the attempts

Harris and Hitchens tag team

2012-02-21T02:53:00.000-08:00

These two videos of Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens arefrom a discussion organised last year by the Whizin Center for Continuing Education. The topic was about whether or notthere was an afterlife (an unprovable speculation either way), with Harris andHitchens squared off against two rabbis, David Wolpe and Bradley Artson Shavit.It seems like all four men gave a good showing, though I agree morewith the atheists’ arguments.

Here’s Harris refuting the dualist idea of the mind,or soul, being somehow separate from the physical brain. We can confidently saythat our increasing knowledge of the brain – and its connection to the mind – hasdiscredited dualism. But this is a bitter pill for religious believers toswallow, because it negates one core tenet of their faith: the survival of themind/soul after death. If human consciousness is entirely generated by thebrain, then upon the brain’s destruction, that consciousness ends. Forever.

Harris makes clear the absurdity of the idea that our soulsgo to an afterlife when we die:

What we’re being asked to consider [bydualists] is that you damage one part of the brain and… something about themind and subjectivity is lost, you damage another and yet more is lost,and yet if you damage the whole thing at death, we can rise off the brain,with all our faculties intact, recognising Grandma and speakingEnglish.

And here we have Hitchens hitchslapping the creepy practice ofreligious believers trying to convert dying people.

This statement hits the nail on the head:

If Sam [Harris] and I were to form a corpsof people to go around religious hospitals, which is what happens in reverse,and say to people who are lying in pain and say, “Did you say you wereCatholic? Well look, you may only have a few days left, but you don’t have tolive them as a serf, you know. Just recognise that was all bullshit, that thepriests have been cheating you, and I guarantee you’ll feel better”, I don’tthink that would be very ethical.

Ah Hitch, you left ustoo soon.

21.2.12

Human, all too human

2012-02-20T04:39:00.000-08:00

I’ve just finished reading Michael Shermer’s illuminating book The Believing Brain (2011), where he shows that, contrary to the common assumption that people form beliefs after rationally thinking them through, the human brain is actually a “belief engine” that forms beliefs first, then tries to rationalise those beliefs second. This post hoc rationalising can be flawed, due to the brain’s tendency towards cognitive biases and faulty reasoning. No one is exempt from cognitive biases, not even those who consider themselves Spock-like in their (supposedly) cool rationality and logical, objective reasoning.

In chapter 12, ‘Confirmations of Belief’, Shermer describes cognitive biases in depth. Below is his alphabetically ordered summary of all the kinds of psychological blind spots that human beings are subject to. It’s enough to humble even the most obstinate Ayn Rand disciple.

Anchoring bias: the tendency to rely too heavily on a past reference or on one piece of information when making decisions.

Attribution bias: the tendency to attribute different causes for our own beliefs and actions than that of others.

Authority bias: the tendency to value the opinions of an authority, especially in the evaluation of something we know little about.

Availability heuristic: the tendency to assign probabilities of potential outcomes based on examples that are immediately available to us, especially those that are vivid, unusual, or emotionally charged, which are then generalized into conclusions upon which choices are based.

Bandwagon effect: the tendency to hold beliefs that other people in your social group hold because of the social reinforcement provided.

Barnum effect: the tendency to treat vague and general descriptions of personality as highly accurate and specific.

Believability bias: the tendency to evaluate the strength of an argument based on the believability of its conclusion.

Clustering illusion: the tendency to see clusters of patterns that, in fact, can be the result of randomness.

Confabulation bias: the tendency to conflate memories with imagination and other people’s accounts as one’s own.

Confirmation bias: the tendency to seek and find confirmatory evidence in support of already existing beliefs and ignore or reinterpret discomfirming evidence.

Consistency bias: the tendency to recall one’s past beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors as resembling present beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors more than they actually do.

Endowment effect: the tendency to value what we own more than what we do not own.

Expectation bias / experimenter bias: the tendency for observers and especially for scientific experimenters to notice, select, and publish data that agree with their expectations for the outcome of an experiment, and to not notice, discard, or disbelieve data that appear to conflict with those experimental expectations.

False-consensus effect: the tendency for people to overestimate the degree to which others agree with their beliefs or that will go along with them in a behavior.

Framing effect: the tendency to draw different conclusions based on how data are presented.

Halo effect: the tendency for people to generalize one positive trait of a person to all the other traits of that person.

Herd bias: the tendency to adopt the beliefs and follow the behaviors of the majority of members in a group in order to avoid conflict.

Hindsight bias: the tendency to reconstruct the past to fit with present knowledge.

Illusion of control: the tendency for people to believe that they can control or at least influence outcomes that most people cannot control or influence.

Illusory correlation: the tendency to assume that a causal connection (correlation) exists between two variables.

Inattentional blindness bias: the tendency to miss something obvious and general while attending to something special and specific.

In-group bias: the tendency for people to value the beliefs and attitudes of those whom they perceive to be fellow members of their group, and to discount the beliefs and attitudes of those whom they perceive to be members of a different group.

Just-world bias: the tendency for people to search for things that the victim of an unfortunate event might have done to deserve it.

Negativity bias: the tendency to pay closer attention and give more weight to negative events, beliefs, and information than to positive.

Normalcy bias: the tendency to discount the possibility of a disaster that has never happened before.

Not-invented-here bias: the tendency to discount the value of a belief or source of information that does not come from within.

Primacy effect: the tendency to notice, remember, and assess as more valuable initial events more than subsequent events.

Projection bias: the tendency to assume that others share the same or similar beliefs, attitudes, and values, and to overestimate the probability of others’ behaviors based on our own behaviors.

Recency effect: the tendency to notice, remember, and assess as more valuable recent events more than earlier events.

Representative bias: the tendency to judge the probability of an event to the extent that it represents the essential features of its parent population or generating process.

Rosy retrospection bias: the tendency to remember past events as being more positive than they actually were.

Self-fulfilling prophecy: the tendency to believe in ideas and to behave in ways that conform to expectations for beliefs and actions.

Self-justification bias: the tendency to rationalize decisions after the fact to convince ourselves that what we did was the best thing we could have done.

Status quo bias: the tendency to opt for whatever it is we are used to, that is, the status quo.

Stereotyping or generalization bias: the tendency to assume that a member of a group will have certain characteristics believed to represent the group without having actual information about that particular member.

Sunk-cost bias: the tendency to believe in something because of the cost sunk into that belief.

Trait-ascription bias: the tendency for people to assess their own personality, behavior, and beliefs as more variable and less dogmatic than those of others.

And here’s a meta-bias, which is common to Objectivists:

Bias blind spot: the tendency to recognize the power of cognitive biases in other people but to be blind to their influence upon our own beliefs.

If you’re like me, you’re probably feeling a little depressed by this list of human cognitive failings. Fortunately, Shermer ends the chapter with good news – we have ways to compensate for our innate cognitive flaws, at least in the field of science.

What can we do about [cognitive biases]? In science we have built-in self-correcting machinery. In experiments, strict double-blind controls are required, in which neither the subjects nor the experimenters know the experimental conditions during the data-collection phase. Results are vetted at professional conferences and in peer-reviewed journals. Research must be replicated in other labs unaffiliated with the original researcher. Disconfirming evidence, as well as contradictory interpretations of the data, must be included in the paper. Colleagues are rewarded for being skeptical. Nevertheless, scientists are no less vulnerable to these biases, so such precautions must be vigorously enforced, especially by the scientists themselves, because if you don’t seek contradictory data against your theory or beliefs, someone else will, usually with great glee and in a public forum.

The reason why proponents of ‘complementary/alternative medicine’ (CAM), or New Age mumbo-jumbo like auras and horoscopes, or pseudoscientific ideas like parapsychology and cold fusion are not to be taken seriously is because they emphatically do not adhere to the scientific method. Their cognitive biases are not corrected, and so the veracity of their beliefs and claims is suspect.

20.2.12

Spinoza would have criticised the Saudi government

2012-02-13T00:50:00.000-08:00

Followers of atheist, humanist and secularist news will know of the Saudi and Malaysian travesty of justice involving Saudi journalist Hamza Kashgari, who posted so-called blasphemous tweets that enraged notoriously thin-skinned Muslims. Kashgari’s harassment in Saudi Arabia, subsequent deportation from Malaysia after seeking asylum there, and current prosecution for apostasy add up to an all too familiar scenario where touchy religionists call for an obscenely disproportionate punishment for the ‘crime’ of mocking their superstitions.

The New York Times philosophy website, The Stone, has a timely piece by Steven Nadler on 17th century Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza and his views on freedom of thought and expression (‘Spinoza’s Vision of Freedom, and Ours’). Nadler quotes Spinoza several times in a context I find relevant to Hamza Kashgari’s persecution by the Saudi state. Here’s one example:

It can be argued that the state’s tolerance of individual belief is not a difficult issue. As Spinoza points out, it is “impossible” for a person’s mind to be under another’s control, and this is a necessary reality that any government must accept. The more difficult case, the true test of a regime’s commitment to toleration, concerns the liberty of citizens to express those beliefs, either in speech or in writing. And here Spinoza goes further than anyone else of his time: “Utter failure,” he says, “will attend any attempt in a commonwealth to force men to speak only as prescribed by the sovereign despite their different and opposing opinions … The most tyrannical government will be one where the individual is denied the freedom to express and to communicate to others what he thinks, and a moderate government is one where this freedom is granted to every man.”

By Spinoza’s criteria, the Saudi theocracy is indeed a “most tyrannical government” – Saudi Arabia is the most socially conservative (ergo repressive) Muslim state, having laws and customs that even its fellow Muslim countries consider excessively restrictive. I’m only speculating here, but Kashgari may have fled to Malaysia, a Muslim-majority country, because he knew it was a comparatively moderate state. But this fact didn’t save him from being deported by the Malaysian authorities, who are complicit in whatever horrible fate awaits Kashgari back in Saudi Arabia.

Spinoza would have argued for freedom of thought and expression in Saudi Arabia because, apart from the obvious consideration of basic human rights, he believed this freedom to be in the state’s own interest. Nadler explains:

Spinoza has a number of compelling arguments for the freedom of expression. One is based both on the natural right (or natural power) of citizens to speak as they desire, as well as on the apparent fact that (as in the case of belief per se) it would be self-defeating for a government to try to restrain that freedom. No matter what laws are enacted against speech and other means of expression, citizens will continue to say what they believe (because they can), only now they will do so in secret. The result of the suppression of freedom is, once again, resentment and a weakening of the bonds that unite subjects to their government. In Spinoza’s view, intolerant laws lead ultimately to anger, revenge and sedition. The attempt to enforce them is a “great danger to the state.”

The Saudi theocracy may delude itself that there is a homogeneity of thought among the Saudi people, that there are no dissenters or critics of Islam among the country’s millions of pious citizens. But Kashgari is certainly not the only Saudi to have a less than deferential attitude towards Islam and its founder. His punishment may cow other Saudi dissenters, but it could also have the opposite effect of arousing anger and resentment against the state.

Spinoza also had a practical reason for governments to support freedom of expression. As Nadler writes:

Spinoza also argues for freedom of expression on utilitarian grounds — that it is necessary for the discovery of truth, economic progress and the growth of creativity. Without an open marketplace of ideas, science, philosophy and other disciplines are stifled in their development, to the technological, fiscal and even aesthetic detriment of society. As Spinoza puts it, “this freedom [of expressing one’s ideas] is of the first importance in fostering the sciences and the arts, for it is only those whose judgment is free and unbiased who can attain success in these fields.”

While it isn’t the only factor, religious extremism in Muslim countries has contributed to their scientific and technological stagnation. The cultures that once kept alive and improved on the knowledge of the ancient Greeks, Romans, Persians and Chinese have lagged behind in the sciences for the last few centuries, especially when compared to the discoveries and advancements made in the West and Asia. As Spinoza presciently observed, when the freedom to express, criticise, debate and improve ideas is curtailed, there are practical consequences that can negatively impact a society in various ways.

UPDATE: There is a Facebook group and a petition calling for Hamza Kashgari’s release. Do join and sign in solidarity with him and defenders of free speech everywhere.

13.2.12

Simon Blackburn on faith, religion and secularism

2012-02-08T04:06:00.000-08:00

It’s always nice to see philosophy articles in magazines that aren’t specialist publications. I take it as a sign that philosophy is shedding its navel-gazing, ivory tower image - that its relevance to modern life is gaining recognition. Case in point: philosopher Simon Blackburn was interviewed by Tara Wheeler for Glass magazine’s winter 2011 issue, which carries the theme of ‘faith’. Glass belongs in that genus of culture magazines that cover art, design and fashion, having the common morphology of thick matte paper, stylised photography, clever graphic design and ubiquitous luxury brand ads. Given this, a philosophy article is a rather incongruous feature, much like antlers on a duck.

Since the winter issue’s theme is ‘faith’, and since you can’t mention faith without mentioning religion, Blackburn was asked for his views on faith, religion and secularism. I reproduce below his lengthy yet incisive responses to two questions, where he points out how religious believers cherry-pick their holy books (thus contradicting their supposedly infallible moral authority) and how moral values are not exclusive to any one religion, or to any at all. Essentially, Blackburn is arguing what humanists and atheists have always argued: you can be good without God.

The theme of this issue is Faith. How do you feel about faith in society today? Perhaps we could begin with looking at the decline of religion – do you think secularisation risks leaving society with a vacuum of moral infrastructure?

Well I think that we human beings stand on our own feet. We have to, even if we consider ourselves people of faith. The faith will be provided by a text or by authorities or our own conscience sometimes. So the idea that you’re holding hands with a deity has always struck me as a delusion. You’re holding hands with a tradition, a literature, a set of authorities, a church and with others in your congregation, which may be a very nice thing to do and I don’t deny the consolations of faith altogether, but as far as morality goes you’re still on your own. You have to decide which of the texts you’re going to listen to. If you read, for example, the Old Testament, it’s absolutely ghastly. God’s always calling for genocides. I think Steven Pinker in his recent book on the decline of violence says that there are 1.2 million killings in the Old Testament and that’s not even counting the flood. It’s just a story of murder and rape and carnage as the Israelites interpreted their own history, so that’s not a moral foundation for anyone. You could go on to things like mental illness as possession by devils, witchcraft and so on and so on, and in the New Testament too, all kinds of superstition and witchcraft. Of course the upstanding Christian says, ‘Oh no, I don’t listen to any of that stuff, I listen to the good stuff’ – fine but then you’re using your own judgement and what you’re going to come out with are things that humanists believe in too, things like be nice to one another, love your neighbour, try not to be too retaliatory, turn the other cheek, don’t sweat the small stuff and the usual kind of advice for living well. Well fine, it’s nice that it’s there in the Bible but it’s also nice that it’s there in Confucius or the Greek philosophers and other traditions. So it seems to me that the idea that it’s because God’s holding your hand that you can manage to be a good person is really just an illusion. And there are other values that Christianity is not so strong on too. For example, Daoism in China has enormous respect for nature, for animals, for the natural world and landscape, which Christianity is entirely silent about.

Would you be happy to see an entirely secular society?

Yes I would. I mean, I feel a slight aesthetic piety; I like the fact that England is cloaked in medieval churches. I enjoy visiting them, I get a sense of community and tradition from them, which I find very enjoyable and I’m sort of grateful to the Church of England for keeping them up and I don’t know what would substitute that because I don’t think David Cameron would do it very well, or perhaps I should say George Osborne. One side of me thinks that the Church of England is a nice little Labrador and I don’t want to put it down, but other churches are more like Rottweilers and I wouldn’t mind putting those down. So there is an ambiguity there but, by and large, I think we can do without the superstition, the hostility to outsiders, the exaggerated sense of righteousness of cause and all of the other bad things that come along with Church membership.

Grab a copy of Glass winter 2011 for the rest of the interview.

8.2.12

So that’s why ACCESS Ministries wants to get into schools

2012-02-05T19:44:00.000-08:00

This pie chart was posted on a Southern Nazarene University webpage titled ‘When Americans become Christian - Evangelism statistics: At what age is outreach most effective? How old are people when they get saved?’

More figures from the International Bible Society and the Barna Research Group:

Another survey -- by the International Bible Society -- indicated that 83% of all Christians make their commitment to Jesus between the ages of 4 and 14, that is, when they are children or early youth. The Barna Research Group surveys demonstrate that American children ages 5 to 13 have a 32% probability of accepting Christ, but youth or teens aged 14 to 18 have only a 4% probability of doing so. Adults age 19 and over have just a 6% probability of becoming Christians.

And here’s the disturbing bit:

This data illustrates the importance of influencing children to consider making a decision to follow Christ.

Because the 4-14 period slice of the pie is so large, many have started referring to the "4-14 Window." Many people serving as career cross-cultural missionaries have testified that they first felt God calling them to missionary service during that 4-14 age period.

The data may be America-centric, but it wouldn’t surprise me if evangelical Christians everywhere, including Australia, agree with its implications: to grow the body of Christ, you’ve got to get ‘em while they’re still young and haven’t developed their critical thinking skills.

It’s rank opportunism, pure and simple.

HT: PZ Myers

6.2.12

“Our State Schools are not Church Playgrounds”

2012-02-03T02:51:00.000-08:00

Victorians concerned about the erosion of secularism in state schools are running a campaign called Fairness in Religions in School (FIRIS). The above graphic is from a FIRIS billboard put up in the suburb of Bulleen. FIRIS was launched in response to current government policy that allows religious volunteers to take up a part of the school day to proselytise their faith to schoolkids. Here are the campaign’s points of contention taken from the FIRIS website:

FIRIS is a parent run campaign that aims to change the way children experience religion in Victoria State schools.

Churches have no right to set school curriculum policy.

The current policy is designed to favor ACCESS Ministry, and only ACCESS Ministry. This group runs a Ministry with government authority and funding.

We support education about religion consistent with Australia’s multicultural character and believe that families can be trusted to attend to the religious formation of their children. The current school policy is a result of political intimidation by a small number of church activists.

This policy divides children and school communities by requiring families of minority religions, or of no religion to withdraw their children from school time.

Ah yes, ACCESS Ministries, that group of evangelical Christians who have no qualms about tearing down the wall separating religion from state for the sake of winning young converts to their One True Faith. Not surprisingly, those with a vested interest in promoting their particular brand of sky-fairyism are hostile towards the idea of secularism. Secularism constraints them – it limits their ability to impose their religious values on non-believers and indoctrinate a mass of impressionable minds, many of which are of school age.

The FIRIS campaign calls for the Victorian government to do the following:

1. Maintain an inclusive school curriculum that does not require any student to withdraw from class on account of different religious beliefs

2. Formally cease the practice of volunteer-run special religious instruction (SRI) during school hours

3. Follow an objective, fair and balanced comparative syllabus for education about religions and beliefs

4. Treat all religious organisations who wish to use the school facilities outside of the school day with transparent and equitable policies

Point number 3 serves to clarify that secularism isn’t about banning religion from the public sphere, but about ensuring that no specific religion is privileged over others. Not “teach no religion”, but “teach all religions” as different belief systems with no single one having a claim to ultimate truth or authority.

Parents and the organisers of FIRIS are taking their case to the Victorian Administrative and Civil Tribunal. FIRIS chairman Tim Heasley made this statement:

“We would like to see religion taught in a fair way that reflects Australia’s multi-cultural commitments and we’re asking our schools to do this in a way that does not violate the `secular principle’ of public education. This needs to be done by closing the door to activists from all religions who want to use our schools to get at kids”.

“Our State Schools are not Church Playgrounds and it is deeply concerning to me as an Australian and as a parent, that I should need to put up a billboard to make this case to the Minister of Education. The Minister could easily change this policy, and that is what we intend to see him do”.

While there has been some progress in the fight against religious encroachment into state education, campaigns like FIRIS are vital to remind the government and the wider public about the secular principles this nation was founded upon, principles that must be upheld if Australia is to remain a progressive, liberal, diverse country. Please show your support by liking the FIRIS Facebook page and spreading word of this important campaign.

3.2.12

This is also what I think about Islam

2012-01-31T04:31:00.000-08:00

Over at Daylight Atheism, Adam Lee clearly states his views on Islam. He is fair, and his post is free of the heated emotion typically found in the writings of anti-Islam polemicists like Maryam Namazie (which isn’t to say that such emotion is unjustified). Lee is essentially arguing for secularism, not atheism per se. I don’t disagree with any of his points, and doubt that any reasonable person, Muslims included, would accuse Lee of bigotry.

Lee further elaborates his views in the comments section:

Although I obviously reject its supernatural claims as false, I don't think Islam is intrinsically worse than any other belief. I think Islam today is more or less where Christianity was about seven hundred years ago, that is to say, the dark ages. Considering that Islam was founded about seven hundred years after Christianity, that's to be expected. Unfortunately, in a world where dark-age minds can grasp 21st-century weapons, we may not have the same luxury of time. Islam badly needs an Enlightenment of its own, but I don't think humanity can afford to wait a few more centuries for it to happen.

A fair and, in my opinion, correct observation.

31.1.12

Two talks on blasphemy and free speech

2012-01-30T04:57:00.000-08:00

Last Saturday the Centre for Inquiry UK held a conference in London on “the criminalization of religious hatred, defamation, and insult under European human rights, and how this functions as a de facto blasphemy law”. The event, aptly named ‘Blasphemy!’, featured two intellectuals who I admire – writer and broadcaster Kenan Malik, and human rights activist Maryam Namazie. They each gave a speech at the conference, and have posted transcripts on their respective blogs. Their talks focused on different issues (though with some overlap) while showing their distinctive communication styles.

Malik talked about, among other things, the connection between the concept of blasphemy and the retention of power by individuals with a vested interest in taking offense when their beliefs and values are challenged or criticised. He laid out in detail the historical, political and social context in which current controversies surrounding blasphemous cartoons and literature are playing out, and argued his case in his usual measured yet sharply critical way.

Namazie spoke passionately on how charges of blasphemy/offense and ‘Islamophobia’ act as “secular fatwas”, their purpose being to silence dissent and curtail free speech. Her talk also touched on the cartoon controversy, with her fierce criticisms mainly directed at the misplaced political correctness of those who sought to censor the cartoons out of ‘respect’ for Muslims. Namazie is more truculent than Malik in her approach, but her arguments are no less valid for that.

I’m with them both on this. Malik’s deep contextual knowledge and Namazie’s righteous anger make a powerful combination. Those of us who treasure freedom of expression and detest religious tyranny are fortunate to have these two champions batting for our team.

30.1.12

Bad idea, Alain. Bad idea.

2012-01-27T05:42:00.000-08:00

I’m a little distressed. An atheist writer who I admire, whose books have played a formative role in my intellectual development, has made a rather silly proposal. Philosopher Alain de Botton wants to build a temple dedicated to atheism. This temple will also serve as a monument to “love, friendship, calm or perspective.”

Face, meet palm.

There are so many things wrong with this idea. Where to even begin? How about with the observation that atheism, by definition, requires no specific place of worship. Or that the money (all one million pounds of it) would be better spent on secular education and science advocacy. Or that buildings dedicated to reason, critical thinking and knowledge already exist (they’re called universities, libraries and laboratories), while places celebrating the natural world and human culture are likewise presently available to inspire the non-religious (they’re called museums, nature reserves, art galleries).

De Botton has written a new book, Religion for Atheists, and gave a TED talk on the central argument of his book: atheists need to borrow a few ideas from religion if they want to make atheism more palatable. De Botton thinks that atheism could benefit from adopting distinctly religious paraphernalia like rituals (including ritual baths!), sermons, and the use of art as a didactic tool.

Jerry Coyne rips apart De Botton’s proposition over at Why Evolution Is True, while the Guardian’s Steve Rose points out the contradiction inherent in the idea of institutionalising atheism:

What De Botton seems to be preaching is his own rather narrow definition of atheism, with its own unified philosophy, set of rules and even architectural brand identity. It feels rather like, er, a religion.

Oh Alain, what were you thinking?

28.1.12

A Celebration of Reason: Global Atheist Convention 2012

2012-01-27T02:27:00.000-08:00

It was my birthday on Wednesday, and my brother gave me an especially wonderful gift: a ticket to ‘A Celebration of Reason’, the global atheist convention being held in Melbourne this April. I wasn’t going to miss this awesome event, and now thanks to my brother’s generosity it’s going to cost me neither money nor effort to grab a ticket. Epic win!

