage with personally, so it’s not possible for any atheist who would hope to distance themselves from Hicks to make <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman">”no true atheist”</a> arguments.<br />
There are however aspects of Hicks’ behaviour that are less than savoury; he was a multiple firearms owner who obsessed about the parking around his condo and was frequently threatening to neighbours who transgressed the rules.
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<blockquote>
Neighbors, as well as tow-truck driver and others, have said Hicks often complained about residents and visitors at Finley Forest parking in his reserved space. He called one tow truck company so often they stopped responding to his calls.</blockquote>
So far the local police are treating this as a killing over a parking dispute and if the victims had not been conspicuously Muslim that is probably where the speculation would have ended. But the execution like nature of this atrocity, three individuals murdered each with a bullet in the head, plus their race and religion makes it at least possible that this was a hate crime; the victim’s family certainly think so.
<br />
<blockquote>
Yusor and Razan’s brother, Yusef Abu-Salha, also told RT last week that there had been a lot of tension between his sisters and Hicks.<br />
<i>“There were plenty of run-ins [with Hicks],” </i>he said,<i> “but the run-ins escalated when my sister moved in; she obviously wore the head scarf. I recall her telling me when she first went to visit the condo before she even moved in together, [Hicks] came and knocked on the door and told them they were making too much noise, and he brandished a gun at his waist.” “I consider that terror,”</i> he added,<i> “I consider that hate.”</i></blockquote>
Also there is no doubt that if Hicks had been Muslim and the victims white Christians the media would have been all over this as a hate crime or even terrorism; Islam would have been cited, links to ISIS or Al-Qaeda sought and security heightened. But, even in a country where atheists are routinely demonised, so far the only people really asking whether atheism is a factor here are atheists themselves.<br />
That we are doing so is I think to our credit. Although there are hyper-sceptical voices claiming his atheism is no more relevant than his hair colour others are suggesting that as a movement <a href="http://www.patheos.com/blogs/daylightatheism/2015/02/thoughts-on-the-chapel-hill-shooting/">we should focus on atheism’s moral dimension more</a> <br />
<blockquote>
There’s nothing wrong with being against religion. But how could anyone absorb that part of our message and completely miss the part about how it makes our common humanity infinitely more precious? Many nonbelievers, including me, have written about how atheism makes life more valuable, not less. But are we not highlighting the moral dimension of atheism enough? Are we not doing enough to make it clear that we think and act as we do because we love the good? Have we not emphasized strongly enough that criticizing religion’s inhumanities is shallow and meaningless if we don’t hold ourselves to a better standard? Those are the questions that I think atheists should be asking ourselves in the wake of this horrific crime.</blockquote>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Craig Hicks</td></tr>
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If atheism turns out to be Hick’s motivation this will be a rare and possibly unique event; Christians being far more likely to <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/jan/28/scott-roeder-abortion-doctor-killer">commit this sort of crime in the U.S </a>. However that does not mean atheists can write him off as mentally ill (a discriminatory excuse in any case) or not one of us. Up until this event he looked from the outside to be fairly representative of a good number of atheists who mock religion without contemplating ethical alternatives, so if atheists in general and movement atheism in particular condemn yet disown him it will be as disingenuous as Muslims pretending ISIS are not Muslim.
Steve Bowenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15243178223616240845noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6900870923576954613.post-86611501952889693962015-02-05T16:10:00.000+00:002015-02-05T16:10:00.038+00:00"Three Parent" IVF is not a moral issueA recent vote in the house of commons means that Britain is one of the first countries in the world to <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/threeparent-babies-britain-votes-strongly-in-favour-of-law-change-10021265.html#">legalise an IVF procedure</a> that involves taking the nucleus of one egg and inserting it into the cytoplasm of another egg which has had its own nucleus removed while , crucially, retaining its <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondria">mitochondria</a>.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRjJ69ub05NfgBiXhtGtySpsZKFAO1vGLcIwVVxJWkLvpfHuWzs" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" class="rg_i" data-src="https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRjJ69ub05NfgBiXhtGtySpsZKFAO1vGLcIwVVxJWkLvpfHuWzs" data-sz="f" jsaction="load:str.tbn" name="3SqbKQcT9l-2TM:" src="https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRjJ69ub05NfgBiXhtGtySpsZKFAO1vGLcIwVVxJWkLvpfHuWzs" style="height: 168px; margin-top: 0px; width: 300px;" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">a mitochondrion</td></tr>
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Mitochondria are organelles whose primary function is to supply energy to the cell and during reproduction they are passed down in the cytoplasm of the egg which means they always travel down the maternal line. Defects in the mitochondria can cause debilitating diseases and infant mortality and it is these conditions that the technique is designed to prevent by substituting healthy mitochondria prior to fertilisation. This will of course be a boon to couples at risk of passing on <a href="http://www.thelilyfoundation.org.uk/animation/">mitochondrial diseases</a> to their offspring as it enables them to have a healthy child with nuclear DNA from both natural parents; up until now it has only been possible for such couples to conceive with a complete donor egg or a surrogate.<br />
Offspring born of this technique are referred to as “three parent babies” which I think is unfortunate because for one thing it’s not strictly true from a genetic standpoint and for another I suspect it has contributed to some of the unnecessary moral panic that surrounds it.<br />
Much of the objection to legalising this form of IVF has come (predictably) from the Church with both Catholics and Anglicans claiming scientific uncertainty as their rational but in fact the technique has been well tested and the people who actually understand the science are satisfied of its safety, with the usual caveats. Given the Vatican’s antipathy to any artificial fertilisation techniques I suspect their objections are entirely ideological and can therefore be ignored. For example Bishop John Keenan, the Bishop of Paisley, was among the Catholic leaders who condemned the technique claiming it “seeks to remove anyone affected by certain conditions from the human gene pool”. Of course what it actually does is remove the <i>condition</i> from the gene pool, the “anyone” in the above nonsense never existed except in the abstract.<br />
Other objections seem more reasonable, for example the concern that the mitochondria continue into subsequent generations, but are grounded in a misunderstanding of mitochondria and their origins as the “powerhouse of the cell”. The “three parent” moniker is inappropriate because although the mitochondria contain DNA it is <i>their</i> DNA and does not contribute to human characteristics outside of the somatic effect of its function. The entire nuclear DNA in this technique, the stuff that can be considered to count, is derived from the natural parents and not from the donor of the egg. Ethically this is more akin to a transplant than genetic engineering.<br />
Another point that has been missing from the public debate is that mitochondrial DNA is not really ‘human’ at all because these organelles are <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbiogenesis">endosymbionts</a>, remnants of previously free-living proteobacteria that either infected or were absorbed by other primitive cells over 1.5 Billion years ago. Over evolutionary time the mitochondria lost the genes necessary for autonomy and retained just enough for their own reproduction and metabolic function within their hosts. The gestalt of these two primitive cells formed the first truly <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eukaryote">eukaryotic</a> cells that are the basis of all complex life.<br />
I’m not convinced that any ethical Rubicon has been crossed by approving this technique. In fact, even if at some future date it is discovered that by some genetic tinkering in the nuclei of eggs destined for IVF we could eliminate<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cystic_fibrosis"> cystic fibrosis</a> or some other debilitating genetic condition we should do it. I do not subscribe to the sort of genetic essentialism that some, including rather bizarrely the church, seem to indulge in and although I’m prepared to accept that somewhere amongst all possible applications of human genetic engineering there will be some ethical red lines we’re nowhere close when it is used solely for the elimination of heritable diseases.
Steve Bowenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15243178223616240845noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6900870923576954613.post-58713665148862466812015-01-30T12:04:00.000+00:002015-01-30T13:08:23.150+00:00Panpsychism: cosmic consciousness and the entropic elephant.The <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness">hard problem of consciousness</a> is, well…hard. It is very difficult to reconcile self-awareness, and experience of <a href="http://www.iep.utm.edu/qualia/">qualia</a> with the squishy materialistic brain stuff that appears to produce it.<br />
<a href="https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQ8I09BCAoRkkZEvqGvwBtvghrO04FmE3CzqEg-d_e2ffCU5O0J" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" class="rg_i" data-src="https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQ8I09BCAoRkkZEvqGvwBtvghrO04FmE3CzqEg-d_e2ffCU5O0J" data-sz="f" jsaction="load:str.tbn" name="p0DohG7Gob-BvM:" src="https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQ8I09BCAoRkkZEvqGvwBtvghrO04FmE3CzqEg-d_e2ffCU5O0J" style="height: 148px; margin-top: 0px; width: 340px;" /></a>From a naturalist perspective the usual solution is <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/properties-emergent/">emergence</a> which argues that from sufficiently complex and organised systems consciousness can arise irreducibly from simpler non conscious processes. Or as <a href="http://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/mathematical.html">Max Tegmark says</a> <br />
<blockquote>
“Consciousness is how information feels when being processed” </blockquote>
It’s a concept that I am sympathetic to, which is why I can entertain the idea that self-awareness may one day emerge in an artificial intelligence, or even out of a well enough connected internet. Even so, this is not obviously true, and human intuition has long assumed a dualist approach to consciousness that maintains a distinct separation between brain stuff and mind stuff.<br />
The extreme of dualism is the naïve religious concept of the soul, that we are essentially an immortal spirit temporarily inhabiting a physical body; our mind stuff <i>is</i> us with the brain a mere vessel. That this is not the case can easily be demonstrated by the fact that we can alter, enhance or impair our minds with psychoactive drugs or through illness and injury. More <a href="http://stevebowen58.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/on-experience-of-god-by-david-bentley_26.html">sophisticated theologies</a> seem to argue for a kind of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantheism">pantheism</a> whereby our consciousness is a phenomenon of an all-encompassing deity, a sea of divine consciousness experienced as God. This idea is a subset of the concept known as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panpsychism">panpsychism</a> .
