Jerry Coyne has finished reading the ENTIRE Bible

I admire the biology professor and author of Why Evolution Is True Jerry Coyne for many reasons: his scientific knowledge and passionate advocacy for science, his informed criticism of religion and theology, the unabashed love he has for cats and good food in often exotic locales, and his commitment to civil discourse on his website. Now I can add another reason to admire the man – his sheer tenacity in reading the King James Bible from “In the beginning…” all the way through to the last verse of Revelation. Talk about taking one for the team!

Coyne took up this Herculean task in June last year, and only completed it a few days ago. He joins that elite group of people who can claim to have read the Bible from cover to cover (a claim that not many Christians can make, I imagine). Here’s his review of God’s holy word:

I have realized, after finishing the Bible two days ago (congratulate me!), that theology is like modern literary criticism applied to a book by authors no longer alive. Faced with a text that says one thing on its face, but which can be “interpreted” in innumerable different ways, and with no recourse to the “true” meaning beyond what the words say—or to the author’s own take about what she intended (which, of course, can be misleading too!), Sophisticated Theologians™ simply make up their own interpretations. This is such a palpably obvious exercise that I’m amazed intelligent people fall for it. That’s why in some ways I have more respect for Biblical literalists than for clever and sophisticated apologists like John Haught. The former, at least, try hard to stick to what Scripture really says. (Readers don’t need to inform me that even literalists exercise some interpretation.)

Oh, and the Bible is not a great work of literature. There are some good bits—we all know them—but most of it is tedious and boring. In no way is it as good as Shakespeare or Joyce. Yes, it is a cultural touchstone, and yes, I am glad I read it, if for no other reason than I can say I did, and know what a terrible guide to “morality” it really is. But I did not come away with the thought “what a beautifully written book!” There are some good sentences, and a very few good verses, but the book as a whole is leaden. And its vaunted “moral teachings” are, when not repugnant, trite. I’m glad to be done.

In this I disagree with Richard Dawkins. We both agree that everyone should read the Bible for cultural reasons. But to me it’s like learning organic chemistry: painful but necessary. To Richard it is also a chance to be thrilled at the beautiful language. But that beauty is thin on the ground. If you want beautiful language, read Shakespeare or “The Dead”. For morality, try modern secular philosophers like [John] Rawls or [Peter] Singer. At least they don’t advocate genocide or the subjugation of women.

One can almost sympathise with Christians who choose not to read their Bible in its entirety. Apart from the tediousness and uneven literary quality, as Coyne has painfully discovered, there’s also the uncomfortable fact of reading passages where God commands, condones or turns a blind eye towards decidedly immoral actions.

14.1.13

When cultural relativism becomes racism

Alex Aan

Human rights activist Maryam Namazie has a blog post about a ‘letter to the editor’ whose writer displays a contemptible sort of cultural relativism. In his letter responding to a petition for Indonesian atheist Alexander Aan’s release from prison (Aan was found guilty of blasphemy for posting atheist statements on Facebook), Raymond Carlise writes:

I have considered Edward Conduit’s appeal to sign the petition in defence of the Indonesian atheist who has been jailed for saying there is no God, but have concluded that I cannot sign [the] Avaaz petition for Alex.

There may well be no God for Alex, as for you or for me. With the Indonesians however it’s evidently a different matter. The limits of subjectivity and of objectivity have to be recognized.

So Raymond Carlise is an atheist who thinks that non-Indonesians have no business telling Indonesians to respect the human rights and civil liberties of their fellow citizens. How magnanimous of him! Clearly for Carlise the “limits of subjectivity and of objectivity” preclude freedom of thought and expression for Indonesian atheists like Alex Aan. Carlise is basically saying to Alex, “You did this to yourself, so tough luck.”

Liberals who share Carlise’s cultural relativism seem blind to the double standards they’re championing. They totally heart those wonderful things called ‘human rights’ and ‘civil liberties’, but hey, if a different culture doesn’t think they’re all that wonderful, more power to it! Who cares if other societies jail atheists/mutilate the genitals of girls/deny women the vote? My own enlightened society doesn’t (phew!), and that’s all that matters to me.

