Category: critical thinking

32 Why not offending the religious is bullshit

October 12, 2010
by Crommunist
· blog · crapitalism · religion · secularism

As I mentioned a couple weeks back, there is a debate within the atheist/secular community about the best approach to spreading the message that we exist and care about things. Briefly, the two camps boil down into accommodationists – those who think we should be working with religious groups and believers to find common ground, and confrontationalists – those who think that the preferable approach is to be assertive and not worry about making people feel good. Daniel Schaeller prefers the terms ‘diplomats’ and ‘firebrands’, which I think is an apt (and less unwieldy) characterization.

If it’s not clear from the way I write here (and the title on the top of this post), I ally myself more closely with the firebrands. While I recognize the simultaneous facts that a) both approaches are crucial to advance the secular position, and b) that the diplomats will get all the credit when the dust clears, I have never been one to shy away from controversy in the name of sparing people’s feelings. But there’s another issue in the mix that seemingly goes without comment.

Most of you have probably heard of Richard Dawkins, the British biologist and professor who is the author of books like The God Delusion, The Ancestor’s Tale, Climbing Mount Improbable, and most recently The Greatest Show on Earth. Undoubtedly if you’re not familiar with his work, you’ve simply heard that he’s a militant asshole. In fact, the term ‘militant atheist’ gets thrown around so much that I find myself being accused of being just as bad as those who murder in the name of their religion, as though clearly expressing my thoughts on a blog is the same as killing someone.

Here’s the problem. Richard Dawkins is not a militant asshole. He’s a nerd from England who likes poetry and evolutionary biology – that’s it. What is his major crime that has earned him the appellation of ‘militant’? He wrote some books and has given some speeches. He also refuses to pretend as though the weaksauce apologies for religion are worth more than the air it takes to utter them. But because he’s talking about religion, he’s somehow violent and hateful. Well I’m sorry, but that’s bullshit, and here are some reasons why.

1. Coptic Pope Apologizes for Insulting Islam

Earlier, Bishop Bishoy had said that – contrary to Muslim belief – some verses of the Koran may have been inserted after the death of Prophet Muhammad. Egypt’s al-Azhar Islamic authority said the comments threatened national unity… “Debating religious beliefs are a red line, a deep red line,” Pope Shenouda said in the television interview on Sunday. “The simple fact of bringing up the subject was inappropriate, and escalating the matter is inappropriate,” he added.

This is the religious mindset, when allowed to take root in the public conscience. Not only does a comment made by a member of one religious organization – made about a different organization – threaten national unity, but even talking about beliefs is somehow inappropriate. Can you imagine if someone from the Canadian government made an announcement that debating economic policy or health care or military involvement was “a deep red line” that couldn’t even be discussed? They’d be laughed out of the room, or perhaps chased out with pitchforks. And yet, when a religious person says something so breathtakingly stupid, we’re just supposed to follow along. If we don’t, then we’re somehow militant.

You want militant? I’ve got your militant right here:

2. Austrian temple shooting yields convictions

An Austrian court has convicted six Indian men in connection with a gun attack in a temple in Vienna in which a visiting preacher was killed. Indian preacher Sant Ramanand, 57, was shot dead and more than a dozen others wounded, including another preacher… Prosecutors say the men had planned the attack on the visiting preacher because of a religious dispute. The men went on the rampage wielding a gun and knives during a temple service attended by about 150 people.

That is what a militant position looks like. Ideas that do not conform to your own are not met with skepticism or even outright dismissal, but violence. The lives of those who disagree with your position are forfeit. People who think differently from you deserve to die. Assuming the men in the court case were literate they could have written a book. Even if they weren’t literate they probably could have started a blog (the internet has pretty low standards). They could have protested. They could have said “I am secure enough in my beliefs that I will completely ignore your obvious stupidity.” But that’s not what a militant does. What a militant does is get 5 friends, board a plane to another country, and then try to shoot and stab 150 people. And yet, when firebrand atheists point this out, the immediate response is that we are “no better” than these terrorist fuckbags for being vocally opposed to religion in public life.

The religious shouldn’t be worried about atheists, they should be worrying about each other:

3. Palestinian mosque set on fire

Israel is investigating Palestinian reports that a mosque in the West Bank has been set alight by Jewish settlers. Palestinian officials say settlers set fire to the mosque in Beit Fajjar, near the town of Bethlehem. They blame residents of a nearby settlement because the arsonists reportedly scrawled Hebrew graffiti on one of the mosque’s walls.

I recognize that the conflict between Israel and Palestine is beyond my full understanding. It is a complex issue involving history, geography, foreign political influence, and xenophobia. However, when it asserts itself in the form of the destruction of religious buildings, it’s difficult for anyone to try and say that religion doesn’t play a central role in the problem.