The GAC 2012 will be a three day mental orgy of intellectual stimulation, provocative discourse and irreverent entertainment. The rock stars of atheism will be there: Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, PZ Myers. One star will be conspicuously absent – Christopher Hitchens was expected to grace the GAC with his eloquence and erudition, but sadly the great man has left us. No doubt the Hitch and his valuable contributions to freethought will be recognised and celebrated at the event.

It makes me feel incredibly proud that my home city is hosting the GAC. I take this as a positive sign that Melbourne is predominantly secular, liberal and progressive, a sign that the world’s most liveable city is indeed worthy of that description. Of course, an atheist convention of the scale of the GAC will ruffle religious feathers. There will be pushback from those who subscribe to various brands of sky-fairyism. While some of that pushback will be hilarious, some of it will also be unpleasant, even threatening. Key speakers like Ayaan Hirsi Ali have received death threats from religious fanatics in the past, so security at the event should be a top priority.

I encourage my fellow Melbournians to attend ‘A Celebration of Reason’, whether you’re an atheist or not. Regardless of your personal beliefs, I assure you that you will come away from the convention with greater knowledge and understanding of the issues affecting society, culture, politics, civil liberties, human rights, ethics, education, science and the humanities. You will leave the GAC a more informed, more enlightened person.

27.1.12

Angelo Flaccavento featured on The Sartorialist

2012-01-20T00:28:00.000-08:00

Awhile ago I posted my thoughts on a fashion article by Angelo Flaccavento, who wrote about wearing a ‘uniform’ i.e. having a deliberately limited choice of clothing that becomes one’s signature style. I didn’t realise when I read his article that I had actually seen photos of Flaccavento before on The Sartorialist blog. True to his credo, he has a distinctive manner of dressing that doesn’t vary to any significant degree, a consistent look that can be summed up as ‘beard + glasses + bow tie + well-fitted suit’. But at the time I didn’t know that the stylish man in the photos was also the articulate man who wrote the ‘uniform dressing’ manifesto that spoke to my own sartorial sensibilities.

Scott Schuman, who runs The Sartorialist and took those photos of Flaccavento, has a recent post where he interviews the dapper, intelligent gent. I especially like Flaccavento’s answer when asked what his “most memorable gift” was.

Good to know the face behind the words.

Photo by Elena Braghieri

20.1.12

Attention all you tennis fans

2012-01-16T03:35:00.000-08:00

The Australian Open starts this week, and tennis fans attending the matches are probably going to see lots of rainbow flags flying at the Margaret Court arena in Melbourne Park. The reason? The arena is named after Australia’s greatest female tennis player, who also happens to be a conservative Christian pastor opposing homosexuality in general and gay marriage in particular. Gay rights activists and their supporters are going to fly their colours proudly at the Open in protest against Margaret Court’s homophobia.

Court’s views on homosexuality and gay rights are informed by her (surprise, surprise) religious beliefs, as she has made clear:

I think I have a right, being a minister of the gospel, to say what it says from a scriptural side. I have been married for 44 years this year and, to me, marriage is something very special, wonderful, ordained by God. I look at the children of our next generation and think of the problems they are having in America with all this – we don’t need it in our nation.

So Court thinks that being well-versed on a man-made collection of history, myths and morality tales gives her the right to discriminate against gays. Chalk that one down as another example of physicist Steven Weinberg’s maxim: religion gives good people a reason to do bad things. Court also implies that Australia needs more religious (i.e. regressive) values, otherwise we’ll end up like those depraved Americans wallowing in godless gayness. Even America isn’t God-fearingly homophobic enough for Court!

Both Tennis Australia and the Women’s Tennis Association have stated that they do not share Margaret Court’s views. Tennis Australia posted the following on its website:

Margaret Court has won more grand slam titles than any other player and has been honoured for her achievements in tennis and she is a legend of the sport. We respect her playing record, it is second to none.

But her personal views are her own, and are definitely not shared by Tennis Australia. Like the [Women’s Tennis Association], we believe that everyone should be treated equally and fairly. We concur wholeheartedly with the WTA who stated that “all human beings, regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation or otherwise, should be treated equally. This is a fundamental right and principle, including within the world of sport. Anyone advocating otherwise is advocating against fundamental and essential rights.”

TA does not support any view that contravenes these basic human rights.

Every year Court is invited to the Australian Open as a guest of honour. Her presence at the tournament this year will be more... exciting than in previous years. Those of you who are going to the Open may want to bring along a rainbow flag to add to the festive, even gay, atmosphere.

HT: Martin

16.1.12

Signs of quackery and woo

2012-01-11T18:47:00.000-08:00

This is a useful guide to recognising bogus ‘medicine’ and dubious health claims.

(Click to enlarge)

HT: Philosophy Monkey

12.1.12

Only men may talk about vaginas

2012-01-10T18:10:00.000-08:00

You’re probably feeling all happy and encouraged after watching that amazing flash mob dance by the women and girls of Beit Shemeth. So it pains me greatly to throw cold water on your warm, joyful glow with this piece of news. A conference on gynaecology being held in Jerusalem today is allowing only male speakers. From The Globe and Mail:

The conference on “Innovations in Gynecology/Obstetrics and Halacha [Jewish law]” is being held by the Puah Institute this Wednesday in Jerusalem. It will include such topics as “ovary implants,” “how to choose a suitable contraceptive pill” and “intimacy during rocket attacks,” in which there are many qualified female professionals, but none will be permitted to speak, at least not from the podium.

Women are allowed in the audience, in a section separate from men.

The conference is a private event, but the Puah Institute receives funding from the Israeli Health Ministry. The Israeli government is increasingly being strong-armed by religious conservatives into sanctioning sexist, discriminatory policies. Whether it’s Judaism, or Islam, or Christianity, fundamentalists from these patriarchal monotheisms are a scourge of women wherever their vile (and usually male) influence is felt.

11.1.12

This is all kinds of awesome

2012-01-10T17:07:00.000-08:00

The Haredi are an ultra-conservative sect of Judaism, and they’re making their chauvinistic presence known in Beit Shemesh, a city in Israel’s Jerusalem district. From verbally and physically assaulting schoolgirls for dressing ‘indecently’ to imposing gender segregation on public buses, Haredi zealots (invariably men) are bent on making women and girls feel like second-class citizens in their own city.

But the feisty females of Beit Shemesh are not going to let the Haredi men’s sexism go unchallenged. The Haredi want them to be silent and unseen. So these women organised a flash mob instead to dance and sing loudly to Queen’s Don’t Stop Me Now, in full view of possibly the same men who seek to oppress them.

Epic win.

HT: Rebecca Watson at Skepchick

11.1.12

Small victory for Australian secularism

2012-01-09T17:13:00.000-08:00

The Canberra Times reports that 208 schools around Australia have decided to replace religious chaplains with secular welfare workers instead under the National School Chaplaincy Program (NSCP). That’s awesome news. The not-so-awesome bit however is that 2236 schools, or 89 percent of schools, are sticking with religious chaplains in their reapplication for NSCP funding.

It looks like the government has considered the “strong feedback” (read “criticism”) on the NSCP’s religious bias, so they have extended the program to include qualified secular welfare workers. This is something that secularists should celebrate, even if the initial uptake of secular welfare workers in schools is modest. In my home state of Victoria only 16 percent of schools with government-funded chaplains have said they would prefer to have secular welfare workers. There’s definitely room for improvement.

While we should welcome the inclusion of secular welfare workers in the NSCP, the point remains that religion should not receive special government favour. Taxpayers should not be forced to fund ideologies that make supernatural, unsubstantiated claims, that reject science, that encourage divisiveness and cultural insularity, and that in their more toxic forms promote prejudice and bigotry. In fact, forcing Australian citizens to indirectly support the religious indoctrination of schoolchildren may be unconstitutional. One such citizen, Ron Williams, took legal action against the NSCP last year, a case that went to the High Court where it still awaits a decision.

Overall, this perhaps isn’t the best news for Australian secularism. But at least the Gillard government is taking criticisms of the NSCP into consideration. Hopefully those percentage figures of schools opting for secular welfare workers over chaplains will continue to rise.

10.1.12

Such a lame argument, even a cat can refute it

2012-01-08T04:21:00.000-08:00

Religionists have a thing for projection. They try to oppress others with their backward ideology, but then claim to be the oppressed ones when they meet fierce resistance. They accuse non-believers of immorality, wickedness and sin, but then commit immoral, wicked and – by their own lights – sinful acts. They promote prejudice and bigotry, but then whine that their opponents are the ones being prejudiced and bigoted. Finally, they cling to their unsubstantiated beliefs for no other reason than faith, but then charge scientists with ‘scientism’ – of having blind faith in science.

One Rabbi Moshe Averick, certified creationist, took leave of his rational faculties and made this last all-too-common fallacious argument. He thinks that a scientist’s “belief” in a naturalistic explanation for reality has “no rational basis”, just like Averick’s own belief in a supernatural explanation for reality has no rational basis. Ergo, scientists are just like religionists.

Higgs the cat aptly demonstrates the epicness of the rabbi’s argument fail (bold emphasis mine):

I’d also like to call attention to your misleading use of the word “faith” to describe the thinking of [biologist and Nobel Laureate Dr. Jack Szostak] as well as [biologist] Dr. Jerry Coyne. Neither of them ever said they believed science would answer everything. We don’t know which questions will be answered by science in our lifetimes, which will be answered in the future, and which will never be answered. The physicist Richard Feynman has remarked that we don’t know if science will ever get to the bottom of things or just keep peeling back layers of an endless onion. That didn’t stop him from peeling back a quite substantial layer.

Furthermore, science works because scientists don’t apply a religions-type faith to their theories. They get in big trouble when they do. Scientists either change their minds when the evidence turns against them or they risk going down in history as defenders of a wrong or outdated idea. Think of cold fusion.

Some people argue that scientists have faith in the process of science, but this type of faith is not a religious leap but a logical extension of our experience. The scientific method has worked in the past many times. Therefore it’s quite rational to think it will continue to work in the future.

Rabbi Averick just got pussy-whipped.

Your argoomint iz invalid.

HT: Jerry Coyne

8.1.12

Lanvin makes Dwarven bling

2012-01-06T02:58:00.000-08:00

So much jewellery is naturalistic in form – Art Nouveauesque in its resemblance to plants, flowers, animals. Bling for Tolkienian Elves, basically. Fashion house Lanvin’s Autumn/Winter 2011 range of accessories contains a welcome departure from delicate gold-wrought leaves and silver filigree. There are still a few pieces of gracefully undulating metalwork in the collection, even some ‘Elven’ designs, but it’s the chunky, square-cut precious stones set in straight-edged heavy metal that stand out. Bling for Dwarves.

Click on the images for a larger and clearer picture.

Some pieces don’t even focus on the stones, being pure celebrations of metal and geometry.

And these really impressed me – a Dwarven take on flowers.

I can imagine the Dwarf ladies (and men too) of Khazad-dûm adorning themselves with Lanvin’s creations as they went about their daily business, back in those happier times before a certain fiery demon took up residence. Lanvin-like jewellery would have also been worn by the mysterious Dwemer of Tamriel, and can be found lying around in their long-abandoned mountain holds.

Kudos to the Lanvin designers and craftspeople for giving us a delightfully fresh perspective on the jeweller’s art.

6.1.12

Dear religious right, cancer is a health issue, not a moral one

2012-01-05T15:18:00.000-08:00

Turns out that Vogue magazine isn’t just about semi-glossed pages of beautiful (if often overpriced) clothes on beautiful (if often emaciated) women. There’s also intelligent, provocative writing to be found tucked between all those perfume ads and sparkly bling. The December 2011 issue has a feature on the controversial HPV vaccine (‘Calling the Shots’); writer Ayelet Waldman tells her story about being infected with HPV, and condemns the moralism of American politicians like Michele Bachmann who oppose the HPV vaccine.

Waldman was infected with the human papillomavirus, which can cause various cancers, despite being in a long-term monogamous relationship, putting paid to the conservative lie that HPV is the (deserved) price for promiscuity. Michele Bachmann displayed this odious self-righteousness in her opposition to the HPV vaccine, going so far as to criticising Texas governor and fellow God-botherer Rick Perry for issuing an executive order mandating HPV vaccination for girls in sixth grade. Here’s Waldman on the really spiteful motivation behind Bachmann’s anti-vaccine position (emphasis mine):

Perry’s strategic mistake was in treating a vaccine that protects children against a potentially fatal disease as a health issue. The state of Texas mandates vaccinations for polio, for chicken pox, for nine different illnesses, only a few of which are as potentially deadly as the cervical, anal, and oral cancers caused by HPV, but Bachmann took no issue with those. She attacked HPV because unlike, say, rubella and mumps, it’s sexually communicable. For people like Bachmann, HPV isn’t a disease; it’s a punishment, a penalty for promiscuity, and to require a young girl to get the vaccine is to expect, even to condone, her sin.

Religious zealots like Bachmann are obsessed with sexual propriety. It’s like they’re wearing special glasses that lets them only see the religio-moral spectrum when they look at any issue of public concern. To them, the HPV vaccine issue isn’t about stopping girls from getting cancer; it’s about encouraging girls to fuck a lot. Prominent skeptic and feminist Rebecca Watson took on Bachmann during last year’s Skepticon, wittily exposing Bachmann’s logic fail:

Michele Bachmann is also against fire extinguishers, because they’ll just encourage everybody to set shit on fire.

Waldman received some negative pushback from her Twitter followers when she tweeted about her HPV infection in what many thought to be overly graphic detail. To her critics, Waldman responds:

The concept of [Too Much Information] is composed of a combination of prudishness, squeamishness, and censoriousness. It’s the last part that bothers me the most. You’re a prude? Fine. You’re uncomfortable with your body? That’s your problem. But when you try to shame others out of speaking out or taking action, then you’re engaging in a hip, digital form of the worst kind of demagoguery. Then you’re Michele Bachmann. The opposing principle of TMI is embodied by the phrase “Silence = Death”. Remember back in the height of the AIDS crisis, when HIV was considered a disease of promiscuous gay men and drug addicts, something decent people neither suffered from nor talked about? It took a pink triangle and a slogan to remind us of the dangers of conflating public health and morality. It’s time to do the same for HPV.

Hear, hear.

6.1.12

Not cool, Turkey. Not. Cool.

2012-01-03T04:51:00.000-08:00

Oh Turkey, what’s happened to you? From a staunchly secular republic (ok, perhaps too staunch at times) that also has a mostly Muslim citizenry, you’ve gradually degenerated into an Islamist state that seeks to impose religious ideology in place of secular values and science.

So I hear you want to ban any mention of Charles Darwin and the theory of evolution. That you want to protect children’s innocent minds from ideas supposedly comparable to images of naked humans slapping their genitals together. So now you’re playing the ‘think of the children’ card too?

I know you don’t much like those obnoxious, trigger happy Americans. So why do you insist on copying one of their least admirable traits? In the eyes of scientifically literate people everywhere, you Turks and Americans are like bosom buddies in God-infused ignorance. Your bromance is obvious from the flattering way Turkish creationists like Adnan Oktar adopt wholesale the Christian concept of Intelligent Design popular with American fundamentalists.

Children of Ataturk, you were supposed to be a secular exemplar of the Muslim world. You were supposed to persuade us faithless heathens that Islam was compatible with liberty, democracy, progress and science. You were supposed to be a political, social and economic example for other Muslim countries to emulate for the better. Now they’re going to emulate you for the worse.

Turkey, I am disappoint.

CORRECTION: I have just learned that the Turkish creationist Adnan Oktar aka Harun Yahya explicitly rejects Intelligent Design (Win!). This is because he thinks that ID proponents are either contemptible Westerners or treacherous Western sympathisers who haven't got the balls to declare that "Allah created the entire universe and everything in it, living and non-living" (Epic fail!).

3.1.12

A little perspective on human perception

2011-12-28T03:33:00.000-08:00

It’s good to occasionally have a reality check to temper our hubris. But I think it’s only fair to acknowledge that our technology – created through the application of our unique powers of reason and distinctly human ingenuity – allows us to see and hear far beyond our natural limits. Telescopes, microscopes, spectrometers, microphones and stethoscopes are inventions that our species can be rightfully proud of.

HT: PZ Myers

28.12.11

I don’t care what he says, I’m wishing y’all a Merry Christmas

2011-12-23T07:19:00.000-08:00

Our facially hirsute friend has got one thing right though – wishing others a Merry Christmas is definitely worse than fornicating. Offering season’s greetings to someone never gave me a mind-blowing, buttock-clenching, gasp-inducing orgasm. But I’m normal and boring like that.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays, you alcohol-swilling fornicators!

HT: Maryam Namazie

24.12.11

Blackford on the UN’s new stance regarding ‘defamation of religion’

2011-12-22T03:35:00.000-08:00

The UN, to paraphrase Churchill, can always be counted on to do the right thing – after it’s tried everything else. For the first time since 1998, the UN General Assembly didn’t qualify its latest call for religious tolerance with the expectation that states ban all forms of expression perceived to be critical or insulting towards religion.

No prizes for guessing which brand of sky-fairyism was largely behind the anti-religious defamation ban: of all the major religions, Islam is arguably the only one that has state-sanctioned anti-blasphemy tendencies that often manifest in violent, murderous ways. Until recently, the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), which comprises 57 Muslim-majority countries, was successful in pushing through annual UN resolutions on “combating defamation of religions”. But the OIC’s decade-long winning streak has finally been broken.

Russell Blackford’s new book Freedom of Religion and the Secular State explores the relevant issues of freedom of speech and freedom of religion in depth. Blackford wrote the following comments on his blog, which touch on the salient aspects of the UN’s position, past and present, regarding religious defamation:

It is one thing for the UN to condemn actions to provoke inter-religious hatred. No one wants to see the world’s societies riven with hatred, though it is worth remembering that much of the hatred comes from religious conservatives who refuse to tolerate sexual freedom (especially that of women), female emancipation, and any expressions of erotic love outside of heterosexual monogamy. Even in Western societies we see this in the emotive opposition to abortion rights and same-sex marriage. It’s another thing to become so focused on this issue that important kinds of speech are stigmatised and even prohibited. There is a public interest in scrutiny of religion, and it should be a fair target for criticism, denunciation, or satire.

At any rate, we should always err, if err we must, on the side of freedom of speech. Whatever lines are drawn in the area should allow bold speech that might offend – and this includes various forms of anti-religious criticism and satire. Such a liberal attitude to speech might permit some ugly speech, but the long-term effect would be to reinforce a valuable lesson: ideologically opposed groups of whatever kind – religious, political, or philosophical – must make their own way, enduring criticism, and even satire, from their opponents, without asking the state to interfere.

Any ideology, religious or otherwise, that requires force and coercion to propagate reveals itself to be insecure, flawed, and tyrannical. You have to threaten, torture, jail and execute people to make them accept the validity of absurd ideas. True and good ideas on the other hand are self-evident to all reasonable people.

22.12.11

Heaven is like North Korea

2011-12-20T00:38:00.000-08:00

So the death of a vile man follows soon after the death of a good one. In his capacity as a journalist, Christopher Hitchens had visited North Korea and written about the failed state and its now deceased dictator, Kim Jong Il. In a Slate article last year, Hitchens wrote:

Unlike previous racist dictatorships, the North Korean one has actually succeeded in producing a sort of new species. Starving and stunted dwarves, living in the dark, kept in perpetual ignorance and fear, brainwashed into the hatred of others, regimented and coerced and inculcated with a death cult.

Far from being the poster child for evil godlessness, North Korea is inherently religious: its founder is worshipped as a divine being, while miracles and portents intending to legitimate the totalitarian rule of the Kim dynasty are propagated just like the myths surrounding Jesus, Muhammad, Buddha and every other religious figure. Furthermore, as Hitchens observed in the video below, the constant adulation of the Great Leader bears a disturbing resemblance to what Heaven is supposed to be like: a place where billions of souls offer up everlasting praise to their lord and master.

I couldn’t picture [Heaven]… but I’ve seen the nearest approximation to it, which is North Korea, where it is the only duty and job and right for a citizen to eternally praise the Divine Leader and his Divine Father. […] North Korea is only one short of a Trinity.

ADDENDUM: Here's Hitchens describing his experience in North Korea, and explaining how religious its society actually is.

20.12.11

Dawkins’s eulogy to Hitchens pulls no punches

2011-12-17T07:15:00.000-08:00

Christopher Hitchens is dead. This isn’t going to be the post where I express what the Hitch and his work mean to me. Right now there are too many scattered thoughts that I have yet to gather into a coherent tribute to one of my intellectual and ethical heroes. Until I find the time to sit down and do said gathering, this will serve as a stop-gap.

Jerry Coyne posted this excerpt from Richard Dawkins’s eulogy to his fallen atheist comrade. For all its eloquence, it has the air of an undisguised “fuck you” to the religious. And appropriately so.

[Hitchens] inspired, energised and encouraged us. He had us cheering him on almost daily. He even begat a new word – the hitchslap. It wasn’t just his intellect we admired: it was also his pugnacity, his spirit, his refusal to countenance ignoble compromise, his forthrightness, his indomitable spirit, his brutal honesty.

And in the very way he looked his illness in the eye, he embodied one part of the case against religion. Leave it to the religious to mewl and whimper at the feet of an imaginary deity in their fear of death; leave it to them to spend their lives in denial of its reality. Hitch looked it squarely in the eye: not denying it, not giving in to it, but facing up to it squarely and honestly and with a courage that inspires us all.

Before his illness, it was as an erudite author, essayist and sparkling, devastating speaker that this valiant horseman led the charge against the follies and lies of religion. During his illness he added another weapon to his armoury and ours – perhaps the most formidable and powerful weapon of all: his very character became an outstanding and unmistakable symbol of the honesty and dignity of atheism, as well as of the worth and dignity of the human being when not debased by the infantile babblings of religion.

Every day of his declining life he demonstrated the falsehood of that most squalid of Christian lies: that there are no atheists in foxholes. Hitch was in a foxhole, and he dealt with it with a courage, an honesty and a dignity that any of us would be, and should be, proud to be able to muster. And in the process, he showed himself to be even more deserving of our admiration, respect, and love.

Farewell, great voice. Great voice of reason, of humanity, of humour. Great voice against cant, against hypocrisy, against obscurantism and pretension, against all tyrants including God.

18.12.11

On wearing a uniform (that isn’t a uniform)

2011-12-06T05:44:00.000-08:00

Fashion is primarily a visual affair. While I can only speak for myself, I find a lot of fashion writing to be akin to postmodernist twaddle: pretentious in its depiction of the superficial as profound and in its forced, obscure intellectualism, stale with its mix-n-match pastiche of trite phrases, clichés and silly neologisms (seriously, ‘murse’?). I would much rather look at pictures of interesting clothes that haven’t been mediated through fashionspeak. This is why I prefer fashion blogs like The Sartorialist that focus on the imagery of clothing and the people wearing it, unlike other more chatty blogs that run often inane commentary alongside the pictures.

But on rare occasions, I come across fashion writing that doesn’t try to pass itself off as deconstructionist prose. Where the writing is honest, intelligible and even humble, if that word could be applied to something as narcissistic as fashion. The autumn/winter 2011 issue of menswear magazine Dapper Dan has such writing, in an article by Angelo Flaccavento (‘Long Live the Immaterial’). Flaccavento is a proponent of ‘uniform dressing’, though he doesn’t mean it in the institutional sense (military, corporate, sports etc). I’ll let the man himself explain.

[W]hat people do with their own wardrobes and lives is none of my business. Prescriptions are proscriptive and I am no teacher. Still, I’d like to humbly suggest another way: uniform dressing. I am not talking about military gear, brass buttons and epaulettes, though I am wildly fascinated by them. I am referring to a formulaic approach to dressing up: choosing what’s best for you and sticking with it. Abandoning the perils of the fashionable for the cozy retreat of the familiar and tasteful. Playing it safe, some might say. But it takes time, care and attention to create a uniform that is not a uniform. Along the way, you will discover the liberating joy of having no options. All of this can be done without forsaking the deep pleasures of dress-up.