<br />
<blockquote>
panpsychism is the view that consciousness, mind or soul (psyche) is a universal feature of all things, and the primordial feature from which all others are derived. A panpsychist sees themselves as a mind in a world of minds.</blockquote>
Panpsychism has a prestigious provenance dating back at least as far as Plato and found favour with Carl Jung, Spinoza, Arthur Shopenhauer and Bertrand Russell to name only a few. Needless to say the theory is not obviously wrong and it’s not my intention here to argue against it, but rather to explore the implications should it be true.<br />
Unless we are to abandon methodological naturalism altogether the first question we should ask is what this “primordial feature” is supposed to be made of. In order to have any continuity at all with the material universe as we currently understand it consciousness would have to be some sort of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_field_theory">field</a>, preferably with an associated quantum particle. After all the brain must be processing <i>something</i> for neuroscientist to be able to measure its activity. To say it’s beyond physical comprehension is only to push the hard problem further down the causal chain; it certainly doesn’t solve it. Also whatever the constituents turn out to be would dictate whether panpsychism implies that <i>consciousness</i> is everywhere or merely that some unconscious fundamental particle of mentality pervades the universe. In other words does mind stuff necessarily mean there is a mind, or does it need further organisation to qualify.<br />
Some flavours of panpsychism insist that everything has at least some experience or perception of qualia, even inanimate matter, whereas weaker versions assign this only to living systems. Mystical interpretations look for an overarching cosmic consciousness, a self-aware universe that some will interpret as God. If the fundamental unit of consciousness turns out to be something completely beyond our understanding all bets are off. But, assuming for now that that our quantum of consciousness can be fitted into the existing paradigm I would suggest that it must be something reducible to information.<br />
Scientist and Author <a href="http://www.peterrussell.com/SCG/Alice.php">Peter Russell</a> Likes to draw parallels between light and enlightenment to pitch light as the vector for consciousness. He uses an argument from special relativity to suggest that photons lie outside of space and time and it is only our perception that creates the illusion of existence in the four spacetime dimensions. From the link above…<br />
<blockquote>
“What you observe as the speed of light can be thought of as the ratio of manifestation of time and space. For every 186,000 miles of space, there appears 1 second of time. It is this ratio that is fixed. This is why the so-called 'speed' of light […] is always the same.”</blockquote>
Unfortunately, Russell takes a <a href="http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Noetic_science">Noetic</a> view of consciousness and believes that meditation and inner reflection can reveal deep truths about the universe and I also think his argument from relativity is flawed (which I won’t elaborate on here) however, pursuing our line of thought, I think the photon as a candidate for a quantum of consciousness is a reasonable one but for different reasons.<br />
In standard particle theory photons are <a -="" en.wikipedia.org="" href="https://www.blogger.com/" oson="" wiki="">Bosons</a> quantum particles that mediate the interactions between other subatomic particles. Specifically photons mediate the electromagnetic force and are emitted and absorbed as electrons change energy levels around nuclei. In living systems this could be considered a fundamental quantum of information since the “experience” of even the most primitive life forms is based on electrochemical reactions facilitated by photons. So could they count as the quanta of consciousness? Well maybe. But for sense to be made of these packets of information some level of processing needs to occur. Even amoebas have relatively complex chemical pathways that translate external stimuli into actions and as far as we can tell only complex multicellular neural interconnected brains can learn, predict and analyse.<br />
But I think there is an entropic elephant in the room. That consciousness only obviously manifests in complex living systems should tell us something. What is unique about life that it is able to make such use of the panpsychic field? Well, one defining feature of life is that it is capable of self-sustaining a state of very low entropy with respect to its surroundings. Life is information rich and maintains this by acting as an entropy pump consuming high quality energy and excreting poor quality energy (mainly heat). Arguably brains are using this same pump to maintain the low entropy high information state of consciousness. Unless we are prepared to allow that the photon (or whatever non-mystical unit of consciousness we posit) is of itself fully “conscious” in order for brains to support minds they must be being organised (thus reducing entropy). <br />
From this point of view strong panpsychism that allows for minds to create reality or for the universe to be self-aware cannot be true since outside of brains the field of consciousness would be disorganised, high entropy and information poor which would not allow for any kind of “cosmic mind” or even connectedness except in a very trivial sense. In other words the universe would not be self-aware even if pervaded by such a field; Spinoza’s god would be dull company.<br />
We’ve arrived at a kind of compromise between strong emergence and strong panpsychism. Allowing for some pervading quantum field of consciousness derived from existing science means that mind does not have to emerge <i>ex nihilo</i> from complexity, rather brains may be evolved for the organisation and processing of this pre-existing resource. However the argument from entropy means we have to dispense with the mystical conclusions of cosmic consciousness and parapsychology and accept that however much navel gazing we indulge in there can be no access to external truths from that source.
Steve Bowenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15243178223616240845noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6900870923576954613.post-70607185413481010012015-01-13T12:05:00.000+00:002015-01-13T12:08:07.614+00:00On Charlie HebdoIt’s almost impossible to know where to start to write about the Charlie Hebdo atrocity. The blood spilt in this tragedy has already been overtaken by ink and pixels with commentary from every quarter and political viewpoint. It is particularly unfortunate that the personality of “Charlie” the magazine has almost occluded the real people that have sadly lost their lives, especially since many of us who have adopted <strong>#JeSuisCharlie</strong> (myself included) have never read it. But it’s inevitable since this attack, aimed directly at the most treasured values of liberal democracy, has ramifications far beyond the limited circulation of one Parisian publication.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihRCO8rHa2LKHknkylbl9Ib42EwohRxfgS8cec_LAfwIGUIqopwcQQ5ziXGhzjM0msY9kTlb9k6w2DsVdtRuZ9vdjHEpGHaCs9bRqsjnAa4_eZ956chkI_8umULMJ_2Z-Jy8SC9aFq5Oo/s1600/Hebdo+cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihRCO8rHa2LKHknkylbl9Ib42EwohRxfgS8cec_LAfwIGUIqopwcQQ5ziXGhzjM0msY9kTlb9k6w2DsVdtRuZ9vdjHEpGHaCs9bRqsjnAa4_eZ956chkI_8umULMJ_2Z-Jy8SC9aFq5Oo/s1600/Hebdo+cover.jpg" height="320" width="239" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Charlie Hebdo post attack cover</td></tr>
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Free speech, freedom of the press and the right of artists in all media to criticise and ridicule sacred cows are the foundations of a truly free society. It does not matter if,<a href="https://www.tumblr.com/search/jenesuispascharlie"> as some suggest</a>, Charlie Hebdo was over provocative or even racist in its portrayal of Islamism. Even if the humour is not to everyone’s taste it is worthy of protection because as soon as we allow that some sections of our communities are never to be offended all useful debate about society will be effectively shut down. In particular we cannot protect religious sensibilities as they are often the quickest to take offence at the slightest of provocation and although I prefer to avoid slippery slope arguments the situations in Pakistan and <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/01/08/us-saudi-rights-idUSKBN0KH1GD20150108">Saudi Arabia</a> should be salutary enough to deter us from pursuing that path.<br />
Nearly a week on from this tragedy, as the remaining staff of Charlie Hebdo are about to<a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/11340358/Charlie-Hebdos-Wednesday-edition-to-include-Prophet-Mohammed-cartoons.html"> release a defiant new issue</a> with an unprecedented three million copy print run expected to be in demand worldwide, the mainstream media are still grappling with how to deal with the “problem” of reporting the story without re-publishing the images which sparked the attack. But I see no moral dilemma here. In any news story I would expect a newspaper or website to publish relevant illustrative photographs or images. Short of graphic depictions of bloody slaughter or gross obscenity pertinent images would normally accompany the narrative and there is no doubt in my mind that should be the case with this story. I understand that newspapers may not want to endanger themselves or their staff but if ever there was a case for holding a journalistic line, even if that meant rival publications colluding to gain safety in numbers, this was it.<br />
In the event if the Jihadists aim was to suppress caricatures of Mohammed being circulated they were obviously unaware of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect">Streisand effect</a> since Charlie Hebdo’s images of the prophet have now become ubiquitous on social media and will also appear prominently in the next edition.<br />
I have no sympathy with the idea that re-publishing such images will further alienate and offend mainstream Muslim opinion: Muslims are not the intended target. However, the ideology that underpins attempts to suppress our freedom of expression is fair game and it is difficult to imagine how this could be effectively satirised without using the speech or images it aims to censor. Satire entails mockery and defiance of power; Islamism aims to be powerful so it is the islamist’s fault their shibboleths are in the firing line.<br />
Very few people would want to gratuitously give offence to a section of our community, most of us aim to be polite and at least tolerant of the foibles of our neighbours. But tolerance is a two way street and in a pluralistic society it is beholden on mainstream Islam not to go looking for offense where it is not intended or to attempt to inflict its taboos on other worldviews. If, as <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/anjem-choudary-on-the-charlie-hebdo-attacks-muslims-do-not-believe-in-the-concept-of-freedom-of-expression-9965400.html#"> Anjem Choudary says</a>, “Muslims don’t believe in the concept of freedom of expression” they are at liberty to live their lives that way but must accept that liberal democracies <i>do</i> believe in it passionately and so will sometimes be exposed to views that conflict with their beliefs. Although, while it may be a theological truth I suspect that most Muslims in the west are much happier with freedom of expression than Choudary suggests. Islam is not the monolith of consistent belief and practice it is sometimes assumed to be and my hope now is that liberal minded Muslims will use this opportunity to seize their religion back from the fundamentalists and the fascism of the Islamists<br />
<br />
<strong>#JeSuisCharlie</strong>
Steve Bowenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15243178223616240845noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6900870923576954613.post-67656521424826578942014-12-21T11:36:00.000+00:002014-12-21T11:36:49.487+00:00Why I believe in Father ChristmasI’m a big fan of Santa. This syncretic quasi-religious staple character of Christmas serves a useful purpose both for parents and the young children that are encouraged to believe in him.<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDIG56fXleZL4SoLvwSqq3ZGvz51OisZdx08a9glWmIrBU79uBhyOcLz7PCOF_6GjZSZqLfHY7s6qUdsDsk1WlwRZ14YMNYSX7YP1_dWuB1CSpAXP5yLUsKwB-O1Q9mrpjVJOmiuTrRoI/s1600/Santa.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDIG56fXleZL4SoLvwSqq3ZGvz51OisZdx08a9glWmIrBU79uBhyOcLz7PCOF_6GjZSZqLfHY7s6qUdsDsk1WlwRZ14YMNYSX7YP1_dWuB1CSpAXP5yLUsKwB-O1Q9mrpjVJOmiuTrRoI/s1600/Santa.jpg" /></a>For one thing he can be a proxy for parents and relatives as a source of presents and treats. Children don’t have to know that they are entirely dependent on their families for everything and at least once a year they can rely on something from someone they don’t feel a need to be totally beholden to. Also the extent to which they have been “naughty or nice” can be a good incentive for self-reflection in the run up to Christmas without any real dire consequences following either way (I mean, do any parents ever not give presents from Santa when their kids misbehave?)<br />
But for me the real utility of Santa is at the point where children start to doubt his existence. Most parents eventually observe their children applying a little bit of critical thought to the whole shtick; “How does he fit down the chimney?”, “But, we haven’t got a chimney”, “How does he get to all the children in one night?”, “How come he looks different in every shop with a grotto?”<br />
Ultimately, all children see the absurdity of Santa, but more interestingly most also take longer to let go of the idea altogether and it is common for children to pretend to their parents and younger siblings that they still believe. This is a good exercise in both scepticism and diplomacy; skills to be encouraged in children and adults alike.<br />
It would be better if all children managed to make the logical leap from a non-existent Santa to a non-existent deity but the extent of religious belief belies any pretence of that possibility although this watershed moment at the crux of credulity does inspire some to question the claims of religion sooner or later. But more to the point it is an early object lesson in the tolerance of other people’s cherished delusions.<br />
I have often said that beliefs don’t deserve uncritical respect but one should respect the right of people to hold whatever beliefs they like (note: this does not entail respecting the believer, adults should take epistemic responsibility for what they believe) and the ability to indulge a younger child’s Santa belief or a parents delusion that you still believe is a skill applicable to adult life.<br />
This, apart from the obvious irony, is why I was struck by <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-30532016">this story</a> of a Norfolk curate who told primary school children that Father Christmas doesn’t exist.