So I challenge those who would use the phrase ‘militant atheist’ to do the following: find me one example of threats of the destruction of national unity, or mass murder, or the destruction of religious buildings, committed by atheists in the name of atheism, and I will make you a batch of delicious cookies.

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3 It don’t matter if you’re not black or white

October 11, 2010
by Crommunist
· blog · crommunism · race

Because we live in Canada, and because so much of the way we see ourselves is inextricably tied up with the United States, we tend to see racism issues as black and white. I don’t mean this in a philosophical dichotomy way, I mean that we tend to focus on race and racism as a black people issue and a white people issue. At the presentation I gave on October 1st, I realized after the fact that the majority of my examples of race and racism are about black people in opposition to white people. Many of my examples from the blog are about black issues in the context of the white majority.

The reality, however, is that race issues go way beyond black and white. We live in a country (and, particularly, I live in a city) that is made up of a number of different groups with distinct cultural histories that are interacting in a unique way. Each group has its own issues to resolve with every other, and the majority of these have nothing to do with white people. Kids whose parents are from India or Pakistan (or those who are born there and immigrate) have to resolve old-world issues completely out of context of shared geography. Korean kids and Chinese kids are superficially grouped into “Asian” here in North America, but there is significant conflict between the countries of China and South Korea, conflict which is compounded by the fact that most others don’t know enough to differentiate between these two groups. Native Canadians find themselves in much the same condition (at least as far as perception goes) as black people, and yet there is very little camaraderie between the two groups.

The fact is that the racial conversation is very real for groups that don’t fall into a black/white or the _______/white dichotomy. James Sweet, a blogger from Rochester, NY, recently posted a piece asking why we use the phrase “person of colour”. After all, everyone is a colour – white people aren’t actually ‘white’. Why do we cling to this ridiculous nomenclature that seems to divide the world into white and non-white?

I responded in the comments to suggest that the reason for the term is because there are issues that are relevant to non-white people as a classification, but that referring to them as “non-white” reinforces the subtle idea that white people are the “default”, whereas everyone else is a deviation from that standard. To forestall the predictable objection that ‘nobody really thinks like that’ – yes, they do. A lot. I recently had a meeting with someone who I hadn’t met before (well I had, but she didn’t remember me). When I arrived, she walked right past me. I introduced myself, and she was shocked. “I was expecting you to be short and Irish,” she said. Now far be it from me to suggest that this says anything negative about this person, she’s really very nice and quite professional. It is simply that her assumption, based partially on my name and partially on the job title I have, was that I would be a white guy. So much so that it didn’t even occur to her that the black guy waiting outside her office was her 11 o’clock.

So we use “person of colour” as a way of describing a sociocultural phenomenon of existing in contrast with a dominant political majority group, without implicitly elevating that group. It’s a subtle rebranding that helps to erode one of the subtle nuances of endemic racial bias, rather than simply being an arch-PC term to avoid hurting feelings.

However, and this is really the subject that this post is about, there are far more numerous racial dichotomies that we as PoC deal with every day that have nothing to do with white people. In this particular case, treating PoC as a homogeneous group does us a significant disservice, because it accomplishes a counterproductive elevation of non-PoC, while necessarily neglecting the fact that the group is not a group.

So why don’t I spend more time talking about these other conflicts along racial lines? If I recognize that the black/white dichotomy is an oversimplification of race and race issues, why not do my part as an anti-racist commenter (if I may be so bold as to describe myself that way) and focus on these other issues? Part of my reluctance to wade into those other conflicts is that I don’t have any connection to them. I grew up observing the black/white dialogue, since it was relevant to my life personally. Simply being a PoC doesn’t grant me some kind of magical insight into cultures that are not my own, except insofar as I recognize those elements that are common to my own history.

I regret that I wasn’t able to make this issue more explicit during my talk, because I may have seemed to grant license to treat the black/white issue as either emblematic of the totality of the race discussion; or worse – I may have suggested that only black/white racism is worth discussing. I certainly did not intend to convey that, and I’m hopeful that anyone who was at the presentation or who watched it online didn’t carry that impression away.

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1 Pope demonstrates why the cake is a lie

October 7, 2010
by Crommunist
· blog · Catholic church · crapitalism · politics · religion

“To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget, whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself — that was the ultimate subtlety; consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word ‘doublethink’ involved the use of doublethink.”

“The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them….To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies — all this is indispensably necessary. Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to exercise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this knowledge; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth.”

– George Orwell, 1984

There’s a concept in the sciences called “regression to the mean”. In statistics, regression to the mean is a phenomenon whereby as you add more observations to a sample, the values will tend to fall around the average (mean) value. In science, this effect is seen in the form of extreme observations moving toward the average the more frequently or longer they are observed. In medicine, we see this phenomenon in sick people who spontaneously improve in a non-intervention (or a placebo) control group.