Flaccavento is my kind of sartorial ideologue. His ‘uniform that is not a uniform’ describes my dress sense. I almost always wear the following: a classic hat, whether a felt fedora, wool fisherman’s cap or straw sunhat; leather lace-up boots or plain canvas slip-ons; a tailored two-button jacket; ankle-length pants with little to no break; button-up shirts, plain or vertically striped (and always tucked in). It has taken me about 4 years of experimentation to finally settle on this selection of garments that constitute my Flaccaventonian uniform.

Here are some of the key influences on my style (click on the images to enlarge them):

Lewis Hine’s early 20th century photos of European migrants, working class men and child labourers.

Winslow Homer’s 19th century paintings of rural Americans.

The period costumes in films like Luchino Visconti’s The Leopard and Claude Berri’s Jean de Florette.

The picture below is from Manon des Sources, the sequel to Jean de Florette. The woman’s clothes display the colours and textures that I’m fond of.

This is Flaccavento’s dressing manifesto. I would happily sign up to it.

1. Be light. Don’t turn your opinion of fashion into a declaration of war. Maintaining a uniform is your choice, not a dogma.

2. Know that you are in good company. Coco Chanel, Diana Vreeland, Gio Ponti and Beau Brummell all excelled in the practice. But don’t use it as an excuse to look down on others. Refrain from judging.

3. Look at yourself in the mirror, thoroughly and severely. Consider your pros and cons, and decide what to highlight. It can be everything. Sometimes cons are more charming than pros; a prominent belly can be more sensational than a six-pack. Trust your instincts, and the uniform will begin to feel natural.

4. Trust in Dieter Rams: “Less, but better.” Edit down to the bare essentials, plus, perhaps, a tiny bit more. You should be able to get ready in a flash with a thoughtful, quick edit. Likewise, never plan an outfit in advance; the result will be rigid. A little mistake here and there feels lively.

5. Be modular: you will augment your sartorial possibilities in a logical, efficient way. If you can mix and match, your wardrobe will expand virtually without taking up vital space.

6. Choose your uniform according to the idea of yourself you have in mind. Let the immaterial shape your material expression of your persona, without restrictions or boundaries. Stripes and mismatched patterns can be to you what solid black or clerk-like grey is to others. That’s how the game works.

7. Ignore what people say. Wear a suit to the grocery store, if you wish. Clothes should be an expression of your inner self, but they should also display courtesy. Dressing appropriately is a gesture of kindness, for oneself and for others.

8. Look at what’s happening in fashion. Be critical, but look. Then adopt and adapt, or you’ll turn into a grumpy old statue covered in dust.

9. Evolve, avoiding dogmatism and orthodoxy. You’re not the same person from day to day. Your uniform should change accordingly.

10. Defy expectations. Don’t let the uniform take over, and don’t allow yourself to be identified by your uniform. Break it up once in a while. Be a prankster. Remember: situationism rules.

11. Hey, they’re just clothes: you’ll get tired of them sooner than you think.

6.12.11

Pinker on what science is all about

2011-12-02T05:30:00.000-08:00

I’m making my way through Michael Shermer’s The Believing Brain at the moment, so Steven Pinker’s latest book, The Better Angels of Our Nature, is still languishing on my ‘to read’ list. I’m aware that it’s a BIG book, but Jerry Coyne has started reading it and his thoughts on its, uh, bigness is actually scaring me a little. It’s most likely going to take me a good part of early 2012 to finish it. But Pinker is a splendid writer with a knack for spinning a good (and in this case, often grisly) yarn out of all the reams of data and graphs his books typically contain.

Coyne selects the following paragraph from Better Angels as a standout for the way it articulates Pinker’s views on science, which concur with Coyne’s.

(p. 181) Though we cannot logically prove anything about the physical world, we are entitled to have confidence in certain beliefs about it. The application of reason and observation to discover tentative generalizations about the world is what we call science. The progress of science with its dazzling success at explaining and manipulating the world, shows that knowledge of the universe is possible, albeit always probabilistic and subject to revision. Science is thus a paradigm for how we ought to gain knowledge—not the particular methods or institutions of science but its value system, namely to seek to explain the world, to evaluate candidate explanations objectively, and to be cognizant of the tentativeness and uncertainty of our understanding at any time.

After reading that, how can any reasonable person still think that scientists are arrogant, cocksure know-it-alls? The scientific enterprise is arguably the most humbling experience one could have. Scientists get it wrong many, many times before they find the correct answers. And they’re constantly going over each other’s work with a magnifying glass, just hoping to find errors or unsubstantiated claims to gleefully point out. I’m no scientist, but I imagine that having one’s research subjected to such intense scrutiny by so many experts leaves little opportunity for inflated egos.

Notice that Pinker makes a value judgment when he writes that science is “a paradigm for how we ought to gain knowledge”, and that it’s not just the “particular methods or institutions of science but its value system” that give it its unique powers of discovery and illumination. Science is a moral undertaking. When people dedicate themselves to science, they are also declaring their commitment to moral values like honesty, humility and integrity. When they abandon any of these values, they cease doing science.

3.12.11

“All will have appetizing vaginas”

2011-11-29T22:10:00.000-08:00

We’re all familiar with the promise of 72 virgins waiting in Paradise for devout Muslim men who martyr themselves in jihad against the enemies of Islam. But I recently came across a rather vivid description of said promise, written by Qur’anic commentator and polymath al-Suyuti (who died in 1505):

Each time we sleep with a houri we find her virgin. Besides, the penis of the Elected never softens. The erection is eternal; the sensation that you feel each time you make love is utterly delicious and out of this world and were you to experience it in this world you would faint. Each chosen one will marry seventy [sic] houris, besides the women he married on earth, and all will have appetizing vaginas.

So Paradise is going to be full of guys strutting around with perpetual boners. I imagine that this being the afterlife, medical concerns regarding erections lasting longer than 4 hours are moot. It’s not a bug, it’s a feature.

Here we have a Saudi cleric, Muhammad al-Munajid, giving a lascivious description of the virginal delights awaiting good Muslim men when they shuffle off this mortal coil (and apparently only the men will have hot unvirgining sex to look forward to in Paradise).

If Al-Munajid’s Quranic exposition doesn’t make clear the misogyny and male chauvinism inherent in Islam, I don’t know what does. The women in Paradise are nothing more than the juvenile projections of selfish, immature boy-men who can’t stand the fact that women have flaws. It wouldn’t surprise me if this poisonous perfectionism contributes to the horrible treatment that women receive from a conservative Muslim patriarchy. Al-Munajid obviously finds certain natural aspects of women to be unseemly, if not outright disgusting.

Also, how is visible bone marrow supposed to be a turn-on? Or is that some Arab fetish I’m not aware of?

HT: Justin Griffith at Rock Beyond Belief

30.11.11

A very cute allegory of the science-vs-religion issue

2011-11-24T09:24:00.000-08:00

This is adorable and accurate.

HT: PZ Myers

25.11.11

A good rant from PZ Myers

2011-11-23T21:27:00.000-08:00

Biology professor and popular blogger PZ Myers is one of the more outspoken public atheists, and a recent incident involving a gelato shop owner has roused Myers’s legendary ire. While I’m not completely sympathetic to his fierce and combative style, I do agree with many of the points he makes in his blog-post-cum-rant. Specifically, the charges he lays against those in the skeptic community who shy away from applying their vaunted skepticism and critical thinking to religion are spot on. Religious beliefs shouldn’t be exempt from the same level of scrutiny and evidential demands applied to UFO claims, conspiracy theories, psychic powers and Big Foot sightings.

I also agree with the spirit, if not the delivery, of Myers’s rant against ‘fair weather atheists’, which I take to mean atheists who adopt a holier-than-thou attitude towards their fellow unbelievers who are so vulgar as to noisily advocate for atheism. Knowing a few such fair weather atheists myself, I wonder if they realise that their freedom to not only not believe, but to also not have to fight for their right not to believe, is contingent on several factors: that they live in a mainly secular society, that they have been brought up in an environment conducive to tolerance of differing creeds and lifestyles, that they are protected by laws prohibiting discrimination against atheists or agnostics, that their social circle mostly consists of like-minded individuals who prevent them from feeling like they’re lonely islands of reason in an ocean of religious fervour.

It’s much harder to be a smug fair weather atheist when you’re an unbeliever in, say, Pakistan, or Iran, or the American Bible Belt. And the values that atheist advocates – from Dawkins, Harris and Hitchens to Myers, Greta Christina and Maryam Namazie – are standing up for are universal. They are fighting for the intellectual freedom and basic human rights of people everywhere, the sort of human goods that may be taken for granted by fair weather atheists, but most assuredly not by atheists who are harassed, persecuted, assaulted, killed or otherwise viciously discriminated against because they happen to be unbelievers in a society that hasn’t quite elevated snark and noncommittalism into a hip cultural institution.

24.11.11

Mississippi redefines what it means to be a ‘person’ (and yes, God’s involved)

2011-11-07T20:38:00.000-08:00

This is what happens when religidiocy butts into biology. A lump of undifferentiated cells suddenly becomes a person, and abortion and birth control become acts of murder.

From the New York Times:

A constitutional amendment facing voters in Mississippi on Nov. 8, and similar initiatives brewing in half a dozen other states including Florida and Ohio, would declare a fertilized human egg to be a legal person, effectively branding abortion and some forms of birth control as murder. [...]

Many doctors and women’s health advocates say the proposals would cause a dangerous intrusion of criminal law into medical care, jeopardizing women’s rights and even their lives.

The amendment in Mississippi would ban virtually all abortions, including those resulting from rape or incest. It would bar some birth control methods, including IUDs and “morning-after pills,” which prevent fertilized eggs from implanting in the uterus. It would also outlaw the destruction of embryos created in laboratories.

The Mississippi amendment is the demon baby you’d expect from the unholy copulation of religiosity and scientific ignorance, as one doctor points out:

Dr. Randall S. Hines , a fertility specialist in Jackson working against Proposition 26 with the group Mississippians for Healthy Families, said that the amendment reflects “biological ignorance.” Most fertilized eggs, he said, do not implant in the uterus or develop further.

“Once you recognize that the majority of fertilized eggs don’t become people, then you recognize how absurd this amendment is,” Dr. Hines said. He fears severe unintended consequences for doctors and women dealing with ectopic or other dangerous pregnancies and for in vitro fertility treatments.

For those folks, Mississippian or otherwise, who think that a zygote is a person, here’s a picture to helpfully illustrate the error of your reasoning.

The Economist also covered this issue, with one reader, Benjamin Iwai of Missouri, writing a letter to the editor that displayed the merit of consistency vis-à-vis the idea of embryos being persons:

Sir, I was delighted to read your article about the effort in Mississippi to pass a state constitutional amendment to recognise embryos as people from the moment of fertilisation. My wife and I have been considering IVF to address our lack of success in conceiving a child. Mississippi’s proposed amendment gives us even more reason to pursue this treatment, and to move to Mississippi.

After the procedure we will insist on taking custody of any extra embryos that result from IVF – it is our right as parents after all. Once safely in our home we plan to keep them in a freezer in our basement and list them as child dependents for tax purposes, thus giving us a tax deduction. To protect the lives of our children in case of a power outage we will buy a backup generator. Anything less would be bad parenting.

HT: Jerry Coyne

8.11.11

Thee-OH, Lo-JEE! What is it good for? Absolutely nuh-thing!

2011-11-06T05:15:00.000-08:00

Ah, theology, a unique intellectual discipline where intelligent people write and talk intelligently about… nothing. Sure, they call this ‘nothing’ God, but it’s still nothing, since there’s no evidence that such a being not only exists, but exists in the manner or form that theologians conceive it to exist. Theology is a hollow exercise in hypothesis-making without any possible means to test those hypotheses. Theologians must be so lacking in self-awareness (or a functioning irony meter) that they can’t see the absurdity of trying to comprehend the supposedly incomprehensible. To explain the unexplainable. To say something about nothing.

A few weeks ago biology professor Jerry Coyne debated Catholic theologian John Haught at the University of Kentucky. The topic was a stomping ground of Coyne’s: are science and religion compatible? Unsurprisingly, Coyne’s rational, evidence-based arguments trumped Haught’s rhetorical obfuscation and unsupported claims. Post-debate, scandal erupted when Haught refused to allow the organisers to upload the video of the debate (he eventually relented after a justifiably severe public backlash, so you can watch the debate here, and the subsequent Q&A session here). Russell Blackford has given his thoughtful take on the Coyne-Haught drama.

Coyne and Haught’s debate is a good example of how theology crumples under the pressure of demands for evidence to support its foundational premise: that a divine being exists which we can theologise about. How do theologians know that God exists, and is this knowledge objectively verifiable without appeals to emotion or ‘gut feeling’? Ophelia Benson asks these questions and others, like the following:

What are the criteria for theology as an academic discipline? How do practitioners tell good theology from bad? Is there such a thing as “wrong”? Is there falsification? Is there peer review? Are there any boundaries – any checks on what we outsiders see as making stuff up?

Theology cannot answer these reasonable demands coherently or convincingly.

So what exactly is the impotent enterprise called theology good for? Nothing at all, according to Richard Dawkins:

What has theology ever said that is of the smallest use to anybody? When has theology ever said anything that is demonstrably true and is not obvious? I have listened to theologians, read them, debated against them. I have never heard any of them ever say anything of the smallest use, anything that was not either platitudinously obvious or downright false. If all the achievements of scientists were wiped out tomorrow, there would be no doctors but witch doctors, no transport faster than horses, no computers, no printed books, no agriculture beyond subsistence peasant farming. If all the achievements of theologians were wiped out tomorrow, would anyone notice the smallest difference? Even the bad achievements of scientists, the bombs, and sonar-guided whaling vessels work! The achievements of theologians don't do anything, don't affect anything, don't mean anything. What makes anyone think that "theology" is a subject at all?

And here’s the 19th century humanist orator Robert Green Ingersoll on the respective benefits of theology and science:

We have already compared the benefits of theology and science. When the theologian governed the world, it was covered with huts and hovels for the many, palaces and cathedrals for the few. To nearly all the children of men, reading and writing were unknown arts. The poor were clad in rags and skins - they devoured crusts, and gnawed bones. The day of Science dawned, and the luxuries of a century ago are the necessities of today. Men in the middle ranks of life have more of the conveniences and elegancies than the princes and kings of the theological times. But above and over all this, is the development of mind. There is more of value in the brain of an average man of today - of a master-mechanic, of a chemist, of a naturalist, of an inventor, than there was in the brain of the world four hundred years ago.

These blessings did not fall from the skies. These benefits did not drop from the outstretched hands of priests. They were not found in cathedrals or behind altars - neither were they searched for with holy candles. They were not discovered by the closed eyes of prayer, nor did they come in answer to superstitious supplication. They are the children of freedom, the gifts of reason, observation and experience - and for them all, man is indebted to man.

Exactly.

7.11.11

Science and politics (and how postmodernism can fuck things up)

2011-11-03T06:30:00.000-07:00

Here’s the introduction for a New Scientist special report on the worrying state of science in the US (‘Decline and Fall’, 29 October):

The US was founded on Enlightenment values and is the most powerful scientific nation on Earth. And yet the status of science in public life has never appeared to be so low.

As campaigning for the 2012 presidential election gets into full swing, US politics, especially on the right, appears to have entered a parallel universe where ignorance, denial and unreason trump facts, evidence and rationality.

Almost all the main Republican presidential candidates subscribe to some variety of anti-scientific bunkum. Michele Bachmann thinks science classes should teach creationism; Rick Perry rejects evolutionary theory because “it’s got some gaps in it”; Newt Gingrich considers embryonic stem cell research to be nothing less than murder; Herman Cain claims that people choose to be homosexual.

Meanwhile, Republican candidates who display a modicum of scientific literacy are practically committing political suicide. Shawn Lawrence Otto writes:

Republicans diverge from anti-science politics at their peril. When leading candidate Mitt Romney said: “I believe based on what I read that the world is getting warmer… humans contribute to that,” conservative radio commentator Rush Limbaugh responded with “Bye bye, nomination”. Romney back-pedalled, saying, “I don’t know if it’s mostly caused by humans.”

One of the contributing factors to this current science low in American political discourse is the influence of postmodernist theory. Otto explains:

Even as [anti-science] criticisms mounted, science was enjoying increased funding and prestige in universities, supplanting the humanities. The humanities pushed back. Postmodernism emerged, drawing on cultural anthropology and relativity to argue that there was no such thing as objective truth. Science was simply the cultural expression of western white men and had no greater claim to the truth than the “truths” of women and minorities. This fit well with the politics of civil rights and also conveniently placed the humanities back on top. In pop culture it became a secular religious movement that preached creating your own reality – the New Age.

Many positive things came out of postmodernism but the idea that there is no objective truth is just plain wrong. And yet a generation of Americans was taught this incorrect idea. As they became leaders in politics, industry and the media this thinking affected their regard for truth and science. Without objective truth, all arguments become rhetorical. We are either paralysed in endless debate or we must resort to brute authority. This is the abyss the US now faces.

This culture war between science and the humanities was broached by the British novelist and physicist C P Snow and further examined by the American science writer John Brockman. Brockman is optimistic that the emergence of a ‘third culture’ of scientists – who engage directly with the public through writing popular science books and giving widely disseminated lectures – will help increase scientific literacy. The re-engagement of scientists with the public, even political, realm is both welcome and necessary, since their previous retreat into their ivory towers contributed to the decline of science’s influence, as Otto writes:

Relieved of the burden of selling the value of their research to philanthropists [thanks to permanent government funding], scientists turned inward and in many ways withdrew from civic engagement. University tenure programmes were developed that rewarded research and publication but not public outreach. Scientists who did reach out to the public were often viewed poorly by their peers. Politics became something that could taint one’s objectivity.

But to view science as apolitical is a fundamental error. Science is always political because the new knowledge it creates requires refining our morals and ethics and challenges vested interests. Withdrawing from the conversation cedes these discussions to opponents, which is exactly what happened.

Another outcome of the postmodernist contempt for objective truth is ‘false balance’ journalism – in any contentious issue, both sides are given equal weight, irrespective of their veracity. Journalist and doctor Ben Goldacre has written extensively on this problem in his book Bad Science (2008). Otto argues that this penchant for ‘false balance’ is encouraged by the info-tainment style of reportage that prioritises emotionalism over rationalism.

News shows now had to compete with entertainment, and so became more emotional and opinionated. A generation of journalists with a postmodern education decided that “objective” reporting was simply getting varying views of the story, but not taking a position on which represented reality. […] This problem, called “false balance” now pits, for example, climate scientists against deniers. This gives undue exposure to extreme views – a situation that has been compounded by the elimination of most science and investigative reporters from cash-strapped newsrooms.

America is at risk of losing its scientific eminence. While the danger shouldn’t be exaggerated (Otto’s article includes data suggesting that science still carries plenty of cultural clout in the US), steps should be taken to ensure that the sort of blatant science-bashing exhibited by the Republicans remains confined to a minority with limited power to shape policy.

History contains many cautionary tales of what can happen when politicians ignore science, thinking that they are entitled not only to their own opinions, but also to their own facts. From the famines that killed millions due to both the Soviet Union’s adoption of Trofim Lysenko’s false ideas on genetics and Mao Zedong’s unscientific agricultural policies, to the deaths of thousands of HIV infected South Africans caused by former president Thabo Mbeki’s denial of the link between HIV and AIDS, history shows that when we reject the objective truths of science, they come back to bite us in the arse.

4.11.11

The story of an Indian atheist

2011-10-19T05:57:00.000-07:00

The October 10 issue of The New Yorker has an article by Akash Kapur about an Indian cow broker named R. Ramadas (‘The Shandy’, online abstract here). Kapur writes about Ramadas’s line of work in the context of a rapidly modernising India. As expected of a New Yorker piece, Kapur’s journalism is engaging, eye-opening and full of pathos without being condescending or mawkish.

The article takes an unexpected turn when the reader discovers that Ramadas is an atheist. I say ‘unexpected’ because Ramadas is a poor, uneducated man born into the Dalit, or ‘untouchable’, caste of a highly religious and superstitious society. The trend is for religion to be more prevalent among those who share Ramadas’s demographic traits. Yet, amazingly, he bucks that trend.

Kapur writes:

[Ramadas] said people always talked about gods and the miracles they’d supposedly performed. People believed the gods could heal a disease. But where was the proof? Ramadas believed only in what he could see. He believed in science. He believed in doctors and their injections.

I find this very heartwarming. Here is someone who breaks the stereotype of the poor, uneducated person struggling to make ends meet in a developing country who finds hope and comfort in the bosom of religion. Kapur provides some background to explain Ramadas’s atheism:

Ramadas was a Dalit – a member of the “untouchable” caste – and, as I got to know him, I realized that his atheism had been shaped by the discrimination he had suffered and seen all his life. Ramadas could remember standing outside upper-caste homes as a boy, and being forced to drink water from his hands so that he wouldn’t contaminate the household vessels. He wasn’t allowed in the ur, the part of the village where the upper castes lived.

When he was around sixteen, he discovered the teachings of E. V. Ramasami Naicker, or Periyar, a twentieth-century social reformer and activist considered by many to be the father of modern Tamil culture. Periyar (“great man,” in Tamil) fought against caste and gender discrimination. He was a committed rationalist and atheist; he believed that religion was often used as a tool to oppress minorities and women. Ramadas was struck by Periyar’s observations that the discrimination faced by Dalits – along with the religious justifications provided for it – was really just a way for the upper castes to maintain their dominance.

Of course, being an atheist in India is not without its hardships. Ramadas’s wife and children are devout Hindus. His occupation involves the selling and buying of cows for consumption, a sin according to Hinduism, and thus a source of friction between him and his family. When Ramadas’s elder son died in a traffic accident in 2001, his family saw his son’s death as divine punishment for his sinful work, and said as much. This particular passage makes me very sad.

I asked [Ramadas] how he felt when he heard that kind of thing. “I don’t care,” he said. “People might say that, but I don’t believe it. It’s nonsense. I told my son not to go out that early morning. I told him not to go driving in the dark. Had he listened to me nothing would have happened to him. I don’t think it had anything to do with my job. I don’t care what people say.”

“You don’t care?” Varun [Ramadas’s younger son] asked. “What do you mean, you don’t care?”

“You want to know the truth?” Ramadas said, and he looked at me. “The truth is it makes my heart feel hard. It makes me feel heavy.”

He said that when his son died he participated in all the religious ceremonies. He didn’t believe in any of it, but he participated because he didn’t want people to think that he didn’t love his son. He performed all the pujas that the priests asked for, and he scattered his son’s ashes in the ocean. He tried to throw himself into the ocean; he wanted to die.

“What can I say?” he told me now. “How do you think it makes me feel that my family believes my work killed my son?” He pointed at his chest. “It pains me here. That’s how I feel.”

Ramadas’s personal tragedy was compounded by the superstitions of others. Here is proof, anecdotal though it may be, that religion can be used to hold people’s emotions to ransom. Unless you perform the scripted rites, you will be considered a cold, heartless bastard. Unless you act out the farcical rituals, you will be viewed as somehow inhuman. Unless you acknowledge the existence of sky fairies, you will be seen as being incapable of love. Or grief.

19.10.11

Religion: identity or idea?

2011-10-18T05:11:00.000-07:00

Non-religious folks like me admittedly find it hard to understand how religious believers can get so emotionally invested in their beliefs. Any criticism or ridicule aimed at what is (to non-believers) obviously just a set of ideas no more sacred than any other set of ideas – whether political, cultural, philosophical – can often be taken as highly personal attacks by holders of those ideas. This conflation of ideas with identity allows believers to accuse religion’s critics of prejudice, even racism, when this is certainly not the case.

Greta Christina tackles this issue with her usual clarity and frankness. The following two paragraphs from her post describe both the nature of religious privilege and the outcome of denying religion that privilege.

A big part of what makes religion flourish is the special treatment it gets. The idea that religion is special and should be treated differently from other human ideas and activities is a ridiculously common one. It’s common to think that its leaders deserve special deference, that its holy places and relics should be treated with reverence, that people who are unusually religious must also be unusually virtuous, that it’s inherently rude or bigoted to criticize it. In the marketplace of ideas, religion gets a free ride. In an armored tank.