<br />
<blockquote>
During the carol service, the curate asked children what they thought was the meaning of Christmas. When a child answered "Father Christmas", she told them he was not real. One parent said on Facebook that Mrs McPhee had "put me off taking my children to church just in case something else gets said".</blockquote>
Rev Margaret McPhee has since apologised to the school for her comment and I am sure she sincerely regrets it. However it does illustrate how glibly people of faith will disabuse a child of its sincerely held belief in one supernatural being while trying to defend the existence of another.<br />
As an atheist but particularly as a humanist I am, more and more, finding myself in contact with children and adults with beliefs in various deities and while I openly state that I do not believe in gods would not dream of telling a young child directly and unasked that Allah or Jesus or Santa weren’t real. It is reasonable though for them to know that not everyone believes the same thing and it would have been enough for the curate to acknowledge that Santa and his elves are important for some people at Christmas before relating the church’s entirely rational position vis-à-vis virgin births, heraldic angels and miraculous stars etc.<br />
This is not the same as answering an honestly asked question. A child who asks directly of an adult whether Santa is real <a href="http://freethoughtblogs.com/greta/2014/12/17/no-virginia-there-is-no-santa-claus-4/#more-14188">deserves a factual answer</a> as does the child who asks directly about God. However, much as it’s fun to draw equivalences between God and Santa the answer to their respective existence cannot be identical. We know unequivocally that Santa is a fiction and should say so when it’s appropriate while explaining why some people maintain the pretence. God however is a much more slippery concept and when a child asks if God exists then is the perfect time to explain how there are so many ideas about what a god might be that they cannot all be correct and that possibly all are wrong.<br />
This is when the previous experience of letting go of one fantastical figure can help them explore their doubts about another while at the same time negotiating the minefield of living with those who still cling to belief.<br />
Anyway, enough! I still have a stocking to hang and mince pies to put out (must remember a carrot for Rudolph).<br />
<br />
Happy Xmas
Steve Bowenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15243178223616240845noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6900870923576954613.post-80728455525888499182014-09-15T11:26:00.000+01:002014-09-15T11:30:20.749+01:00Muslims or monsters?Over the weekend David Cameron made a statement following a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabinet_Office_Briefing_Room">COBRA</a> meeting in response to the appalling murder of British aid worker <a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f1c7eac2-3bb8-11e4-84b4-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3DMxPEXfW">David Haines</a>. The takeaway sound bite was <a -="http://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2014/sep/14/isis-muslims-monsters-david-cameron-iraq-video" href="https://www.blogger.com/">”ISIS are not Muslims but monsters”</a>.<br />
Now I understand the <i>realpolitik</i> behind such statements but in this instance and in the way this was phrased it is less than helpful .<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivkPKnryNRHMQSuM0qtFRDaUYA07uzkEWjuHg_9jKCWUiEa6yqjZ-tuHAC19e3TQjYVsU4F51UrblLrNegN3mJBljEdfpfxTLe-youXdWOGE1JR11m36b4Xz8giLE4RhpZIIwMfxq-GLY/s1600/Jihadist.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivkPKnryNRHMQSuM0qtFRDaUYA07uzkEWjuHg_9jKCWUiEa6yqjZ-tuHAC19e3TQjYVsU4F51UrblLrNegN3mJBljEdfpfxTLe-youXdWOGE1JR11m36b4Xz8giLE4RhpZIIwMfxq-GLY/s1600/Jihadist.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Not Muslims?</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
To start with who is David Cameron to determine who is or isn’t a Muslim and why does he think himself sufficiently theologically equipped to declare Islam necessarily a religion of peace? It’s just vacuous rhetoric with no other purpose than to pander to the sensibilities of moderate Muslims and even on this measure I suspect it will fail. Moderates will only feel patronised.<br />
It’s also self-evidently wrong. Whether or not ISIS conform to Cameron’s view of what Muslims should be the Jihadists self-identify as Muslims and moreover consider themselves to be the true face of Islam. Also, trivially, if they are not Muslims what are they? Perhaps Anglican heretics or lapsed Catholics or maybe they kill to the glory of L. Ron Hubbard and we’ve just mistaken their battered copies of <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dianetics-Modern-Science-Mental-Health/dp/8779897711"><i>Dianetics</i></a> for the Qur’an.<br />
“Muslim or monster” is a puerile and dangerous juxtaposition to make. They are not mutually exclusive any more than Christian and monster or Hindu and monster are as it is perfectly possible to be both a follower of a faith and a monster. It plays into the false idea that to be religious is to be moral and that the truly devout cannot behave immorally<br />
All religions are religions of peace to those who follow them peacefully and all are capable of being justifications of violence to those who would be violent (although I maintain that Islam has peculiarities which make radicalism easier to justify). The extent to which the majority of Muslims are “good” is, I suggest, precisely the extent to which people in general are “good”. I would expect most human beings to find moral outrage in the behaviour of ISIS regardless of their religious allegiances and I would expect the majority of Muslims to condemn them as not being representative of Islam. But to suggest ISIS are not Muslims is absurd and a blatant use of the <a herf="http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/No_True_Scotsman" href="https://www.blogger.com/null">No True Scotsman</a> logical fallacy. <br />
I get that western politicians are anxious not to demonise Muslims in general and they are right to do this. Muslims in general are not demons or any other kind of monster but pretending that radical islamists are not Muslims at all is to neglect a great deal of the ideology that motivates them. Neither will a white Middle England Anglican telling a potential British jihadist that they are doing Islam wrong persuade them from heading to Syria. If anything it will be a greater motivation.
Steve Bowenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15243178223616240845noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6900870923576954613.post-26633345716081623802014-08-29T10:32:00.000+01:002014-08-29T10:41:32.939+01:00Is there something about Islam?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQPBwSIJ3iAE6qWJtymlWf1hUega_DzxvjxkfwCxjlcgvfZyDDrTu3rvozY3gjQRY0Nvek2HMC5UFwIREcMnuO7xbd1w8pFUuaUNZ6OBCnPFFKzY3Czvjmy2kSEtkC029D-1Zi3COV8QM/s1600/WHCIslam.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQPBwSIJ3iAE6qWJtymlWf1hUega_DzxvjxkfwCxjlcgvfZyDDrTu3rvozY3gjQRY0Nvek2HMC5UFwIREcMnuO7xbd1w8pFUuaUNZ6OBCnPFFKzY3Czvjmy2kSEtkC029D-1Zi3COV8QM/s1600/WHCIslam.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The panel at WHC Oxford with moderator Jim Al-Khalili</td></tr>
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Earlier in August I attended the World Humanist Conference held in Oxford. Among the many interesting sessions and presentations one of the most thought provoking was a panel discussion called “Is there something about Islam?” in which <a href="http://alomshaha.com/">Alom Shaha</a>, <a href="http://maajidnawaz.com/">Maajid Nawaz</a>, <a href="http://www.kenanmalik.com/">Keenan Malik</a> and <a href="http://www.maryamnamazie.com/">Maryam Namazie </a> debated whether Islam is peculiarly prone to violence and fundamentalism.<br />
Keenan Malik, in particular, argued that <a href="http://kenanmalik.wordpress.com/2014/08/12/is-there-something-about-islam/">Islam like any other religion is open to interpretation</a>.<br />
<blockquote>
“Jihadi literalists, so-called ‘bridge builders’ like Tariq Ramadan […] and liberals like Irshad Manji all read the same Qur’an. And each reads it differently, finding in it different views about women’s rights, homosexuality, apostasy, free speech and so on. Each picks and chooses the values that they consider to be Islamic.”
</blockquote>
This is true of course, but to point out that to be a Muslim does not necessarily mean you will be a radical is a truism that only the paranoid and prejudiced would reject. It is also true that other religions have their extremists and that most religions have at some time or other been used and abused in the service of atrocity, but it is impossible to ignore the frequency and intensity with which Islam is the prime culprit today.<br />
Radicals are also spawned by secular causes; environmentalism, feminism, animal rights, nationalism and racial equality to name a few. Most to some degree have had their share of violent protests, sporadic riots, bombings and death threats but these really are confined to a very small minority of the people who support such causes and a sustained commitment to violent extremism in these cases is rare.<br />
Radical Islam however is building a consistent narrative of violent jihad recruiting and growing to the extent that it can now sustain a well-equipped and effective army in Syria and Iraq.<br />
I.S. may not represent the Islam of the vast majority of Muslims around the world, certainly not the Shia or the Sufis, but they are attracting recruits in droves from Asian Sunni communities in the U.K and Europe despite the horror with which their actions are reported here. It attracts finance from wealthy Muslim countries and, according to a recent report, a <a href="http://muslimstatistics.wordpress.com/2014/08/24/92-of-saudis-believes-that-isis-conforms-to-the-values-of-islam-and-islamic-law-survey/"> 92% approval rating from citizens of Saudi Arabia</a>.<br />
I disagree with Keenan Malik and also <a href="http://saidsimon.wordpress.com/2014/08/02/radicalisation-belief-and-violence/"> blogger Simon Frankel Pratt</a> with whom I had a brief Facebook discussion on the subject. Whilst individuals may have their own routes and reasons to radicalisation they cannot pursue them in isolation, they need a framework and an internally consistent narrative in order to sustain their zeal and justify behaving in ways that in other circumstances would be anathema to them. No other religion in the modern world has the ideology, history, theology and motive to support violence in way that Islam does.<br />
In the first place Islam has always had a strong territorial and political dimension. The traditional history of its early expansion is one of conquest and occupation with the establishment of the faith achieved in a matter of decades following the death of Mohammed. Whether this and the exploits of the first Caliphs, scimitar and Qur’an in hand, are true or not they are written into the Hadith and Sunnah and are a ready justification for modern day jihad. I can think of no other religion that claims to have spread in this way or would want to be associated with forced conversions today even if they happened in the past.<br />
Secondly Islam is socially normative to a high degree. It is not only a religion to be believed it also has to be practiced in ways that can demonstrate that belief. Dietary laws, praying in one direction at specific times of day, fasting and pilgrimage are signals to other Muslims that they are part of a bigger community with obligations to conform. This also makes it easier for other norms such as Hijab to emerge even though they may not be a strict requirement of the religion.<br />
The Qur’an is highly prescriptive. To find a parallel you could look to Leviticus or Deuteronomy in the Bible but the Qur’an is almost entirely comprised of this kind of legalistic theology whereas the Bible drowns it out in history and myth then arguably dispenses with it entirely in the New Testament. Muslims are taught to see their scriptures as authoritative and the Sharia legal system is based entirely on the Qur’an and Hadith. It is still possible to pick and choose liberal interpretations but much harder to refute the conservative ones<br />
The principle schism in Islam between Sunni and Shia runs very deep and traditionally stems from a dispute over who should have succeeded Mohammed as leader of the faith. It is no accident that the main victims of I.S. are Shia Muslims, heresy being a worse crime than being of another religion entirely. Islam is not uniquely but nevertheless very well primed for the “<a href="http://therearenoothers.wordpress.com/2011/12/28/othering-101-what-is-othering/">othering</a>” of heretics and apostates and dehumanising potential enemies.<br />
Simon Frankel Pratt kindly pointed me to an article by Clark McCauleya* & Sophia Moskalenkoa called <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09546550802073367#tabModule"><i>Mechanisms of Political Radicalization: Pathways Toward Terrorism</i></a> which is worth a read as it explores the mechanisms by which individuals may become radicalised in diverse situations. They call this the “pyramid model”<br />
<blockquote>
”From base to apex, higher levels of the pyramid are associated with decreased numbers but increased radicalization of beliefs, feelings, and behaviors. Thus one way of thinking about radicalization is that it is the gradient that distinguishes terrorists from their base of sympathizers. How do individuals move from the base to the extremes of terrorist violence at the apex?”</blockquote>
a path that is summarised in the table below.