This somewhat overlaps with the “relative frame of reference” idea from physics – that is, that a stationary object appears to be moving towards you at the same rate you move towards it. As such, spontaneous regression to the mean, seen from an outside perspective, appears to be a move either up or down toward the average. However, if your frame of reference is one that views things from the perspective of an observation that lies far above the mean, regression toward the mean appears to be a move downward.

I’ve also spoken before about the completely false picture of Christianity that some Christians like to paint – that of poor beleaguered misfits just trying to practice their own beliefs in peace. It’s a complete lie, and thanks to the Pope, I have evidence:

The Pope said: “I cannot but voice my concern at the increasing marginalisation of religion, particularly of Christianity, that is taking place in some quarters, even in nations which place a great emphasis on tolerance. There are those who would advocate that the voice of religion be silenced, or at least relegated to the purely private sphere. There are those who argue that the public celebration of festivals such as Christmas should be discouraged, in the questionable belief that it might somehow offend those of other religions or none.”

Yes, Mr. Ratzinger (which sounds, incidentally, like a really unpalatable flavour of tea), from your privileged perspective high atop the social ladder, it would appear that Christianity is being “marginalized”. However, you betray your own ridiculous level of special pleading in your own words. The advocacy of moving religion out of the public square into the private sphere is not marginalization. Nobody is forcing Christians to stop believing what they like – they’re just not allowed to make decisions on behalf of other people. And yes, the people who argue against Christmas have a point – namely, that a specific religious belief system is not representative of the population at large.

The reason for the Orwell quote at the top is that the Pope spends the first 7 minutes of his address talking about the need for freedom of religion and the separation of church and state. He then pivots (on the head of Sir Thomas Moore) to talk about how religion should be more involved in political life. It’s not hypocrisy to him, it’s doublethink. He holds the ideas of freedom of religion simultaneously with the idea of greater church control of public life.

He also pulls the ‘lack of moral fundamentals’ card, a personal favourite of mine (so brazen is its hypocrisy). He talks a good game about the need to use reason, but in true Catholic style, he makes the Augustinian provision that reason should be subject to religion. He actually encourages more religiosity in the body politic, as though places like Iran, Somalia, the USA and Malawi aren’t warning signs that religion is a lousy way to run a country.

It appears to be Ratzinger’s intent to smear secularism, asserting repeatedly that it is somehow comparable to fundamentalism. Please show me one fundamentalist secularist. I’d really be curious to see one.

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6 “I believe that…”: when to ignore someone (pt. 2)

October 4, 2010
by Crommunist
· blog · critical thinking · crommunism · religion

A couple of weeks ago, I talked about a couple of catch-phrases that immediately raise flags in my mind and allow me to ignore the rest of the argument. A line of reasoning that is based on any logical fallacy reminds me of one of my favourite Bible passages (yes, I have favourite Bible passages):

(Matthew 7:26-27) And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand: And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it.

Of course, in the above passage, Matthew is talking about anyone who doesn’t follow the teachings of Jesus, but the parable is still useful in describing what happens to arguments that are built upon faulty premises. I recall a conversation with my father about the value of theology. His position was that it was a valid field of inquiry, based on logic and reasoning. I told him that when it is based on an assumption that is illogical and lacks evidence – assuming the truth of that which it wishes to prove – it is a masturbatory exercise only.

Such is any argument that starts with the phrase “I believe…”

I find this strategy pops up again and again when talking about religion, but also when talking about pseudoscience, alt-med nuttery, and basically any time you find someone on the left in a debate about anything. When put into a corner, the wheedling cry comes up as the preface to a long series of assertions. Of course, you can’t attack those assertions, because it’s what that person believes. They don’t need proof!

I am reminded of a “debate” I saw between the Australian skeptic atheist who goes by the online alias Thunderf00t and Creationist Bobo-doll Ray Comfort (for those of you who don’t know, this is a Bobo doll). Comfort is a master of typical creationist tactics. First, he unleashes a barrage of terrible arguments that have been refuted a thousand times before (the refutations of which he’s also heard a thousand times before). When the patient skeptic opposite him tries to take one of them on, Comfort backpedals into arguments from incredulity (based on an intentional misunderstanding of science, particularly biology – “do you really think that humans could evolve from frogs?”), which eventually turns into a reducto ad mysteria, where he asks for the answer to a question that nobody has solved:

When the skeptic opponent answers honestly that we, as a species, have not yet discovered the answer to how life started, or what existed before the Big Bang, Comfort then asserts smugly “well I know the answer.” The answer, by the way, is always Jesus.

The problem with a statement like that, aside from its complete and utter vacuousness, is that it’s false. Ray Comfort doesn’t know how the universe began. He has a belief that is based on a particular interpretation of a particular version of history from a particular tribe in a particular region of the world. To know something means to have evidence of that thing’s truth. Ray Comfort doesn’t have any evidence of anything, just his half-baked belief system (I say half-baked because he clearly doesn’t even understand the scriptures he quotes from).