So criticizing religion doesn’t just have the effect of sometimes persuading people out of it. It also has the effect of repositioning religion as just another idea. It has the effect of treating religion the same way we treat ideas about politics, science, art, philosophy, medicine, ethics, social policy, etc. — namely, as fair game. Ideas that have to stand up on their own. Ideas that are only as good as the evidence and reason supporting them. Ideas that can be questioned and challenged and made fun of and blasted into shrapnel, just like any other. Criticizing religion doesn’t just expose religion as a singularly bad, entirely indefensible idea. It reframes it as an idea, period.

Christina also has a few words of caution for ardent critics of sky-fairyism:

I think that when we do hammer on the idea [of religion], we need to be very careful, and very rigorous, about hammering the idea without insulting the people.

We need to be very careful to say, “That idea makes no rational sense” — and not say, “You’re irrational.” We need to be very careful to say, “That idea is entirely divorced from reality” — and not say, “You are entirely divorced from reality.” We need to be very careful to say, “That’s a ridiculous and stupid idea” — and not say, “You are ridiculous and stupid.”

It may be trite advice, but if we critics of religion want to uphold the moral and intellectual integrity of our position, we would do well to bear these words in mind as we go about shooting down one lousy idea after another.

Happy hunting!

18.10.11

Why (and how) science is incompatible with religion

2011-10-17T06:51:00.000-07:00

Over at The Guardian, philosopher Julian Baggini explains why science and religion are oil and water, despite the intellectual acrobatics of theologians, religious scientists and ‘faithists’ (non-believers who nonetheless believe in the value of belief) defending accommodationism. Baggini’s article is a more eloquent version of my own arguments against the Gouldian concept of ‘non-overlapping magisteria’, or NOMA. I used the analogy of science and religion (supposedly) occupying two separate rooms but religion constantly intrudes into science’s room. Baggini expands on this illustration by showing how religion intrudes into the room it apparently has no business in entering, if the accommodationists are to be believed.

Accommodationists maintain that science is purely concerned with the ‘how’ questions, while religion deals with the ‘why’ questions. Both are compatible with each other so long as they stick to their respective spheres of expertise. But Baggini demonstrates that such claims are incorrect, even dishonest:

It sounds like a clear enough distinction, but maintaining it proves to be very difficult indeed. Many "why" questions are really "how" questions in disguise. For instance, if you ask: "Why does water boil at 100C?" what you are really asking is: "What are the processes that explain it has this boiling point?" – which is a question of how.

Critically, however, scientific "why" questions do not imply any agency – deliberate action – and hence no intention. We can ask why the dinosaurs died out, why smoking causes cancer and so on without implying any intentions. In the theistic context, however, "why" is usually what I call "agency-why": it's an explanation involving causation with intention.

So not only do the hows and whys get mixed up, religion can end up smuggling in a non-scientific agency-why where it doesn't belong.

That’s the nub of this whole affair: religion assumes the necessity of agency, so all scientific ‘why’ questions that are agency-free will run afoul of religion, which sees itself as the only institution permitted to handle ‘why’ questions, questions that, from a religious perspective, inevitably have answers involving agency i.e. God. And by insisting on the ‘agency-why’ nature of agency-free questions, religion ends up trespassing into the domain of science, because ‘agency-why’ questions often turn into ‘how’ questions, which accommodationists assure us are the sole preserve of science. As Baggini points out:

This means that if someone asks why things are as they are, what their meaning and purpose is, and puts God in the answer, they are almost inevitably going to make an at least implicit claim about the how: God has set things up in some way, or intervened in some way, to make sure that purpose is achieved or meaning realised. The neat division between scientific "how" and religious "why" questions therefore turns out to be unsustainable.

Baggini exposes the falsehood of accommodationism’s premises: contrary to the NOMA ‘law’, religion keeps meddling in scientific matters because the strict separation that accommodationists believe exists actually doesn’t. Consequently, the myth of compatibility between science and religion is debunked; conflict between evidence-based understanding and faith is basically guaranteed when faith continually challenges the processes and findings of science.

So religion, by its inherent propensity for seeing agency in everything, including agency-free phenomena, cannot avoid interfering in the scientific enterprise because for religion, all ‘how’ questions are also ‘why’ questions. And the thing is, science also sees it that way, if in reverse – many ‘why’ questions are really ‘how’ questions. The key difference is that science doesn’t require agency to come up with answers. Religion always does.

Here’s an elegant graphic showing another way in which science and religion differ in their approach to finding answers to questions (click on the image to enlarge).

HT: Jerry Coyne

18.10.11

There should be more bookshops like this

2011-10-12T06:02:00.000-07:00

Given the despondent bookstore scene in Melbourne, the arrival of Embiggen Books is glad news. Formerly based in Noosaville on the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, this independent bookstore packed up earlier this year for cooler climes southward, making its new home right in the Melbourne CBD (central business district).

But you know what’s more awesome, by orders of magnitude, than a mere indie bookstore? An indie bookstore that has “the biggest range of popular science titles in stock in the observable universe” and also sells scientific equipment and giftware, that deliberately refuses to sell books promoting pseudoscience, mysticism and irrational, baseless nonsense, and that is active in the skepticism movement.

An excerpt from the Embiggen Books website:

[The bookshop’s] parents Mr and Mrs Embiggen have had long interests in evidence based understanding, reason and life, the universe and everything. They have sieved out pseudoscience wherever they smell it so you won’t find new age malarkey in the stock list.

Imagine that, a bookshop with no self-proclaimed spiritual gurus, no anti-science screeds, no outright con jobs like The Secret, maybe even no section on religion (I haven’t visited the store yet). There will most likely be books on the history and philosophy of religion, perhaps of a comparative nature, but it would be wonderful to note an absence of books hawking one brand of sky-fairyism or another.

Fellow Melbournians who appreciate science, reason and skepticism, and books promoting them, while also having a sentimental fondness for brick-and-mortar bookstores are duly exhorted to pay Embiggen Books a visit, and support them with your custom. You can also buy books online and have them delivered to you, so even non-Melbournians can support a business dedicated to science, reason and skepticism.

The address and contact number for Embiggen Books:

197-203 Little Lonsdale St, Melbourne, 3000

Phone: (03) 9662 2062

HT: Russell Blackford

13.10.11

Hitchens recommends books to a young, bright girl

2011-10-11T05:20:00.000-07:00

Christopher Hitchens recently attended the Atheist Alliance of America convention in Houston, Texas. Over at Why Evolution Is True, Jerry Coyne has uploaded videos of Hitchens receiving the Richard Dawkins Award for promoting freethought and atheism, and holding forth on Rick Perry and Mormonism.

A highlight of the event was Hitchens taking the time to have a one-on-one chat with 8-year-old Mason Crumpacker. During the Q&A session Mason had asked Hitchens what books he thought she should read in order to become a freethinker like him. Hitchens graciously offered to see Mason afterwards to give her his recommendations.

Coyne has a post on the exchange between Hitchens and Mason written by Mason’s mum Anne, who accompanied her daughter. It was a beautiful moment, when one of the most keen and erudite minds alive today passed on a precious fragment of his mental library to a young, precocious girl who hoped to follow in his footsteps. A dying man planted seeds of knowledge and wisdom in the mind of a potential successor.

Mason wrote a lovely thank you letter to Hitchens:

Dear Mr. Hitchens,

Thank you for your kindness to me and all of the wonderful books you recommended to help me think for myself. Thank you also for taking my question very seriously. When I was talking to you I felt important because you treated me like a grown up. I feel very fortunate to have met you. I think more children should read books. I also think that all adults should be honest to children like you to me. For the rest of my life I will remember and cherish our meeting and will try to continue to ask questions.

Sincerely,
Mason

P.S. I would like to start with “The Myths” by Robert Graves.

Anne Crumpacker captures that fateful meeting between Hitchens and Mason with heartbreaking poignancy:

I’m not a professional writer, just a mom, but if I get to make only one comment it would be this: There isn’t a magic reading list. Never was. Never will be. The reason what transpired that night was memorable was the wondrous Socratic feel of the exchange. Here was a man, a great thinker of our time who has spent his life developing and honing his intellect, challenging the next generation to pick up the mantle. What all these books have in common is they demand us to question, search and engage. They don’t preach, patronize or indoctrinate. They are a joyful expression of the whole of the human experience. The very best examples of a life fully lived.

We are about to lose a giant among us, but we, as atheists know there can be no greater Valhalla then to join the great conversation of the philosophers. We can honor Christopher Hitchens’ life by teaching our children his best virtues: to study broadly, to laugh heartily, to fight ardently, and to question relentlessly. Books are timeless companions and friends. Mason will surely spend her life in the company of illustrious authors gone before. Naturally, she was introduced to many of them that night by a kind man, with flashing eyes, sitting at a table who is about to join their company.

11.10.11

Alt-med woo peddlers aren’t happy that their bullshit is being exposed

2011-10-10T05:37:00.000-07:00

The James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF) has an article on their website about the frustration of ‘alternative’ medicine woomongers in the UK over having their lies and misinformation being exposed by skeptics, with help from the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA). Looks like the alt-med crowd is feeling the impact of awareness-raising campaigns run by skeptic activists; alt-med’s often baseless claims regarding the efficacy of its treatments and products are being publicly challenged, and independent regulators like the ASA are lending their muscle to the skeptic cause.

Referring to real doctors and skeptics, this statement from the pro-alt-med website ASA Sucks (how mature) clearly indicates alt-med’s disdain for scientific rigour in determining the efficacy of medical treatments:

Their reason for hating complementary medicine is based on the ill-founded belief that double blind placebo based trials are good science.

Far from being an “ill-founded belief”, double blind placebo trials are essential to prevent subject and tester bias from compromising the objectivity of the trial. Using this method is definitely a sign that good science is being done. Alt-med folks understandably dislike double blind placebo trials because they all too often produce results that do not confirm alt-med claims. Since they are emotionally invested in their anti-conventional medicine ideology, alt-med folks blame the double blind placebo method for the failure of their ‘theories’, rather than the inherent flaws of their ideology.

Concerning the ASA Sucks website, Tim Farley, who wrote the JREF article, makes the following observations:

In a pattern we’ve seen before, the complaint site does not stick to factual debate, but delves deep into logical fallacies, conspiracy theory thinking and other canards. It makes rude comments about Simon Singh and others, but somehow manages to miss the fact (clearly published on the [skeptic organisation] Nightingale Collaboration website) that the group is actually run by [Alan] Henness and [Maria] MacLachlan.

Meanwhile the complaint site itself was registered anonymously Monday through a U.S. company and is hosted on servers in Malaysia. None of the text on the site is signed, there’s no indication of who is behind this effort. Whoever is behind it is not only angry, but anxious to not be publicly known. (Compare this with the skeptics, who are very open about what they are doing, and even have posted a code of conduct).

The people behind ASA Sucks can’t be very convinced of the righteousness of their cause if they haven’t got the integrity to back up their accusations with their names.

In the immortal words of Tim Minchin:

Do you know what they call “alternative medicine” that’s been proved to work? Medicine.

10.10.11

Steven Pinker’s new book

2011-10-06T07:52:00.000-07:00

Human beings are becoming less and less violent. This is the premise of renowned psychologist Steven Pinker’s new book, The Better Angels Of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined.

Pinker is considered to be one of the finest science writers of our time, with a gift for making complex ideas accessible to the layperson in his typically lucid yet highly informative writing style. His book on human language, The Language Instinct (1994), is a science classic. Reading The Blank Slate (2002) was a milestone in my intellectual journey. Pinker’s arguments against the tabula rasa theories of the social sciences left an indelible impression on me, and he convincingly demolished the ‘noble savage’ and ‘ghost in the machine’ ideas so widely held. I’m looking forward to reading his latest work for a similarly illuminating experience.

John Horgan has written a mostly positive review of Better Angels. Sam Harris interviewed Pinker and posted the result on his blog. I especially liked Pinker’s response when Harris raised the issue of so-called ‘atheist’ atrocities (obviously a dig at a common, and incorrect, anti-atheism argument):

[Harris] Need I remind you that the “atheist regimes” of the 20th century killed tens of millions of people?

[Pinker] This is a popular argument among theoconservatives and critics of the new atheism, but for many reasons it is historically inaccurate.

First, the premise that Nazism and Communism were “atheist” ideologies makes sense only within a religiocentric worldview that divides political systems into those that are based on Judaeo-Christian ideology and those that are not. In fact, 20th-century totalitarian movements were no more defined by a rejection of Judaeo-Christianity than they were defined by a rejection of astrology, alchemy, Confucianism, Scientology, or any of hundreds of other belief systems. They were based on the ideas of Hitler and Marx, not David Hume and Bertrand Russell, and the horrors they inflicted are no more a vindication of Judeao-Christianity than they are of astrology or alchemy or Scientology.

Second, Nazism and Fascism were not atheistic in the first place. Hitler thought he was carrying out a divine plan. Nazism received extensive support from many German churches, and no opposition from the Vatican. Fascism happily coexisted with Catholicism in Spain, Italy, Portugal, and Croatia.

Third, according to the most recent compendium of history’s worst atrocities, Matthew White’s Great Big Book of Horrible Things (Norton, 2011), religions have been responsible for 13 of the 100 worst mass killings in history, resulting in 47 million deaths. Communism has been responsible for 6 mass killings and 67 million deaths. If defenders of religion want to crow, “We were only responsible for 47 million murders—Communism was worse!”, they are welcome to do so, but it is not an impressive argument.

Fourth, many religious massacres took place in centuries in which the world’s population was far smaller. Crusaders, for example, killed 1 million people in world of 400 million, for a genocide rate that exceeds that of the Nazi Holocaust. The death toll from the Thirty Years War was proportionally double that of World War I and in the range of World War II in Europe.

When it comes to the history of violence, the significant distinction is not one between theistic and atheistic regimes. It’s the one between regimes that were based on demonizing, utopian ideologies (including Marxism, Nazism, and militant religions) and secular liberal democracies that are based on the ideal of human rights. I present data from the political scientist Rudolph Rummel showing that democracies are vastly less murderous than alternative forms of government.

Pinker displays a reassuring optimism about humanity’s future, though it is tempered with a certain amount of realism.

Are you willing to make any predictions about violence in the future?

I think that the humanitarian movements that have gathered momentum since the Enlightenment will continue to make progress. The burning of heretics, gruesome executions, blood sports, slavery, debtors’ prisons, foot-binding, eunuchism, and wars between developed states won’t make a comeback any time soon. Most likely capital punishment, violence against women, human trafficking, the beating and bullying of children, and the persecution of homosexuals will continue to decline, albeit bumpily and unevenly, over a span of decades. I’m willing to go out on this limb because international moral shaming campaigns in the past (such as those against piracy, whaling, and slavery) have generally succeeded over the long term. I think there is also a non-negligible chance that within the next 25–50 years there will be fewer bloodthirsty despots, and that nuclear weapons could be abolished. But terrorist attacks, civil war, and wars involving non-democracies are too capricious to predict, since they depend so much on the actions of individuals. Also, crime rates have defied every expert prediction, and it would be foolish to say that they could not go back up.

While the gradual diminishment of violence is a welcome development, there is an argument that, historically, violence played a significant role in the formation of modern civilisation. Francis Fukuyama makes such an argument in his book The Origins of Political Order (2011):

Competition is crucial to the process of political development, just as it is in biological evolution. If competition did not exist, there would be no selection pressure on institutions, and therefore no incentives for institutional innovation, borrowing, or reform. One of the most important competitive pressures leading to institutional innovation has been violence and war. […] And when we looked at the historical record of state formation in China, India, the Middle East, and Europe, violence once again played a central role in incentivizing not just state formation but also the creation of the specific institutions we associate with modern states.

Violence may have given birth to the modern state and other attendant achievements, but its decline in the coming decades may facilitate even greater accomplishments, ones achieved with far less human suffering and death.

ADDENDUM: Here’s a video of Pinker giving a TED talk in 2007 on the subject of human violence and its historical decline. Better Angels fleshes out the points covered in this talk.

7.10.11

Possibly the BEST description of the Bible

2011-10-05T23:17:00.000-07:00

Biology professor Jerry Coyne is garnering a reputation for his public criticism of religion in general and accommodationism in particular (the Templeton Foundation is his arch-nemesis). Of course, this means that Coyne now attracts the attention of god-botherers who have had their pious sensibilities bruised by his arguments. Not that the good professor minds the (perhaps unintentional) publicity his opponents generate for him.

The latest sky-fairyist to take a snipe at Coyne is New York Times columnist Ross Douthat. Being a Catholic, Douthat takes issue with Coyne’s blog post eviscerating the Christian doctrine of Adam and Eve being the first humans and thus the progenitors of us all. But Coyne’s scientific debunking of that myth wasn’t what made Douthat go “tsk tsk”. No, what Douthat objected to was Coyne’s inability to see the Adam and Eve story as a metaphor. It’s supposed to be viewed through the lens of ‘sophisticated theology’, not taken literally! Simplistic atheists like Coyne misrepresent the subtleties of Christianity by painting all believers as Biblical literalists, Douthat squawks. To these protestations, Coyne responds:

I don’t insist on a view of “true” religion as a literal reading of scripture, whether it be the Bible, the Qur’an, or any other holy book. What I insist on is that those people who see some parts of scripture as metaphor, and others as true, kindly inform us how they know the difference.

Indeed, how do religionists know which bits of their sacred texts are to be taken as fact and which are to be read as metaphor? Could it be that they don’t actually have an objective method to make that discrimination? That they just make up the rules as they go along?

Religion: the original Calvinball

Fallible readers of supposedly infallible books are necessarily going to come up with faulty, inconsistent, contradictory interpretations. Coyne gives the best description of the Bible that I’ve ever come across. It’s accurate, fair, and unsparing.

The Bible is a jerry-rigged, sloppily-edited, largely fabricated, and palpably incomplete collection of oral traditions and myths, once intended to be the best explanation for the origins of our species, but now to be regarded merely as a quaint and occasionally enjoyable origin fable related by ignorant and relatively isolated primitive ancestors. It’s a palimpsest that is largely fictional, a story reworked many times, but based on our ancestors’ best understanding of how we came about. It’s simply a myth, no truer than the many myths, religious or otherwise, that preceded it. Embedded in it are some good moral lessons, but also many bad moral lessons. And the “good” morality doesn’t come from God, but was simply worked into the fairy tale by those who adhered to that morality for secular reasons.

6.10.11

When women betray their own gender

2011-10-05T06:32:00.000-07:00

Here’s the gist of Madeleine Bunting’s Guardian article: Western imperialists cynically used the oppression of women by the Taliban as a pretext to carry out the US-led Afghan War.

Bunting isn’t anti-women’s rights; she’s anti-fighting-for-women’s-rights-while-also-shooting-and-bombing-their-oppressors. Now this may seem like a fair enough position to take. Spreading the idea of gender equality shouldn’t require the invasion of another country and subsequent mass killing of its people. Yet Bunting affects a concerned pacifism that disturbingly slips into cultural relativism.

Regarding the initial enthusiasm for the Afghan War, she writes:

Key to this largely supportive public opinion was how, over the course of a few weeks in 2001, a war of revenge was reframed as a war for human rights in Afghanistan, and in particular the rights of women. It was a narrative to justify war that proved remarkably powerful. A cause that had been dismissed and ignored for years in Washington suddenly moved centre-stage. The video of a woman being executed in Kabul stadium that the Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan had offered to the BBC and CNN without success was taken up by the Pentagon and used extensively. The Taliban's brutal treatment of women, the closure of girls schools: all were used to justify military invasion and close down debate.

Alright, so the Bush administration overemphasised the oppression of Afghan women to sell its war to the American public and its allies. Valid point. But Bunting then pulls out the ‘you-don’t-understand-the-culture’ card, presumably to shame her readers into seeing the ‘other side of the story’.

Over the last decade little attention has been paid to understanding Afghanistan and its history. The country had experienced various attempts during the 20th century to bring progress to Afghan women. These ended in failure, prompting deep resistance because they were seen as foreign, imported modernisation that corroded traditional Afghan identity. The issue of women's rights opened up divides between the urban and rural populations and between different ethnic groups in an already fragmented country. The position of women has been deeply politicised in this war-torn country. In conservative rural areas, powerbrokers built up their legitimacy with appeals to traditional values. Girls' education was a particularly sensitive subject, provoking anxieties about the transmission of conservative values and the functioning of kinship groups. Such entrenched social systems cannot be re-engineered by outsiders, however well-intentioned.

Bunting indulges in the usual West-bashing (what naïve, arrogant fools were we for trying to impose our liberal values on a stubbornly conservative culture!), but nowhere in her article does she explicitly condemn the horrible treatment of Afghan women by the patriarchal culture she discusses. That’s right, the ‘culture’ Bunting refers to isn’t one that women have created, contributed and consented to as the equals of the men. As the Heresiarch points out in his criticism of Bunting’s article, specifically the paragraph quoted above (his emphasis):

Nowhere in it does Bunting acknowledge that her paean to Afghan culture is entirely male-centred. When she talks of culture, she means male culture. When she writes that attempts – for example by Afghanistan's last king – to improve the lot of women encountered “deep resistance because they were seen as foreign, imported modernisation that corroded traditional Afghan identity”, what she means is that the reforms encountered deep resistance from men. When she suggests that “the issue of women's rights opened up divides ... between different ethnic groups”, what she really means is that it opened up divides between the male leaderships of different ethnic groups. Girls’ education was a particularly sensitive subject among men, provoking male anxieties about the transmission of conservative values and the functioning of kinship groups.

If conveniently ignoring (or at least downplaying) the misogyny present in Afghan culture wasn’t bad enough, Bunting goes on to suggest that by waging war in Afghanistan, the West actually made that misogyny worse:

What has also been ignored is any understanding of how Afghanistan's long history of conflict affected gender roles. There is plenty of research on the impact of conflict on women, who are increasingly among its primary victims. They experience violence from both enemies and friends. The common pattern is that conflict polarises gender roles: masculinity becomes more aggressive and women are idealised as “the bearers of a cultural identity”, in the words of the World Health Organisation. Their bodies become part of the battle field. This is as true of the Democratic Republic of the Congo as of Afghanistan. In the latter, foreign intervention ultimately only exacerbates such deeply destructive trends.

So now it’s the fault of the West that Afghan girls get acid thrown on them if they dare to go to school. That’s what happens when interfering do-gooders try to “re-engineer” “entrenched social systems”. Nevermind that such a social system denies an entire gender its basic human rights and could do with some positive re-engineering.

Going by the following paragraph, Bunting is prepared to sacrifice the right of Afghan women to the same quality of life and opportunities that she enjoys for the sake of security, if not peace, in Afghanistan.

On Monday Oxfam brings out a report urging the international community not to trade in women’s rights in a peace settlement with the Taliban. It calls for a longterm commitment to support women. I admire and understand the sincerity of their intentions but question whether women’s rights should be an obstacle in the process of a settlement. And I’m sceptical as to whether foreign powers are in a position to impose negotiating terms. A degree of security in Afghanistan – it hardly merits the word peace – may cost women’s rights as it did in the 1990s, and many Afghan women may regard that as tragic but necessary.

“Many Afghan women may regard that as tragic but necessary.” How delighted these women must be to have such a staunch champion like Madeleine Bunting. Bunting can afford to make these sorts of sagely comments on Afghanistan because, as the Heresiarch notes:

She doesn’t have to live there. And when Western troops do eventually leave Afghan women to their fate, as will happen soon enough, she won’t even have to think about it.

6.10.11

Warren vs Rand

2011-10-04T05:04:00.000-07:00

Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren is the antithesis of Ayn Rand, the writer and founder of Objectivism. Two months ago Warren gave a speech that was essentially a rebuttal to Rand’s philosophical ideas concerning the rights of the individual versus the rights of the society in which an individual lives.

Rand notoriously rejected the idea that society, i.e. the state, had a rightful claim to a share of the fruits of an individual’s labour, i.e. taxes. Rand believed that taxation was a form of theft, since it involves the use of force or coercion by the state to take people’s money without requiring their consent. However, since governments require revenue in order to function, Rand conceded that taxes were necessary but insisted that they should be voluntary, and only collected to fund the most basic services that the state could rightfully be expected to provide: the police, the military, and the law courts.

