Category: critical thinking

14 Why do we trust these people?

September 27, 2011
by Crommunist
· blog · critical thinking · religion

My friend Brian once used an argument that has stuck with me ever since I heard it (it’s super effective!). Imagine yourself at the deathbed of a loved one – say a spouse or a child. You are approached by someone who tells you that if you give him your life savings, he will be able to secure YahwAlladdha’s personal intercession to save the ailing party. Would you do it, even if you knew the chance of success was remote? If your answer is ‘yes’, then that is an argument in favour of atheism. Faith healers are a dime a dozen (actually, far more expensive than that), and none of them do what they claim to do. Someone who knows that intercessory prayer does not work, no matter how devout the petitioner, is forever protected against this specific type of huckster.

The fact is that this is not, for many, a hypothetical question.

‘Miracle Babies’ pastor to be extradited

An evangelist who claimed to have created miraculous pregnancies through prayer is to be sent back to Kenya to face child abduction charges. Gilbert Deya, who has held services in Peckham, south London, has fought a legal battle to stay in the UK since 2007, arguing anything else would breach his human rights.

(snip)

Infertile or post-menopausal women who attended his church in Peckham, South London were told they would be having “miracle” babies. But the babies were always “delivered” in backstreet clinics in Nairobi. The Tottenham MP, David Lammy, had a husband and wife turn up at his constituency surgery who had been through it. “The couple went to Africa, came back into the country with a child that the authorities found out was not theirs through a DNA test.

(snip)

When asked how he explained the births of children with DNA different to that of their alleged parents, he said: “The miracle babies which are happening in our ministry are beyond human imagination. It is not something I can say I can explain because they are of God and things of God cannot be explained by a human being.”

I can’t read this story without being absolutely disgusted by how low members of our species are willing to stoop. This is evil, pure and simple. I don’t think anyone would look at what this man has done to his parishioners and say ‘well his heart was in the right place’. He engaged in a scheme that was equal parts fraud and child trafficking – no amount of justification can possibly excuse this, except in his own mind. I can only sympathize with the heartbroken people who were lied to, and the others who were desperate enough to need to part with their newborn children (for reasons I can only guess at).

Buddhist monk charged with raping girl in 1970s

A Buddhist monk has been charged with raping an underage girl in the 1970s, the Metropolitan police has said. Pahalagama Somaratana Thera, chief incumbent of Thames Buddhist Vihara, Croydon, has been charged with four counts of sexual abuse, police said. The alleged rape and three counts of indecent assault occurred in Chiswick, west London, in 1977 and 1978.

I don’t think I have to provide a sophisticated argument or compelling statistics to have you agree that rape is horrible. While we collectively have this myth that rapists are leering perverts hiding in dark alleys and jumping on unsuspecting women (who are dressed too slutty, donchaknow), the truth is that the vast majority of rapists are known to the victim. Oftentimes they are family members or close, trusted authority figures. The sense of betrayal can only serve to turn the physical violence into a full-blown existential crisis. To be raped by a religious teacher – a person who commands absolute trust – must be horrible beyond imagining.

So these are the stories. They’re both about awful people who did awful things. There are awful people who do awful things that have nothing whatsoever to do with religion. A NYPD supervisor pepper-sprayed a peaceful protester point blank in the face, then laughed it off while checking his text messages. I doubt he did so with the Psalm of David on his lips. This isn’t the point. The question that popped immediately into my mind when I read both of these pieces was why on Earth did people trust them in the first place? An unbelievable level of faith (wording intentional) was placed in these men – far more than an adult places in their employer or their elected representative or doctor or college professor – people who arguably can demonstrate the reason why you should trust them.

Even if you are a theist (and would you please de-lurk so I know you’re out there?), I think we can build a consensus around the merits placing absolute trust in individual people. There is no shortage of examples of religious leaders who have demonstrated the capacity to lie and distort theological claims to dupe unwitting followers. Those examples include violence against self and others, betrayal of family, complete inversion of ethical principles – any thing that one might describe as ‘sin’. Even if you do believe that some kind of god exists, surely we can get together on the premise that trust should not be given to those that claim its favour.

But this is my main gripe with religion: I don’t really have to speculate what the mechanism is for these kinds of slime to gain the unquestioning trust of their followers. Religion is built on the promotion of unquestioning trust. Trust in the absence of evidence is the fundamental stuff of theistic religion – without faith, religion is simply philosophy (and pretty lazy philosophy to boot). Part of this trust has always been directed at those god-men who claim special insight into the whims of the almighty. A layperson who claims to have had direct communication with an extraterrestrial intelligence is rightly seen as a bit of a nutcase. A politician who claims to have divine direction rockets to the top of the polls. We cannot ignore the encouragement of faith as a major explanatory mechanism for this disparity.

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3 Liberal privilege and tragic epiphanies

September 26, 2011
by Crommunist
· blog · crapitalism · crommunism · privilege · religion

I am one of (I think) few people who can look at where my life is and who I am as a person and be satisfied. Hell, even happy most of the time. In a culture where we are constantly bombarded with images and ideas that serve to undermine our self-confidence and constantly question our self-worth (which, according to advertisers, can only be enhanced by buying whatever product they are selling at that moment), I know how tough it can be to feel good about who you are. Right now I am working competently at a job where I make a positive impact, living in a city where I have lots of leisure activities and great friends to do those activities with, and have realistic prospects for growth in the not-too-distant future. I do not profit from the misery of others, and have regular opportunities to give back. I don’t have any major moral quandaries or vices that I have to keep hidden from the world or my family. All in all, I don’t really have anything substantive to complain about.

It was not always this way, to be sure. Like most people, my teenage years were a miserable and clumsy affair*. I used to be known as a joke killer – people would be laughing and having a good time, I’d try to join in, everyone would stop laughing. I spent virtually my entire teen years completely undateable for reasons that I could never quite figure out. I had very few friends before the age of 17/18. I would always somehow find the exact wrong thing to say (a fact that gives me a wry sense of satisfaction whenever anyone praises my speaking or writing skills). I am reminded of a party I was at where a guy I didn’t care for was having a conversation with a girl I was quite smitten with. He was relating to her that he didn’t have many friends. In an effort to be nice, she said “I’ll be your friend!” I, visited by a bout of assholery, blurted out “yeah, if you pay her!”