I recall another conversation with my father (he comes up a lot in topics like these, as he has studied theology) wherein I was trying to explain to him that simply believing something does not grant it some kind of legitimacy, and that it was necessary to test beliefs with the scientific method. People are capable of believing a great many things, many of which are untrue. His response was that science isn’t the only way to know something.

I was too stunned to respond. What I should have said is that while science might not be the only way to know something, it was definitely the only way to find out if it was true or not. Theology (the subject we were debating) is built upon the premise that a deity exists, and then uses (and misuses) the rules of formal logic to work out “proofs” of its position. The problem with this kind of internally-valid “reasoning” is that there is no basis for establishing whether the premises are true. For example:

1. X exists
2. If X exists, it has properties of A, B, …, Z
3. Therefore, X has properties of A, B, …, Z

The problem with this argument is that we have no reason to trust the truth of Statement 1. Statement 2 might be entirely reasonable. It may necessarily follow that if God exists then He has the properties of omniscience, omnibenevolence, and omnipotence (it emphatically doesn’t, and the prospects are mutually exclusive, but whatever let’s just pretend), but that is not proof that such a being exists in the first place. It is not sufficient to assume the existence of that which you are trying to prove, however convenient it may be. You have to find a way to demonstrate it through observation – this is the scientific method.

Getting back to the original topic of this discussion, when someone says “I believe that Y is true”, or in Ray Comfort’s case when he simply asserts that he “knows” that Y is true, based on the assumption of the truth of X, they haven’t given the listener any useful information. All they’ve done is state a personal prejudice. Without the ability to point at some body of evidence and say “I draw my conclusion of Y from this collection of facts”, it’s about as useful as saying “Neapolitan ice cream is better than pistachio.” My usual response to such statements is to say “that’s nice that you believe that. So what?”

Needless to say, I don’t have a lot of second dates 😛

6 Obama draws fire over ‘Ground Zero Mosque’ (what a stupid name)

October 1, 2010
by Crommunist
· blog · civil rights · crapitalism · cultural tolerance · forces of stupid · religion

I am re-posting this, a post that I wrote about a month ago and posted on Canadian Atheist. Because I am rather proud of it, I’m cross-posting it here for posterity.

I’ve read some depressingly stupid responses to the so-called “Ground Zero mosque“. One came from leading skeptic and atheist Sam Harris:

But the margin between what is legal and what is desirable, or even decent, leaves room for many projects that well-intentioned people might still find offensive. If you can raise the requisite $100 million, you might also build a shrine to Satan on this spot, complete with the names of all the non-believing victims of 9/11 destined to suffer for eternity in Hell.

Nice, Sam. Very nice.

Also flogging the “desirable and decent” horse is Democratic Senate leader Harry Reid:

Spokesman Jim Manley said in a statement that the senator respected that “the First Amendment protects freedom of religion”, but still thought the mosque, planned for a site about two blocks away from the former World Trade Center, should be built in a different location.

Way to stand up for Democratic principles, Harry.

And yet, surrounded by the raging storm of stupid, President Barack Obama has stood up and said that the construction should be allowed to go ahead:

At a White House dinner celebrating Ramadan on Friday, Mr Obama vigorously defended the developers’ right to put the mosque there “in accordance with local laws and ordinances”. Muslims “have the same right to practice their religion as anyone else in this country”, the president said.

As far as his personal feelings on the “desirable and decent” pseudo-argument, President Obama declined to comment, which is his right. His statement, however, reasserted the principles of freedom of religion, tolerance and secular authority that the United States was built on.

That’s really not going to help his poll numbers:

Some 18% said the president was a Muslim, up from 11% in March 2009, according to the Pew Research survey of 3,003 Americans. Among Republicans, that number was 34%. Just a third of those quizzed correctly identified Mr Obama as Christian.

Republican critics have accused the President of being out of step with mainstream Americans. If “mainstream Americans” are this stupid and have memories this short (Rev. Wright? Remember that guy?), I’d prefer to be out of step with them. “Mainstream Americans” are in dire need of a civics lesson. So, to help our knowledge-impoverished neighbours to the south (including Sam Harris, apparently), I’ll remind you of three important facts.

1. The “Ground Zero Mosque” is not at Ground Zero

The proposed Cordoba Centre is being built 4 blocks away from the site of the World Trade Centre remains. It is being built in an abandoned coat factory. Opponents of the building have not provided a proposal for how far away it is okay to built a mosque, nor have they provided some rationale for why such a distance is more acceptable than 4 blocks.