Rand wrote the following in her book The Virtue of Selfishness (1964), in the chapter titled ‘Government Financing in a Free Society’ (emphasis hers):

In a fully free society, taxation—or, to be exact, payment for governmental services—would be voluntary. Since the proper services of a government—the police, the armed forces, the law courts—are demonstrably needed by individual citizens and affect their interests directly, the citizens would (and should) be willing to pay for such services, as they pay for insurance. […]

The principle of voluntary government financing rests on the following premises: that the government is not the owner of the citizens’ income and, therefore, cannot hold a blank check on that income—that the nature of the proper governmental services must be constitutionally defined and delimited, leaving the government no power to enlarge the scope of its services at its own arbitrary discretion. Consequently, the principle of voluntary government financing regards the government as the servant, not the ruler, of the citizens—as an agent who must be paid for his services, not as a benefactor whose services are gratuitous, who dispenses something for nothing.

Taking these arguments as her moral basis for opposing compulsory taxation, Rand condemned as immoral any attempt by the state to impose higher taxes on the rich. To do so, in her view, would be to unjustly punish those who benefited others through their ingenuity, risk-taking and hard work. In her 1957 novel Atlas Shrugged, Rand put these words into the mouth of her individualist hero, John Galt:

[W]hen you live in a rational society, where men are free to trade, you receive an incalculable bonus: the material value of your work is determined not only by your effort, but by the effort of the best productive minds who exist in the world around you.

When you work in a modern factory, you are paid, not only for your labor, but for all the productive genius which has made that factory possible: for the work of the industrialist who built it, for the work of the investor who saved the money to risk on the untried and the new, for the work of the engineer who designed the machines of which you are pushing the levers, for the work of the inventor who created the product which you spend your time on making, for the work of the scientist who discovered the laws that went into the making of that product, for the work of the philosopher who taught men how to think and whom you spend your time denouncing.

Contrast this glorification of the individual producer with Elizabeth Warren’s speech where she points out the producer’s dependence on taxes paid by the rest of society:

There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear:

You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for; you hired workers the rest of us paid to educate; you were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did.

Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific? Or a great idea? God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.

Warren debunks Rand’s individualist myth that the lone productive genius owes nothing to society. On the contrary, the relationship between producers and society is symbiotic: both parties need each other in order to flourish. Tax rates should reflect this mutual dependency. Rand may be partially correct in asserting the importance of great minds whose ideas have a positive impact on society. Yet her extreme individualism ignores the fact that no man is an island. As Warren mentioned, without society’s collective contribution, the success and wealth of producers would have been achieved with greater difficulty, if at all.

4.10.11

Happy Blasphemy Day!

2011-09-29T08:40:00.000-07:00

Blasphemy is an epithet bestowed by superstition upon common sense.

- Robert Green Ingersoll

Today is International Blasphemy Rights Day. It’s an appropriate occasion to reflect on one basic human right many of us take for granted: freedom of expression. Many countries, particularly those with Muslim majorities or theocracies, have laws against insulting or criticising religion. Punishments for transgressing such laws include fines, jail, and the death penalty. Apart from these legal, state-sanctioned punishments, there’s also the informal consequences of social condemnation, ostracism and physical violence inflicted upon those who overtly disrespect religion.

Blasphemy laws have been used to silence and intimidate those who dare to challenge religion’s self-awarded exemption from criticism and mockery. Mortal, fallible men (and they are almost always men) pretend that they are defending the sacredness of their God by creating laws punishing those who slander him, but what they are really doing is imposing their own temporal authority on others. As the 19th century American humanist orator and outspoken critic of religion Robert Green Ingersoll observed:

An infinite God ought to be able to protect himself, without going in partnership with State Legislatures. Certainly he ought not so to act that laws become necessary to keep him from being laughed at. No one thinks of protecting Shakespeare from ridicule, by the threat of fine and imprisonment.

Let’s be clear about the purpose of Blasphemy Rights Day – it’s not an excuse to be a dick just for kicks. As the good folks at the Center for Inquiry explain:

The goal is not to promote hate or violence. While many perceive blasphemy as insulting and offensive, it isn't about getting enjoyment out of ridiculing and insulting others. The day was created as a reaction against those who would seek to take away the right to satirize and criticize a particular set of beliefs given a privileged status over other beliefs. Criticism and dissent towards opposing views is the only way in which any nation with any modicum of freedom can exist.

If we can make fun of people’s political, philosophical or cultural convictions, we should be free to do the same for their religious ones. Religionists who demand that their beliefs be treated as an exceptional case are like so many naked emperors demanding that their non-existent raiment be unquestioningly admired. But they’re starkers, and blasphemers are simply pointing that out.

30.9.11

The end of print?

2011-09-27T10:47:00.000-07:00

Sam Harris’s latest blog post spells out in brow-furrowing, lip-chewing detail the gloomy future of the printed book. Fellow bibliophiles are going to find it a depressing read. I do.

Martin at Furious Purpose has commented on the rather dire Melbourne bookshop scene. Borders and Angus & Robertson are gone. My regular supplier of ink-on-dead-trees, Reader’s Feast, is now a famine – they shut shop a few months ago. The only bookstore left that is likely to stock the kind of books I’m willing to pay grossly inflated prices for (thanks Australian government! /sarcasm) is Readings in Carlton. If (when?) that place shutters, I’m going to need therapy.

In this digital, Amazonian age we currently inhabit, book lovers need to somehow make the printed word indispensable, hip even. John Waters has an idea on how to do just that.

HT: Martin

28.9.11

Blackford on how religion disparages the good things in life

2011-09-27T04:46:00.000-07:00

Earlier this month Russell Blackford participated in a debate organised by Intelligence Squared Australia, with the motion ‘Atheists are wrong’. Blackford along with Jane Caro and Tamas Pataki made up the ‘against’ team, which won the debate (insert smug smile here). In a recent blog post, Blackford comments on how the debate arguments of Tracey Rowland – who was for the motion – reflect a common characteristic of religion: its propensity to “[do] dirt on everything good in life”. Whether it’s social relationships, politics, trade or sex, religion preaches that without God, these things lose their value, or become corrupted. As Rowland, informed by her Catholicism, sees it:

Sexual relations hollowed out into their materialist shell become mutual manipulation; political relations hollowed out into their materialist shell become brutal power; and market relations hollowed out into their material shell give us consumerism and status anxiety.

Blackford disagrees. The presence or absence of a supernatural divinity is irrelevant to the goodness or badness of things like politics or sex. In fact, the religionist insistence that their goodness depends on the existence of a supernatural divinity belittles their inherent worth, as Blackford argues:

Religionists cannot explain how the supernatural makes things that are not otherwise good become so, or how good things are any less so in the absence of some sort of supernatural power. No one has ever shown how that is a coherent way of thinking about the issues. If something has the properties that are required to satisfy certain human needs, desires, interests, etc., then we are quite entitled to judge it as "good" ... whether a supernatural power, such as God, exists or not.

The sort of ridiculous, unsubstantiated claims made by Rowland and her sky-fairyist ilk are rooted in the same emotive soil that feeds anti-scientific criticisms accusing science of ‘disenchanting’ the world. According to its detractors, science sucks the fuzzy-wuzzy, warm gooey caramel centre out of things like love, beauty and ‘spirituality’ (an ambiguous term) with its cold, unromantic, materialist ideology. What tosh. If any ideology is sucking the life-affirming goodness out of human preoccupations, it’s religion, with its perverse delight in seeing corruption, shame and taint in what are actually natural, pleasurable and even beneficial aspects of our humanity.

Blackford rightly asserts that “the religious mind thinks little of human pleasure and desire, and so disparages ordinary kinds of goodness.”

Religion is not the root of all evil, but it is far from being the source of ordinary goodness in our lives. On the contrary, it is an enemy of ordinary goodness. We can lead good and fruitful lives without God or any belief in the supernatural, and that's what I suggest we all do. Life without God is not thereby way diminished or hollowed out. That's an unsustainable claim. It is pathological to think of the world that way.

Quite so.

27.9.11

More from Christina on fashion (and its frustrations)

2011-09-22T23:24:00.000-07:00

It seems that Greta Christina’s previous posts on fashion rubbed some of her readers the wrong way. She felt compelled to address this pushback with another post, where she clarifies her original argument that fashion is a form of communication, whether one is conscious of it or not.

Judging by the raw nerves this subject matter has touched, one thing fashion definitely isn’t is irrelevant. Love it, hate it, apathetic about it – so long as we homo sapiens are subject to both the physical necessity of clothing our bodies and the psychological occupations of our inner lives (status anxieties, moral values, sexual attraction, aesthetic appreciation, emotional needs and cognitive biases), we will inevitably have some kind of relationship to fashion.

I sympathise with Christina’s position, yet I also understand why her views have caused offence. Still, she’s trying to meet her dissenters halfway by acknowledging their grievances against either her arguments or fashion itself. But people being people, I doubt that the controversy surrounding anything fashion related will be tidily resolved by Christina’s latest essay.

23.9.11

“It’s not the coolness of atheism. It’s the lameness of religion.”

2011-09-21T23:29:00.000-07:00

Anglican archbishop Rowan Williams thinks that religion (i.e. Williams’s own Jesus-centric brand of it) is losing the popularity contest to atheism because godlessness is perceived to be ‘cool’. The presumably uncool archbishop opines:

I'm not avoiding the point that the coolness of atheism is very much in evidence. The problem is it's become a bit of a vicious circle. Atheism is cool, so books about atheism are cool.

They get a high profile, and books that say Richard Dawkins is wrong don't get the same kind of publicity because atheism is the new cool thing.

Why of course! Atheism is gaining traction because it’s, like, so trendy now to apply reason and critical thinking to fabulous claims. Asking for supporting evidence is avant-garde! Questioning superstitious, unfounded beliefs is so ‘in’ this season! After all, this fickle, juvenile, ephemeral atheism craze has only been around since the time of Socrates (who actually was one cool cat).

PZ Myers has a characteristically eloquent reply to Williams’s remarks:

[Williams is] making a very common error of perspective. I hate to break the news to all of you, but atheism is not cool. It’s not cool at all. It’s the domain of nerds and geeks and sciencey weirdos with beards and snarky women who are way smarter than the guys chasing them. We are not rock stars. We are not fabulously sexy (well, except for Brian Cox). We tend not to have loud movie star personalities (well, except for Neil deGrasse Tyson). Nothing personal, but if you put together a line-up of one of the Kardashians, Miley Cyrus, Justin Bieber, Daniel Radcliffe, and Richard Dawkins, and showed them to the average person on the American street, most of our citizens’ eyes would light up in recognition at the first four, and look quizzically at the guy on the end. And no, it wouldn’t help much to swap in Brian Cox for Richard Dawkins.

But that’s the point: cool is a relative thing. Coolness depends on what you contrast it with. And that’s really Rowan Williams’ problem.

It’s not the coolness of atheism. It’s the lameness of religion.

Exactamundo, dude.

Williams has a pretty strange conception of ‘cool’. So he thinks it’s cool to be the most despised and least trusted demographic group in highly religious societies? That it’s cool to be threatened, harassed and have your privacy violated simply because you associate with atheist groups? That it’s cool to be part of an often persecuted minority in cultures that privilege religion and its believers in various ways, from tax-exemptions to taboos against criticism or mockery?

Atheism and atheists are not ‘cool’. Godless folks may be many other things: courageous, rational, informed, intellectually honest. But not cool. And certainly not lame.

22.9.11

A woman after my own heart

2011-09-12T08:10:00.000-07:00

Greta Christina is really starting to grow on me. Her post on the difference between atheist diplomacy and accommodationism hit all the right notes – she clearly defined what it means to be an atheist who respects religious believers, yet does not surrender her intellectual integrity and commitment to truth and reason.

Now Christina has written an intelligent, provocative essay on another topic of interest to me – fashion.

Those who know me are quite aware of my fondness for certain styles of clothing. And to say that I don’t mind wearing a nice hat would be deliberately coy of me. It’s no big secret; clothes excite me, for various reasons. Christina pretty much nails the key ones in her essay – they’re a form of self expression, they can give aesthetic pleasure, they can be a psychological booster and comforter.

Christina acknowledges the less flattering sides of fashion – the slavish adherence to fickle trends, the arbitrary authority of tastemakers (designers, critics, magazine editors, retailers), the unethical labour and manufacturing practices of many fashion companies, the vacuous superficiality it can (and often does) promote. But Christina makes an interesting comparison between fashion and food that supports her celebration of fashion without ignoring or trivialising its dark side. You’ll just have to read her essay to see what I mean.

So Christina’s a smart, articulate, engaging, passionate atheist and feminist who has a thing for fashion and style. If she wasn’t a happily married lesbian, I might have entertained the possibility of an exclusive, mutually satisfying bond of affection between us. Just don’t call it ‘romance’.

13.9.11

Against romantic love

2011-09-05T06:05:00.000-07:00

If I must name one writer who has had a life-changing impact on me, it would be Alain de Botton. He was my First Philosopher, since his books introduced me to a lot of the more famous philosophers who preceded him. The name and nature of this blog have their ultimate origins in de Botton – although they were inspired by Michel de Montaigne’s Essais, or ‘Attempts’, it was de Botton, in his Consolations of Philosophy (2000), who brought about my fateful encounter with the 16th century French writer and inventor of the essay.

I read de Botton’s The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work (2009) when it first came out, and followed his column in Standpoint until it was dropped from the magazine last year. Since then I haven’t read any more of his writing, mostly because I discovered other writers who then proceeded to consume a greater and greater portion of my reading attention. So it was a pleasant surprise when a few days ago I found a de Botton piece in the very first issue of Australian men’s magazine Smith Journal (published by the same folks behind Frankie). It was like bumping into an old friend you hadn’t seen in years. In my case, a friend who had played a large part in making me the person I am today.

De Botton’s Smith Journal article (Ten Things I Believe) is a collection of ‘wisdom nuggets’ that distils much of the practical philosophy he has espoused in his books. Topically, he ranges from education to happiness to travel to money, but it’s de Botton’s take on love, specifically romantic love, that resonated with me. He writes:

If there is a conclusive argument against romantic love, it is that it draws sentimentally upon an idealised childhood template of love, failing to acknowledge that no adult can ever give another the sense of security that they tasted when young, and should not be expected to shield quite so much of their own fragility, need and anxiety.

Adult love shouldn’t be about remembering what it was like to be loved as a child, but imagining what it took for a parent to love us.

I should stress that neither de Botton nor myself am repudiating things like affection, trust, intimacy and other good, tender values that constitute that many-splendoured thing called love. We simply agree that rose-tinted glasses are unnecessary, and can even be counterproductive, when it comes to the great love project engaged in by our species.

On relationships and marriage, de Botton continues:

None of the emotions that we expect to find inside a good modern marriage are unusual in themselves. We find them well described in art and literature across all cultures and eras. What makes modern marriage extraordinary in its ambitions is the expectation that these emotions should reliably be entertained over a lifetime with the very same person. We want marriage to be a fusion of love, family and sex. I believe in all three, but I do doubt whether they can be enjoyed at the same time with the same person. That’s the craziness of modern romanticism.

Lest you think that these are the sentiments of a bitter, envious, sexually repressed and socially inept virgin, de Botton is (presumably happily) married with two (presumably adorable) children.

I broadly agree with what has been expressed above, but I would add that pop culture – as manifested in love songs, romantic films and novels, relationship advice columns – has exerted a muscular influence on social norms and expectations regarding sexual love. Several years ago I scribbled down in a notebook the following thoughts on this very idea of pop culture ‘infecting’ our conception of sexual love.

Love, as an ideal, is contaminated by all the popular depictions of it in literature, music, art, film and all the many storytelling media ever conceived by a fertile imagination. A person’s conception of romantic, erotic, passionate love is unavoidably informed, coloured, by her mental bank of images, experiences, expectations, representations, taboos, stigmas, affirmations, vindications and various memetic paraphernalia gleaned from some form of media for the purpose of identity construction. Her romantic hopes, fears, desires and biases are in a sense not purely hers. Their origins lie elsewhere, outside of her.

When it comes to romantic love, we imagine ourselves playing a certain role in a specific context, and likewise cast the object of our love in a compatible role (rarely do we imagine them to be incompatible; we are not so masochistic). The common ‘poor fit’ between two actors in the love story owes largely to our miscasting of our co-star. The girl you saw as that sassy yet sweet protagonist from your favourite Korean television series turns out to have a bit too much sass for your liking; meanwhile you are not quite the strong, sensitive, talented character she conjures from a mix-bag of funk-soul band frontman, Left Bank café intellectual and rugged, boot-cut denimed cowboy.

We see the object of our longing through other eyes apart from our own. We approach love along paths pioneered by the professional storytellers and corporate mythmakers. And the compass you carry to navigate your way through love’s labyrinthine complexities is likely to be aligned to that bold, sexy yet vulnerable figure who haunts your heart from the monochromatic pages of a critically acclaimed, bestselling manga.

I’d love to know what the die-hard romantics reading this think of de Botton’s and my arguments against romanticism. Can you persuade me of its merits?

5.9.11

Greta Christina hits the nail on the head

2011-09-02T09:37:00.000-07:00

Sometimes you come across an article so well written, so accurate in its analysis of the issue at hand, it practically gives you the shivers. You silently - or not so silently - shout “Yes!”, “Right on!”, “Damn straight!”, “Fuck yeah!”

Greta Christina’s recent blog post on the difference between a diplomatic atheist and an outright accommodationist is one such piece of shiver-inducing, shout-producing writing. This is a memo every sycophant of religion should get, since they seem to have trouble with making the distinction between respecting people and respecting ideas. This may come as news to them, but you can do the former without also doing the latter, especially if the ideas are demonstrably wrong, harmful or just plain idiotic.

I have religious friends who I respect and admire, and even have deep affection for a few, since the values we hold in common greatly outweigh our metaphysical disagreements. I try to be diplomatic by not callously sticking a knife into their beliefs every chance I get. But I do not accommodate those beliefs by pretending that they’re rational or true, or accepting that they’re protected by an anti-criticism force field. And my theist friends know all too well where I stand on the matter of religion.

Forthright critics of theism and the religious structures built around it are often recipients of undeserved invective from nicer-than-thou types. People like Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, Maryam Namazie, Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Christina herself are called everything from arrogant to militant to simplistic by those who either haven’t actually read their work, or have read it but consider any criticism, no matter how valid its basis and measured its delivery, to be a smack to the face.

And all that’s coming from their fellow atheists!

Christina’s article is a much needed corrective to the prevalent misconception held by ‘nice’ atheists that being diplomatic to religionists means bending over backwards to accommodate their irrational, pernicious, baseless superstitions. Whether it’s out of political correctness, or a (misplaced) sense of fairness, or, let’s admit it, fear of being shot, cut down or blown to bloody pieces by death-cult fanatics, the accommodationist wet-dream where critics of religion either play nice or just STFU is misguided, cynical and cowardly.

Christina sums it up beautifully:

Our problem is not with being civil and friendly to believers, or with trying to make alliances with them. Our problem is with bowing to religion. Our problem is with accepting religion’s assessment of itself as a special case, an idea that ought to be above criticism. Our problem is with seeing religion the same way believers see religion, and treating it the way believers want it to be treated… even when it’s grossly harmful, laughably ridiculous, wildly out of touch with reality, or all three at once.

Our problem is not with working with religious believers as equals.

Our problem is with bending to religion as its subordinate.

Accomodationism is not diplomacy. Accomodationism is not necessary for diplomacy. Let’s not treat it as though it is.

Yes. Right on. Damn straight. Fuck yeah.

3.9.11

Randians abandon Sam Harris

2011-08-28T02:15:00.000-07:00

Apparently there were quite a number of Ayn Rand devotees who, until recently, were fans of Sam Harris. But when Harris wrote a blog post in support of higher (i.e. fairer) taxes on the rich, the Randians were not impressed.

As a former Objectivist sympathiser, I can understand why Randians would see a kindred spirit in Harris. The guy’s an outspoken atheist, an advocate for science, reason and knowledge, and a proponent of objective morality. But when Harris made the (entirely rational) case for tax increases on America’s super-rich, boy, did he royally piss off the Cult of Virtuous Selfishness.

I stopped believing in many Objectivist ideas for several reasons, both intellectual and emotional. One such reason was my realisation that the Objectivist view of justice – that people got only what they deserved – was simply wrong. Harris explains why (emphasis his):

Many of my critics pretend that they have been entirely self-made. They seem to feel responsible for their intellectual gifts, for their freedom from injury and disease, and for the fact that they were born at a specific moment in history. Many appear to have absolutely no awareness of how lucky one must be to succeed at anything in life, no matter how hard one works. One must be lucky to be able to work. One must be lucky to be intelligent, to not have cerebral palsy, or to not have been bankrupted in middle age by the mortal illness of a spouse.

And that’s what Objectivists refuse to admit – their accomplishments are not entirely a result of their own awesomeness and hard graft. Other external factors contributed to their successes, whether they acknowledge this or not. Conversely, unsuccessful or poor people didn’t get that way simply because they were lazy and stupid. “But for Fortune there go I” is a phrase that is anathema to the Objectivist conception of self-betterment.

It’s a pity that the Randians have excommunicated Sam Harris from their intellectual life. He has so much to offer those who care about ideas. Well, it’s their loss. That the person the Objectivists denounce is actually more rational than them is an all too common irony.

28.8.11

An open letter to the Chinese film industry

2011-08-24T15:56:00.000-07:00

Dear sirs and madams,

I write to you as an avid fan of your country’s unique and distinguished moviemaking tradition. The films of Chinese luminaries such as Zhang Yimou, Chen Kaige and Wong Kar Wai have indelibly seared themselves onto my consciousness. I am overcome with emotion from simply recalling the lush colours and sensuous textures that permeate the finest offerings of Chinese cinema. I also really dig Chinese chicks.

But lately I have become somewhat vexed with the repetitiveness of Chinese films, specifically those of the wuxia and epic historical genres. A casual glance over the stock of my local bootleg Asian DVD shop reveals a glut of swords, spears, armour, banners, period costume and Donnie Yen’s consistently stone-faced mug sporting varying lengths of facial hair.

New broadsword, same as the old broadsword

Of course, you may have your reasons for cranking out such a prodigious amount of historical films. Perhaps they provide gainful employment for the millions of rural migrants who make up the on-screen armies. Perhaps the Communist Party imposes quotas for such films. Perhaps they are the only kind of films Donnie Yen is prepared to act in for just a six-pack of Tsingtao and a pat on the bum.

Clearly your glorious country has no shortage of manpower, talent and cash to throw at insipid, unoriginal, invariably chopsocky sword-and-silk productions. But what about science-fiction movies? There is a noticeable dearth of visionary sci-fi filmmakers amongst your countrymen. Where is your Stanley Kubrick? Your James Cameron? Your Ridley Scott? Your Mamoru Oshii? By the way, if you do find yourselves a Chinese George Lucas, let him make one sci-fi trilogy. Then shoot him.

Science-fiction is a genre that remains largely untapped by the Chinese film industry. Think of what Chinese cinema could accomplish in this field by transplanting the visual bravura and poetic action of martial arts and epic historical films onto a galactic space-opera far, far away, or a dystopian future Earth, or a virtual reality.

There is much promise in Chinese-made sci-fi films. But for the love of Mao, could you please pick someone other than Donnie Yen to star in them? I don’t care how good he looks jackhammering android alien bugs with his fists, or how balletic his flying kicks are in zero G. The guy is like in 11 out of 10 historical movies your studios churn out. His output defies the laws of space-time.

I look forward to a new era in Chinese cinema that embraces the potential of science-fiction to tell intelligent, compelling, exciting stories that make us imagine what could be, not just what has been. Chinese sci-fi could address issues of universal concern, but with a distinctive vernacular of its own that looks to the future, not the past.

Meanwhile we wait for a Chinese Metropolis.

Yours sincerely,

Darrick Lim

25.8.11

What gives religion its edge

2011-08-24T06:15:00.000-07:00

Alright religion, you win. Science just hasn't got what it takes to answer the BIG questions.

If only scientists didn't have such bloody intellectual integrity. *sigh*

24.8.11

HT: Jerry Coyne

The misconceptions of ‘cultural’ Christianity

2011-08-23T08:04:00.000-07:00

Two recent events have brought into focus the idea of Christianity being the cultural bedrock of Western civilisation. The first is the Norway massacre carried out by Anders Behring Breivik, and the second is the ‘Mark No Religion’ campaign conducted in the lead up to the Australian 2011 census just past. The concept of ‘cultural’ Christianity laid at the heart of both events; Breivik was not religious, yet saw himself as defending Europe’s ‘cultural Christendom’ against Muslim invaders, while the ‘Mark No Religion’ census campaign sought to educate Australians on the distinction between being a follower of the Christian faith, and being an irreligious member of a Christian-influenced culture.