Conversation at the party stopped. Shocked and hurt, the girl looked at me. I quickly realized that in addition to being a petty douche, I had implied that she was some kind of prostitute. Not one of my finest moments, I will readily admit.

I’ve definitely come a long way since then. I still say dumb things, but I am at least aware that they’re dumb before I say them, and nobody’s feelings get seriously hurt. Sometimes though, I will be strolling along my merry way, and a memory like this from my past will float across my conscious mind, completely knocking me on my ass. I will feel so ashamed of the things I’ve said – a feeling that is palpable and stays with me. There’s nothing in particular that will bring one of these episodes on, I’ll just get totally blindsided by what an asshat I was, or how foolish I looked. It’s not a pleasant experience.

From time to time I have a similar experience when I consider people’s religious beliefs. While I am obviously aware that people believe ridiculous superstitions and allow their actions to be guided by them, on rare occasions I will be struck by a deep realization that this is not simply a fun thing to argue about on the internet. Somewhere in the world right now there is a young woman married to a grotesque old man that she doesn’t love, who honestly believes that her fate is justified by the will of her deity. Somewhere else, a young gay man contemplates suicide because he honestly believes that the way he feels is an abomination in the eyes of his creator. Somewhere else, a world leader with access to a massive arsenal of weapons makes his decisions guided by his interpretation of an ancient book. Somewhere else, a mother instructs her children that their neighbours deserve to die because they worship the wrong gods.

These are things that happen every day. They’re so wildly surreal that my brain doesn’t seem to connect them to reality, treating them as abstractions much the same way it copes with the physical laws of the universe – things that are true, but not viscerally so. Occasionally their deeper semantic truth pokes through for a moment and completely throws me for a loop, but most of the time they just putter away in the background.

I can only surmise that this comes from the fact that I am surrounded, for the most part, by people for whom faith is either a non-issue, or who agree with my position on it. I don’t really get into religious debates often, and even when I do I don’t really connect with the fact that this person actually thinks this is true. It’s operating from a position of priviliege, wherein I can’t even start to see what colour the sky is on their planet, because their entire way of belief is foreign to me. Even when I was a believer, I wasn’t so completely god-swarmed that my faith meaningfully coloured my day-to-day reality. I have never believed in the way that someone who is willing to strap a bomb to her/his chest and detonate it in a crowded market believes. That kind of blind faith is beyond me.

Reading over that last passage, it makes it sound as though believers have something I don’t, and that I wish at some level that I had. Nothing could be further from the truth. Any belief, religious or not, that completely blinds you to possibility and forces you to rewrite or ignore facts is dangerous, and I want no part of it. If someone could present me with compelling evidence of the validity of palm-reading, or the existence of ghosts, or the efficacy of rolfing, I’d certainly entertain it, and would be forced to revise my understanding of the world. I see that kind of flexibility as a strength, and the kind of rigidity needed to maintain a belief that runs contrary to the evidence (or forces you to torture the evidence into position) as a weakness.

That being said, until I can see religious faith in the way that those who believe do, I will be horribly handicapped in my understanding of how to disabuse them of their delusions. Of course, that’s not my job, so I’m not going to lose too much sleep over it.

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*I am definitely aware of the fact that some people have legitimate problems during their teen years. I am not trying to say either directly or by implication that I suffered in a way that is comparable to people who were bullied or ostracized or any of the really damaging things that can happen to you during adolescence.

0 Movie Friday: If it please the court

September 23, 2011
by Crommunist
· blog · civil rights · ethics · law · movie

I would never dream of cheating on my one true love, The West Wing. However, its slightly less hot (but still smokin’) cousin Boston Legal caught my eye one one of those lonely, Bartlettless nights and swept me up in its strong arms. I truly don’t understand what it is that makes it so unpopular to have politically-relevant shows that explore the arguments on both sides of issues. They seem to be incredibly popular when they manage to make it on the air, and yet so few of them ever do. While it’s nice to have 30 Rock stroking all the liberal talking points, I’d love to see a drama that explores them more honestly – even through comedy.

That being said, for all its truly funny moments, Boston Legal also hits us right in the heart at times, often through main character Alan Shore’s closing statements in cases. Today’s video comes from S01E17 – Death Be Not Proud:

Please excuse the cheesy song in the background. I cannot fathom why someone would want to ruin such a great speech with such a terrible soundtrack. Take it up with the uploader.

This video should stand as a tribute to the memory of Troy Davis – a man executed under similarly doubt-ridden circumstances, executed by a state that would rather see a man die for a perverted sense of ‘justice’ than to do a thorough job investigating his innocence.

The transcript of the video is available here, but this is the relevant bit:

Alan Shore: I am here. With all due respect, may it please the court, because I have a problem with the State executing a man with diminished capacity. Who may very well be innocent! I’m particularly troubled, 8 may it please the court, with all due respect, that you don’t have a problem with it. You may not want to regard my client’s innocence, but you cannot possibly disregard the fact that 117 wrongfully convicted people have been saved from execution in this country. 117! The system is hardly foolproof.

And Texas! This State is responsible for a full third of all executions in America. How can that be? The criminals are just somehow worse here? Last year you accounted for fully half of the nation’s executions. Fifty percent from one State! You cannot disregard the possibility, the possibility, that something’s up in Texas.

Judge Lance Abrams: I would urge you to confine your remarks to your client, and not the good state of Texas.

Alan Shore: Zeke Borns never had a chance. He was rounded up as a teenager, thrown in a cell while he was still doped up on drugs, brow-beaten and interrogated, until his IQ of eighty was overcome, he confessed to a crime he had no memory of, still has no memory of, for which there is no evidence, other than two witnesses who saw him pumping gas around the time of the murder. He was given a coked-up lawyer, who admittedly did nothing.