2. The “Ground Zero Mosque” is not a mosque

The Cordoba Centre is being built as a Muslim community centre. It does contain a prayer room (which should surprise exactly nobody, since prayer is a part of Muslim life), but it also contains a basketball court, a gym, a book store, and a culinary school. There is a giant Jewish community centre of the same type sitting at the corner of Bloor st. and St. George in Toronto. I’ve been in there, and I’m pretty sure everybody knew I wasn’t Jewish. It’s a community centre, not a synagogue. The proposed Cordoba Centre is exactly the same thing.

3. There’s already a “Ground Zero” mosque

Apparently there’s some confusion about what was there first – the Muslims or the terror. There’s been a mosque (Masjid Manhattan) 2 blocks from the World Trade Centre site since before there was a World Trade Centre. Muslims have been part of the population of Manhattan since far before these critics knew what Islam was.

Now that we know how intellectually bankrupt the arguments against being allowed to construct a mosque in that “holy site” are, let’s look at this risible “desirable and decent” argument of Sam Harris. Sam, you’re an atheist, right? A pretty vocal one, if I remember correctly. You know who might not find your beliefs, or your out-spoken defence and promotion of them, “desirable and decent”? Millions of Christian Americans. That’s right Sam, by your own argument, you should be keeping your damn mouth shut.

I’m not sure how much I want to explore the stupidity of the conservative critics:

“It’s unwise to build a mosque at the site where 3,000 Americans lost their lives as a result of a terrorist attack,” Senator John Cornyn of Texas said on Sunday on Fox News.

This is about as sterotypical as Islamophobia gets. Senator Corwyn is asking us to complete the following logic assignment:

A. Terrorists blew up the World Trade Centre
B. ???
C. Muslims pray at mosques.

Therefore, we shouldn’t have mosques near the World Trade Centre

The solution to that little logic problem up there, incidentally is B: All Muslims are terrorists. I doubt anybody reading this needs me to explain why the proposition is not only offensive, but incorrect.

The main crux of Sam’s piece is that Islam is not merely just another peaceful religion with a few deluded followers – that it, more than Christianity or Judaism or Hinduism or Sikhism (or any number of other -isms) promotes violence and the subjugation of women. I’m not sure I disagree with Sam on this one. In its current incarnation, Islam worldwide is a consistent force for evil (see Somalia, Iran, Pakistan, the Maldives, for evidence of this). I wonder if Sam knows that there is a surefire method to blunt a religion’s influence – secularize it. If Muslims feel cut off from secular America (if you, for example, protest when they try to build a community centre), they will band together under the banner of their religion. This means that the moderate elements are going to feel strong solidarity with the radical elements. No Sam, the answer is to make them feel welcome as possible, and start sending your kids to play basketball and cook with Muslim kids. It’s harder to draw barriers around yourself when there are people who don’t share your religious beliefs eating at your table or slam-dunking for your team.

Finally, there’s a major flaw in the argument that I haven’t really heard discussed. Even if the mosque was at ground zero. Even if the mosque was a mosque. Even if there was no other mosque there, this thing would still be a good idea. One of the reasons the United States is reviled by the Muslim world is that it is built on the idea that all people are free to believe what they want. In Muslim countries, it is illegal to convert from Islam. Some even require you by law to be a Muslim. They enforce laws that are based on Muslim scripture that supersede secular law. The idea of a place where Muslims aren’t special, where Allah is not even recognized in passing, is offensive to these dictatorial assholes. Putting up a Muslim centre at the site of a terrorist attack sponsored by the Muslim world is essentially a big “fuck you” to those same assholes. It says essentially that not only are we not going to allow your attacks to change our way of life, we’re going to go out of our way to promote those same ideas you find repulsive, and we’re going to use your religion to do it.

This “controversy” is nothing but appeals to what is least-informed and most bigoted in our society, and has no place being defended by thinking people. I’m disappointed in you, Sam.

TL/DR: Sam Harris is kind of a dick, the “Ground Zero Mosque” is neither of those things, and even if it was we should build it anyway.

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5 Movie Friday: Hardcore Pornography!

October 1, 2010
by Crommunist
· blog · bmusic · crapitalism · forces of stupid · movie

Since their first album Mass Romantic dropped almost 10 years ago, I have been a fan of The New Pornographers. They’re an amazing and unique-sounding band that uses unusual combinations of instrumentation and composition to create a musical motif that is not easily classified. Their use of several songwriters and lead singers is something that I’ve co-opted into my own band, which fans seem to enjoy a lot.

(Incidentally, pause it at 3:12 – those of you in Vancouver will probably recognize where this video was shot)

There’s a second reason why I thought I would highlight this particular band today (besides the fact that they’re amazing). Just like the Bare Naked Ladies had to deal with back in the 90s, some puritanical morons in the United States have canceled a performance by the band because of their spikiness over the name:

A Christian college in Grand Rapids, Mich., has cancelled a scheduled concert by Canadian indie band The New Pornographers because of the band’s name. The Vancouver-based band’s website announced the cancellation Wednesday. Calvin College rescinded an invitation to the band to play on Oct. 15 after weeks of discussion, the college said in a statement. The statement said the college found it difficult to explain the band’s name.