This idea of a cultural Christianity inseparable from Western identity and values contains several errors. Kenan Malik has written an informative article that spells out what these errors are. I summarise it below:

Many of Christianity’s ethical and philosophical ideas have their origins in ancient Greek and Jewish intellectual traditions. Whether it’s the Sermon on the Mount, the Golden Rule or universal compassion, key Christian values have their roots in pre-Christian cultures.
Far from being the source of all good and decent elements of Western civilisation, Christianity’s unique contribution – the concept of Original Sin – has arguably undermined humanity’s confidence in its own innate goodness. Christianity’s bleak, cynical view of human ethical agency has had pernicious effects that reverberate down to the present day.
Although the Church kept alive some semblance of a learned culture during the Dark Ages, it also contributed to that intellectualism’s stagnation and decay by favouring Christian dogma over pagan knowledge. The curiosity, critical thinking and empiricism of the Greeks were spurned by Christian thinkers like Tertullian and Augustine, the latter writing in his Confessions that the desire to discover “the hidden powers of nature” was a “disease”.
Those same Greek thinkers (like Aristotle) whose ideas were rejected by the early Church were embraced by Muslim intellectuals. Thanks to them, Classical knowledge and philosophy survived long enough to be transmitted centuries later to a more welcoming European audience. Much of Western accomplishments in science, philosophy and mathematics were enabled by the Muslim Middle East.
Western values like democracy, equality, toleration and freedom of speech are largely products of the Enlightenment and the subsequent centuries leading up to modernity. Furthermore, those aspects of Western ideals that pre-date the Enlightenment do not have their genesis in Christianity, but, as noted above, in ancient Greek philosophy. Yet the modern forms of such ideals are neither distinctively Christian nor Greek.

There is however one facet of Western civilisation that arguably owes its existence to Christianity, or specifically the Catholic Church – the rule of law. In The Origins of Political Order: Volume 1 (Chapter 18: The church becomes a state), political scientist Francis Fukuyama writes:

The rule of law in Europe was rooted in Christianity. Long before there were European states, there was a Christian pontiff in Rome who could establish authoritative laws of the church. European rules regarding marriage and the inheritance of property were dictated not initially by a monarch but by individuals like Pope Gregory I, who passed clear instructions to his delegate Augustine, sent to convert the pagan king Ethelbert of Britain to Christianity.

The main point of Kenan Malik’s essay is that the panic over the decline of Christianity in places like Europe is unwarranted. Malik argues that Western values are not synonymous with Christian ones, and that the latter isn’t essential for the former to survive. He concludes:

The reason to challenge the crass alarmism about the decline of Christianity is not simply to lay to rest the myths and misconceptions about the Christian tradition. It is also because that alarmism is itself undermining the very values – tolerance, equal treatment, universal rights – for the defence of which we supposedly need a Christian Europe. The erosion of Christianity will not necessarily lead to the erosion of such values. The crass defence of Christendom against the barbarian hordes may well do.

24.8.11

Not just fraudsters, but bullies too

2011-08-18T06:59:00.000-07:00

Let’s say that you’re a large corporation or institution that has staked its profits and prestige on nothing more than a confidence trick. What do you do when someone calls you out on your public deception? Well, since you can’t actually defend your claims with evidence (because you haven’t got any), you’ll just have to sue that pesky know-it-all critic. With the deep pockets you’ve got, you can easily afford a legal campaign to silence anyone who had the temerity to expose your lies.

The British Chiropractic Association did exactly that to the journalist Simon Singh when he wrote a Guardian article criticising chiropractic. And now Boiron, a French manufacturer of ~~sugar pills~~ homeopathic ‘remedies’, is using the same bully tactics against an Italian blogger, Samuele Riva, who pointed out in a post that Boiron’s flu ‘treatment’ product Oscillococcinum doesn’t actually do anything. Like all homeopathic medicine, the so-called active ingredient has been diluted so many times to the point where there isn’t any left in the final product. Homeopathy ideology posits that water has ‘memory’, so even though there aren’t any physical traces of the original active ingredient left after multiple dilutions, its remedial power is nonetheless ‘remembered’ by the water, and thus retained.

Over at Science-Based Medicine (where real medical professionals advocate for evidence-based treatments, not magic), Steven Novella has written a great post on the Boiron case. And here’s Darryl Cunningham’s educational comic strip on homeopathy.

Quacks and snake-oil salesmen like the BCA and Boiron should really familiarise themselves with the Streisand effect. It might give them pause before they call their lawyers.

18.8.11

Nothing new under the sun

2011-08-17T23:41:00.000-07:00

There’s been a lot of commentary, explanation, interpretation, rationalisation, condemnation and justification going on regarding the UK riots. To pick only a tiny sample, there’s writer and cultural critic Kenan Malik’s take (it’s largely the fault of the Right), and there’s The Economist’s (it’s a bit more complicated than that). The New Humanist calls bullshit on the more ludicrous examples of the post hoc discourse, while the Heresiarch cheekily exposes the absurdity of all the post hoc discourse.

Here’s a typical censure of out-of-control hooligans:

What is happening to our young people? They disrespect their elders, they disobey their parents. They ignore the law. They riot in the streets inflamed with wild notions. Their morals are decaying. What is to become of them?

A Tory politician wagging a stern finger at British youthdom? A baby-boomer lamenting the dusk of good manners and personal responsibility? A conservative newspaper columnist asking hard, discomfiting questions?

No, it’s Plato having a gripe in the Athens agora circa 4th century BC.

Some things never change.

18.8.11

Think Inc. - a science and rationalism conference in Melbourne

2011-08-17T06:37:00.000-07:00

The Think Inc. science and rationalism conference is just one month away, on 18th September. The three guys behind the Melbourne event have somehow managed to sign on heavyweights like Christopher Hitchens, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Neil deGrasse Tyson and Michael Shermer to give talks on the following topic – In the next 10 years, what does the global community need to do in order to survive and flourish?

Apparently Think Inc. is the first large scale science and rationalism conference put together by the young organisers (James and Sean are 24, and Desh is 30). The three have had some experience in organising large music events, but it’s impressive that they’ve convinced such intellectual giants to come all the way down to Melbourne to edify us antipodeans. Being at the arse end of the world and thus so far removed from all the rationalist action in the US and Europe, having Hitchens, Hirsi Ali, deGrasse Tyson and Shermer gracing our sunburnt country is like receiving drought-breaking rain. There’ll also be Aussie speakers representing, but let’s face it, the foreigners are the main crowd-pullers.

Sadly, Hitchens and Hirsi Ali will only be figuratively gracing this wide brown land. Hitchens’s cancer treatment has made him too ill to travel, and Hirsi Ali won’t be physically attending the conference for security reasons (she has received death threats from local religious fanatics. Oh the joys of being a hunted woman simply for opposing Islam). They’ll both be giving their talks via live video link. Yes, it’s a disappointment, but their oratory power will be little diminished. It’s still going to be the Hitch directly addressing us in that inimitable way he has with words.

Tickets are selling fast, so be sure to grab yours ASAP. And if you’re a science teacher, those generous Think Inc. lads are offering you a FREE seat! How awesome is that!

Here’s the suitably blockbuster-esque promo video for the conference.

I look forward to meeting my Melbourne readers at Think Inc. You folks are going to be there, yes?

17.8.11

Australian Census 2011 (and a dishonest census collector)

2011-08-03T05:41:00.000-07:00

We’ve received our census form at our place, but I haven’t gone through it yet. With a week to go before the official census night, I’d like to remind my fellow irreligious heathens to please tick the ‘No religion’ box on your form. Answering the religion question is optional, but doing so will contribute towards a more accurate picture of religiosity levels in Australia. Our New Zealand neighbours had their last census in 2006, with 34.7 percent of Kiwis professing no religion. Impressive. Let’s see if we can get a higher percentage of godless folk than those Hobbit-lovers.

The Mark ‘No Religion’ campaign has raised awareness about the secularist cause championed by the Atheist Foundation of Australia (AFA) along with other atheist, humanist and secularist groups and individuals. The purpose of the campaign was not to tell Australians how to fill out their census forms, but to encourage those who aren’t religious to answer the religion question honestly and correctly. Which is what a certain census collector did not do when he suggested that a Canberra couple mark themselves as Christian even if they weren’t.

According to David Rollston, the census collector told him and his wife that “if people were only nominally Christian or non-practising, they should indicate in the census they were Christian, otherwise the demographic could be swayed” and they “would end up with a Muslim prayer centre nearby”.

Now, one might ask how is this different to what the AFA is doing with its Mark ‘No Religion’ campaign? Well, for one thing, the AFA isn’t encouraging people to lie about their religiosity or lack of it. And for another, the AFA isn’t a government representative who is ethically bound to remain impartial on census matters.

3.8.11

HT: Martin

There’s hope yet for Aussie kids

2011-08-01T06:37:00.000-07:00

The Sydney Morning Herald has an eloquent, intelligent and measured article arguing in favour of non-religious ethics classes in school, written by Charlie Fine. Who is 11 years old.

Young Master Fine is responding to Reverend Fred Nile’s call for the New South Wales government to abolish ethics classes currently being taught in 128 public schools throughout the state. Nile is the National President of the Christian Democratic Party, a right-wing outfit that predictably opposes LGBT rights, abortion, euthanasia, pornography and flavours of sky fairyism other than its own. What is especially worrying is that Nile is the Assistant President of the NSW Legislative Council, which means that his conservative Christian beliefs could have an inappropriate influence on NSW lawmaking.

Nile wants to get rid of ethics classes because they have the sinister effect of exposing schoolkids to ideas that do not comport with his preferred supernatural fictions. And he is ganging up with the Shooters and Fishers Party to bully the state government into giving him what he wants. Nile says that he will block any key legislation from being passed by the upper house if ethics classes are not scrapped. He has issued this veiled threat:

The government has to respect that we [the Christian Democrats and the Shooters] have influence. They need our votes on every bill. We want to maintain a positive relationship with the government, but it is a two-way street.

The NSW government led by Premier Barry O’Farrell has apparently submitted to Nile’s demands and is considering removing ethics classes from schools, despite O’Farrell’s election promise not to do so. Charlie Fine expresses the sentiments of many secularists when he writes:

Mr Nile is attempting to abolish ethics classes in school, so that all schoolchildren learn what he believes in, which goes against the wishes of many Australian parents.

By all means, Mr Nile, you go out and be as Christian as you want; I respect that entirely. But that does not give you and your supporters the right to attempt to shape a future generation of adults in your mould – that is a religious conservative.

Your views are out of step with modern society, so I would ask you to reconsider your actions and continue to allow parents and children a choice in their classrooms.

Master Fine also has a few words for the rather spineless Premier:

And Premier Barry O'Farrell, you promised to keep ethics classes. Mr Nile is trying to make you break your promises and undermine what you stand for.

I trust you not to be manipulated by a man who on Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras gets down on his knees and prays for rain.

A reprimand and some well-placed snark. The young lad shows much promise.

1.8.11

HT: Martin

Australian National School Chaplaincy Program to be challenged in the High Court

2011-07-31T23:05:00.000-07:00

I’ve previously written about how the National School Chaplaincy Program is little more than a covert proselytising operation by evangelical Christians, who view the program as a “God-given open door” to “take the Christian faith into our schools and share it”. This clear breach of state secularism has alarmed many Australian parents who aren’t keen to have their children’s psychological welfare left in the hands of unqualified volunteers with religious biases.

One of those concerned parents, Ron Williams, has mounted a legal challenge to the NSCP, and his case will be heard in the High Court from August 9. Here’s a video that Williams produced to explain why he is challenging the NSCP in court, and to appeal for financial support:

If you believe that taxpayer funds should not be used to pay for unqualified religious volunteers to look after children’s emotional and psychological welfare, then please consider helping out with Ron Williams’s legal costs. You can donate to this important cause at the High Court Challenge website.

NSCP chaplains may be well-meaning people, but in the context of providing counseling to schoolchildren, good intentions are not enough. Counselors also need proper job qualifications and should abide by Australia’s constitutional secularism, even if religionists oppose it.

1.8.11

HT: Martin

Why I am an atheist

2011-07-31T21:56:00.000-07:00

Earlier this year journalist Andrew Zak Williams interviewed about 30 public figures who believed in God. Their explanations for their belief were published in a New Statesman article. Now Williams has followed up his earlier piece with another NS article, this time presenting the reasons given by prominent atheists for why they don't believe in God.

As for me, my answer has been covered by many of the NS atheist respondents, with greater eloquence. But for what it's worth, here's why I am an atheist:

Lack of evidence for gods and the supernatural, the obvious human-centric (usually male) artificiality of religion, the correlation between levels of poverty, education and security and levels of religiosity that suggests a mundane - not divine - explanation for religion, the evidently indifferent, amoral universe of randomness, accident and chance, and a personal preference for reason over faith.

1.8.11

This is what your soul looks like

2011-07-25T04:42:00.000-07:00

This image was in the August 2011 issue of National Geographic magazine. It shows the “color-coded depiction of routes created by a brain’s neural pathways”, made possible by cutting-edge 3D imaging technology. From the accompanying text:

We like to brag about our gray matter, linking smarts to brain cells. But for neuroscientists, it’s also about white matter, the spaghetti-like tangle of nerve fibers, and the networks that carry information between regions of the brain. Who we are — our memories, thoughts, emotions — derives from these wiring connections. The problem was no devices existed to see and decode the neural maze in live subjects. That’s now changing.

Advances in neuroscience and psychology increasingly prove that our minds – constituted of our memories, thoughts, dreams, emotions, decisions – have a physical basis in our brains. As this knowledge becomes more widely spread and accepted, it will revolutionise the way human beings perceive themselves and others. The ramifications for culture, society, law, religion and politics are immense.

For thousands of years people have, to varying degrees, believed in a soul or self that isn’t bound to the physical body, nevermind the specific lump of matter in our skulls. This dualism is apparent in religion, pop psychology, the cultural products we manufacture, even our language – as when we exhort someone to ‘follow your heart’, meaning to trust their ‘gut’ feeling that is supposedly distinct from their brain-derived thinking. I don’t know about you, but all my heart does is pump blood around my cardiovascular system. I do my feeling with my amygdala and my rationalising with my frontal lobes.

The popular conception of the soul or self is becoming untenable. Like the geocentric universe, bloodletting, bodily humours, phlogiston and much of pre-Darwinian biology, mind-brain dualism will eventually end up in the rubbish bin of false ideas. The only thing keeping it from being immediately thrown out is the ubiquitous triumvirate of social inertia, ignorance, and fear.

Those who still believe in immaterial souls and ghosts in machines are on the wrong side of history.

25.7.11

Image by Van Wedeen

A terrorist by any other name

2011-07-25T01:37:00.000-07:00

I watched the BBC’s live coverage of the Oslo bombing just minutes after it happened. It wasn’t long before reporters and interviewed commenters mentioned the ‘I’ word. Despite the paucity of facts at the time, there were knee-jerk assumptions that the Oslo bombing was carried out by Islamist terrorists. I confess that I had the same assumption. Now we know that the bombing and the subsequent mass murder of people at a youth camp were all the work of one white, Christian, Islamophobic, right wing extremist Norwegian.

Waleed Aly has written an eloquent essay that spotlights our post-9/11 tendency to associate the word ‘terrorist’ almost strictly with Islamists. When non-Muslims like Anders Behring Breivik, or white supremacists, or violent environmentalists commit politically motivated atrocities targeting innocents, they’re usually described as insane, or slapped with epithets like ‘lone gunman’. They may eventually be (correctly) called terrorists. But when Muslims commit similarly terrible acts, charges of terrorism come with greater alacrity.

Waleed writes:

Today's domestic terrorists are a broad bunch, as the FBI notes: “From hate-filled white supremacists… to highly destructive eco-terrorists… to violence-prone anti-government extremists… to radical separatist groups.” And that is to say nothing of anti-abortion violence, which is quite common. These attacks don't get international headlines, or blanket domestic coverage. As a consequence, they don't generate the broad fear that Islamist terrorism does. But when they succeed, and they do, the dead are just as dead.

Terrorism is terrorism is terrorism. We may have been conditioned by the media’s biased reporting to immediately link brutal, indiscriminate, politically motivated violence with Islamists, but this Pavlovian response is inappropriate, even dangerously complacent. Terrorism risks becoming something that the alien Other engages in, but not ‘us’, however ‘us’ is defined. But any “fear-inducing violence by a non-state actor in the service of a political cause”, according to Waleed, is a “textbook case of terrorism”, regardless of the ethnicity or beliefs of the perpetrator. The ideology and actions of both Al-Qaeda and Anders Behring Breivik are equally despicable. Our language should reflect this.

25.7.11

UPDATE: ABC News has an article criticising the media for quickly jumping to the conclusion that the Oslo bombing was carried out by Muslim terrorists. Waleed Aly was interviewed for this piece, where he expands on a few points he made in his essay.

Skepticism, the internet, and Google filters

2011-07-21T07:25:00.000-07:00

The Amazing Meeting – an annual conference for skeptics, mythbusters and truthseekers held in Las Vegas – had its ninth gathering last week. A lot of prominent skeptics attended the event, and came away feeling inspired and challenged by the topics discussed. PZ Myers and Daniel Loxton each had their own take on the topic of skeptic outreach: Myers mainly agreed with the gist of one discussion (that skeptics need to focus on the effective communication of their message), but had reservations as to whether the suggested ‘gentle approach’ is the best, or only, way to promote skepticism (I commented on this in a previous post). Loxton seemed more on side with the argument that successful communication requires sensitivity, compassion and respect towards the intended audience. And Steven Novella had some thoughts on the connection between the internet and the growth of the skeptic movement.

I’m going to focus on Novella’s post, because it raises an important, if tangential, point. Novella observes that since the internet allows people to access an unprecedentedly huge amount of information, skepticism gets a boost because people are able to look up the facts on any contentious issue. He’s right about that. To demonstrate his point, Novella ran a Google search on a few skeptic hot words like ‘homeopathy’, ‘intelligent design’ and ‘do vaccines cause autism’. Almost all had a skeptical link on the first results page.

Novella was understandably quite chuffed with the outcome of his little experiment. It appeared to confirm his belief that skepticism was gaining ground, at least on the internet. But one commenter responded to his post with the following:

Steve,

I agree that the structure of the internet sides with the skeptical movement, but your quick Google experiment, innocent though it was, gives results so wrong that I thought it worth mentioning.

Google tailors its results to the search history of the computer, gmail account logged in, and region of the ip address. Given that you’re likely to spend lots of time on skeptical websites, and that you ran this experiment on your computer, your results will be skewed. Conversely, members of pseudoscientific communities are more likely to be insulated from skeptical results on their google queries. This effect would be compounded for those who live in regions where pseudoscience reigns supreme.

There is a Google “blank slate”, and your tailored results might not be too far from it, but the personalized results of Google are changing the way we should think about the flow of information on the web.

The commenter, rgower, supplied a link to a TED talk given by Eli Pariser, in which Pariser described how internet entities like Google, Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and others filter out content that their customisation programs think we’re not interested in, based on our personal online history and preferences. This creates a ‘bubble’ around each of us, where only the websites, videos, music and other content that we are biased towards are prioritised for our consumption. Pariser argues that this can then lead to a situation where instead of living up to its promise of connecting people to all the wealth of information it contains, the internet simply becomes a collection of narrow minded, prejudiced cliques that only read and absorb content they agree with.

Pariser believes (and I agree with him) that the internet shouldn’t just provide information that is relevant to our interests:

If algorithms are going to curate the world for us, if they’re going to decide what we get to see and what we don’t get to see, then we need to make sure that they’re not just keyed to ‘relevant’. We need to make sure that they also show us things that are uncomfortable, or challenging, or important... other points of view.

As I said earlier, this is all rather tangential to Steven Novella’s post, but it’s an important factor to consider because we now know that Novella’s Google search results are most likely a reflection of his skeptical interests, and not an objective view of the state of skepticism on the internet. An anti-vaxxer, or young earth creationist, or ‘alternative’ medicine advocate will get quite different search results, ones biased towards their misconceptions.

But Novella is right to think that in the free marketplace of ideas, “the skeptical world view has real value and even appeal” and that “sectarian views that rely upon intellectual isolation are likely to be threatened.” Even though algorithmic content filters compromise the search for knowledge on the internet, that information nonetheless exists. So long as it’s available to those who seek it out, such knowledge will demolish any nonsense and falsehood it is wielded against. Peddlers of the latter know this, and it scares them.

Novella puts it nicely:

If your belief system cannot survive close or open scrutiny, if it cannot compete in the rough and tumble world of free information, perhaps it is lacking in some fundamental way.

22.7.11

Is there a ‘correct’ way to promote skepticism and atheism?

2011-07-18T06:33:00.000-07:00

PZ Myers has written a slightly anxious post articulating his thoughts on how to best communicate ideas relating to godless skepticism. Whether it’s politics, or religion, or ‘alternative’ medicine and pseudoscientific woo in general, there’s a lot of really lousy thinking and patently false ideas being propagated, to the detriment of many. Those involved in the movement to combat nonsense are often caught up in internal arguments over matters of strategy: do we try to gently persuade our opponents of the error of their ways, or do we firmly call a spade a spade and unreservedly attack their ridiculous, harmful, wrong ideas?

In the skeptic/atheist movement, you’ll find different flavours of communication tactics, depending on the person’s temperament - from Phil ‘Don’t be a dick’ Plait’s conciliatory approach to Richard Dawkins’s famously stern and implacable style. To an observer, it can look as if the movement’s leaders, like Tokugawa-era samurai swordmasters, have their respective coterie of disciples sympathetic to their particular method of skepticism/atheism advocacy. One could be a student of the School of Unsparing Criticism, or of the Soft Touch Style, or perhaps the Way of Water, adapting as circumstance requires.

Myers offers these thoughts:

Don't get me wrong; I'm not saying we must endorse only our rock-ribbed heroes of godless skepticism, or that they can do no wrong. I'm saying we have to do it all, embracing a wide range of tactics, including the proximate tools of psychology and holding high a coherent and strong set of principles. Unfortunately, in recent years, many of the people in this movement have wrongly decided that the most firmly principled people in our ranks are all dicks who need to be chastened -- a weakness the other side does not have. I sometimes feel like we spend more time gnawing at our foundations than we do effectively peeling away opponents to our side.

Myers is taking a shot at people like Phil Plait who imply that anyone who doesn’t adopt their less confrontational style is actually harming the cause. Essentially, Plait and co. have elected themselves the movement’s ‘tone police’. And I think this is wrong, for the following reasons:

1) The tone police presume that the ‘soft touch’ approach is the only effective way to convince people of the error of their beliefs. Yet there are people who have, say, abandoned religion after being hit with “a thunderbolt from the sky”, as Myers put it, when they encountered a spirited refutation – even condemnation – of religious dogma. At the very least, it can provoke them to have a good, hard think about their previously unquestioned beliefs.

2) Critics of ‘aggressive’ polemicists like Dawkins, Myers, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Maryam Namazie tend to assume that the targets of their polemics are solely the obstinate god-botherers. This isn’t so. As Dawkins has explained, quite often the real targets of skeptic and atheist criticism are the third parties eavesdropping on the (perhaps heated) discussion. Atheists know that they’ve got hardly any chance of convincing devout believers that their beliefs are wishful thinking at best, delusions at worst. But the fence-sitters or modestly brainwashed religionists listening in may be persuaded to give reason a go, especially if they think that they’re not the ones being directly attacked by Dawkins and co.

3) The problems of religion and irrational, superstitious beliefs in general are formidable. Skeptics, humanists and atheists are going to need all kinds of tools and tactics to address these problems. The ‘soft touch’ approach is just as necessary as unsparing criticism. Yet while advocates for the former are trying to restrain the latter, few – if any – in the latter camp are telling people like Phil Plait to stop doing what they’re doing. The self-righteous scolding is very much a one way street, and that’s not right.

Myers concludes his post with this:

Don't forget: the truth is our pole star, science is the vessel we use to progress, and a passion to explore and learn is the engine of our purpose. If we lose sight of that in our concern to be gentle with those who impede us, we'll lose our way.