I’m now before nine presumably intelligent people in the justice business, who have the benefit of knowing all of this. Add to that, you know DNA places somebody else at the scene, and you’re indifferent! You don’t care! Whether you believe in my client’s innocence, and I’ll assume, with all due respect, may it please the court, that you don’t! You cannot be sure of his guilt! You simply cannot! And failing that, how can you kill him? How can you kill him?

How indeed?

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2 Racism: it ain’t yesterday’s problem

September 22, 2011
by Crommunist
· blog · crime · critical thinking · law · news · race · racism

Yesterday I mentioned that I don’t have a specific goal for these writings. Mostly they are a signpost for me to be able to look back and see how my thought process is evolving over time, much like writing one’s self a letter to be read in the future. That being said, people are reading this stuff (and thank you for that, by the way). This means that my ideas must stand up to third-party scrutiny in a way they wouldn’t have to if they were just my random, private thoughts. One of the more contentious ideas I have is my operational definition of racism. I fully recognize that the way I use the word – to describe the attribution of ethnic group characteristics to individuals – is subtly different from what most people think when they use the word. My position remains that my definition is superior because it adequately encompasses the ‘classic’ definition, whilst also describing the reality of contemporary ‘polite’ racism.

However, there are occasions where I can go beyond simple rhetorical demonstration and actually bring evidence to bear on why we must shift our understanding of what racism is:

A Texas inmate sentenced to death—in a racially charged case that now-Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said was inappropriately decided—has petitioned Gov. Rick Perry and his state parole board for clemency, giving the GOP presidential candidate two days to decide whether to commute the sentence or grant a temporary stay of execution. Last week, one of the Harris County prosecutors who helped secure Buck’s conviction wrote a letter to Perry urging him to grant a retrial.

Some quick housecleaning here:

I am not calling Rick Perry racist. I don’t know anything about the man’s personal beliefs when it comes to issues of race, or his track record of treatment of visible minorities. Even if Perry were an open and notorious member of the KKK, it would be completely irrelevant to my argument.
I am also not interested in debating capital punishment at this time. I am personally against it, and have found all arguments in favour of executing convicts to be lacking in validity. That being said, my personal stance on the ethics or pragmatics of capital punishment are entirely tangential to the issue at hand.
I am also not trying to make the argument that Duane Buck, the inmate in question, is innocent and should be freed. By all accounts, he’s guilty and his conviction is a good one. Again, this has nothing to do with the point I wish to make here.

The point I wish to make lives in these lines:

The issue at hand isn’t Buck’s innocence, but the means by which his death sentence was obtained. Prosecutors firmly established Buck’s guilt, but to secure a capital punishment conviction in Texas they needed to prove “future dangerousness”—that is, provide compelling evidence that Buck posed a serious threat to society if he were ever to walk free. They did so in part with the testimony of a psychologist, Dr. Walter Quijano, who testified that Buck’s race (he’s African American) made him more likely to commit crimes in the future.

This is about as stark an example of racism as one could ask for. If Duane Buck had been white, he would have received a sentence of life in prison rather than execution. The psychologist testifying against him made it a matter of science (or at least clinical opinion) that black people are inherently more dangerous, and more likely to reoffend. This declaration pushed the jury to decide against him when deciding sentencing. One can certainly fault Dr. Quijano for abdicating his ethical responsibilities both as a medical practitioner and as a human being by offering racist claptrap as sworn testimony – there’s your classical racism. However, and this is significant – the jury believed him.

Imagine sitting in a juror’s box and having to decide on a land dispute between two neighbours. A shaman is called to testify, and offers his expert testimony that when he consulted the entrails of sacred chickens, they clearly indicated that the border between the two properties should be redrawn so that Mr. Ortiz can expand his garage as planned. When considering the evidence, would you include the shaman’s remarks, or rightly dismiss them as complete nonsense? Because you’re a reasonable person who knows that one cannot derive municipal zoning law from the gastrointestinal tract of domesticated animals, you’d probably ignore the insane ‘evidence’ offered in the courtroom.

That’s not the case in Texas. In Texas, the idea that black people are simply more dangerous – that black skin and heritage is meaningful when trying to predict someone’s behaviour – is something that carries enough traction to carry the force of law. The fact that the jurors weren’t able to immediately dismiss Dr. Quijano’s arguments as meritless means that somewhere in their minds, the predictive power of race on behaviour is a real possibility. This doesn’t mean that they were necessary maliciously racist people, or that they were even consciously aware of the effect that their own nascent racism had on their decision-making processes. What it does mean, however, is that without a fuller understanding of what racism is and how it operates, legal decisions such as the one Mr. Buck is facing are a reality, and will continue to be in the future.

Luckily, for Mr. Buck anyway, the controversy surrounding the sentencing has led to a temporary stay of execution:

The U.S. Supreme Court halted the execution Thursday of a black man convicted of a double murder in Texas 16 years ago after his lawyers contended his sentence was unfair because of a question asked about race during his trial. Duane Buck, 48, was spared from lethal injection when the justices, without extensive comment, said they would review an appeal in his case. Two appeals, both related to a psychologist’s testimony that black people were more likely to commit violence, were before the court. One was granted; the other was denied.

But this brings to light a whole new series of questions. Suppose that, under Texas law, Duane Buck should be executed. Suppose that, without Dr. Quijano’s testimony, the decision would have gone the same way. It is entirely possible that a guilty person is being excused because of complication surrounding the way the justice system handled his race. It’s happened before. Justice has not been served, and it is because of our preoccupation with race, coupled with our seeming inability to chart the way forward when it comes to resolving what is evidently still an open and relevant question.

Racism is not a problem that our parents or grandparents had to contend with, and that we can consign to the annals of history. Racism is very much alive, and failing to understand it will continue to be a millstone around our collective necks for as long as it takes us to get serious in our discussion of it.

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3 Intelligent vs. smart: reflections on ‘racial realism’

September 19, 2011
by Crommunist
· blog · critical thinking · crommunism · forces of stupid · race · racism · science · skepticism

As a member of the skeptic/freethinker community, I tend to associate with many people that share my views on things. I am somewhat spoiled by the fact that most people my age in Canada read from the same playbook, and have many of the same fundamental assumptions/conclusions about the world. It is therefore usually a pretty big shock when I meet someone who is a 9/11 truther or a climate change denialist or a hardcore libertarian making themselves known at a skeptic’s pub night or related event.