Yes, God forbid (pun intended) that anyone mistake the venerable name of Calvin College with anything so revolting as pornography. No, they’d much rather be associated with:

Rampant anti-Semitism;
Original sin (a disgusting doctrine which preaches that a mythical ancestor ate an apple, and as a result you are doomed to an eternity of torture);
Censorship of musical expression (shock! surprise!)
Southern Baptist churches (hi Fred!)
And of course, Puritanism

Just so long as nobody thinks they’re cool with pictures of nekkid ladies. I felt today’s video was particularly appropriate.

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2 Accommodation vs. Confrontation

September 27, 2010
by Crommunist
· blog · civil rights · crommunism · history · secularism

I suppose I have been remiss in formally commenting on one of the major debates currently going on in the atheist/agnostic/secular movement. There is a camp of people that thinks that the pathway to achieving the goals of a secular world is to work hand-in-hand with religious groups, and avoid offending the sensibilities of the religious at all costs. This camp believes that the path to peace can only be achieved if atheists are perceived not as a threat, but as welcome allies in the struggle to achieve a more stable, democratic society.

The other camp wants the first camp to STFU and GTFO.

This debate has been colloquially referred to as “accommodationism” vs. “confrontationalism”. Accommodationists want to work with religious people and find ways to ally the goals of the atheist movement to those of the religious movement, being very respectful at all times of the beliefs of others. Confrontationalists think that the path to achieving the goals of the movement is to assertively articulate our position and push on both the legal system and the large unengaged middle to highlight the important issues and bring about large-scale change.

There is currently a dispute, some might call it a fight, over which of these approaches is the correct one. I have not yet, at least in print, expressed which camp I ally more closely with.

Before the “big reveal”, I want to talk about a similar situation that was happening during the Civil Rights movement in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s. If I may be so grotesque a mangler of history, we can contrast the approaches of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X as the “accommodationalist” and “confrontationalist” camps (respectively).

I will say at this point that Malcolm X began his political career as the mouthpiece of a fundamentalist Muslim who advocated mass conversion of black people, and complete segregation of those people from white America – essentially establishing a self-contained religious theocratic state within the USA. Martin Luther King Jr. was no saint either – he was happy to use segments of Christianity as justification for his struggle, without acknowledging the fact that it was that same philosophy that was used to justify the enslavement and systematic oppression of the very people he was fighting for. The two men were not really fighting toward the same goal, except insofar as they were both interested in increasing the autonomy and independence of black Americans. However, for the sake of convenience and familiarity, I hope you will allow my somewhat ahistorical comparison.

It was directly due to the influence of MLK that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed, granting equal protection and access under law to people regardless of their ethnicity. His doctrine of non-violent resistance and co-operation with white leaders and people, coupled with his amazing powers of public persuasion and charisma reached out to all corners of society, even those who might not otherwise agree with the aims of the movement.

As a contrast, Malcolm X was far more militant (in the literal sense, not this ridiculous pap of “militant atheism” that basically just means speaking your mind directly and unashamedly) and confrontational than his counterpart. He famously disdained the inclusion of white people in the black nationalist movement, referring to them (using the language of the Nation of Islam under Elijah Muhammad) as “white devils”. He galvanized his audience – disillusioned and disheartened black youth – by presenting them with a vision of black people as a group under oppression, rather than as a lesser race. He advocated disciplined uprising against the current socioracial system, albeit under theocratic direction.

What those who favour staunch accommodationism are suggesting is that the contribution of Malcolm X, namely the doctrine of black power (which I will take a moment to say should not be contrasted with “white power”, an entirely different concept), was not valuable and/or necessary to the civil rights movement – a claim which is far more ahistorical than my own admittedly crude analysis. The Nation of Islam and its confrontational doctrine accomplished two simultaneous goals. First, it unified and attracted black youth to a cause that was, to many, viewed as just more political posturing that would not improve the day-to-day reality of being black in America. Second, it terrified the white establishment out of its complacency and forced them to find alliances in the black community that would show their sympathy to the cause.

Failing to recognize the influence that black nationalism, which experienced several resurgences (most notably in the 1970s under the Black Panthers, the 1980s in the burgeoning hip-hop movement, and currently with the rise of anti-racism and afrocentric black intellectualism) played in the establishment of civil rights is painting a picture of history that is fundamentally doomed to repeat itself. This is happening currently within the atheist movement. Phil Plait, alongside Chris Mooney, Sam Harris, and other prominent atheists, seem to take an approach that accommodationism is the path toward mainstream acceptance, whereas confrontation is unwelcome and pushes the atheist movement backward.