These same liberals are likely to be infected with the postmodernist idea that any one culture’s moral norms are just as valid as those of others, including those of the so-called West. To believe otherwise is to be a racist, a cultural bigot. But atheist writer and activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali points out that it’s actually the opposite – cultural relativists are the ones being racist, for their refusal to oppose practices like persecution of atheists and female genital mutilation (FGM) condemns non-Westerners to pain and suffering that Westerners wouldn’t tolerate for their own cultural group.

Here’s a video from the Global Atheist Convention held in Melbourne earlier this year, where Hirsi Ali joins Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and Sam Harris for a panel discussion. Hirsi Ali makes her argument that cultural relativism can become a form of racism (and worse) at time mark 0:07:13.

Referring to FGM carried out by British Muslims while a ‘culturally sensitive’ government allows it to happen for fear of being thought racist or Islamophobic, Hirsi Ali says:

If you think through the logic of racism, if little [Muslim] girls of seven, eight years old cannot be protected by British law, then you start to wonder what exactly is racist. If the genitals of little white girls were being cut off, there would be enormous outrage.

Cultural relativists like Raymond Carlise should seriously reconsider their position. If they think that they occupy the moral high ground by refusing to judge the moral failings of another culture, they’re only fooling themselves. Don’t be like Carlise. Sign the petition calling for Alex Aan’s release, or write to the Indonesian government to let them know that human rights are for everyone, not just privileged Western liberals.

5.7.12

The Cologne Regional Court has done the right thing

A court in the German city of Cologne has done what every court in the world should do: rule against the circumcision of infant boys for religious reasons. The British Humanist Association has a short post on this unsurprisingly controversial decision, while the New Humanist website has a longer article doubling as an editorial.

Where I stand on this matter should be obvious. Chopping bits off a baby’s penis in the name of superstitious, antiquated tradition is not what modern, rational, civilised people do. What is especially galling is that religionists like Dieter Graumann (President of Germany’s Central Council of Jews) and Aiman Mazyek (of the Central Council of Muslims) have the temerity to call the Cologne court’s ruling “outrageous”. No, what is truly outrageous is that infants continue to be mutilated without their consent simply because their parents subscribe to barbaric Iron Age customs.

Richard Dawkins was right to state that “there is no such thing as a Catholic child, there is only a child of Catholic parents. There is no such thing as a Protestant child, only a child of Protestant parents. There is no such thing as a Muslim child, only a child of Muslim parents.” As Dawkins argued, we wouldn’t think of labeling a child as a Marxist or a libertarian. Yet millions of children around the world are branded with the religious convictions of their parents by default, despite neither having understood nor consented to those convictions.

This is far from over. The Cologne Regional Court has been brave and principled, but its historic ruling may yet be overturned by Germany’s highest court, the Constitutional Court. Already the religionists are pushing back, playing the persecution card while they fight for their right to violate the physical integrity of their young children. Appeals to tradition are flying thick and fast. But what else do you expect from regressive individuals who remain mired in the past?

28.6.12

Dawkins’s eulogy to Hitchens pulls no punches

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

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

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.

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

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.

Baptist minister’s attack on secularism = FAIL

Looks like The Age’s ‘militant secularist’ coverage of the Access Ministries scandal has ruffled Baptist minister Nicholas Tuohy. This man of God believes that The Age and “its buddies at the Humanist Society” are mounting an “unjustified and unfair attack on Christian Religious Education (CRE) in schools and chaplaincy.” Conveniently for me, Tuohy has structured his peevish outburst in a numbered point-by-point format, so I’ll just shoot down his fallacious arguments in exactly the same order he has made them.

~

Firstly, why shouldn’t children have the right to learn about Jesus and, if they so want, become a follower or, ready for it, a Christian? One example in The Age article refers to a child who ended up taking herself and her parents off to the local church after having CRE classes. Shock horror, call in the troops! A family heading off to church together? The Age thinks this is somehow sinister.