Many people use the term ‘skeptic’ to denote anyone who ‘opposes the status quo’ – saying that their conspiracy mongering over who really took down the World Trade Center towers is just them being ‘skeptical’. When organized skeptics talk about ‘skepticism’, they generally refer to methodological skepticism – a philosophy wherein all beliefs and truth claims are subjected to scrutiny and apportioned to the available evidence. While superficially those do seem to overlap, the problem with the positions I mention above is that they fail to doubt their own truth claims, instead relying on a combination of ideological rigidity and back-filling to “prove” their validity. As I’ve spelled out before, it is no good to decide something is true and then look for evidence – the human mind is capable of thus “proving” pretty much anything it likes.

Enter “racial realism”.

Regular readers may recall a number of months ago when I had a white supremacist show up in the comments section. It triggered a somewhat unusual and surprising reaction in me – one that I myself wasn’t really prepared for. That aside, while I stand by my characterization of that person as a de facto white supremacist, he would probably prefer the term “race realist”. Race realism is, generally, the position that observable racial groupings are biologically valid, and are so beyond simply superficial cosmetic traits. The video linked above was created by someone who describes herself in such terms.

It may surprise you (it certainly surprised me) to learn that there are many points of agreement between myself and the author. Insofar as race has a biological component, I am certainly happy to admit that genetic differences account for phenotypic differences. I will also agree with her assertion that many people (most often those on the political left) misuse the term ‘racist’, often in an attempt to introduce emotional weight to an argument, sometimes in lieu of actually refuting the claims made. I will finally agree with her closing statement that noticing racial differences is not, in and of itself, racist.

That is probably the beginning and the end of the places where the author and I would agree with each other. The rest of the video is (despite the catchy musical accompaniment) is utter nonsense. Her basic position is that because races are inherently different, that “noticing” racial differences is only natural. The problem with her position specifically, and racial realism generally, is twofold. First, the statement that racial differences account for the type and magnitude of differences in access/achievement seen between racial groups is unsupported by the scientific evidence, and fails to take into account the multitude of other demonstrated, observed factors.

Second, the video uses the word “noticing” in a profoundly different way than we would colloquially. When the author uses the word ‘noticing’, she means semantically what most of us would use the word ‘explaining’ for. Noticing that there are disparities between racial groups is, indeed, not a racist action. Explaining differences between groups by attributing them to something as demonstrably superficial as race certainly qualifies as racism – almost by definition.

I’m not going to spend too much longer on the myriad of reasons why I disagree with the author. Friend of the blog Will has done an unbelievably thorough job of skewering the specific claims about race that the author makes:

Ruka also demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of social constructivism. The fact that race is socially constructed does not mean it is not real. It means that it is not reducible to biological traits. Race is a very real idea and has real, tangible implications on peoples’ lives. So, of course racial hate crimes exist, but they are based on the way people define race (e.g., skin color), not based on biology. I will close with a typically anthropological discussion. The definition of “race” varies cross-culturally, across time, and across space. This fact is evidence for a social construction of race. An excellent example of this can be seen in the changes of the race category of the United States national census over the last two centuries and in comparing the American categories of race options to the race options on other countries’ censuses.

Tim Wise has similarly taken his quill to the position of racial realism, saying that even if it was true it would be morally inarguable:

In other words, in order to uphold the notion that people should be treated like the individuals they are — not merely as individuals in the abstract — considering the way that racial identity may have limited opportunities for job or college applicants (and thus, taking affirmative action to look more deeply at what goes into an applicant’s presumed and visible “merit”) would be morally requisite. And yet, making assumptions about individual IQ based on group averages, and then doling out the goodies accordingly would be morally repugnant. Both look at group identity, but for very different reasons, with very different levels of ethical justification, and with very different practical results.

I don’t think I could do a better job than they have of taking on this absurd position. My utter contempt for it is such that I am loath to run the risk of elevating it above the adolescent brain-fart it is. What I would like to do is offer some perspective on why I think the author, and those like her, should be particularly addressed by the skeptical community.

Smart vs. intelligent

Back in early 2009, I re-posted a brief essay I had written delineating the concepts of “smart”, “wise”, “intellectual” and “intelligent”. I have a tendency to redefine terms for my own purposes, and I wanted that page to serve as a reference in case I ran into someone who objected to my describing of something as ‘stupid’. Simply put, “intelligent” refers to one’s ability to adapt to novel situations, “wise” includes the application of previously-held knowledge, and “intellectual” refers to one’s willingness to process things cognitively and through the application of logical processes. “Smart” is the confluence of all three of these attributes, whereas ‘stupid’ is its polar opposite.

I have no doubt that Ruka, the author of the video above, is intelligent. I am sure that, in her own way, she is “intellectual”, except insofar as she ignores contradictory evidence and refuses to address the flaws in her position, preferring instead to bloviate about how mean everyone is to her when she’s ‘just asking questions’. None of her intelligence, however, protects her from being profoundly stupid. I cannot really speculate about whether she is intentionally introducing straw man arguments and red herrings into her position, but I can conclude that, intentional or not, her arguments are sloppy and borne of an unbelievably arrogant reliance on her own perception of her cognitive abilities.

This kind of unwarranted self-assurance is also what is at play in 9/11 truthers, climate skeptics, Holocaust deniers, and other non-methodological ‘skeptics’. While it is most often an unfair straw man characterization foisted upon us by our opponents, it is also occasionally true of those who call ourselves ‘freethinkers’. Skepticism, as I’ve mentioned variously in previous posts, is an ideal to be pursued; not a goal to be reached. The only reliable path to truth is to test our beliefs against observed evidence, and (more importantly) to change them when necessary. While this can be done without ridiculous hang-wringing and false modesty, one must always keep in the back of their mind the statement “what if I’m wrong? How could that be demonstrated?”