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpmW4_AvgS61w881Y_bcCjcDN1nmi3CuIKprYmNTB_oKK2UtV4mIGJMiMIkJS1oPQ7Lb2Vir_kfAjjDJuvsOqxr6bx10fOMbBXqd_BGlbWdm1HvEsy1XDv7qAEcaEWOToteXS7BIOSlcw/s1600/mechanisms-of-radicalisation.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpmW4_AvgS61w881Y_bcCjcDN1nmi3CuIKprYmNTB_oKK2UtV4mIGJMiMIkJS1oPQ7Lb2Vir_kfAjjDJuvsOqxr6bx10fOMbBXqd_BGlbWdm1HvEsy1XDv7qAEcaEWOToteXS7BIOSlcw/s1600/mechanisms-of-radicalisation.jpg" height="217" width="400" /></a></div>
But in my view Islam short circuits this process by providing a ready-made ladder to the apex and a fast-track means of fulfilment for the wannabe radical. The emphasis on martyrdom, the supra-nationalism, the prescriptivism and the historical justification all make Islam a potent draw for those who would find political cause or personal glory in its name. Islamism is a thing. It is a political movement with substantial theological support and history on its side. Although the vast majority of believers may wish to reject it conservative Islam is shifting the perceptions of what it is to be a Muslim towards its own narrow interpretation, often aided and abetted by western media portrayals of Islam in precisely this way.<br />
<a href="http://mpvusa.org/">Liberal Islam is also a thing</a> so there doesn’t <i>have</i> to be “something about Islam” but for now the conservative view has the platform and the charisma to attract young Muslims who are otherwise disaffected and, more than other causes or other faiths, the doctrines to retain them.Steve Bowenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15243178223616240845noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6900870923576954613.post-74719853641464950572014-07-21T16:45:00.000+01:002014-07-21T16:51:34.621+01:00An Imam a Christian and a Humanist walk into a school...No, it’s not the start of a cheesy joke, rather the way quite an interesting day began…<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwaoLL2A4DlhPTMJtQfweinMIkk8_1bDCcpDB7UFQ_2d9ZVVS5e-iS7kVaa40SEFuE2lRpRlu1chMbOJkdFU9fmwyrfxnxw-p6WV9ltd00ZgQH8lEGPojv6lueP15peEltq7hgUbzKinU/s1600/HFS.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwaoLL2A4DlhPTMJtQfweinMIkk8_1bDCcpDB7UFQ_2d9ZVVS5e-iS7kVaa40SEFuE2lRpRlu1chMbOJkdFU9fmwyrfxnxw-p6WV9ltd00ZgQH8lEGPojv6lueP15peEltq7hgUbzKinU/s1600/HFS.png" /></a>Just to give a bit of background, a few months ago I attended a course run by the British Humanist Association (<a href="https://humanism.org.uk/">BHA</a>) designed to train humanists to assist schools with a revised religious education curriculum that requires teachers to include secular points of view as well as those of the mainstream religions. There are about a hundred of us registered so far and R.E teachers can request assistance via the <a href="http://humanismforschools.org.uk/"> Humanism for Schools</a> website from BHA volunteers who will help by supplying classroom materials, participating in classrooms directly or speaking at assemblies. We have a range of year group appropriate resources we can draw on.<br />
Anyway, recently I received an email from the Humanism for Schools coordinator asking if I was able to be the humanist representative on a diversity panel for a year 9 group (13 to 14 yrs) alongside a Muslim Imam and an Anglican Vicar. Of course I was happy to oblige.<br />
The event involved half a dozen or so forty-five minute sessions as a series of classes rotated between us and other cultural diversity events. The pupils had an interesting range of questions which each of us answered in turn according to our particular worldview.<br />
The Imam was a particularly interesting person; an affable retired G.P originally from India and without a rational notion in his head. He fielded a question on evolution by insisting “nobody ever saw a human hand appear on a monkey’s arm” and was very insistent that it was impossible to be a moral person without Allah. However in a conversation I had with him during a break he made a very interesting point about the radicalisation of British Asian Muslims which he illustrated by referring to his own “embracing” of Islam. He had been brought up in a traditional Muslim family while in India and learned the Qur’an by rote in Arabic which is apparently the norm despite being unable to speak or understand the language. Consequently until the age of forty, when he finally read it in translation, he had no idea what the Qur’an actually said other than what was told to him. If this is typical of Asian Muslims it becomes easy to see how a hard line interpretation of Islam could be imposed on them without having any other frame of reference. By the time any of them read a translation they can understand (if they ever do as some Imams teach that all translations are corrupt) their minds are already primed for Jihad.<br />
The Vicar was of the “trendy” variety, one of your followers of Jesus types with a naïve pick and mix liberal theology. He had the utmost conviction in the historicity of Jesus claiming it was “better documented than any event in history” (me pointing out that one primary source doesn’t count fell on deaf ears) and, to his credit, insisted in every session that Christianity was the one true religion which is far more honest in my opinion than mealy-mouthed ecumenicalism.<br />
He fielded the first of the “do you believe in evolution” questions with, wait for it… “It’s only a theory” and… “It’s like a whirlwind in a junkyard accidentally making a Jumbo Jet”…Yep! He actually went there. After I was forced to make a small diversion into the actual predictions made by Darwinian natural selection he confined subsequent answers to saying it must still be “God guided”. But, I suppose that’s the best you can expect.<br />
Throughout the day we fielded perceptive questions on; the existence of God, miracles, evolution, contraception, homosexuality and abortion. We all gave answers from our own perspective and for the most part did not pursue the arguments between us but left the different worldviews to hang there for the pupils to absorb.<br />
It’s difficult to know whether any converts were made by anyone that day, which really was not the objective from my point of view (the Imam however came loaded with Islamic literature so maybe he had a different agenda), but several of the classes said they had never knowingly met a humanist or even heard of humanism before so for that alone I considered the day fully worthwhile.
Steve Bowenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15243178223616240845noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6900870923576954613.post-56245507106100243102014-05-29T16:00:00.000+01:002014-05-29T22:00:28.302+01:00Liberal belief is not harmless<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibL3FQccTxxXdAwBwkFQpnUOZDk6bnik4Z2RqrhT4hLbkiCeKukpk0DY9BZEZZ1g6s1kNlIuKb2MjmGeUI7DXLPceJbLBb_LCyV7KceG58hwWkqPrJAtRCVJR502_sKRhKMxFfiKrHEBk/s1600/god.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibL3FQccTxxXdAwBwkFQpnUOZDk6bnik4Z2RqrhT4hLbkiCeKukpk0DY9BZEZZ1g6s1kNlIuKb2MjmGeUI7DXLPceJbLBb_LCyV7KceG58hwWkqPrJAtRCVJR502_sKRhKMxFfiKrHEBk/s1600/god.png" /></a>In general atheists only actively disbelieve in the existence of deities that are purported to have influence in the material world or that are presumed to have opinions and preferences about the way human beings conduct their affairs. As a result we are often accused of having an overly simplistic concept of God; merely attacking an old bearded strawman in the sky rather than dealing with Anselm’s unmoved mover or the Ground of Being that Thomas Aquinas and later “sophisticated” theologians like Paul Tillich, Alvin Plantinga and my latest buddy David Bentley Hart envisage. But there are reasons why most atheists ignore or are agnostic about abstract concepts of God not least because they really are un-falsifiable from a scientific point of view so having a strong opinion one way or the other would be irrational but more importantly the believer in the street is not concerned with abstract gods and neither, I suggest, is organised religion.<br />
The gods that most religions present to their faithful are not abstract but quasi-human. They have opinions on dress, diet, sexuality and morality. They expect to be worshipped in specific ways on specific days with special words and rituals or prayed to while facing a particular direction. Some of them publish verbose and internally contradictory manuals with a limited first run distribution around a small area of the middle-east that make historical and factual claims we now know to be false and moral claims many now find abhorrent.<br />
To me it is self-evident that these gods don’t exist in external reality nevertheless they do exist in the minds of many people and the ontological presumptions of many cultures. That is where my real beef with religion really starts.<br />
American philosopher <a href="http://www.pdx.edu/philosophy/peter-boghossian">Peter Boghossian</a> likes to define faith as “pretending to know things you don’t know”. Religion makes truth claims about God’s desires on the basis of very flimsy evidence yet these claims are frequently put into the service of enforcing cultural norms that have very real detrimental effects on people. They have been used to <a href="http://stevebowen58.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/when-christians-talk-of-slavery.html">defend slavery</a>, they are used to perpetuate misogyny and the subjugation of women, and they are used to justify the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/sep/07/iran-executes-men-homosexuality-charges">hanging of homosexuals</a>, the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/nov/03/somalia-rape-amnesty">stoning of rape victims</a> and <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/sudan-woman-death-row-apostasy-birth-23909203">apostates</a>. They are used to restrict access to contraception and abortion and to deny proper medical care to women <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Savita_Halappanavar">hospitalised due to miscarriages</a>.
“People pretending to know things they don’t know” are preventing the education of women, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creation_and_evolution_in_public_education">opposing the teaching of science</a>, trying to deny same sex couples access to the civil institution of marriage and stop them from adopting children.
People pretending to know things they don’t know want the rest of us to pretend we know these things too.<br />
Now if you’re a believer you may be saying to yourself “I don’t recognise the god this atheist is complaining about, my god doesn’t advocate stoning women or discrimination on the basis of gender or sexuality. My god is a loving inclusive nurturing sort of god”. Well if so congratulations on choosing a better behaved god and pretending to know nicer things about yours than some other people pretend to know about theirs but all believers, wittingly or not, are involved in the same conspiracy to pretend to know something they don’t know.<br />
Liberal belief in a beneficent deity is, I concede, the source of much good in society. Apart from the comfort if gives to individuals, a selective reading of scripture encourages some religious communities to charity and social welfare, education programs and the like. Churches, Mosques and Synagogues offer sanctuary and community and for some that may be a necessary social lifeline. Yes, some religion in some aspects for some people is a good thing for some of the time.<br />
But, one would have to be blind not to notice that much harm is being done in religion’s name and this is not, I believe, just because the extremists are doing it wrong. The bible that inspires the affable Rev Colin Still is the same bible that motivated Fred Phelps and the Southern Baptists. The Qur’an of “the religion of peace” is also the handbook for Boko Haram. The Jihadists and the moderates, the bigots and the liberals are just pretending to know different things about the nature of God and there is no objective way to prove who if anyone is ‘correct’ since God is unavailable for comment.<br />
Liberal belief is not benign: it is the foundation for extremism. It renders truth claims about the nature of God socially and intellectually respectable despite having no objective measure of their worth. Even liberal belief protects itself against criticism by insisting ridicule of religion is at best impolite and at worst blasphemous giving cover to extremists who will kill over religious satire. The very premise that there exists a God that has attitudes, rules, regulations, likes and dislikes is the root of much more suffering and injustice than can be justified by the good it sometimes engenders and besides as humanists have proved again and again God really is unnecessary for human flourishing.<br />
If theists only believed in the apophatic, un-moved mover god of sophisticated theologians I doubt I would even bother to write this blog. I have no problem with that sort of belief since; for one thing, they may be right but more to the point no-one ever got killed by arguing over the foibles of a Ground of Being.