I have used a metaphor that is unfortunate in its level of violence, but apt in its ultimate meaning. Imagine a battlefield between two opposing forces, one force with both infantry and archers, arrayed against one that is purely infantry. As the two footsoldier contingents meet in the middle, the unbalanced force is cut to ribbons by the arrows of the archers, resulting in a trouncing. Similarly, one that is purely archers would be overrun by brutes wielding swords. However, two equal opposing forces are forced to use tactics and real strength to prevail. The hole in this analogy is, of course, that people die in war. Nobody is seriously proposing that atheists be killed, nor would any self-respecting secularist call for the violent removal of the faithful.

The point of this analogy is that different people are persuaded by different things, and to use only one tactic (either accommodation or confrontation) will result in the rapid trouncing of the atheist/secularist movement by the religious, who use a variety of methods to advance their points. However, when the opposing forces are balanced in their armaments, the battle is decided by that which remains – the evidence. In that case we win, because by definition the evidence is on the side of the skeptics.

We need the Malcolm X school to bring apathetic atheists out of the closet by pointing out the evils and influence of the religious establishment, and to put the fear of the godless in the believers. To balance that, we need the Martin Luther Kings of the movement to be reaching across the aisle to find mutual ground with the more moderate and freethinking elements within the theist camp. Saying that one group is counterproductive is short-sighted and foolish – buying into the fear and discomfiture of the oppressors to justify throwing your compatriots under the bus.

As a caveat to this diatribe (which has gone far beyond the TL/DR barrier, for which I apologize), it is important to recognize that even the two paragons of accommodation and confrontation recognized the need for balance. MLK often expressed his contempt for the philosophy of “gradualism” – the idea that human rights should be given out slowly over time, to protect the oh-so-sensitive feelings of racist whites. After his Hajj, and after leaving the tutelage of Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm (at this time known as Malik El-Shabazz) began to reach out to non-black people who expressed a desire to advance the cause of black nationalism. Tragically of course, the fundamentalists on either side of the debate weren’t having that, and both men were assassinated.

The fact is that in the struggle for civil rights, there must be both a carrot and a stick; a voice that pulls dissenting groups together, and one that drives the points forward without fear. I was not alive at the time, but I can’t imagine that MLK didn’t have at least one (and likely hundreds) of conversations with concerned white people saying “that Malcolm X is driving the civil rights movement backward by alienating people!” We know from transcripts of his speeches that Malcolm had a great deal of contempt for those he viewed as selling out the Negro birthright to capitulate to the white man. The forces worked in opposition, but toward the same ultimate goal. How much more powerful would the atheist/secularist movement be if we stopped this petty (and meaningless) squabbling among our own ranks and instead marshalled our respective forces toward the ultimate goal of a society in which we are free to have our own opinions, regardless of dogmatic interference of any kind?

TL/DR: Much like Malcolm X’s confrontational style was a necessary balance to Martin Luther King’s accommodationalist style, the respective philosophies within the atheist/secularist movement are both required for the long-term progress towards civil rights. Failing to recognize this is a weakness within the movement.

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3 Movie Friday: Neil DeGrasse Tyson on UFOs

September 24, 2010
by Crommunist
· blog · critical thinking · movie · science · skepticism

Neil DeGrasse Tyson is probably my favourite public figure in the sciences. No disrespect to Richard Dawkins, PZ Myers, Bill Nye, Lawrence Krauss, or any of the other multitude of famous scientists out there fighting the good fight for public education in science and skepticism, but I will always carry a torch for Neil. He’s a charismatic, animated, and engaging speaker who is happy to be in the limelight, without being so academic as to turn non-scientists away from the information.

Since I talked about the argument from ignorance earlier this week, I thought I’d share with you Dr. Tyson’s thoughts:

Whoops, wrong video… here it is:

This guy should be teaching science in every classroom in the world. He tears down the mystique about the scientific method and why it works better than the other ways we try to discern truth (divine revelation, hunches, common sense…).

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2 …and therefore God

September 20, 2010
by Crommunist
· blog · critical thinking · religion

I was watching a debate between Christopher Hitchens and four (really 5) Christian theologists the other day. I really like Mr. Hitchens’ writing, but his debate style often leaves much to be desired. Many times he’ll be so enamored about what he thinks the point or the question is that he’ll completely talk past the actual conversation. Watching this video, I saw a number of times when a particularly meaningless argument could easily be smacked down, but was left alone or acquiesced to either due to inattention or diplomacy. To be fair, the number of easily and oft-refuted arguments thrown at him were in such number that he might simply have missed some.

However, at one point during the discussion, Mr. Hitchens is asked if Christian theology adequately explains the problem of evil by explaining that suffering is a necessary component of free will, but that ultimate justice would eventually arrive after death. Mr. Hitchens ably skewered the argument, illustrating that a god who watches immense suffering, has the power to intervene, and does absolutely nothing, cannot possibly be anything other than malevolent and evil. However, another commenter points out, using an argument that Mr. Hitchens had used himself earlier, that just because you don’t like something doesn’t make it untrue. Mr. Hitchens then concedes that the explanation of evil is at least internally consistent, though abhorrent.