Failing to do this, or only pretending to do it, as Ruka does (she apparently blocks comments unless they agree with her or insult her – presumably so she can paint her opponents as lunatics as she does in the video I link above), will inevitably lead us into positions like hers, where our inherent beliefs about the world are ‘justified’ through a convoluted process of back-filling and denial.

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0 Privilege: making it up as we go along

September 15, 2011
by Crommunist
· blog · critical thinking · forces of stupid · history · politics · privilege

I’m not sure how much background everyone reading this has had in the concept of privilege. I recognize that atheists, for example, have been recently introduced to the term as feminist voices within organized atheism have become more vocal. Those of you coming from anti-racist or feminist blogs could probably teach me a thing or two about privilege and how it manifests itself. Those who stumble on this blog from somewhere else may be facing the term for the first time (if that is legitimately the case, you should probably start with this article). Privilege, briefly, describes the set of advantages that one has merely by being a member of a group, operating through how society perceives that group. So if, for example, you are a man who is firmly trying to make a point, you are seen as ‘assertive’; if you’re a woman, you’re ‘bitchy’. Those two evaluations for identical behaviour put one group (men) at a significant advantage compared to those others, due to nothing more than how we stereotype that group.

One of the most insidious aspects of privilege is that, if you have it, it’s practically invisible. Privilege is most often held by the majority group, meaning that it is simply seen as ‘normal’. Whenever you look around, your explanation of the way the world works matches pretty much everyone else’s. It’s what’s in the media, in the classroom, it’s the way your friends and family see things – there’s very rarely any disconfirming evidence. Unless someone takes the time to point it out to you, there’s really no reason to suspect that there’s any other way of looking at the world.

On its own, privilege might not be so bad. Yes, it represents an inaccurate and nuance-free view of the world, but that on its own isn’t necessarily a problem. Where the negative aspect arises is when we use our privileged position to explain the world around us. If we’re trying to construct a narrative about how we came to be where we are, and by extension where we are headed or how we should behave, we need to ensure that we have our facts straight. When all of our facts come from a single perspective that necessarily neglects the number of other valid perspectives in existence, we get an incomplete picture. Thus, any narrative we build is going to neglect big chunks of information.

Even that on its own isn’t that dangerous. Any narrative is going to be missing pieces of information. After all, we can’t possibly know everything. What’s the big deal if we’ve missed a couple of perspectives, so long as we keep our facts straight?

Earlier this year [Michelle Bachmann] told an audience that the United States, at its founding, was a bastion of fairness and opportunity for “different cultures, different backgrounds, different traditions.” She went on to say (in an awkward sort of way) that the U.S. was a “resting point from people groups all across the world. It didn’t matter the color of their skin … [or] language … or economic status.” She was on a roll: “Once you got here, we were all the same.” Even assuming that she was talking only about the men, I still say, uh, no.

It’s easy (and fun!) to pick on Michelle Bachmann, because her relationship with reality is one of those late-night booty call arrangements where they don’t see much of each other, and when they do there’s nobody else around. It’s fairly unnecessary to pick on her specifically, since I’m sure everyone reading this already more or less agrees with my stance on her. What I will do, however, is use her as an illustration of exactly how dangerous it is to be so blissfully unaware of your privilege.

Bachmann’s positions are polluted by ‘research’ from ‘historian’ David Barton, who had an idea fixed in his head and then went out and found evidence to support it. Her approach is the same as his: decide what is true, and then backfill an explanation for how it came to be. Of course, my position on backfilling is pretty clear: if you do it, I stop listening to you. This is something we all do from time to time, out of convenience. After all, we’re not all historians, and we don’t always have all the facts. It’s a useful heuristic when used sparingly and only in cases where the stakes are low. However, when trying to decide national policy that will affect millions of people, it’s probably a good idea to make sure you presuppositions are accurate.

In Bachmann’s case specifically, and in the case of privilege generally, there is the potential to do serious damage when employing this tactic. After all, if Bachmann’s assertion of fundamental equality upon arrival in America is true, then we have to assume that everyone who isn’t successful is that way through their own laziness (which is certainly the way those on the right explain racial disparities). And when you are as ignorant of history as Bachmann is, then you wind up saying really stupid stuff:

Bachmann says that European immigrants “did not come here for the promise of a federal handout … or a welfare payment.” Instead, they came here for the “limitless opportunity” that the “most magnificent country” in history afforded them.

Well, actually, European immigrants did get special federal handouts in the form of white-only citizenship rights: Germans, Greeks, Jews, Irish, Poles and Italians were never barred from the “white only” military, voter rolls, juries or federal jobs, unlike people of color. Keep in mind that citizenship itself was limited to “free white persons.” When more than 90 percent of black people were enslaved in the U.S., the Homestead Act of 1862 gave millions of acres of land to white immigrants. Yep, federal handouts.

The bootstraps myth is a pervasive and powerful one. Its appeal is that it removes the onus of having to do anything to reduce disparities from those who are at the top. Despite their repeated calls for “personal responsibility”, this myth requires everyone else to be “personally responsible”, while allowing the myth-holder to hang on to all the advantages they’ve gained through privilege. It permits us to crane our necks such that we don’t see the scales as tilted in anyone’s favour, despite all the evidence to the contrary.

So we can (and should) deride people like Michelle Bachmann and David Barton for their eager willingness to abdicate any professional responsibility to ensure their depiction of history is based in fact rather than ideology. But we should also use them as an example of what happens when we allow our own privilege to run away unchecked. The picture of the world that remains when we remove the blinders of privilege might be much different from the one we’re used to seeing.