Steve Bowenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15243178223616240845noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6900870923576954613.post-88891629859949946782014-05-03T11:16:00.000+01:002014-05-03T11:19:17.570+01:00On "The Experience of God" by David Bentley Hart: Part 3 of 3<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">David Bentley Hart</td></tr>
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Prompted by <a href="http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/">Jerry Coyne’s</a> critiques of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Bentley_Hart"> David Bentley Hart’s </a> latest book <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Experience-God-Being-Consciousness/dp/0300166842"><i>The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss</i></a> I have bought my own copy as it is apparently the latest sophisticated argument for God that atheists now have to refute in order to qualify for the right to an opinion on the subject and so I have decided to post my own thoughts on this latest ‘best argument for God’.<br />
As Hart’s sub-title implies the book is split into three divisions; <i>Being</i> (the existential question, essentially the cosmological argument), <i>consciousness</i> (or why the “<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness">hard problem</a>” of consciousness points to God) and <i>Bliss</i> (The experiential evidence). I intend this to be a series of three posts addressing each in turn so today’s is <i>Bliss.</i><br />
<br />
<b>BLISS</b><br />
Given his teleological and platonic presumptions the first two sections <i>Being</i> and <i>Consciousness</i> make interesting if unremarkable arguments for the existence of an ultimate causational ground of something or other that Hart likes to call God. However in <i>Bliss</i> he provides little argument (beyond reiteration) and less evidence for a series of assertions concerning our human experiences of desire for love, morality, status and altruism <i>et al</i> which must, he insists, really be nothing but stops on the way to bliss; a union with the divine.<br />
How, he wonders, can we strive to be moral if there is not some extant perfect morality or feel the urge to pursue happiness if that abstract concept is not in some sense all pervasive? He speaks as though he has already established the case but whereas the universe and, arguably, consciousness are things seeking explanation internal emotions really aren’t. They are already contingent upon physical reality, somatic organic states and consciousness (magical or otherwise) and it makes no sense to insist that they must be representative of “pure” emotions.<br />
Hart pre-empts the obvious evolutionary rebuttal in the most bizarre way by embarking on a tirade against Richard Dawkins’ seminal concept of <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Selfish-Gene-Richard-Dawkins/dp/0192860925"><i>The Selfish Gene</i></a> which having ridiculed as a terrible metaphor he then goes on to dispute by treating it as though biologists really believe genes are intentional “imps” with Machiavellian designs on our bodies and minds. In fact Hart’s entire world view seems to make him incapable of understanding the fundamental point about evolution which is that it is an entirely contingent process, unintended and undirected. He claims to get that the idea of “genes for” a particular trait is a naïve simplification of how things work yet attacks gene centric explanations for the evolutionary utility of emotion entirely on that basis and he certainly does not realise that <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics"> epigenetic phenomena</a> where the organism apparently effects the genes are themselves evolved mechanisms to cope with short term environmental changes.<br />
Biology is a messy business and natural selection may act reflexively and on different levels from DNA through individuals and maybe even populations although as I have <a href="http://stevebowen58.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/conflict-resolution-difference-between.html"> said before</a> my intuition is that at bottom the gene (broadly defined) is the ultimate agent of evolutionary change. But Hart wants to turn the narrative on its head and insist that, for example, a mother’s love preserves the genes through her child, rather than genes survive which promote the emotions conducive to nurturing a child. While the observable effect would be indistinguishable either way Hart’s version is un-falsifiable and has none of the explanatory power of Darwinian selection (Ironically in <i>consciousness</i> Hart scorned the concept of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memetics">memes </a>as units of ideas that preferentially spread through cultures but in <i>bliss</i> partly exculpates Dawkins for the success of the selfish gene metaphor because it has spread organically through media to become a cultural trope. So how does he think that happened exactly? Well, he doesn’t say but I think he’d be hard pushed to supply a non-Darwinian explanation). <br />
This section of the book contains the most word salad by far, in fact in places it’s so unintelligible the circularity of his thinking is sometimes difficult to pick out. Or perhaps that’s the point. For example he insists in various tortured ways that our quest for beauty, love and conscience is in reality our yearning for God because God <i>is</i> good and the good<i> is</i> God (so even if you’re an atheist desiring to do good you are also tacitly accepting Gods existence; handy that…) and waves away <a href="http://www.philosophyofreligion.info/christian-ethics/divine-command-theory/the-euthyphro-dilemma/"> the Euthyphro dilemma</a> as irrelevant because God’s goodness is sufficient unto itself. Hart is defining God in his own self-referential terms just like every other theist who needs their god to conform to their own concept.<br />
It is interesting to note that although Hart constantly reminds us that God is everything, is the cause of everything, sustains everything, contains and is contained by everything as the ground of all being, consciousness and bliss his God is always referred to as “he”. For some reason this all-consuming deity (which should definitely not be anthropomorphised in any way, dearie me no!) is resolutely male even before we ascribe other characteristics such as goodness <i>etcetera</i>. Why, for example, shouldn’t such a deity be perfectly evil, hateful or vain or perfectly any other thing that human beings are capable of pursuing when not seeking love or the good? <br />
All told, it’s not that this book is a poor argument for God, more that it’s an argument for a rather poor God and definitely not for the God of most believers. If Hart really accepted only this amorphous definition of God he would be almost as much an atheist as I am. As it is I started his book agnostic about such a ground of being and finished it with the same attitude. Yes, it is logically possible for Hart’s God to exist, but except from a purely metaphysical point of view it is hard to care one way or the other. I am an atheist because I don’t believe in (amongst others) Hart’s other God; the one he is not attempting to defend but the one of his professed <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Orthodox_Church"> Eastern Orthodox</a> faith that made man “in his own image” ,incarnated in the person of Christ, and was crucified. The Eastern Orthodox God that has attitudes and preferences and speaks ambiguously through the bible of dietary laws and sexual taboos. Hart may want to avoid drawing a face on the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophatic_theology">apophatic</a> God of <i>Being, Consciousness and Bliss</i> but by doing so he is arguing for no kind of God at all.<br />
<br />
<b>Footnote:</b>
You may have found these three posts a little tedious to read so by way of an antidote I offer <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVbnciQYMiM"> this video</a> via the much wittier and entertaining <a href="http://www.nonstampcollector.com/"> NonStampCollector</a>.
Steve Bowenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15243178223616240845noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6900870923576954613.post-90661177939224533412014-04-28T16:35:00.000+01:002014-04-28T16:47:51.290+01:00In defense of scientific materialismAs a slight diversion from my three part critique of David Bentley Hart’s <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Experience-God-Being-Consciousness/dp/0300166842"> <i>The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss</i></a> I’d like to make a more general point about philosophical <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialism"> materialism</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalism_(philosophy)"> methodological naturalism</a> and why <i>pace</i> Hart they are not logically absurd positions.<br />
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In the course of everyday experience our metaphysical and ontological attitudes are largely irrelevant to the point where most people never consider them at all. It is perfectly possible to be a platonic realist without considering every object we encounter in terms of its deviation from a notional ideal perfect form and I seriously doubt anybody lives their lives that way. Similarly we may be able to believe reality is an illusion but still organise our lives so that we don’t try to leave our homes via the first floor window. In general we all treat the world as though it is exactly how it appears to be; a series of causal and caused events acting upon discrete physical objects.<br />
There are good evolutionary reasons why this purely materialist point of view is the quotidian default. At the scales in which biological life can evolve the underlying nature of things is invisible and insensible. Even at bacterial dimensions the interactions with the environment are on a molecular or, at the least, atomic level as far as its sensory capabilities are concerned and millennia of evolution has equipped us and all life to perceive reality reliably but within boundaries that are relevant to natural selection. It is in this trivial sense that Alvin Plantinga is correct to say that evolution <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_argument_against_naturalism">limits our cognitive abilities</a> although not, I suggest, to the extent that we cannot make rational sense of the material world.<br />
It is only when we try to investigate the universe systematically that the philosophical issues become paramount. When considering what extra sensory causes lie behind the physical effects we experience the only logical course open to us is to assume that the principles of cause and effect, one material object upon another, continue to obtain even when we cannot directly observe them. To suppose otherwise offers no fruitful line of enquiry because once you allow for the answer to be in some way magical it would be impossible to design an experiment or predict an observation that would disprove it. Methodological naturalism is therefore the only coherent philosophy under which science can proceed even if the ultimate reality, whatever is holding up the last detectable turtle, is something immaterial.<br />
Part of the problem that non-materialists (of whatever stripe) seem to have with methodological naturalism as a scientific presupposition is based, I believe, on a misunderstanding of what science claims to know. In most situations science is not claiming possession of absolute factual truths about the universe but rather a collection of well tested theories that are both explanatory and predictive of what we can expect to observe either by our evolved senses or the machinery we have invented to enhance those senses. These are conceptual models that if applied <i>via</i> material reality produce reliable outcomes, nothing more; they say zip about what may be the underlying cause of everything. In fact when methodological naturalism is defined it is as a working assumption, not an absolute truth, the overriding idea being that regardless of <i>whether or not</i> supernatural forces operate at some fundamental level the material observations would appear identical. In this scenario supernaturalism is a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Null_hypothesis">null hypothesis</a> that eventually science could, in principle, falsify to everyone’s satisfaction making <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphysical_naturalism">metaphysical naturalism</a> (which does claim, strongly, that there are no supernatural phenomena) the most likely situation. Personally, I suspect that however far science is capable of reaching it will still be turtles all the way down for all practical purposes simply because any cause that we can ever detect or postulate must be interacting physically with some other material system we have either observed or conceived.<br />
Even if the sophisticated theologians or the Deepak Chopras of this world are correct and the turtles swim in something divine or pantheistic it still makes no sense for us to explore the universe from any other perspective than materialism despite alleged logical inconsistencies with its metaphysics. You cannot arrive at a coherent consensus description of reality by appealing to a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensus_divinatis"><i>sensus divinatis</i></a> that if it exists at all is not universally reliable and no amount of meditation or naval gazing will solve the proximal mysteries of existence even if, for some, they seem to point the way to ultimate ones: for now, and probably forever, materialism rules.
Steve Bowenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15243178223616240845noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6900870923576954613.post-30667547606292343832014-04-26T20:02:00.000+01:002014-04-26T23:18:50.160+01:00On "The Experience of God" by David Bentley Hart: Part 2 of 3<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjyMghgzlWHqMGkOhvGDQj7PynXiEn8ZYUV74sIapj4KaoWJ5yeyExdRkjxShzCYpB8ZYRPT2xUeUWdq7ZqYy3lh3o-wDaydNE2W6JkW7WxPQbNULHfP_FAA4-IMWhU2og1KFy2fXUUPc/s1600/hartbook.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjyMghgzlWHqMGkOhvGDQj7PynXiEn8ZYUV74sIapj4KaoWJ5yeyExdRkjxShzCYpB8ZYRPT2xUeUWdq7ZqYy3lh3o-wDaydNE2W6JkW7WxPQbNULHfP_FAA4-IMWhU2og1KFy2fXUUPc/s1600/hartbook.jpg" /></a>Prompted by <a href="http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/">Jerry Coyne’s</a> critiques of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Bentley_Hart"> David Bentley Hart’s </a> latest book <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Experience-God-Being-Consciousness/dp/0300166842"><i>The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss</i></a> I have bought my own copy as it is apparently the latest sophisticated argument for God that atheists now have to refute in order to qualify for the right to an opinion on the subject and so I have decided to post my own thoughts on this latest ‘best argument for God’.<br />
As Hart’s sub-title implies the book is split into three divisions; <i>Being</i> (the existential question, essentially the cosmological argument), <i>consciousness</i> (or why the “<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness">hard problem</a>” of consciousness points to God) and <i>Bliss</i> (The experiential evidence). I intend this to be a series of three posts addressing each in turn so today’s is <i>Consciousness</i><br />
<br />
<b> CONSCIOUSNESS </b><br />
One would expect that when somebody explicitly denies that they are making an <a href="http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Argument_from_incredulity">argument from personal incredulity</a> that the substance of what then follows would be something other. Hart does make this claim but unfortunately it is difficult to see his problem with a materialistic view of consciousness as anything but an appeal to complexity and ignorance. For Hart the subjective experience of consciousness seems way too tenuous to be pinned down to the mechanism of the brain and he simply does not believe that neuroscience will ever bridge the quantitative – qualitative gap between a firing neuron and his personal experience of a red rose.<br />