Sorry to burn down your strawman Tuohy, but no one, not The Age, not their ‘buddies at the Humanist Society’, not the Australian Education Union, not even baby-eating ‘militant’ atheists like me are denying anyone, children or adults, the right to learn about Jesus / Mohammad / Krishna / Satan’s friend Buddha / Odin All-Father / Gandalf the White. The issue here is about the state funding of personal religious ideology. Public schools are no place for religious indoctrination. Places dedicated to such ‘instruction’ already exist. I believe the public venue for the Christian variety has the technical designation of ‘church’, while the private one is commonly referred to as ‘home’. Go mess with people’s heads there.

“Science is not a tradition”

Harold Camping is one of the latest in a noble line of doomsday prophets stretching back to antiquity. The evangelical Christian broadcaster has announced, reportedly with a straight face, that the end of the world is nigh – on May 21 to be exact. At least the Almighty, in His infinite compassion, has allowed us to catch the Eurovision finals on the 14th before enacting the Rapture.

The Washington Post caught wind of this somber news and proceeded to ask none other than Richard ‘The God Delusion’ Dawkins what his thoughts were on this clearly consequential matter. Dawkins promptly replied:

Why is a serious newspaper like the Washington Post giving space to a raving loon? I suppose the answer must be that, unlike the average loon, this one has managed to raise enough money to launch a radio station and pay for billboards. I don’t know where he gets the money, but it would be no surprise to discover that it is contributed by gullible followers – gullible enough, we may guess, to go along with him when he will inevitably explain, on May 22nd, that there must have been some error in the calculation, the rapture is postponed to . . . and please send more money to pay for updated billboards.

So, the question becomes, why are there so many well-heeled, gullible idiots out there? Why is it that an idea can be as nuts as you like and still con enough backers to finance its advertising to acquire yet more backers . . . until eventually a national newspaper notices and makes it into a silly season filler?

The esteemed professor sure gave the Post a good slapping. Can’t say they didn’t deserve it.

In the question posed to Dawkins, there was this phrase: ‘What does your tradition teach about the end of the world?’ Dawkins took issue with its implication that science is merely a ‘tradition’, a product of customs and beliefs handed down through time. He set the record straight:

Science is not a tradition, it is the organized use of evidence from the real world to make inferences about the real world.

Precisely. We can thank sloppy thinking and the postmodernist assault on knowledge for the annoying refrain that science is just another religion/ideology/cultural construct/power structure/tradition. Sorry relativists, it isn’t. Science is a process, and a bloody effective one at that. Calling science a tradition is like calling the act of putting fuel in your car to make it run a ritual.

Skepticblog’s Donald Prothero has written about science’s unique truth-finding and knowledge-producing characteristics, which can be summarised as follows:

1. It works.
2. It is self-policing.
3. It tells us inconvenient truths.

No tradition does all that.




12.5.11

Blackford on the New Atheism phenomenon

Philosopher and writer Russell Blackford has an excellent two-part (Part 1, Part 2) overview of New Atheism – on its origins and subsequent dissemination in the wider culture, and its luminaries and critics, with a focus on the inter-atheist squabbling that bedevils the otherwise progressive movement.

My own introduction to atheism (or specifically anti-religionism) was Sam Harris’s book The End of Faith. I had already been casually irreligious for many years prior to encountering the ideas put forth in TEOF, but Harris was the first ideologue to make me feel indignant over the harms caused and perpetuated by religion. Then Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion and Christopher Hitchens’s God Is Not Great completed my transformation into a committed atheist.

We can be friends, but that doesn’t mean you are right

Ophelia Benson has a new post over at Butterflies & Wheels on more ‘nasty atheist’ complaints. Apparently New Atheists are just like those hyperbolic Tea Partiers. Yup, non-belief in a magic sky fairy is just as dangerous to civil society as right-wing hysteria cooked with superstition and bigotry. The resemblance between the two is striking.