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1 No True Nigerian

September 14, 2011
by Crommunist
· blog · critical thinking · religion

My dad’s side of the family is not entirely sure about our heritage more than a few years back. Whereas my mom’s side can trace our heritage to emigration from Germany and Ireland, my dad’s ancestors were not immigrants to the Caribbean; not voluntarily, anyway. While lamentable, this is a fairly common story. The truth is that we may never know where we are from aside from the generic ‘Africa’. Still, it is hard not to feel some personal sorrow when I read a story like this:

Gangs of armed youths in the Nigerian city of Jos attacked Christians as they gathered to celebrate mass, killing a number of them and burning their cars, witnesses and the military said…

Witnesses said Muslim youths set up road blocks and attacked Christians as they gathered in Jos’s Gada Biu and Rukuba areas, shooting a number of them dead. Muslims involved in the clashes spoke of revenge for a string of bombs that exploded in Jos at the end of Ramadan last year that left at least 80 people dead. Nigeria has a roughly equal Christian-Muslim mix.

I have friends who are Nigerian. I know Nigerians to be a peaceful people who are highly tolerant and loving. Nobody who was truly Nigerian would commit such an atrocity. It is inconceivable. Anyone who would do something like this may call themselves Nigerian, but it is abundantly obvious that they are not. There is more to being a Nigerian than simply being from Nigeria, or being a citizen of Nigeria, or living and working in Nigeria. The laws of Nigeria specifically outlaw this kind of violent attack, and if people simply followed the laws to the letter, there wouldn’t be any such immorality. The fact that some people claiming to be Nigerian committed these crimes is simply precluded by this fact: a true Nigerian would not do such a thing.

Okay, ham-handed and obvious. Obviously everyone recognizes the stupidity of this argument. And yet, we’re called to accept it as legitimate when pressed into the service of religion. We are reminded endlessly that Christian ethics specifically preclude this behaviour or that one, and therefore those who engage in those behaviours are thereby precluded from the label ‘Christian’. It’s not just Christians that try to weasel out of their bad deeds either. Following every terrorist attack in which the perpetrator is Muslim, we are ‘treated’ to a chorus of evasive language (often from non-Muslim politicians) telling us how this isn’t “true” Islam.

Daniel Fincke over at Camels with Hammers takes this idea on:

Can we make a similar distinction between normative “true” religions and historical “pseudo-religions” which should be acknowledged as truly existing historical manifestations of religions but not be confused for “religion itself”—just as we say a past morality was a genuine historical instance of a morality but is not “true morality itself” or that a past science was a genuine historical instance of science but is not “true science itself”? How could we do this with religion? How could we say there is any truth in something so historically enmeshed with ludicrous falsehoods?

His conclusion is to judge the validity of the existence of a religious traditions in terms of how well it aligns with positive morality and pro-social development. If the purpose of religion is to provide a framework upon which civilization can be built, then any religious belief or practice that undermines such progress is, by definition, not a true religion.

It is an interesting idea, but any religion that encourages ‘faith’ (which I put in quotes to distinguish it from belief supported by evidence) inherently undermines social order. Encouraging people to suppress their critical faculties, even if it is only for certain claims and not others, is the mechanism by which these atrocities are justified. I am sometimes tempted to simply agree that those who commit violent acts in the name of their religion are just ‘really shitty Christians/Muslims/Buddhists’, since they ignore huge swaths of their own scripture. However, I cannot get past the fact that while committing those acts, the perpetrators always feel the hand of God justifying their endeavour. They don’t see themselves as breaking their religious laws, and their subjective experience of ‘feeling’ the Holy Spirit is all the reality check they need to ‘know’ that their acts have divine license.

Oh shoot. I screwed up the quote from the news article earlier. Yeah… replace ‘Christian’ with ‘Muslim’ and vice versa in that paragraph. It was, in fact, a group of Christians that attacked a group of Muslim celebrants of the end of Ramadan in Jos. The point of this clumsy switch is to highlight my central thesis when it comes to religion: I don’t care what banner you fly or what label you ascribe to yourself – they’re pretty much all the same to me. Any philosophical position that asserts its superiority based on belief without evidence is destructive, and I will oppose it. Whether that’s a cult or a world religion, whether you are a fundamentalist practitioner or a ‘moderate’, they’re all the result of the same faulty thought process.

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4 Why do you need to be a ‘black atheist’?

September 12, 2011
by Crommunist
· blog · crommunism · race · religion

In the past few months, I have occasionally been invited to write posts on other people’s blogs. Phil Ferguson has invited me to post occasional guest spots on Skeptic Money, I had a post up on Skeptic North, and Hemant Mehta asked me to contribute something to Friendly Atheist. You can probably notice a trend in these sites – they’re all atheist/skeptic friendly blogs that discuss religion in the same way that I do. However, last week I was invited to cross-post one of my pieces on anti-racism blog Racialicious. I have been a Racialicious reader for 2 years now, and so it was a really exciting opportunity to open my writing to a new kind of scrutiny.

And boy howdy, did that happen:

Atheists can be just as preachy and dogmatic as any other group. And the idea that an atheist is a “freethinker” by virtue of being atheist is just as disingenuous as the idea that some white ex-Christian is an oppressed religious minority.

Are there things that bug the ish out of me around the black community’s relationship to the church? Definitely! But I’m not on a mission to educate, encourage or “liberate” black folks of color from Christianity because that feels too much like organized religion to me.

Something about having to join a meeting and band together with other people in a set location to discuss a lack of religious beliefs feels a little, well… church-like to me. And convincing other people of your train of thought, atheistic or otherwise, and passionately wanting more people of color to join your side strikes me as very… evangelical.

Once again, one can see a pattern emerging. I am well-versed in defending anti-racism among discussions with atheists. Having to defend atheism, particularly my active form of it, among a group of anti-racists was a new experience for me. It was made a bit more frustrating by the fact that the post wasn’t even about why people of colour (PoCs) should be atheist, or why they (we) should be abandoning religion. It was simply an examination of some of the issues that might be keeping PoC who are atheists away from joining the mainstream movement. While a couple of the comments dealt with the issues I had raised, the majority of them were like the ones above – variations on a theme of “why bother to be part of an organized atheist movement?” or “why bother to be an atheist?”

Funnily enough, this is a conversation that I’ve had with atheists a number of times, but from the other side – “why do you need to be a black atheist? Why can’t we all just be atheists?” or the ever popular refrain that racial differences will cease to exist when we just stop paying attention to them. My usual response to a question like that is usually something flippant – “why do we have to call ourselves atheists? Why can’t we all just be bipeds?” The point being that labels are useful when there are real differences between groups or positions.