Much of Hart’s issue is that he denies the possibility of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence">emergence</a> the process by which complex systems can arise from large numbers of simple interactions. In the book’s introductory section he suggests that such emergent systems are never seen although, in fact, physics recognises the phenomena at fundamental levels. A wave, for example, is an emergent structure independent of the substrate on which it travels. In a liquid it is explained by the vertical movement of molecules but is described by a <a href="http://galileo.phys.virginia.edu/classes/252/Classical_Waves/Classical_Waves.html">mathematical function</a> that is equally applicable to quantum mechanics, in other words a wave is qualitatively different from the components it is made from. In the same way it is reasonable to assume that consciousness could emerge from sufficient numbers of unconscious interactions in the brain or indeed any sufficiently complex information processing structure. Physicist <a href="http://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/mathematical.html">Max Tegmark </a> characterises consciousness as “[…] the way information feels when being processed in certain complex ways” and in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness_Explained"><i>Consciousness Explained</i></a> philosopher Daniel Dennett suggests that it arises from the parallel and reflexive processing of information by the brain.<br />
The jury is far from out on this and neuroscience in its infancy is still taking the commensurate baby steps towards an understanding of consciousness (and the related question of whether or not we have free will) but to suggest it is forever insoluble is premature. For Hart the ”hard problem” becomes easy as his <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/platonism/">Platonic view</a> of the world allows for the redness of his red rose to have an ideal existence of its own as a <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia/"> qualia</a> available to augment the mere physical presence of the flower and inform a metaphysical consciousness but the paucity of such a view, even if ultimately proved correct, would put an end to the adventure of research into the subject. By discounting the concept of emergence, even though it can be clearly demonstrated to occur, Hart is biasing his argument in favour of a top down teleological view of consciousness and perception that he offers the materialist no reason to accept bar allowing for the supernatural. <br />
<blockquote>
”What makes the question of consciousness so intractable to us today, and hence so fertile a source for confusion and dashingly delirious invention, is not so much the magnitude of the logical problem as our inflexible and imaginatively constrained loyalty to a particular ontology and a particular conception of nature. Materialism, mechanism: neither is especially hospitable to a coherent theory of mind. This being so, the wise course might be to reconsider our commitment to our metaphysics”</blockquote>
By this light the results of all scientific enquiry would boil down to “Goddidit!” and render further effort futile.<br />
On the subject of free will Hart is very quick to trivialise, if not outright ridicule, the work of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Libet"> Benjamin Libet</a> who was the first to conduct experiments that suggest the intention to perform an action, as measured by observing the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bereitschaftspotential">readiness potential</a> in the brain, precedes consciousness of the intent by some 200ms or so which implies that free will may well be illusory and that our decisions are made at an unconscious level. But his criticism is merely a restatement of his conviction that materialism is a flawed philosophy <i>per se</i> which to my mind is just as pre-suppositional and unnecessary as plenty of materialist philosophers <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_Evolves">would still argue for free will</a> even if it is not the ‘magical’ free will that Hart, presumably, desires.<br />
Using an extension of Alvin Plantinga’s <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_argument_against_naturalism">evolutionary argument against naturalism</a> Hart also asserts that it would be impossible for a purely material mind capable of abstract thought to evolve as there would be no natural selection for such an ability. However this is to ignore (as does Plantinga) the fact that features selected for one advantage can become co-opted for another. Abstract reasoning (and even a coherent sense of self) may well be the result of selection for language ability. The capacity for expressing higher order intentionality, the ability to form “what if?” scenarios to plan for imagined hazards and the sharing of strategies were once adaptive advantages that may have required a brain complex enough to accommodate abstract concepts. In short all of the qualities of mind that Hart believes are too difficult to evolve and impossible to understand via naturalism could well be <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spandrel_(biology)">spandrels</a>, by products of features favoured by evolution for other reasons.<br />
The least convincing contention in this chapter is the idea that pure reason is incompatible with a materialist view of consciousness. But, given that we live in a universe that, whether for magical or natural reasons, is comprehensible it would be expected that brains would evolve to comprehend it. The ability to deduce logically is merely an extension of observation and categorisation of the world we inhabit. Hart finally flogs his red rose metaphor to death at this point by suggesting the syllogism “all of the roses in my garden are red, I am observing a rose in my garden, therefore the rose I am observing is red” must require some kind of mystical preternatural knowledge of categories such a <i>rose</i> , <i>red</i>, <i>garden</i> etc. and awareness of categories of rose that aren’t red and plants that aren’t roses. I really hope I am not straw manning his point here (this is one of his more obtuse segments) but all of this seems either experiential (we have learned what constitutes a rose that is red) or linguistic (regardless of whether we know the objects the syntax makes sense: all of the blibblies in my wibbly are flibbly, I am observing a blibbly in my wibbly, therefor the blibbly I am observing is flibbly) and requires nothing transcendental that I can see.<br />
As with his chapters on <i>being</i> Hart’s quest for the spiritual in consciousness lay less in a strong case for God and more in a weak rebuttal of naturalism which is only an irrational philosophy if you accept <i>a priori</i> Hart’s ontological assumptions and incredulity of emergent phenomena. Again, Hart may be correct; his is not a falsifiable assertion as we can always maintain that purely naturalist explanations for consciousness are just around the corner although an atheism of the gaps philosophy is no better than the more commonly heard theistic trope. But he still fails to provide any evidence for theistic gods worthy of petition or worship on the basis of consciousness. Perhaps he will fare better with <i>bliss</i>.
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<br />Steve Bowenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15243178223616240845noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6900870923576954613.post-54517294651245591392014-04-22T20:04:00.000+01:002014-04-22T20:04:46.925+01:00On "The Experience of God" by David Bentley Hart: Part 1 of 3Prompted by <a href="http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/">Jerry Coyne’s</a> critiques of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Bentley_Hart"> David Bentley Hart’s </a> latest book <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Experience-God-Being-Consciousness/dp/0300166842"><i>The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss</i><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null"> I have bought my own copy as it is apparently the latest sophisticated argument for God that atheists now have to refute in order to qualify for the right to an opinion on the subject. <br />
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As others have pointed out it seems unfair that for theists to criticise scientific rebuttals of religion they rarely see the need to actually understand the science but for an atheist to criticise religion requires an encyclopaedic knowledge of two millennia of theology. But what the hell! I quite like acquiring knowledge for its own sake and have a fair grasp of both theology and science so I have decided to post my own thoughts on this latest ‘best argument for God’.<br />
As Hart’s sub-title implies the book is split into three divisions; <i>Being</i> (the existential question, essentially the cosmological argument), <i>consciousness</i> (or why the “<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness">hard problem</a>” of consciousness points to God) and <i>Bliss</i> (The experiential evidence). I intend this to be a series of three posts addressing each in turn starting with <i>Being</i><br /><br />
<b>BEING</b><br />
In one respect the disappointment of this part of the book is that it really offers nothing new. Hart’s argument is essentially a re-hash of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Tillich">Paul Tillich</a>’s “ground of being” concept where God is defined as that upon which all else is contingent, although I think Hart’s explanation and derivation is much more cogently explained than many with less resort to post-modernist language and obfuscation (I do mean less by the way, not none: there is still plenty of semi-digestible word salad in this book).
He begins by asserting that materialism is a self-limiting philosophy that science uses necessarily to render the observable universe available for comprehension while ignoring the philosophical dilemma of why anything requiring investigation exists at all. The logical consequence of this is that everything is seen as a sequence of causes and effects leading to infinite regressions if you try to contemplate the “first cause” of anything. He extends the argument to say that explanations relying on mathematical imperatives fail the same test as they must also be contingent on something absolute as would an infinite multiverse or any appeal to the anthropic principle to explain why the universe is as we find it.<br />
Hart goes on to explain that his refined <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/cosmological-argument/">cosmological argument</a> requires an eternal infinite indivisible prime cause that doesn’t initiate creation at a specific point or occupy Einsteinian space-time in any way. Meaning it can’t be observed because science only looks inside the system and ignores external supernatural explanations (which is a general claim<a href="http://stevebowen58.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/does-science-really-ignore-possibility.html"> I have addressed before</a>).<br />
My problem with all of this really boils down to “so what”? Apart from the fact that such arguments have been made for centuries even if such a ground of being does exist (and I am prepared to concede that it might, or even logically must) why call this thing God? In fact why call it anything at all if it is essentially beyond our capacity to observe and the universe cannot possibly look other than it does either with or without it?<br />
My favourite sound-bite response to the question “why is there something instead of nothing?” is to suggest that there is only one way for there to be <i>nothing</i> yet an almost infinite number of ways for there to be <i>something</i> so the balance of probability is massively in favour of <i>something</i>. I’ve always considered this to be a trivial thought but Hart does take the time to argue against it by saying that an “empty universe” is merely a logical possibility and not a logical necessity in the way that his prime cause of being is and anyway there may be many logically possible empty universes: but this wrong. While there may be many logically possible empty universes there really can only be one way for there to be <i>nothing</i> (whatever that means) even assuming it is logically possible at all. It may be that <i>something</i> is the default due to the logical impossibility of <i>nothing</i>.<br />
It is unsatisfying (even for a materialist) to say it’s “turtles all the way down” but this doesn’t mean that any ground of being ,even if metaphysical, must possess divinity or intent and even less that it has specific opinions on the dietary and sexual habits of humans, which leads me to this final observation…<br />
In a substantial diversion from the initial theme of “being” Hart makes the point that the God he is attempting to describe and justify is not a small ‘g’ god or the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demiurge">demiurge</a> of the Old Testament who created a universe from pre-existing chaos but one that’s very much the <i>ex-nihilo</i> be-all and end-all of existence. But, given that he is explicitly aiming this book at atheists he appears to have missed the memo that for the most part it is only the existence of the demiurges that we are denying. After all it is these theistic gods that are supposed to answer prayers and wreak punishments with careless abandon on human kind. These are the gods for which not only is there no evidence but substantial evidence against even though these are also the gods that, despite Hart’s conviction, most naïve believers look to for moral guidance and salvation. Hart, at least in part one of this book, is flirting with <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantheism"> something very close to pantheism</a> which really does not square with his professed <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Orthodox">Eastern Orthodox</a> Christianity and he fails to make the qualitative leap between god in the abstract and a God we should care about.
<br />Steve Bowenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15243178223616240845noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6900870923576954613.post-64439714045053544852014-03-11T15:48:00.000+00:002014-03-11T20:12:15.500+00:00The birds are singing to Yahweh according to Rabbi Sacks.Oh Dear! <a href="http://www.rabbisacks.org/">Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks</a> has fallen into the “Darwin was wrong about some things” trap to deliver a puerile homily about taking ...<br />
<blockquote>
...Darwinian selection to be more than a law about biology, and turn it into a metaphor for life itself, as if all that matters is conflict and the struggle to survive, so that love and beauty and even birdsong are robbed of their innocence and reduced to genetic instincts and drives.</blockquote>
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Yes, once again Radio 4’s <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01tn8w3">Thought for the Day</a> has come up trumps as an inspiration for a blog post and for me this one touched all the bases; Darwin, evolution, covert creationism and intellectual dishonesty all in one three minute segment. So where to begin?<br />
Well, Lord Sacks has decided that the account of a revised understanding of the sexual mores of birds in a new book <a href="http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/29558/title/The-Birds-and-the-Bees/"><i> The Wisdom of Birds </i></a>by ornithologist Tim Birkhead is sufficient to impugn the scientific understanding of evolution because it now transpires that Darwin’s assertion that female birds are faithful and monogamous and the promiscuous males sing to attract mates has proved to be less than universally true. It is now recognised that female birds are also opportunistic in their mating strategies and that some species have females that are as vocal as the males as evidenced by genetic studies of wild populations and observation by ornithologists.<br />
The first thing to say about this is that Darwin was wrong about the specifics of many things, most importantly from an evolutionary point of view he completely misunderstood the true nature of inheritance, ignorant as he was of even the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mendelian_inheritance">Mendelian laws of inheritance</a> being developed around the same time. This is both understandable and widely recognised by biologists who do not see this as a reason to reject what is arguably the most powerful explanatory scientific theory of the millennium. Given that context, minor observational errors on <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_selection">sexual selection</a> in birds should not be a big issue. Although in fact Tim Birkhead says this of Darwin who, as a pigeon fancier, would most likely have been aware of the truth of the matter.<br />
<blockquote>
He was probably playing it safe. In Victorian England it simply wasn’t appropriate for a well-respected gentleman scientist to draw attention to the existence of female promiscuity, let alone to justify it in biological terms.</blockquote>
Be that as it may avian female promiscuity and vocalisation does not lead to the conclusions that Lord Sacks would like to infer with this:
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<blockquote>
A century and a half ago Darwin argued that birdsong was all about sexual selection. It was males who did the singing, hoping to make female birds swoon at hearing the ornithological equivalent of Justin Bieber, giving the most tuneful males a better chance of handing on their genes to the next generation.