Anyway, silly people saying silly things aside, one commenter, Sajanas, mentioned attending Richard Dawkins’s Duke University lecture in October last year. Here’s Sajanas’s comment in full:

I attended the lecture Dawkins gave for his most recent book at Duke University, and for whatever reason, the religious person asking him why he was so mean to religion was the last one. His reply was simply ‘by all means, let’s be friends, but that doesn’t mean that you are right’. And so many people simply won’t be satisfied or friendly unless atheists cave to that desire they have to be fawned over because of their deeply held beliefs, because of how much they go to church, or what not, even though atheists don’t find those things at all impressive. I do think that the many people whose faith motivates them to do good works are very impressive, but I would find it more impressive still if they did these things without disrupting gay rights, women’s health and equality, and science research and education. And the atheists that want to get on the good side of religion (and religious cash) by using the good works to hide the bad can just get a big ole raspberry.

Sajanas makes good points aplenty, but that phrase, “by all means, let’s be friends, but that doesn’t mean that you are right”, jumped out at me. Knowing a few people who are either religious or believers in the supernatural, Dawkins’s statement could come in handy next time someone I know tries to sell me the idea that Jesus saves or that the ancient wisdom of pre-modern, pre-scientific societies is a superior tool for understanding the world, the universe and humanity.

We can be friends, but that doesn’t mean you are right.

By the way, Sajanas’s reference to atheists kissing up to religion and the monetary resources at its disposal is a jab at accommodationism, where smart people who should know better trade their intellectual integrity for cash and kudos from religious-but-pretending-it-isn't organisations like the John Templeton Foundation. Sunny Bains, a journalist and scientist at Imperial College London, has written a report on the Templeton Foundation exposing the lies and misrepresentation it concocts in order to woo scientists and atheists to its oxymoronic cause – the reconcilement of science and religion.




24.3.11

Pick me, Mr Stangroom, pick me!

Jeremy ‘Snark Hunter’ Stangroom has embarked on a rather ambitious pet project. He intends to hunt down examples of atheist incivility as part of his crusade to ‘name and shame’ atheists behaving badly. The Great Snark Hunter first went after Russell Blackford (who subsequently granted Stangroom his impressive title), not just once, but twice and thrice. He then set his snark-sights on Richard Dawkins and most recently, PZ Myers and Jerry Coyne.

In the spirit of fraternity, many atheists have been eager to contribute to the Snark Hunter’s piteously small collection of godless rudeness. Adam Lee is one such atheist who has generously emailed a collated sample of his snarkiness to Stangroom, in the hope of furthering the Snark Hunter’s noble cause. Strangely though, in response to Lee’s heartfelt gift, the Snark Hunter simply had this to say:

Don’t be an idiot.

Perhaps the Snark Hunter was just being hiply ironic.

I would hate to be the only godless heathen who hasn’t got anything to offer Mr Stangroom. Why, he might mistake me for a lily-livered, conflict-averse surrender monkey kind of atheist! So I’ve taken the trouble to comb through my archive (with a meticulousness worthy of the Snark Hunter himself) and dig up some examples of my own bald meanness and spite. Well, maybe more like the odd bit of mildly pointed language (ok, so I’m not a foul-mouthed bastard. Got a problem with that, you empty headed animal food trough wiper?)

Anyway, here’s what I found:

While the star of the progressive Greens is waxing, especially in the state of Victoria, reactionary politicians like Steve Fielding and his Family First ilk (who share his knack for making idiotic comments) are losing power and influence. (Good riddance to religious rubbish)

~

Of course, some Christians will spout their mantra of “loving the sinner, hating the sin”, which for all its rhythmic poetry is perhaps a disingenuous evasion of this simple truth: they just don’t feel comfortable with the idea of a man tenderly pistoning his tumescent love-muscle into the welcoming rosebud of another man. ("Eeeww!": Disgust and morality)

~

If well-meaning senators and lawmakers are to be consistent in their efforts to attenuate the harm caused by cults, they would have to apply any new anti-cult law to all cults, including the long-established ones that prefer to call themselves ‘religions’. (The irony of anti-cult laws)

~

The atheist, secularist, humanist or naturalist who calls religion to task demonstrates the courage that the religious believer lacks. For a people who supposedly venerate truth and are dedicated to its promulgation, believers are positively terrified of the stuff when it is presented to them naked, uncovered by dogma and unadorned with superstition. In their terror they show just how gutless they really are. (A tragic courage)

~

I’ll say it: religious believers tend not to be sophisticated thinkers. (Religion and its conceits)

It’s a meager harvest, I admit, but I hope the Great Snark Hunter will find it acceptable.