As with all things on this blog, I am not going to pretend that I can give a definite answer to either of these questions. I will, however, provide you with my own reasons for why I am black, atheist, and a black atheist.

Why call yourself black?

As I’ve alluded to before, I’ve struggled with my racial identity for most of my life. Where I’ve settled, for now at least, is that since the world treats me like a black man rather than a mixed-race person, I might as well call myself black. I can (and do) draw a great deal of strength and existential context from my African heritage. While everyone has their identity as individuals, it is more or less inevitable that we will also find a way to place ourselves in groups. I embrace this rather than trying to continue a futile struggle to assert my unique snowflake-ness.

Why call yourself an atheist?

This question usually has more to do with being a vocal atheist – what some people continue to insist on calling ‘militant’. (Just a caveat here: until someone begins to use violence to intimidate others, they are not militant, and you’re just using the word to score cheap rhetorical points.) Why get together with other atheists and talk about being atheists? This is the subject, surely, for an entire post of its own, but there can be great value – socially, politically, and in terms of security – in banding together with like-minded people. I am a vocal atheist because I recognize the harm that religion does in the world, and the privileged position it holds that allows this harm to continue apace. Religion needs people who are not afraid or too apathetic to criticize it and bring the conversation into the mainstream.

Why call yourself a black atheist?

I have actively chosen both the labels ‘black’ and ‘atheist’ for myself. It is not simply a question of passive de facto categorization – both of these labels meaningfully inform my outlook on life. In a reciprocal way, each of the labels affects the other. My lack of belief puts me at odds with most of the black community. At the same time however, the skeptical tools that I use in my discussion of religion have helped me immensely in my discussions of race. Being black makes me an outlier within the atheist community, but I can readily reach for examples when discussions of privilege come up, and the civil rights struggle is perfectly mirrored in what the atheist community is attempting to achieve now.

So far from simply being the accidental collision of my race and my beliefs, I take great pride in being a black atheist. Not only do the labels describe me meaningfully on their own, they operate in parallel to reinforce each other. I don’t see any problem in this kind of self-identification. Some do not choose to see themselves that way, and I can’t make the decision for them. However, I have little patience for those who would attempt to minimize or trivialize my own choice simply because they do not choose it for themselves.

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4 Belief and self-limiting allegiance: crabs in a barrel

September 7, 2011
by Crommunist
· blog · forces of stupid · funny · news · politics · religion

One of the recurrent topics of discussion within the freethinking community has to do with how one should treat religious groups with similar humanistic goals. Should we, for example, work with the Campus Crusade for Poseidon and the Hatmehyt Society to preserve ocean fisheries, even though their beliefs are opposed to our own (and each other’s, but we’ll get there later)? Is there ground to be gained by putting aside our fundamental differences to accomplish a mutually-beneficial outcome? Most people at this point of the conversation say ‘well of course’, but there is a second part to this question. Should we stop talking about our differences in order to foster ‘respect’?

This is an important questions, because it underlies the entire enterprise of working together. If our would-be allies are so turned off by criticism of their position, we’d surely lose their support. It would be therefore advantageous to treat them with kid gloves, right? It’s better than trying to ‘go it alone’ and have cumulative parts that are weaker than the whole trying to tackle a major problem, isn’t it?

This is the part where I (and those like me) part ways with this line of argument. It does me no good to have an ally with whom I cannot be honest, particularly if the areas in which we disagree are relevant to our work. Does the CCP want to preserve ocean fisheries so that they can ultimately defeat the Crab People of the Marianas Trench? Is the Hatmehyt Society trying to re-establish the lost kingdom of Atlantis? Yes, our stated goal of conservation might be similar, but our ultimate goals are diametrically opposed. Must I sell out the long-term problem of the fact that my allies are insane in order to solve the short-term problem of overfishing? Do I only begin to attack them when we’ve accomplished the short-term goal? What happens when my participation is no longer useful to them?

There is a real danger to allying yourself with people who disagree with you, unless you are able to make your differences clear and resolve them somehow. There is an even greater danger in following the old adage of keeping your enemies closer, and allying with people who outright hate your guts:

Liveprayer.com, an interactive Christian website with over 2.4 million subscribers, is calling for a boycott of Christian TV network TBN, according to a press release. Bill Keller, the leader of the site, issued the call after prominent Christian leaders such as Pastor John Hagee and David Barton expressed their support for Glenn Beck’s “restoring courage” campaign on the network.

“It is absolutely ridiculous for a supposed Christian TV Network, that purports to be propagating the gospel, like TBN, with major Christian figures like John Hagee and David Barton, to be supporting and advocating for a member of a satanic cult,” said Keller to The Christian Post. Glenn Beck, a professed Mormon, frequently identifies himself with other religious people such as Christians, feeling they all have similar values and can work together on “common interests.” However, to believers like Keller, this is deceitful behavior since he believes Mormonism is a satanic cult or a counterfeit form of Christianity, and that true believers should not align themselves with these types of faiths.

My first reaction when reading this story was to chuckle and enjoy a deserved glass of delicious schadenfreude as the extreme wing of the religious right begins to tear itself apart. After all, I pointed out the potential for this kind of fracturing within the supposedly-monolithic edifice of America’s nascent theocratic movement many moons ago:

The only people who would benefit from an erosion of state sovereignty by the religious establishment is those who agree completely with the leading class’ views. History shows us again and again that fractions will appear within religious communities as they grow larger and more powerful. There is no long-term benefit to the rule of religion – there will always be a group that is seen as heretical until there is only one absolute ruler. Religion knows no satiety in its appetite for power.

And while I do so enjoy being correct when it comes to matters like this, I will tamp down my instinct for self-congratulation and allow this news item to serve a different purpose. I will invite you, however, to take a moment and ponder that this is one of those few examples of a religious disagreement that is based solely on denominational/doctrinal grounds. Oftentimes, apologists for religion will say that ‘religious conflicts’ are ethnographic conflicts with the veneer of religion brushed over them. For the most part I will accept this explanation as valid (with the caveat that religion makes this kind of conflict much easier and more deeply entrenched). This is not the case, however, in the split between TBN and Liveprayer.