Well said.

18.7.11

Fukuyama’s new book

2011-07-15T06:14:00.000-07:00

I’ve just started reading Francis Fukuyama’s latest book The Origins of Political Order. It’s the first of two volumes, and deals with the development of political institutions across varying cultures and eras from prehistoric times to the 18th century (the second volume will pick up where the first left off and continue the analysis up to the present time). Some have called it Fukuyama’s magnum opus. The books are certainly ambitious in both scope and intended theoretical application.

Fukuyama is often associated with American neoconservatism, but apparently he no longer supports that rather bellicose ideology. A passage from chapter one of TOoPO (‘The Necessity of Politics’) shows his more centrist stance:

There is in fact a curious blindness to the importance of political institutions that has affected many people over the years, people who dream about a world in which we will somehow transcend politics. This particular fantasy is not the special province of either the Left or the Right; both have had their versions of it.

And the political scientist who signed a post-9/11 letter to President Bush urging him to remove Saddam Hussein from power by any means necessary later became a critic of the Iraq War. In TOoPO Fukuyama writes:

The degree to which people in developed countries take political institutions for granted was very much evident in the way the United States planned, or failed to plan, for the aftermath of its 2003 invasion of Iraq. The U.S. administration seemed to think that democracy and a market economy were default conditions to which the country would automatically revert once Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship was removed, and seemed genuinely surprised when the Iraqi state itself collapsed in an orgy of looting and civil conflict.

Fukuyama’s centrist, perhaps even realist, ideas appeal to me. As someone who flirted with far Leftism many years ago (I was a member of an Australian socialist group), my present self actually feels a tad embarrassed over having been seduced by romantic ideas that often took leave of the realities of society, human nature and economics. I think my acquired respect for rationality, evidence and critical thinking played a big part in my move towards the political centre (though upon a thorough accounting perhaps more of my values lie towards the liberal, progressive left). Maybe it’s an inevitable transition, as per Winston Churchill’s curt remark:

If you're not a liberal at twenty you have no heart, if you're not a conservative at forty you have no brain.

Since I’m neither twenty nor forty, it’s only fitting that I be a moderate, thus retaining both heart and brain. Which is why I also liked Joseph Heath’s Filthy Lucre: Economics for People Who Hate Capitalism (2009), where a left-leaning philosophy professor debunks common economic myths believed by the Left and the Right. This sort of equal opportunity reality check isn’t so much a case of “the truth lies somewhere in the middle” (an argument prone to the false compromise fallacy), but rather a case of the facts being indifferent to ideology. Just like in science.

It’s going to take me a while to get through volume one of The Origins of Political Order, especially since my distraction by other reading material is basically guaranteed. Hopefully by the time I reach the cliffhanger chapter on the French Revolution, volume two will already be out. I swear, Fukuyama better not do a George R R Martin.

15.7.11

We can’t always trust our brains

2011-07-12T03:51:00.000-07:00

Neurologist Steven Novella has written an illuminating post on sleep paralysis. He describes this often frightening experience, then explains its neurobiological causes.

One striking thing about this post (and the comments on it) is how grateful and relieved sufferers of sleep paralysis are once they know and understand the mechanism behind their scary experiences. A lot of people – usually romantic types – accuse science of cruelly taking away their cherished illusions, of robbing life of its mystery by driving away the soft shadows with the harsh, bright light of rationality and knowledge. Yet in the case of sleep paralysis we have a clear example of science giving comfort to people, by reassuring them that they weren’t going mad, or being molested by evil spirits or inquisitive aliens.

Another take-home point from Novella’s post is that our brains are prone to misreading reality, even creating delusions of their own. This is why subjective claims to truth and knowledge made by anyone have to be taken with a pinch of salt. Unless those claims have passed through a rigorous screening process (scientific methodology, fact checking and corroboration, tests), they cannot be vouched for. It’s probably fair to say that gullible people do not adequately appreciate how flawed the human brain is. They assume that the brain and the senses are unfailingly accurate interpreters of the world and its happenings, which biases them towards accepting unproven or far-fetched claims as being plausible, if not true.

Dr Novella said it best:

Our brains are capable of distorting, filtering, and interpreting sensory input, of altering memories and even generating false memories, and of generating false experiences. While it is good enough for everyday activity, our brains have many flaws. We cannot rely upon our memories of our experiences to understand the world, especially when those experiences are unexpected or unusual. We need external verification, objective measurement, and careful recording of data.

In other words – we need science and skepticism to compensate for the flaws and pitfalls of our neurobiology.

12.7.11

International Day Against Stoning

2011-07-10T18:16:00.000-07:00

Today is the International Day Against Stoning. Many of you will know of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, the Iranian woman who was sentenced to death by stoning in 2006 on the unsubstantiated charge of murdering her husband. Thanks to global condemnation of such barbarism, the Iranian government avoided carrying out Ashtiani’s execution, but she is still in prison, reportedly under horrible conditions.

Human rights activist Maryam Namazie is collecting statements in support of Ashtiani and the International Day Against Stoning. There is also a Facebook page that shows how you can contribute to this important cause. Please be one of those who stand against a cruel practice that has no place in a modern, egalitarian and just society.

11.7.11

CORRECTION: Ashtiani was sentenced to death by stoning for the crime of adultery. For the alleged murder of her husband, she was initially sentenced to death by hanging, but that sentence was then reduced to jail time. This only highlights how seriously fucked up the Iranian legal system is, that adultery is punished more severely than murder.

Image by Stephen Hughes

Australian Census 2011 - If you’re godless, say so!

2011-07-01T07:15:00.000-07:00

The Australian census is being carried out this year on 9 August. Australian atheist and humanist groups are conducting a campaign to encourage non-religious Aussies to tick the ‘No religion’ box on their census forms. A similar campaign in the UK earlier this year by the British Humanist Association was a great success, with the message “Not religious? In this year’s census say so” getting national publicity. When the official data is released, the percentage of British people who are not religious should be a more accurate (and possibly higher) number than that recorded in the last census.

Let’s achieve the same thing in this Australian census! If you’re not religious, please seriously consider ticking ‘No religion’ on your form. If you intend to put down a joke religion like Jedi, Church of the FSM and such, I urge you to reconsider your decision. As the Atheist Foundation of Australia puts it:

[If you write down a joke religion] it gets counted as 'Not Defined' and is not placed in the 'No religion' category. This takes away from the 'No religion' numbers and therefore advantages the religion count. It was funny to write Jedi once, now it is a serious mistake to do so.

Since the census results are used for funding and decision making purposes by state and federal governments, it is vital that the interests of non-religious Aussies are properly represented. Statistics indicating a substantial number of non-religious citizens will bolster Australian secularism against attempts by religious groups to enact policies that unduly privilege them, or that unfairly disadvantage those who don’t subscribe to their ideology.

Come August, religious folks will be doing the right thing according to their convictions – ticking the box of their particular faith. We infidels should be just as sincere with our unbelief.

2.7.11

“If the battle is waged on a level playing field, our victory is assured”

2011-06-29T07:27:00.000-07:00

Secularism is on the rise, and religious groups aren’t happy about it. A favourite pushback tactic of theirs is to cry discrimination, that their rights are being trampled on by the godless. If they’re referring to their right to be bigots, to be shielded from criticism, to be accorded special privileges like tax-exempt status and unelected political power, and above all to be unquestioningly respected, then yes, such ‘rights’ should be denied to them. Religious groups demand these pseudo-rights because they understand – and fear – the consequences of not having them: they would be forced to compete with more liberal, rational, progressive and humane ideas on equal terms.

A level playing field in the great social debate humanity has with itself is a prospect that frightens the religious. Daylight Atheism’s Adam Lee makes this clear in his post on the worried reaction of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary president Albert Mohler to the recent same-sex marriage law passed in New York State. Likewise, the UN gay rights protection resolution passed two weeks ago was condemned by Muslims, who would prefer an international climate more conducive to their religiously inspired homophobia. The sacred task of shaming, assaulting and killing gays becomes noticeably more difficult to execute when global opinion is most emphatically not on your side.

Atheists, humanists and freethinkers know that they have a better than good chance of winning in a fair ideological fight. Religious groups and their accommodationist allies are aware of this, so they try to silence their opponents either by force or by the more subtle yet no less deplorable method of tarring them as supposedly strident, aggressive, militant, arrogant, simplistic polemicists. As Lee writes:

In their furious hushing of atheists and demanding that we be more respectful, in their efforts around the world to pass bills punishing speech that insults or denigrates religion, we see that what the major religious groups and their allies want is to silence dissent. Again, they don't want to compete in a marketplace of ideas; they want society to be their parishioners, sitting in enforced silence while they alone stand in the pulpit and preach.

There's a lesson here for freethinkers: to win the debate, we just have to show up. If we can speak freely and make our case, we've already won. If we can successfully claim the same rights and the same privileges as religious people, we've already won. If ordinary people have friends and family who are atheists, and know that they have friends and family who are atheists, we've already won. If the battle is waged on a level playing field, our victory is assured, because we know that in an open and fair debate, our arguments are the better ones and will carry the day. It's only coercion and prejudice that can hold us back, and both those obstacles are weakening and falling one by one.

Yes, our arguments are indeed the better ones, for they are based on reason, evidence and universal compassion. Which is why the religious would rather we didn’t voice them.

30.6.11

School chaplains are only to “provide advice”, not “religious instruction”

2011-06-28T06:24:00.000-07:00

The Australian government is considering a proposal that chaplains involved in the National School Chaplaincy Program (NSCP) be required to have formal qualifications in youth work or a similar field. School Education Minister Peter Garrett has stated that “whoever’s working in a school environment… should have a level of appropriate training and qualifications,” including NSCP volunteers. The NSCP currently funds “2681 schools across Australia where chaplains or pastoral care workers provide students with ‘general advice, comfort and support’”.

So those who give “general advice, comfort and support” to schoolchildren may soon be required to have proper qualifications. Fair enough. But why do they have to specifically be chaplains?

Mr Garrett has said that the NSCP chaplains are “not there for discipline, they're not there for teaching, they're not there for religious instruction, they're there to provide advice.” So, if chaplains are barred from religious proselytizing, why are religious credentials necessary for the job? A secular youth worker could just as well fulfill the role described by Mr Garrett.

The answer is that religious people are automatically perceived to be virtuous simply by dint of their belief in the existence of invisible, magical beings. It is a result of the common canard that one needs God in order to be good. So by professing a superstitious belief in an authoritarian sky fairy, chaplains somehow acquire moral qualities that unbelievers apparently lack. Why else would people without professional training but who subscribe to irrational nonsense be chosen as school counselors, to minister to the emotional needs and ethical problems of children?

Mr Garrett may be confident that chaplains serve a role that is “free of any religious instruction”. Yet the scandal involving one chaplain provider, Access Ministries, clearly shows that evangelical Christians cannot be trusted to refrain from selling their brand of sky fairyism to school kids. It’s incredibly naïve of people like Mr Garrett to expect devout Christian chaplains not to ‘share the gospel’ with their young charges. In fact, many consider it their moral duty to ‘win disciples’ for their faith.

While it would be good to require all school workers, religious and secular, to be properly trained, the presumption of religious workers’ upstanding moral character is undeserved. On the contrary, religious counselors can act in despicable ways towards the very children they’re supposed to care for and protect.

28.6.11

HT: Russell Blackford and Martin

Did these people even READ the letter?

2011-06-26T07:03:00.000-07:00

The creationist Ken Ham caught wind of PZ Myers’s letter to one of Ham’s brainwashed victims, 9 year old Emma. Ham must have got all riled up over being called “a poor teacher” who gives “bad answers”, so he wrote a Facebook post accusing Myers (who Ham doesn’t name but coyly refers to as “a well known atheist”) and his fellow atheists of being “extremely intolerant people who in their anger, shake their fist at God.”

But Ham does not provide a link to Myers’s letter.

Is Ham afraid that if he actually allowed people to read the “extremely intolerant” letter “attacking” Christians, they would realise that he lied about the nature of that letter? And judging by the comments of his fellow supernaturalists, they’re sure quick to jump to conclusions about how mean and vicious atheists are without having even read Myers’s letter.

Some choice ejaculations from the God-botherers responding to Ham’s post:

I am so glad that the world is still filled with far, far more people like Emma and her mom than people like these atheists who will stoop to anything, including viciously attacking a little girl. You don't attack kids, atheists. You just don't.

Only someone who didn’t even read Myers’s post will think that a kindly, professorial letter is a vicious attack on a little girl.

My husband works in the museum industry. While at a conference he challenged the speaker about evolution presented as "fact" on the exhibits. I believe if the speaker had a gun he would have shot him... no kidding. These people are militant.

Yes, because ‘militant’ atheists are the ones going around shooting people who violate their ideology.

And atheists claim to be the authority on logic and have morality without Christ in their lives. Their behavior simply goes to show their ignorance and intolerance of anything biblical. Ken has every right to block these people from his blog and his FB page. All they do is complain and troll.

So atheists are ignorant and intolerant, but Christians like Ken Ham who teach kids to reject science and knowledge while censoring critics are obviously not.

Lately I’ve been trying to be more sympathetic to supernaturalists like Ken Ham and his fellow Jesus fans, avoiding excessively mocking language and caricature in my posts. But such ridiculous supernaturalist antics sorely test my resolution to be a kinder critic of kookery. In this instance, the stupid just burns.

26.6.11

UPDATE: I've noticed that comments on Ken Ham's post that were critical of him and his religion but were in no way rude have been removed. They were there when I started writing this and linked to Ham's FB post, but have since vanished. Christian courage and tolerance on full display.

Every kid should get this letter

2011-06-23T21:55:00.000-07:00

His Tentacled Majesty, biologist and science communicator PZ Myers has written what is perhaps the most lucid letter explaining how science works. His (hypothetical) letter is addressed to a (real) 9 year old kid who has sadly been led astray by creationist rubbish. In clear, simple language, Myers shows why asking the right questions is so important if we want to know the “wealth of wonderful truths that reveal so much about our universe.”

Myers is currently working on a book slated for publication either this year or next. If his prodigious blogging allows time for it, maybe the Squid Overlord should follow up with a children’s science book. His letter shows that he has a knack for introducing good ideas to young minds at their level of understanding.

24.6.11

What exactly is a person’s ‘true self’?

2011-06-21T08:04:00.000-07:00

Person X is usually kind, generous and courteous. But sometimes she can also be mean, petty and boorish. Which description would she regard as representing her ‘true self’? Which one would her family, friends, colleagues and acquaintances consider to be her ‘real’ character?

Now let’s expand on the above. Say that Person X is characteristically kind, generous and courteous. But when she gets drunk, she undergoes a Jekyll and Hyde transformation into a mean, petty and boorish person. So, which version of Person X is her true self?

In the first case, one might say that Person X is a complex combination of both positive and negative traits, though she may prefer to consider the positive traits as her true self while others may choose to focus on her negative qualities. In the second case, there are two possible responses:

Person X revealed her true, horrible self when drunkenness made her drop her fake mask of good character.
Person X is really a kind, generous and courteous person, since it required something as drastic as getting absolutely pissed in order to change her personality.

This thought experiment presumes that there is such a thing as a ‘true self’. But does such a thing actually exist?

Philosopher Joshua Knobe has written an interesting article on popular conceptions of the term ‘true self’. He uses the following anecdote to raise the same questions posed above.

Mark Pierpont used to be an important figure in the evangelical Christian effort to help “cure” gay people of their homosexual desires. He started out just printing up tracts and handing them out in gay bars, but his ministry grew over time, and eventually he was traveling the world and speaking to crowds that sometimes numbered in the thousands. There was just one problem. Mark Pierpont himself was gay. He continued to feel sexual desires toward other men and was constantly engaged in an effort to suppress them. In the documentary film “Protagonist,” Pierpont movingly describes his inner conflict, saying that he sometimes felt an almost physical revulsion at his own desires and would then think: “Good. I hate this. I hate sin, just like God hates sin.”

Leaving aside the story’s unsavoury religiosity, Mark Pierpont is, like our Person X above, caught by this question: which is Pierpont’s true self? The gay man who is undeniably attracted to other men, or the devout Christian who has renounced homosexuality? And like Person X, the answer depends on the perspective of the one giving it. As Knobe writes:

One person might look at his predicament and say: “Deep down, he has always wanted to be with another man, but he somehow picked up from society the idea that this desire was immoral or forbidden. If he could only escape the shackles of his religious beliefs, he would be able to fully express the person he really is.”

But then another person could look at exactly the same case and arrive at the very opposite conclusion: “Fundamentally, Pierpont is a Christian who is struggling to pursue a Christian life, but these desires he has make it difficult for him to live by his own values. If he ever gives in to them and chooses to sleep with another man, he will be betraying what is most essential to the person he really is.”

Each of these perspectives seems like a reasonable one, at least worthy of serious consideration. So it seems that we are faced with a difficult philosophical question. How is one to know which aspect of a person counts as that person’s true self?

Knobe presents two views from which an answer to his question can be derived. There is the philosophical view, and the ‘common sense’ view. The philosophical view argues that:

[…] what is most distinctive and essential to a human being is the capacity for rational reflection. A person might find herself having various urges, whims or fleeting emotions, but these are not who she most fundamentally is. If you want to know who she truly is, you would have to look to the moments when she stops to reflect and think about her deepest values.

This perspective would say that Pierpont’s true self is the Christian one who reins in his homosexual desires, because they are “not the real him”.

However, the ‘common sense’ view takes the opposite position:

The true self […] lies precisely in our suppressed urges and unacknowledged emotions, while our ability to reflect is just a hindrance that gets in the way of this true self’s expression. To find a moment when a person’s true self comes out […] one needs to look at the times when people are so drunk or overcome by passion that they are unable to suppress what is deep within them.

So of course, this perspective would say that Pierpont’s homosexuality is part of who he really is as a person.

Knobe (perhaps predictably) resolves this conflict by stating that “neither of these two perspectives fully captures the concept of a true self.”

The trouble is that both of them assume that the true self can be identified in some straightforward way with one particular part of a person’s psychology. But it seems that the matter is more complex. People’s ordinary understanding of the true self appears to involve a kind of value judgment, a judgment about what sorts of lives are really worth living. So people will tend to arrive at different judgments regarding the nature of Pierpont’s self depending on whether they think that a homosexual lifestyle truly is a valuable one.

And there lies the gist of this whole matter. The concept of a ‘true self’ is tied to a person’s subjective values. Knobe goes on to describe an experiment he carried out to test this hypothesis, but although he admits that a single study is insufficient to form any solid conclusions, nonetheless the idea that an objective ‘true self’ exists appears untenable.

Russell Blackford has commented on Knobe’s article. He argues that the concept of a ‘true self’ creates a false distinction between all the traits that one possesses:

The thing is, I am constituted by, among other things, all of my desires. There is no sub-set that is my “true” self. If I have a desire to have sex while wearing a rubber wetsuit, while also thinking that there is something depraved about having sex in a rubber wetsuit, while also wondering whether my judgments about what is or is not “depraved” are justifiable, then all of the above is part of me. [emphasis Blackford’s]

Sounds right to me. Going back to Person X, her ‘self’ consists of all her traits, good and bad. To say that certain traits are her ‘true’ self is to impose a distinction that is arbitrary because as Knobe observed, the distinction depends on the values of the one making it. Just as Mark Pierpont’s ‘true self’ depends on whether the one making the distinction (either Pierpont himself or others) considers homosexuality to be valuable or not.

Basically, all this talk of ‘true selves’ is sustained by a belief in a kind of dualism: there is an authentic ‘me’ that stands apart from the mess of desires, impulses and other unconscious mental processes that are (supposedly) not ‘me’. But this separation is a false one. Our entire consciousness springs from a single source – the brain. The ‘real me’ label is something we choose to apply to those aspects of our consciousness that we prefer to identify with. When we protest that “this isn’t really who I am”, what we’re really saying is “this particular facet of my character is something I’d rather not accept as part of who I am.”

Respectable and shameful, noble and base, all our actions, thoughts and proclivities make up our ‘self’. Authenticity doesn’t figure into it. In fact, when we define an ‘authentic’ or ‘true’ self and take it as a standard to measure ourselves by, all we’ve done is cherry-picked the bits about our character that we feel attached to for whatever reason and appointed the collection as representing our ‘true self’. We like the concept of a ‘true self’ because it flatters us.

22.6.11

Even chicks look good in classic menswear

2011-06-20T07:16:00.000-07:00

Not trying to get all essentialist here, but as per my recent post on the return of classic menswear, you know a style has got something fundamentally appealing about it when it looks classy on either gender.

21.6.11

Photo by Scott Schuman of The Sartorialist

Steven Novella defends science-based medicine

2011-06-20T06:30:00.000-07:00

Dr Steven Novella is a neurologist, educator and dedicated proponent of science-based medicine (SBM). He maintains an excellent website, NeuroLogica, where he writes well-argued criticisms of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), among other scientific and philosophical topics. I enjoy reading Novella’s eloquent, straightforward essays where he calmly yet firmly corrects common misconceptions of both SBM and CAM. He neither rants nor abuses his ideological opponents; in fact, Novella often responds to his critics with admirable patience and professionalism (especially considering that these critics repeatedly make the same flawed arguments either supporting CAM or opposing SBM).

Novella’s qualities are displayed in his response to an article by David Freedman in The Atlantic. Freedman had interviewed Novella to get the SBM side of the story for his article on CAM versus SBM. Unfortunately, the published article turned out to be sympathetic to CAM (its title, ‘The Triumph of New-Age Medicine’, pretty much declares its bias). Novella may be a gentleman ideologue, but he’s also bloody tenacious. Not letting this gross misinformation go unchallenged, the good doctor has written a lengthy, detailed rebuttal to both Freedman’s arguments in his article and his comments on NeuroLogica and elsewhere defending his journalism.

It’s a lot to read, but I recommend that you do it. Novella uses his trademark critical thinking skills, measured rhetoric and deep knowledge of the subject matter to show why CAM is pure nonsense, and why promoting it is a serious mistake.

Dr Novella said it best in the conclusion of his post ‘Alt Med Apologetics at the Atlantic’:

Freedman seems to have been overwhelmed by the finely crafted propaganda of the CAM industry. The “triumph of new-age medicine” is not in patient outcomes, or in filling any perceived gap in science-based medicine. The triumph is in pulling off a massive con. They have managed to put together a very slick package of logical fallacies, misdirections, misconceptions, and outright deception that is very effective. They have an excuse for every failure, and have managed to successfully attack their critics – even science itself.

Sowing confusion is easier than careful explanation, however. And it is remarkably easy to sell people something that they want. The appealing lie will always be hard to counter with harsh reality.

A journalist’s job, however, is to tell the harsh reality. Freedman failed in this regard. Despite his intentions, in the end his article was just another advertisement for an industry of pseudoscience.

If you’re too lazy to read the whole thing, you can scroll down to the ‘Conclusion’ section of Novella’s essays, a great feature of all his posts where he summarises the essay’s main points. But c’mon, read the whole damn thing! It’ll be good for you.

20.6.11

Classic styles are back

2011-06-19T06:51:00.000-07:00

I go to church on Sundays.

Metaphorically speaking, of course. My house of worship is a three-storey 19th century building with mod-con refurbishments that contains, among an assortment of businesses, a magazine shop that also makes coffee. My Sabbath ritual involves easing myself into a sinfully comfortable leather armchair on the shop’s second floor, then quaffing a mocha while I peruse the stock, usually art, history, culture and fashion magazines (I avoid reading ‘hard’ stuff like current affairs, politics and science on Sundays, ‘day of rest’ and all that).

Today I read fashion mags. One noticeable trend in menswear (whether on magazine pages or Melbourne streets) is the return of early to mid 20th century styles, in clothing, shoes and accessories like hats or braces. I’m partial to the menswear of that era, so it’s satisfying to see a large-scale resurrection of fitted jackets and vests, smart cardigans and pullovers, tailored pants, dress shoes and boots, hats that aren’t baseball caps, ties both narrow and wide on shirts with all kinds of collars, and satchels or briefcases instead of backpacks.

I’m not going to analyse the causes of the current menswear Renaissance. But this sartorial example from the 1950s may provide some clues to answering this question: why do classic styles have such staying power?