UPDATE: The good professor Myers has become aware of Mr Stangroom's disapproving gaze, and has responded appropriately.




4.3.11

Apologist for religion misunderstands atheism

Philosophy professor Stephen T. Asma thinks that atheists are too easily dismissive of religion, or at least the Big Three monotheisms with which they appear to be obsessed. He chides atheists like Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett for their ‘provincialism’, reminding them that a great, if not the greatest, part of humanity follow non-monotheistic religions like Buddhism and animism.

Having lived in Cambodia and China, and travelled in Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, and Africa, I have come to appreciate how religion functions quite differently in the developing world — where the majority of believers actually live. The Four Horsemen, their fans, and their enemies all fail to factor in their own prosperity when they think about the uses and abuses of religion.

On not being a dick

Skeptics and critical thinkers everywhere have recently been engaged in a sort of family quarrel. The issue: how should one go about correcting the falsehoods, poor reasoning and wrong beliefs of others? With tact and sensitivity, or with righteous anger? The answer seems obvious, but some in the skeptic community think that too many of their fellow nonsense-debunkers are choosing the latter option, with predictable results.

The irony of anti-cult laws

Amid the political grandstanding, media sensationalism, indignant protests and nervous murmurs surrounding Independent Senator Nick Xenophon’s call for anti-cult laws comme les Français, it seems that people forget one crucial point: all religions were once cults. The big players are simply the lucky few who, thanks to various factors, eventually grew into the global behemoths they are today, mega-corporations of the soul whose products aren’t material consumables but rather intangible ministrations to the psychological need for teleological narrative and ontological meaning endemic to our species.

Postmodernist writing: the real deal

In case you hadn’t notice (and who could blame you for failing to do so), my previous ‘essay’, "Preconceptualist patriarchialism and semiotic narrative", was a pastiche of absolutely meaningless mumbo-jumbo, randomly generated by this clever program created by fellow Melbournian Andrew Bulhak (click on your browser’s ‘refresh’ button to generate a brand new configuration of po-mo keywords, hackneyed phrases and notable names). A wry dig at the abstruse terminology, liberal name-dropping appeals to authority and banal observations dressed up in profound-sounding language that are the stock-in-trade of many postmodernist and social constructivist writers, the Postmodernism Generator at least produces essays that are, as Richard Dawkins noted, “distinguishable from the real thing only in being more fun to read.”

The three cultures

During the mid-twentieth century, the British physicist and novelist Charles Percy Snow wrote and spoke of the gulf between the ‘two cultures’; the humanities on one side and the sciences on the other. Snow observed that a breakdown in communication between intellectuals from both camps of knowledge was obstructing efforts to solve the world’s problems. In the nineties, American science writer John Brockman updated the concept of the two cultures by positing the emergence of a ‘third culture’. This third culture consisted of scientists and other intellectuals who were communicating their (mainly scientific) ideas directly to the public and in the process challenging the traditional cultural authority of writers and thinkers from the humanities.

Life is meaningless (but that's OK)

In her article ‘Purpose, Meaning and Darwinism’ published in the January/February 2009 issue of Philosophy Now magazine, Dr Mary Midgley insists that, contrary to certain interpretations of Darwin’s theory of natural selection that paint biological history as a purposeless, random process, there is indeed meaning and purpose to life. And Midgley isn’t just saying that life has meaning from a human perspective. No, she believes that all of existence has an intrinsic purpose, and that “purposiveness is not a peculiarly human trait… it is one we share with many other animals.” Purposiveness – as defined by Midgley – is “persistent, systematic striving till a particular end is achieved.” Therefore, a person, animal or even a plant demonstrates purposiveness when striving to reach a specific goal, whether gaining a job promotion, escaping from a trap or (as Midgley provides as an example) in the case of seeds, growing around and through paving stones, “lift[ing] them out of place, if necessary.”