It’s also useful to consider how diametrically opposed this kind of backbiting is diametrically opposed to the more ecumenical version of religion that many apologists like to put forward as its ‘true face’. These are two groups that, in all likelihood, agree on 95% of their politics and theology. I don’t know who is more admirable here: Glenn Beck for attempting to build bridges between dissenting factions, or Bill Keller for at least having the integrity to be honest and forthright about his beliefs.

That dealt with, I do want to point out the minefield that these political marriages of convenience can pose. Aligning yourself with someone who disagrees with everything you stand for because your interests happen to overlap on some arbitrary topic is a tricky tightrope to walk. It’s made even trickier when that person is leaping up and down on that tightrope, threatening to throw you off every time you make a misstep. It is inevitable that we will disagree with each other from time to time, and we do have to find ways to compromise to get things done. However, when our disagreements go all the way down to the core issues, it may be in our self-interest to let that particular team pitch pass us by.

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4 Questions, answers, and the search for meaning

September 6, 2011
by Crommunist
· blog · critical thinking · crommunism · religion

One of the common statements made in favour of religion is that it provides us with answers to life’s deepest and most important questions: why are we here? how should we behave? what is the ultimate purpose of life? A commenter here once expressed dissatisfaction at my explanation of where morality comes from if not from a deity, saying that my naturalistic and philosophical explanations of the origin of morality were not going to provide “meaning” to people’s lives. I suppose the criticism assumes that religious-based morality does provide that kind of “meaning”. Atheism and science are, the criticism goes, not equipped to answer the ‘big questions’. A quote that I used to like, and would press into service in my own criticisms of atheism goes something like: Science tells you how; religion tells you why.

It’s a nice, pat phrase that allows believers to smugly assert that despite the fact that their beliefs have no basis in fact, they provide an existential framework that science simply does not address. Religious beliefs provide the kinds of answers that are ‘spiritually’ satisfying, allowing people to quiet the constant questioning that happens in the backs of their minds so that they can get on with their lives. This kind of thinking bothers me for three main reasons, which I will go to in detail.

1. They do not answer anything

Imagine for a moment you asked me why tomatoes are red, and I answer “because rain falls upwards in the southern archeosphere”. Technically, in a very shallow sense of the term, I have given you an ‘answer’. You have asked me a question, and I have given you a sentence in response that starts with the word ‘because’. The problem, immediately discernible, is that what I have told you is utter nonsense. First of all, rain doesn’t ever fall upward, regardless of where you are relative to the globe – the very concepts of “fall” and “up” are diametrically opposed. Second, the word ‘archeosphere’ is completely made up – it has no value semantically. Finally, even if my statement was valid, it has nothing at all to do with tomatoes. What I have given you is a completely useless answer.

It is the same with the answers that religion gives. “Why shouldn’t I kill?” “Because God says that it is wrong.” The definition of the word ‘God’ is vague and applied equally to any number of different semantic concepts. Saying that “God” says something in particular is in no way an answer to the question – it does not provide us with any information.

2. They presume uniformity of belief

But if we, for the sake of argument, grant a particular definition of a deity (and this is a major concession on my part), religious “answers” still do not reach the status of an actual answer. If you were to ask me why it is that European countries are far better off than African countries, I could give you a facile response: “it’s pretty obvious once we recognize that white people are genetically superior and predisposed to excellence.” Now, this would be an answer to your question provided that we agree on the genetic superiority of the white race. However, assuming that you aren’t a white supremacist, you’re likely going to (correctly) label my answer as non-legitimate.

It is the same for religious answers to questions. We have no reliable evidence that even if there were a deity, that your particular interpretation is correct. The response completely fails to give a meaningful answer to the question, because it is based on the assumption that all people believe in the same gods that you do. An earthquake and a hurricane on the eastern coast of the United States is an unlikely event, and many people have pronounced that it is evidence of their god’s judgment for some transgression or another. The problem, of course, is that there are a variety of imagined slights that are supposedly being punished or warned about. Not only that, but many people who agree on the basic concept of their god disagree that she/he would use such an oblique method as an earthquake and a hurricane to send her/his message. The response fails to address the question accurately.

3. They beg the question

Back in high school I took a course in philosophy (roughly the equivalent of a 1st-year university survey course). One of the assignments we had to do was to construct our own ‘argument, refutation, counter-refutation’ essay on a philosophical topic of our choice. I’m sure Mr. Peglar would be proud to know how much that class informed not only this blog, but my thought process more generally. One of the essays written by a classmate of mine concerned teaching an artificial intelligence to learn to use and interpret language. His basic thesis was that there are a number of ways that words in the English language can be arranged that are syntactically correct, but semantically meaningless – for example: penguins often ward intrinsically argumentative pacifism’. Sure, the words each make sense, and the way they are arranged is grammatical, but it doesn’t make any sense.

I feel the same way about many of the “big questions” we are supposed to turn to religion to solve. “What is the meaning of life” is perhaps the most egregious culprit for this one. The question entirely presupposes the existence of a ‘meaning’ for life, and then demands that we identify it. Why would we suppose that there is something at all like ‘a meaning’ for life? I could paraphrase and produce similarly faux-profound koans: “where does the sound a soul makes go?”, “who created sunlight?”, “why can’t we weigh time?” Yes, they’re all questions that make sense in English, but they don’t make anything even approaching sense. Assuming the existence of an answer bypasses the more important question: is there an answer?

So whenever people tell me that they gain a great deal of meaning from their religious beliefs, or that religion is how they find answers to the big questions in their lives, I am always mystified. Without exception, the ‘answers’ that religions provide are based on shaky evidence at best, and complete incomprehensibility at worst. We can develop ways of answering real questions, but as anyone who works in the sciences will be able to tell you, formulating these questions properly is 90% of the difficulty. We should never accept pat, simplistic, and evidence-free answers to complex questions, no matter how comforting we may find it to do so.

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