Well, it turns out to be not quite like that after all, because scientists have now discovered that female birds do almost as much singing as the males, and it has less to do with sexual selection, than with simply saying: I’m here. </blockquote>
and this:<br />
<blockquote>
Not all is wrong in a world where birds sing for the joy of being alive.</blockquote>
Birdsong <a href="http://www.pbs.org/lifeofbirds/songs/">fulfills several functions</a> not, or only partly, related to mating strategies. For some species it is territorial, a signal to deter members of the same species from invading its feeding and breeding grounds. In flocking birds it can be a means of maintaining colony cohesion and for warning against predators. Singing has to be explainable under natural selection as making a noise can be a risky strategy for a prey species and would only persist in a population if it had other survival advantages: saying "I'm here" just for the sake of it could result in "the joy of being alive" a very short experience. Skylarks for example, while on the wing, will use song as a form of <em>defense</em> against predator birds. By singing, the skylark signals that it is in good condition and will be difficult to catch as only a fit skylark can afford to sing whilst being chased by a predator. <br />
Moreover even if both males and females are singing to attract mates it does not negate sexual selection as both sexes would be advertising their fitness to potential partners which is still true even if strict monogamy were not the expected outcome. Lord Sacks seems to be suffering from the delusion that it can only be sexual selection if the male is behaving like a peacock and the female is a coy recipient of his advances which may say more about his cultural biases than about his grasp of biology. After all, both partners will usually be involved in feeding the brood so fitness, for which singing is a proxy, is advantageous to both birds.<br />
Lord Sacks cannot make any of this mean what he would like it to mean which is birds sing because of God. <br />
<blockquote>
[…] like all those psalms that speak of creation singing a song to the creator, and the wonderful closing line of the last psalm of all: Let everything that breathes praise the Lord.
</blockquote>
Birds sing for survival and not to praise a deity that only human minds can afford the luxury of inventing and no <i>faux pas</i> of Darwin’s changes that. However that does not render the dawn chorus any less uplifting or appealing, in fact the complex twists and turns of natural selection that have granted the birds their vocal abilities are mirrored in our own to appreciate them. Which is a much deeper and richer truth that it may benefit the good Rabbi to contemplate.
Steve Bowenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15243178223616240845noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6900870923576954613.post-16323725574503707322014-03-08T00:38:00.001+00:002014-03-08T09:37:25.053+00:00Science in the Quran? Maybe if you squint…<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Zakir Naik</td></tr>
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My youngest daughter appears to have inherited my scepticism of religion yet succeeds in maintaining sincere believers, both Christian and Muslim, as her closest friends. This is an admirable trait of which she should be justifiably proud, as indeed am I, and she achieves this even while having challenging theological debates amongst them.
Recently a Muslim friend suggested my daughter and I watch a YouTube debate between Islamic and Christian apologists <a href="http://www.zakirnaik.net/Naika">Dr Zakir Naik and Dr.William Campbell on </a><a href="http://youtu.be/-t7xhZdppF0%3C/a">"The Quran and the Bible in light of modern science"</a> which was supposed to convince us that the Quran is a reliable source of timeless scientific knowledge.
Now I have been exposed to Dr Naik before as he is the go-to-guy for Muslims wanting to defend the Quran as a perfect revelation by pointing to Surahs that pre-sage modern scientific theory but although I have read some of his thoughts online this was the first time I had watched him in action.
The first thing to say is that the link we were given is an egregiously biased edit of the actual debate with William Cambell's responses amateurishly curtailed to make his arguments fall literally and philosophically short and make Naik appear a better debater than he actually is. This is not surprising as theists of all denominations have been guilty of this tactic, but for the purposes of this post it is irrelevant because neither of the participants actually engaged the real problem, the purpose of that debate being to pitch the Bible against the Quran as to which is defensible through science: but neither are.
From my perspective Naik does a pretty thorough job of debunking Biblical claims to scientific integrity, better in fact than many atheist debaters I've seen. But that proves only that Naik is a competent theologian and logician with enough knowledge of science to recognise absurdities when he wants to.
However when it comes to defending the Quran his critical faculties desert him and his intellectual dishonesty becomes manifest.
Before what appears to be a gender segregated and predominantly supportive audience, Naik cites Surah upon Surah to support what are actually very weak eisogesic arguments for scientific "signs" in the Quran. For example he lists Surahs giving "detailed accounts of the water cycle" but only selectively quotes from them. Consequently if you actually research the Surahs he cites you get the following.<br />
<blockquote>
“We sent down water from the sky, blessed water whereby We caused to grow gardens, grains for harvest, tall palm-trees with their spathes, piled one above the other – sustenance for (Our) servants. Therewith We gave (new) life to a dead land. So will be the emergence (from the tombs).” [Quran 50:9-11]<br />
“We sent down water from the sky in measure and lodged it in the ground. And We certainly are able to withdraw it. Therewith for you We gave rise to gardens of palm-trees and vineyards where for you are abundant fruits and of them you eat.” [Quran 23: 18-19]<br />
“We sent forth the winds that fecundate. We cause the water to descend from the sky. We provide you with the water – you (could) not be the guardians of its reserves.” [Quran 15:22]<br />
“Allaah is the One Who sends forth the winds which raised up the clouds. He spreads them in the sky as He wills and breaks them into fragments. Then thou seest raindrops issuing from within them. He makes them reach such of His servants as He wills. And they are rejoicing.” [Quran 30:48]<br />
“(Allaah) is the One Who sends forth the winds like heralds of His Mercy. When they have carried the heavy-laden clouds, We drive them to a dead land. Then We cause water to descend and thereby bring forth fruits of every kind. Thus We will bring forth the dead. Maybe you will remember.” [Quran 7:57]<br />
“Hast thou not seen that Allaah sent water down from the sky and led it through sources into the ground? Then He caused sown fields of different colors to grow.” [Quran 39:21]<br />
“Therein We placed gardens of palm-trees and vineyards and We caused water springs to gush forth.” [Quran 36:34]</blockquote>
Seven 'divinely revealed' verses that say in no uncertain terms that...it rains...sometimes water comes from the ground...and stuff grows.<br />
This is not science, this is observation which fair enough is where science starts, but science is supposed to be explanatory and none of this is. It may be descriptive of the water cycle but that's as far as it goes and only proves that seventh century Arabs weren't stupid, which nobody is suggesting.<br />
Naik also defends the <a href="http://www.answering-islam.org/Quran/Science/embryo.html">Quran's description of embryology</a> which is often ridiculed by Christians and atheists alike as being a woefully naive description of the actual process of fertilisation and development of the human embryo.<br />
The truth is that as a descriptive narrative it is not far off. If talks of mixing fluids, a clot of blood, a leach like structure, a formative muscular/ skeletal phase all of which as descriptions are not obviously wrong. But, none of this is miraculous nor was it unknown. Women had been having miscarriages, foetuses had aborted and pregnant women had been mutilated for millenia enough for all of those things to have been observed and described. Again this is not science and in the absence of clear references to meiosis, eggs, sperm fertilisation etc is not explanatory. If indeed these had been explicit the divine provenance of the Quran would not be in doubt.<br />
On most other areas, particularly cosmology and geology, Naik either misunderstands or is just plain lying about the science. His explanations of plate tectonics and mountain formation are laughable as is his characterisation of the big bang. Although, a<a href="onhttp://www.answering-islam.org/Quran/Science/embryo.html"> Quranic reference about "an expanding universe" </a>did give me pause enough to search my own copy for the context of which I'll give you a few Surahs. <br />
<blockquote>
51:44
But they were insolent toward the command of their Lord, so the thunderbolt seized them while they were looking on.
51:45
And they were unable to arise, nor could they defend themselves.
51:46
And [We destroyed] the people of Noah before; indeed, they were a people defiantly disobedient.
51:47
<b>And the heaven We constructed with strength, and indeed, We are [its] expander.</b>
51:48
And the earth We have spread out, and excellent is the preparer.
51:49
And of all things We created two mates; perhaps you will remember.
51:50
So flee to Allah . Indeed, I am to you from Him a clear warner.
</blockquote>
Now, leaving aside the fact that like much of the Quran this is actually incoherent it demonstrates entirely how taking one verse out of many in a completely unrelated context can in retrospect be made to say something apparently meaningful. As I pointed out to my daughter on this standard of evidence you could pick any random sentence from any book and draw a parallel to any fact you chose. As a demonstration I linked the current cold snap in North America to this from <a href="http://pooh.wikia.com/wiki/The_More_It_Snows_(Tiddely-Pom)">A.A Milne </a><br />
<blockquote>
The more it snows (Tiddely-Pom)
The more it goes (Tiddely-Pom)
The more it goes on snowing (Tiddely-Pom)
And nobody knows (Tiddely-Pom)
How cold my toes (Tiddely-Pom)
How cold my toes are growing (Tiddely-Pom Tiddely-Pom Tiddely-Pom Tiddely-Pom)</blockquote>
Which is a clear prediction of the counter-intuitive but scientifically explainable recent effects of global warming. Clever old bear...<br />
There is no doubt that Dr Naik is an excellent debator and skilled theologian. His mastery of presuppositional and (mostly circular) logic is enough I suspect to convince the faithful, indeed it must be given the frequency with which I am directed towards him, but the fact that his title is medical and he is not a science PhD shows painfully to anyone with some grounding in science and frankly no sceptic would take him seriously on the strength of this debate with a Christian apologist also lacking scientific credentials.<br />
He did however give my daughter and I a very entertaining and highly amusing evening as we laughed together at his transparently flawed science and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend his <a href="http://www.zakirnaik.net/">website</a> as a resource for atheists looking for ammunition to use in similar debates.<br />
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Steve Bowenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15243178223616240845noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6900870923576954613.post-6220180081131862082014-03-03T17:11:00.000+00:002014-03-03T19:15:34.187+00:00When Christians talk of slavery...<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Solomon Northup</td></tr>
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Since the well-deserved success of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12_Years_a_Slave_(film)"> 12 Years a Slave</a> at both the BAFTA and OSCAR awards ceremonies there has been a renewed interest in the issue of slavery, both in its historical legacy and its modern iteration of human trafficking. The US in particular still has a deal of unresolved baggage around slavery and much of the racism prevalent in the southern states harks back to unquestioned assumptions of white supremacy in an era when to be black was to be owned.<br />
One contribution to the conversation was made on the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01t669g">Thought for the Day</a> segment on Radio 4’s Today programme by Rev Professor David Wilkinson who made the statement (and I may be paraphrasing as the transcript is not available yet) that in the past some people had tried to defend slavery using the bible. In the next breath he appealed to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Wilberforce">William Wilberforce</a>’s speech to parliament specifically as a parallel to the consciousness raising effect of 12 Years a Slave, but also as a counterpoint to religious culpability for slavery.The problem I have with this is that there is absolutely no difficulty whatsoever in defending slavery with the bible and little evidence of religion being motivated to repudiate it.<br />
So first of all what does the Bible say about slavery? It couldn’t be clearer than in <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Leviticus+25:44-46"> Leviticus 25:44-46</a> <br />
<blockquote>
44 ‘“Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves. 45 You may also buy some of the temporary residents living among you and members of their clans born in your country, and they will become your property. 46 You can bequeath them to your children as inherited property and can make them slaves for life, but you must not rule over your fellow Israelites ruthlessly.</blockquote>
So pretty much <em>carte blanche</em> to enslave any foreigner you come across, direct from the deity’s mouth so to speak. Incidentally, that last bit about not ruling over your fellow Israelites is the get out of jail free card some apologists use to argue it wasn’t really slavery, just bonded labour. But what the Bible goes on to say about that refers exclusively to the Israelites, not foreign slaves: they’re yours for ever.<br />
Influenced as he was by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methodism"> Methodism</a> Wilberforce was very much on the evangelical wing of the Anglican Church and possessed a strongly humanitarian view of Christianity. In this the apologists are justified in saying <em>his</em> religion started the process of abolition (at least as far as Britain was concerned) of the slave trade. But what is not mentioned is that the conservative elements against whom Wilberforce was arguing were of the British Christian establishment and equally comfortable with their pro-slavery position. As well they might be…
<br />
<blockquote>
Ephesians 6:5-8<br />
New International Version (NIV)<br />
5 Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. 6 Obey them not only to win their favor when their eye is on you, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart. 7 Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not people, 8 because you know that the Lord will reward each one for whatever good they do, whether they are slave or free.</blockquote>
Now this is couched in Paul’s usual apocalyptic assumption that the end times were just around the corner so the slaves would soon be “free” as saved Christians. But, there is nothing in here to suggest that slavery as an institution was being condemned. Certainly none of the canonical gospels have Jesus even commenting on the practice let alone repudiating it.<br />
There is no doubt that William Wilberforce is deserving of the reputation he earned over the abolition of the slave trade and whether his faith informed his humanity or <i>vice versa</i>, though moot, is probable irresolvable but there is nothing intrinsically Christian or Biblical to explain his zeal. One can only assume that like many Christians today he defined his religion by selectively choosing those aspects that chimed with his morality and ignored the rest.