The photo was posted by the owner of the Shorpy Historic Photo Archive website. This was a presumably candid (as in frank, though posed) shot of the photographer’s father in 1955. Yet the distinguished-looking gentleman and his apparel would not look out of place in the magazines I browsed this morning. In fact, they would be very much of the moment. The rich texture of the knitted vest, the clean lines of the shirt (whose elegant minimalism is emphasised by covered buttons!), the warm brown and gold of the tortoiseshell spectacles suitably contrasting with the cool blue and grey of the gentleman’s ensemble and neatly combed hair – all these parts form a complete aesthetic that pleases the eye in some inexplicably fundamental way.

There must be a reason why classic 20th century menswear styles are making a comeback, but I can’t quite put my finger on it. All I can offer is this weak assertion: these styles are back because they look good.

19.6.11

Theology shmeology

2011-06-17T08:48:00.000-07:00

Biologist Jerry Coyne is a persistent, long-suffering man. Or a masochist. Professor Coyne has been reading up on Christian theology, taking mental bullets for Team Godless. He confirms what unbelieving infidels already know, or have at least suspected:

The entire edifice of theology rests on the unproven assumption that God exists.
Theologians tend to write in impenetrable po-mo gobbledygook (all the better to hide the lack of good ideas or compelling arguments).
There’s plenty of rhetorical hand waving to divert attention away from the gaping logical holes in their prose.
There’s a lot of appeals to authority, which is basically theologians deferring to other (usually long dead) theologians in an echo chamber of Godspeak.

The examples of theological cryptography Coyne cites are simply atrocious (only a theologian will try to reconcile genocide with divine grace). Even if we grant that Coyne may have selected the most egregious specimens of Godspeak, the rotten epistemic foundations of the whole intellectual structure condemns it to collapse when you tap it with a little critical thinking. It’s all just smoke and mirrors to cover up the fact that, unlike scientists like Coyne, theologians have got nothing of consequence to say about reality. Or at least nothing that couldn’t be said without invoking a magic sky daddy.

Many theologians are well-read and highly knowledgeable in history, philosophy, literature and yes, even science. Which makes it such a shame that by simply holding an unfounded belief in the existence of an omnipotent, omnibenevolent deity (whose omnipotence and omnibenevolence, by the way, are constantly negating each other even as theologians scramble to explain the awkward contradictions), otherwise smart people end up doing stupid things. Like suggesting that God allowed the Holocaust to happen because He didn’t want to “take away our humanness”. Theologians just love to hand their God get-out-of-jail cards, lest we come to the logical conclusion that if such a being did exist, He’s either quite pathetic, or He’s an outright bastard.

A few years ago I wrote the following on theologians:

For all their scholastic titles and awards, theologians are nevertheless conmen, though perhaps unwitting ones. Like astrologers, feng shui ‘experts’ and spirit mediums, they are naked emperors whose influence grows in proportion to the number of gullible folk who uncritically accept their proclamations. I’ve recently purchased an English translation of Michel de Montaigne’s ‘Essays’ by M.A. Screech, who is, among other impressive titles, an ordained Catholic priest. Dr Screech is a regrettable example of a highly educated, articulate, intelligent individual who subscribes to mysticism and supernatural abstractions, holding onto such pearls of wisdom as ‘all knowledge is merely opinion’ and insisting that truth is revealed (presumably by the Catholic conception of God), not arrived at through Man’s oh-so-fallible powers of reason.

We can add another theology marker to the list above: Truth comes via divine revelation (“It’s true cos God told me so”), not through examining the evidence to see if it supports a claim.

Professor Coyne’s website is the sort that attracts intelligent readers. You’ll find them taking theology apart in the comments to his post with all the well-honed skill of people who have chosen critical thinking, reason and evidence over mere faith.

18.6.11

Personal bias: the blind spot of science

2011-06-15T09:04:00.000-07:00

Science is indisputably the best tool for us to acquire knowledge about reality, both its contents and mechanisms. Science’s efficacy is its own validation; whether through technology or new insight into the true nature of things, our lives are tangibly affected by the processes and products of science. This is an observation that only a die-hard po-mo theorist or committed supernaturalist would challenge.

But this acknowledgement of science’s preeminence as a path to truth does not mean that science is flawless. Science is carried out by people, and people are not perfect. The subjective beliefs of scientists can, unfortunately, contaminate the objective purity of the scientific process. A recent paper published in the journal PLoS Biology, ‘The Mismeasure of Science: Stephen Jay Gould versus Samuel George Morton on Skulls and Bias’, by Jason Lewis et al, reveals how an eminent scientist, in his attempt to debunk the work of another scientist as being tainted by personal prejudice, ironically succumbs to personal prejudices of his own.

In his 1981 book The Mismeasure of Man, the late paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould set out to discredit the ideas of race and intelligence that he found appallingly bigoted and incorrect. Gould’s primary target was the 19th century racial scientist Samuel George Morton, who enjoyed a great reputation in his time for his somewhat macabre studies of the differences – chiefly in intelligence – between ‘races’. In his book, Gould essentially accused Morton of fudging the data he collected from measuring various skulls collected from all over the world in order to ‘prove’ that Europeans were naturally more intelligent than non-Europeans. Gould argued that Morton manipulated the data to arrive at conclusions about European intellectual superiority that the racial scientist already had in mind from the outset.

Gould had good intentions; he was keen to slap down what he perceived to be racist ideas with pernicious consequences. But the PLoS Biology paper shows how Gould was mistaken in his criticism of Morton and his work. More pertinently, the paper lays out evidence that Gould indulged in some data fudging of his own to arrive at his biased conclusions about Morton’s supposed bigotry.

Cultural critic Kenan Malik has written an incisive and in-depth article on this discomfiting case. Malik presents the PLoS authors’ arguments showing how Gould selectively picked those parts of Morton’s data that confirmed his suspicions of Morton’s racist agenda. Bear in mind that the point isn’t that Morton wasn’t biased (or incorrect) with his ideas of race; clearly he was, as were most people of his era. The point is that Gould had set out to paint Morton as a dodgy scientist who deliberately manipulated his findings to confirm an a priori assumption of European racial superiority. Yet the PLoS authors show that Gould's criticisms of Morton were often unfounded.

Another critic of Gould’s zealous anti-racist view of Morton’s work was John S Michael, who in 1988 wrote in a paper published in the journal Current Anthropology that:

Contrary to Gould’s interpretation, I conclude that Morton’s research was conducted with integrity… He was trying to understand racial variation and not, as Gould claims, trying to prove Caucasian racial or intellectual superiority.

But even Michael does not escape the analytical rigour of the PLoS authors, who wrote the following in an appendix to their paper:

While we come to largely similar conclusions as Michael, his analysis does not support his findings… Michael’s remeasurements are reported erroneously, lack specifics on individual comparisons, and are missing the key data on the population affinity of potentially mis-measured specimens… [Michael’s] defense of Morton against Gould’s claims overlooks the most relevant charges made by Gould.

Science is inescapably embedded in social and cultural contexts. Morton’s now discredited ideas about race and its connection to intelligence were largely a product of the limited knowledge and technology of his time. While Morton’s honest, if flawed, research has been vindicated by the PLoS paper, his racial ideas were eventually superseded by a more accurate conception of our species, thanks to advances in genetics and anthropology. The PLoS authors made it clear that they were defending Morton’s reputation as a meticulous scientist, not his ideas:

In reevaluating Morton and Gould, we do not dispute that racist views were unfortunately common in 19th-century science or that bias has inappropriately influenced research in some cases. Furthermore, studies have demonstrated that modern human variation is generally continuous, rather than discrete or “racial,” and that most variation in modern humans is within, rather than between, populations. In particular, cranial capacity variation in human populations appears to be largely a function of climate, so, for example, the full range of average capacities is seen in Native American groups, as they historically occupied the full range of latitudes. It is thus with substantial reluctance that we use various racial labels, but it is impossible to discuss Morton and Gould’s work without using the terms they employed.

As for Gould, he has been revealed to be a scientist who allowed his personal convictions – noble though they may have been – to unduly influence his assessment of a predecessor. As Kenan Malik put it:

The real importance of the expose of Gould’s dissembling is the light that it throws not on the issue of race but on the often complex relationship between science and ideology. In one sense Gould has been proved right, though not in the way he would have wanted. His distortion of Morton’s data reveals how strongly held ideological beliefs – in this case not racism but anti-racism – can persuade one to see what one wants to see among the thicket of facts.

All this criticism, counter-criticism and counter-counter criticism highlights two important points about science: Firstly, for all its vaunted claims to objectivity, science is susceptible to personal bias and subjective beliefs that affect its practice and outcomes. Secondly, despite this blind spot, science contains within itself the very antidote to its ailments of subjectivity, namely the stringent analysis, peer review and criticism carried out by scientists on other scientists. Those who engage in the scientific process act as checks on their fellow practitioners, resulting in a system that is effectively self-policing, as the PLoS authors and their paper aptly demonstrate.

16.6.11

Give credit where credit's due

2011-06-01T22:42:00.000-07:00

If you're a console gamer, chances are you either know of or have even played Rockstar's latest game L.A. Noire. The publishers of the Grand Theft Auto series and Red Dead Redemption have added another excellent title to their stable. The reviews have been very positive, and from what I've seen the hype and praise are well deserved.

But there's a fly in the ointment. Over 80 people who were involved in the creation of L.A. Noire did not have their names credited in both the game's credits section and the game manual. My brother is one of those people. Like him, these 80+ developers, artists and programmers worked hard during the often punishing production schedule to create a game that has earned accolades and given pleasure to millions of gamers around the world. Their work is still visible in the game; they were left out of the credits for only one reason - they were no longer working at the developing studios when L.A. Noire was completed and shipped.

I've been told that this 'policy' is common in the relatively young games industry. The threat of being uncredited when a game ships is used both as a stick and a carrot to coerce staff to tough out the grueling 'crunch time' towards the end of a game's production. Even if a developer / artist / programmer has worked on a game like L.A. Noire for years and their handiwork is retained in the shipped game, if they have left the company for whatever reason before the game's release, they are omitted from the final credits.

This is blatantly unethical. By not crediting all developers both past and present, many of whom are working in the industry for the first time, Rockstar and their contracted production studios are needlessly compromising the future career prospects of former staff, since they cannot refer to the credits of landmark games like L.A. Noire as evidence of their contribution. For those who are just starting out in the industry, this can affect their work portfolio, with unfortunate results.

A campaign has been started to raise awareness of this issue. There's a website that aims to be the definitive credits list of all those who worked on L.A. Noire, whether they left before it was released or stayed until the end. If you believe in fairness, that credit should be given where it's due, then please show your support by 'liking' the L.A. Noire Credits Facebook page. Your support is essential if we are to set a precedent of crediting all the passionate, talented people who make the games we play and love, and thereby change a pernicious aspect of the games industry. Thank you.

2.6.11

Great film duels - Duel Six

2011-05-31T07:13:00.000-07:00

Yu Shu Lien vs Jen Yu (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon)

I know I said that I was only going to post five duels, but I couldn’t pass up the chance to add a feminine touch to an otherwise male-only series of great film fights. This duel between Yu Shu Lien (Michelle Yeoh) and Jen Yu (Zhang Ziyi) is from Ang Lee’s 2000 wuxia film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, which paved the way for the genre’s eventual popularity in the West. Young, impetuous Jen has stolen the sword called Green Destiny, and Shu Lien demands that she return it, if not willingly then by force. Jen, feeling confident of her skills and knowing that she has a superior weapon, chooses to fight Shu Lien.

Michelle Yeoh and Zhang Ziyi both come from a dancing background, which is fitting considering the dance-like aspects of a film fight. We get to see Shu Lien wield a variety of Chinese weapons against the seemingly invincible Green Destiny. One particularly heavy weapon provides a moment of humour during the fight.

Overhead camera shots are used several times to show the sweeping movements of the two opponents. This is an uncommon angle in fight scenes, where the camera tends to face the actors in profile. There’s also not as much wirework here as there is in more extravagant wuxia fights. Most of the action rests on the natural agility of the actors and stunt people. These ladies go as hard and as fast as the boys.

Despite Jen’s arrogance (Shu Lien accuses her of having a significant advantage with the Green Destiny), Shu Lien finally lands a well-placed blow that would have killed Jen if not for Shu Lien’s restraint. The older woman is clearly the better fighter.

With that, this series of posts on great film duels comes to an end. It is by no means a definitive selection, and I’m sure I’ve omitted many worthy candidates, especially unarmed fights. But this was never going to be an exhaustive coverage of movie fights. Hopefully the few examples I chose have demonstrated the aesthetic qualities of a well-executed fight scene. May the artform’s future hold more magnificent duels that equal, even surpass, the best that already exist.

1.6.11

Great film duels - Duel Five

2011-05-30T05:35:00.000-07:00

Nameless vs Long Sky (Hero)

Finally we come to a fight scene from a wuxia film. While Chinese films may not be the pioneers of on-screen duels (that honour goes to Hollywood with its silent movie era swashbucklers), the dynamism and exoticism of Chinese martial arts in films have greatly influenced fight choreography – and the perception of martial arts itself – since the golden age of kung fu movies in the 80s and 90s. Bruce Lee and the Shaw brothers kicked things off in the early days of Chinese martial arts cinema. Then Jackie Chan, Tsui Hark, Brigitte Lin and Jet Li took it to the next level during the golden age. The wuxia films of Zhang Yimou and Ang Lee brought the genre into the 21st century, incorporating more sophisticated film-making techniques, special effects, cinematography and of course, fight choreography.

Zhang Yimou’s 2002 film Hero was his first epic wuxia film. This scene takes place early in the story, when an unnamed prefect fights the warrior called Long Sky, who had attempted to assassinate the king of Qin. What makes this duel special is that it pits two martial arts legends, Jet Li (as the nameless swordsman) and Donnie Yen (as Long Sky), against each other. Li and Yen had fought each other before on-screen in Once Upon a Time in China 2, so their duel in Hero was a reunion that pleased the fans.

The gravity-defying wirework ubiquitous in wuxia films is used to dreamy effect here. The elaborate swordplay typical to the genre showcases the amazing skills of Li and Yen, who come from a fading generation of martial-artist actors. The music of a guqin, a type of zither, playing in the background reinforces the Chinese-ness of the scene. No Western-style orchestral score here! The duel is also unique in that it mostly takes place as an imaginary fight mentally pictured by the two opponents – a duel where very little actual fighting happens. I’m going out on a limb here, but perhaps this aspect of the duel is an example of a mystical (and largely Asian) conception of martial arts; you must first defeat your enemy in the mind before you can defeat him in the flesh.

30.5.11

Great film duels - Duel Four

2011-05-27T07:27:00.000-07:00

Nanashi vs Luo-Lang (Sword of the Stranger)

The samurai genre is a staple in Japanese anime. While it clearly draws stylistic influence from the real-life samurai films of directors like Akira Kurosawa and Kihachi Okamoto, samurai anime has the benefit of not being constrained by the laws of physics, the limits of a physical camera, safety concerns in action scenes, and the (perhaps mediocre) fighting skills of actors. When done well, combat scenes in samurai anime can be the most sublime expression of stylised violence out of any storytelling form. And the climactic battle between a nameless ronin and a blonde-haired, blue-eyed Chinese assassin in Sword of the Stranger ranks as one of anime’s finest.

The genre’s conventions are all there in the film. Nameless (anti)hero fleeing a dark past: check. Said hero has renounced violence: check. Events inevitably force the hero to abandon his pacifism: check. Hero’s principal antagonist is a warrior of equal skill: check. Said antagonist displays hyperviolent psychopathy and a morbid obsession with the hero: check.

Clichés aside, the fight choreography is absolutely stunning. BONES, the animation studio that produced Sword of the Stranger, is known for its well-crafted action scenes infused with fluid movement and explosive energy. The duel between Nanashi (“No Name”, of course) and Luo-Lang is perhaps the studio’s best fight work to date. The sheer speed of the combat and the humanly impossible movements of the fighters aptly illustrate the strengths of the animation medium. Elements like wind, snow and the large wooden structure are used to impart a sense of exertion, suspense and danger. The sound effects of steel blades parrying, grating and cutting all ring, screech and swoosh with aural fury.

The score by Naoki Sato is reminiscent of Taku Iwasaki’s haunting music for another samurai anime gem, Samurai X: Trust & Betrayal, especially the flute solos. Maybe I’ve been conditioned to associate that sort of music with awesome samurai swordfights, but Sato’s majestic score acts as a counterweight to the frenzied action. It’s a beautiful package, the whole blood-soaked, snow-blasted affair.

28.5.11

Great film duels - Duel Three

2011-05-25T07:48:00.000-07:00

Darth Maul vs Qui-Gon Jinn & Obi-Wan Kenobi (Star Wars: Episode 1 - The Phantom Menace)

Ok, so this one isn’t technically a duel, but it does contain two duels. I think there’s a consensus among Star Wars fans that this fight is the best of the entire saga. Being the first prequel movie after a sixteen-year gap since Return of the Jedi, the special effects and particularly the lightsaber fight scenes of Phantom Menace were a significant improvement on those in the original trilogy. The lightsabers looked more crisp and the Jedi fighting arts were less… amateurish. The duels had a breathtaking intensity, speed and athleticism that were lacking in the earlier films, all perfectly complemented by John Williams’s rousing score.

Of course, it helps that Darth Maul was played by an actual martial artist, Ray Park. Park’s training made the Sith Lord seem convincing as someone who had dedicated his life to mastering the fighting arts. He truly gave the impression that he was more than a match for his two Jedi opponents.

Exciting as it may be to see three warrior mystics clash laser swords over and over again, it’s the pacing of the fight and the vignettes scattered throughout it that lift this scene above mere swashbuckling. Darth Maul’s tactical disposal of Obi-Wan allows him to focus on Qui-Gon alone. I’d even hazard a guess that Darth Maul led the fight up to and through the energy shields to prevent both Jedi from engaging him simultaneously.

The timed shields also cleverly serve to establish a break in the frantic combat. When they switch on, Darth Maul and Qui-Gon are separated from each other by an energy barrier. The Jedi Knight kneels to meditate and recover his strength, while the Sith Lord paces like a caged animal, hungry for the fight to recommence. These simple gestures succintly convey the difference in character between the two antagonists.

Obi-Wan’s duel with Darth Maul is another brilliant set piece within the larger fight sequence. It’s more acrobatic, and it even ratchets the already blistering pace up a few notches. After being starved of a decent lightsaber fight for sixteen years, Star Wars fans in theatres everywhere must have wet themselves at this point. The climax is perhaps a little incongruous (surely a Sith Lord of Darth Maul’s skill and reflexes would have seen that killing blow being telegraphed from a parsec away), but it’s a tiny flaw in an otherwise highly polished – and now iconic – fight scene.

26.5.11

Great film duels - Duel Two

2011-05-24T06:57:00.000-07:00

Leonardo vs Raphael (TMNT)

If you’re an 80s kid, and you had the privilege of watching cartoons and reading comics, you'd know about the four mutant ninja turtles of New York. I never really got into the TV series, but Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird’s comics made quite an impression on my pre-teen mind. I still prefer the more edgy look of the Turtles in the early comics over the ‘cute’ TV versions with their colour coded headbands and pads, alphabet belt buckles and baby eyes.

When the first live-action Turtles movie came out in 1990, I remember being amazed by how real the Turtle costumes looked. Although they kept the coloured headbands (for obvious identification purposes), the Turtles’ character design harked back to the grittier comics I loved. It didn’t hurt that the movie’s plot was partly based on a particular Mirage Studios comic that remains til this day the only Turtle story I remember with any clarity (it’s the one where Raphael gets ambushed by the Foot Clan and is badly beaten up).

Like a lot of other cool cartoons I grew up with, the Turtles eventually fell off the pop culture radar. I know that in the intervening years there was a revamped TV series plus new comics, toys and merchandise. But my propensity for nostalgia kept me from giving the new stuff a lookover.

Then in 2007, a fully computer animated Turtles movie was released. And boy, did it look good.

The Turtles got a design update, looking sleeker and meaner, and they could now pull off moves that were impossible for an actor in a rubber suit to do. It was like the Turtles of my childhood comics had been given the breath of life and were now able to run, leap, backflip, somersault, skate and fight like elite ninja dudes. Awesome.

This duel between Leonardo and Raphael is one of the highlights of the film. What makes it special (apart from the gorgeous animation and rendering) is its emotional aspect – Leo and Raph are arguably the more complex characters out of the four brothers. They are in many ways diametrically opposed; Leo is calm, rational and idealistic, while Raph is hot-tempered and impetuous but also more pragmatic than his older brother. This fight is a demonstration of their differences, perhaps even caused by those very differences.

There’s a lot to analyse about the fight. Raph has greater protection with his armour, and even appears stronger than Leo (I don’t know if it’s in the TMNT canon that Raph is the ‘bruiser’ of the team, but it kinda looks that way here). Leo is lighter on his feet and outmanouvers Raph a few times, though whether that’s down to his superior skill or because Raph is encumbered by his armour is up for speculation. I’ll say it’s due to Leo’s skill and Raph’s lack of discipline, but I’m biased.

24.5.11

Great film duels - Duel One

2011-05-23T07:59:00.000-07:00

I recently watched several K-1 kickboxing fights on YouTube, a sport that until then I had only the slightest familiarity with. Being a fan of martial arts films, I was struck by how different real life hand-to-hand combat is from the stylised action seen on screen. The real thing is far more inelegant; strikes are erratic and tend to come in staccato bursts in between periods of cautious feints and footwork. When a punch or kick does connect, it looks – and sounds – rather underwhelming. There is no exaggerated ‘thwack’ courtesy of the sound effects department to emphasise the blow’s impact. Strikes rarely land clean and sharp; they glance, slide, wobble, buckle and bounce. There’s a lot more sweat.

Real fighters also tend to avoid executing fancy moves. It’s a strategic choice – complicated techniques have a higher risk of failure, which can expose a fighter to a counterattack, and they are tiring when used too often. Real life bouts can be rather conservative affairs, especially when compared with their spectacular counterparts in movies.

For all their simulated violence, movie fights are more akin to dancing artforms than combat sports. For one thing, they’re choreographed, just like ballet or theatrical dance routines. There is an emphasis on rhythm, music, aesthetic appeal and narrative. Since the audience knows that no one is actually getting hurt, movie fights can be viewed with the same expectations as one would have of, for example, a ballet performance. The beauty of the fight and the storytelling purpose it serves take precedence over questions of who is the better fighter.

With this in mind, I’m starting a series of posts celebrating the artform of film fights, specifically duels. I chose duels because there’s something primal about one-on-one combat, and also because duels serve as a comparison with combat sports. I have chosen duels featuring weapons, because, well, they’re cooler.

Of course, my selection is a purely subjective exercise in martial arts film geekery. No doubt there are some who will question my choices. I’m aware of the many jaw-dropping quality swordfights in cinema, but since I don’t intend to post several hundred entries on film duels, I’m going to limit myself to just five examples. Each is taken from a specific genre: A swords-and-sandals film, a full CGI film, a sci-fi film, an anime, and a kung-fu (or rather wuxia) film. All five duels represent, for me, some of the best film combat choreography in the history of the moving picture. I hope you enjoy their artistry as much as I do.

Achilles vs Hector (Troy)

The film had mixed reviews, but I was (and still am) impressed with the costume designs and fight choreography. Brad Pitt’s Achilles really conveyed the martial prowess of the fabled warrior, cutting down Trojans with grace, agility and a terrifying ferocity. Much to the wrath of Iliad purists, the screenwriters and choreographers took creative liberties with the depiction of Achilles’s legendary duel with the Trojan prince Hector. I prefer to appreciate the film duel on its own merits, canonical or not.

Achilles’s agility and haughtiness are on show in the fight. This duel contains, to my knowledge, a rare example of non-Asian spear fighting. It’s interesting to see how the choreographers interpreted the way a Greek spear was wielded in single combat. That and the large shields give this duel a distinctive flavour.

The best fight scenes have an element of character exposition. We read in the body language of Achilles his contempt for Hector. We glimpse the not unremarkable skill of Hector when he manages to cut the hitherto untouchable Achilles. We feel that Hector was truly a great warrior – both in arm and heart – and thus consider it an injustice that a mere man, no matter his skill, was matched against a virtual god of war. Brave Hector stood no chance against the dancing, dodging Achilles.

24.5.11