Steve Bowenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15243178223616240845noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6900870923576954613.post-77920112608864121532014-01-21T17:11:00.000+00:002014-01-22T09:48:00.698+00:00Does science really ignore the possibility of God?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHdGAjVkYBDZg1UFgVc4AlVZyqKKBTt7bl6K3jCuZ6EKcu4FpDUX83TBKQTy5XgJJYhQdCz0WIxj7bdTKf0q1pu4uIOpwd7oLDDHDEp0vDvMPhCUu2XG2DC0u7QGyWPCYkATCIj36Zwhw/s1600/sci+method.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHdGAjVkYBDZg1UFgVc4AlVZyqKKBTt7bl6K3jCuZ6EKcu4FpDUX83TBKQTy5XgJJYhQdCz0WIxj7bdTKf0q1pu4uIOpwd7oLDDHDEp0vDvMPhCUu2XG2DC0u7QGyWPCYkATCIj36Zwhw/s1600/sci+method.png" /></a></div>
There is a criticism sometimes levelled at atheists who point to the lack of evidence for the supernatural and therefore gods that the reason they see no such evidence is that they are not looking for it. The suggestion is that the world view on which atheists tend to rely, science, is intrinsically antithetical to supernatural phenomena and does not take their possible existence into account for explanations of the world.<br />
This view is illustrated by Tim Minchin’s eponymous character from the beat poem <i>Storm</i> (see link on sidebar) where she is made to say <br />
<blockquote>
”Science just falls in a hole
When it tries to explain the nature of the soul.”[…] “Shakespeare said it first:
There are more things in heaven and earth
Than exist in your philosophy
Science is just how we're trained to look at reality,
It can't explain love or spirituality.
How does science explain psychics?
Auras; the afterlife; the power of prayer?” </blockquote>
Theists in general will tell you that the handiwork of God is all around for everyone to see should we deign to take off our reductionist blinkers and appreciate the awesome wonder of their god’s creation. If only we would look at the world in the ‘right’ way, opening our minds and hearts to the obvious God would be self-evident. However I am going to make an argument that possibly even a philosopher of science would find contentious (at least I’ve never heard it put quite this way) that the scientific method far from ignoring the possibility of supernatural intervention is in fact constantly testing for it.<br />
Science, it is true, presupposes <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalism_(philosophy)#Methodological_naturalism">methodological naturalism</a> <br />
<blockquote>
Methodological naturalism is concerned not with claims about what exists but with methods of learning what nature is. It is strictly the idea that all scientific endeavors—all hypotheses and events—are to be explained and tested by reference to natural causes and events. The genesis of nature, e.g., by an act of God, is not addressed</blockquote>
which at first sight appear to vindicate the theist’s view that science is ruling anything supernatural out <i>a priori</i> but this ignores the other cornerstones of the scientific method namely <a href="http://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Falsifiability.html">falsifiability</a> and the <a href="http://udel.edu/~mcdonald/stathyptesting.html">null-hypothesis</a>.<br />
In science a hypothesis is considered to be falsifiable if in principle it can be proved to be incorrect by observation or experiment. For example when J.B.S Haldane was asked what could falsify the theory of evolution he replied <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precambrian_rabbit">”Rabbits in the Precambrian”</a> by which he meant if a fossil rabbit was found in a geological era prior to the evolution of mammals it would upset the theory.<br />
In practice every experiment conducted or observation made with scientific intent is an attempt to falsify a particular hypothesis but beyond that I would argue they are also, albeit unconsciously, testing methodological naturalism itself because the underlying hypothesis is one of natural cause and effect. A result found or observation made that could not be explained by natural phenomena would falsify methodological naturalism and imply that supernatural events could influence the data.<br />
A null-hypothesis is a statistical concept that states there will be no difference between two sets of observations. For example in a drug trial with a placebo control the null-hypothesis would be that the clinical outcomes will be identical for both groups of patients. An observed statistical deviation between the groups would then tell you something about the effectiveness of the drug in question. For the purposes of this argument I would suggest the null hypothesis that scientific experiments and observations will yield the same results regardless of supernatural or purely natural influences. Over centuries of scientific observations, more than enough to be statistically significant, we have never seen a deviation in an expected outcome due to supernatural activity (Note: I am saying that this null-hypothesis is implicit in the scientific method even if it is not explicit in a particular experiment such as, for example, testing the efficacy of prayer on the mortality rates of cancer patients). This suggests one of two things, either the null-hypothesis is correct and that regardless of supernatural forces the results are identical to those expected from naturalism or, conceivably, there are no supernatural forces. To quote again from Tim Minchin’s <i>Storm</i> <br />
<blockquote>
”Throughout history Every mystery
Ever solved has turned out to be
Not Magic.”</blockquote>
This is not to argue that science has disproved gods or the supernatural but merely to point out that the scientific method is obliquely but consistently testing the hypothesis that is methodological naturalism and as a consequence only ignores the supernatural insofar as, to date, it has either not significantly impacted on observations or shown itself to exist. It is consistent with the rational atheist position that where we do contemplate possible gods they are of the ignorable, non-interventionist, deistic variety rather than the prayer answering, miracle working, null-hypothesis falsifying species beloved of the major religions.Steve Bowenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15243178223616240845noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6900870923576954613.post-28369527014306181452014-01-07T17:18:00.000+00:002014-01-08T12:44:07.341+00:00Anne Atkins invokes the devil<br />
It’s been a while since I caught Radio 4’s <strike>Thought</strike> Sermon for the Day segment on the Today program, but travelling to work this morning I was treated to some delightful drivel from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Atkins">Anne Atkins</a> who to be fair I always find good value if only for the amusing lack of rational content in her contributions.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPA1H1V7orRFqCIB4ClcfAzp4smGOSKdPH-SymTJKEr3dB5sE_9t3k7EQRJe3v9yb2CVlyNxll8OWJdq87sNeRIcZiMUprOGztiIjphCFpCIQHfdAMBnzvfWnijGEDL5TPYl90wlrj1rI/s1600/Atkins.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPA1H1V7orRFqCIB4ClcfAzp4smGOSKdPH-SymTJKEr3dB5sE_9t3k7EQRJe3v9yb2CVlyNxll8OWJdq87sNeRIcZiMUprOGztiIjphCFpCIQHfdAMBnzvfWnijGEDL5TPYl90wlrj1rI/s1600/Atkins.png" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Anne Atkins</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Her latest missive was inspired by the Church of England’s <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/10551423/Church-of-England-removes-devil-from-christening-service.html">re-working of the Christening ceremony</a> to eliminate the phrase asking godparents if they “reject the devil and all rebellion against God” and substituting it with “reject evil, and all its many forms, and all its empty promises”. Atkins opened her piece with the “good news” that the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby had “cast out the Devil” but then went on to query why, if absolute good was personified in the existence of the Christian God, should absolute evil not be similarly personified in the form of the Devil? This is of course a very good question that goes straight to the heart of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_evil">problem of evil</a>, Christianity’s greatest philosophical nemesis, for if an omnibenevolent and omnipotent god exists there should be no place for evil.<br />
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoroastrianism">Zoroastrianism</a>, which predates Christianity by some seven centuries and second temple Judaism by two, resolved the apparent disparity by having opposing deities representing good (Ahura Mazda) and evil (Angra Mainyu) in eternal battle and it is likely that the character of Angra Mainyu became superimposed on Satan during the Babylonian exile demonising a character that in earlier Jewish tradition was considered a loyal agent of Yahweh’s and merely doing his bidding. Mutated by Christian mythology, medieval iconography and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_Comedy">Dante’s Divine Comedy</a> we have ended up with the cartoonish Horned Devil so beloved of fire and brimstone Southern Baptist types but seen as an embarrassment to liberal Christians who well understand the theological difficulties such an entity poses.<br />
Anne Atkins reaches out to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Screwtape_Letters">C.S Lewis</a> to point out that the absurdity of this image has long been recognised.<br />
<blockquote>
In every era the Church faces the challenge of presenting eternal truths in the vulgar tongue, and unchanging beliefs in the familiar media of the day. And the devil has been out of fashion as far as memory goes back. “If any faint suspicion of your existence begins to arise in the patient’s mind,” Screwtape advises his diabolical pupil Wormwood, “suggest to him a picture of something in red tights.” As he observes, nobody could believe in that, so it will throw him off the scent. “An old text book method,” he says dismissively.</blockquote>
But the lurking implication is that there really is a demonic personality behind the temptation to do evil even if it doesn’t fit the stereotype…and that’s exactly where Atkins takes us<br />
<blockquote>
Plato taught that behind every material reality is a greater spiritual reality: his definition of God is the ἰδεα, the form, of the good. Thus good itself has the attributes of personality: mind; affection; and volition. God thinks: He speaks, and argues. He feels: He and loves and hates. He wills: deciding on action and carrying it out.
If this is so, it is at least a rational supposition that the same could be true of evil. Indeed, otherwise it’s hard to see how evil ultimately exists. The difference between a wicked crime and an unfortunate accident is intent: one is wilful, the other fortuitous. If there is no evil objective behind the sorrows of the world, then they are not wrong but random. If there is morality, there must surely be evil as well as good. </blockquote>
So either she is a born again Zoroastrian or she has totally missed the theological implications of an evil being that her all loving god must necessarily be allowing to exist. But, like all good theists her angst is really all about the necessity of there being some divinely ordained objective morality as without that we are all doomed to nihilism.<br />
<blockquote>
If there is no intelligent force of evil then we live in a neutral universe, I can make choices like a consumer in a supermarket, and ultimately nothing matters. </blockquote>
Nothing matters? Really! Her family, her health, world peace, poverty, the environment, human suffering none it matters unless there is an existential god and his evil twin to make it all meaningful. In order to make this work Atkins has to believe not only in her god but also in a nagging demon on her shoulder tempting her from the straight and narrow.<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBplrtoimAeBnwdDcagyedWKyTNCZx_1U41tFIxnKzvexN11FACgMfzaF2rWI4Y5lEBhZMeDB5P6JK8LFfKFcysKa3CFu8_50MryPt8W2XnTlB28JWSSQdu7EEyZuaPp60IBjHIJBhaYw/s1600/littledevil.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBplrtoimAeBnwdDcagyedWKyTNCZx_1U41tFIxnKzvexN11FACgMfzaF2rWI4Y5lEBhZMeDB5P6JK8LFfKFcysKa3CFu8_50MryPt8W2XnTlB28JWSSQdu7EEyZuaPp60IBjHIJBhaYw/s1600/littledevil.jpg" /></a>When new atheists ridicule the superannuated Santa Claus in the sky version of the Christian god we are told that we are fighting a straw man nobody believes in. Sophisticated theologians talk of
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Tillich#The_use_of_.22Being.22_in_systematic_theology">God as the ground of being</a> or some such blather that we are all too dim to appreciate. But Anne Atkins is not stupid or naïve. I’m sure she is as capable of understanding Alvin Plantinga or Paul Tillich as I am <br />
yet here she is an intelligent woman, the wife of a clergyman no less, arguing against current Anglican doctrine and for the existence of an actual intelligent force for evil, or The Devil by any other name.
Steve Bowenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15243178223616240845noreply@blogger.com0