Unfortunately, the final speaker at the event seizes upon this admission and claims that there are several arguments that were not addressed that give serious credence to the idea that there is a God, and furthermore that he is Christian:

The argument from contingency (first cause of the universe)
The argument from fine-tuning of the universe (existence is set up perfectly for intelligent life to exist)
The argument from morality (why are people good if there is no God as the author of morality?)
The argument from biological complexity (life is so complex that it could not have happened by naturalistic forces)
The argument from consciousness (the fact that we are self-aware means that there is a God)
The argument from rationality (the rules of logic are impossible to happen naturalistically)
The argument from self-validating experience (we have subjective experience of God, why would we unless He exists?)

The speaker somehow seemed to think that these were compelling arguments that necessitate the existence of YahwAlladdha. He then went on to say that since there were logcial reasons to believe in God, and since Christianity explained the problem of evil, it followed logically that God was Christian.

Every skeptic atheist reading the above list has probably rolled their eyes clear out of their sockets by now. These are incredibly tired (I like the term shop-worn) arguments that have been refuted countless times, yet they keep popping up again and again. I like to imagine that at least some of my readers are either non-skeptic atheists (don’t believe in a god, but haven’t really thought about why), or moderate theists (people who believe in some god, but not the literal truth of the Bible). Apparently these arguments are occasionally strong enough to sway people in these two camps closer to theism. The testimonial of every “converted” atheist I’ve ever read or heard contains at least one of these arguments.

Here’s the problem – none of them necessitate any kind of God. They’re all just appeals to a common form of fallacious reasoning, the argument from ignorance. Basically, the argument from ignorance operates as follows:

A. X event occurs
B. I cannot explain X, or; nobody knows how X happens
C. Therefore, Y is the cause

The problem, of course, is the step between B and C – it does not logically follow that Y must be the cause. Sure, Y might explain (in a limited sense of the word) how X happens, but so does any other number of things. For example, I might not know how Aspirin works to dull pain, and a cartoonish idea of Aspirin molecules being little soldiers that march around my bloodstream and fight my hangover might “explain” my miraculous recovery, but it’s completely untrue.

Similarly, the above 7 arguments are appeals to that exact same illogic:

The universe was created by the Big Bang; We don’t know what happened before that; Therefore, God
Intelligent life exists; The existence of intelligent life seems very improbable; Therefore, God
People have an innate moral sense; It is possible that there is an evolutionary advantage to being immoral; Therefore, God
People are self-aware; It strains credulity that this could happen by simple materialistic processes; Therefore, God
Things in the body are really complicated; It seems too complicated to have happened through evolution; Therefore, God
Logic exists and seems to work to describe the world; It strains credulity that there should be rules to govern the universe; Therefore, God
Some people feel like there is a God; …; Therefore, God (I really don’t get this last one)

When it’s spelled out like this, it’s pretty obvious that these arguments are far from compelling. They’re the whine of a frightened child who refuses to deal with reality, preferring instead to hold onto the fantasies he has created for himself. The mature, adult thing to do is admit “I don’t know,” and then go out and look for real answers. It is simply not convincing or sufficient to say “nobody knows the answer, therefore this is the answer.” And despite how much you might believe it to be true, it doesn’t obligate the rest of the world to adhere to your refusal to address the answers head-on.

However, even if it were true that these arguments somehow demonstrated that some kind of God exists, it doesn’t matter at all. There’s an additional step that is missing from the Christian argument. Maybe you already caught it.

A. God exists
B. Therefore, Christianity

There is an argument being made here that the existence of some kind of creative force means that Christianity is true. Even if we were generous and bundled all the Abrahamic religions together and said that Judaism, Islam and Christianity are the same thing, it gets us no further to a coherent argument. The Bible/Qu’ran make very specific claims about the nature and characteristics of Yahweh/Allah, not a single one of which is either borne out by evidence, or follow from the above arguments. In no way must a god that started the Big Bang and authored the rules of physics and logic be opposed to blasphemy, or require rest on the Sabbath, or care about how you honour your parents. It’s a complete non-sequitur to insist that the complexity of the universe lends particular credence to your back-filled, post-hoc rationalization of what you’d like God to be (not even touching on the fact that if you ask 100 different people to describe God, you’ll get 200 different answers).

Sadly, perhaps because he was innundated by a wave of illogical assertions and fallacies, or perhaps distracted with concern over his increasingly-bad cough (which turned out to be esophagoeal cancer), Christopher Hitchens didn’t bother to point out the central glaring flaw in the argument. These are not isolated arguments that are specific to this particular debate either – they are common canards that turn up again and again in any discussion of the “evidence” for the existence of God. Pointing out this flaw is not merely a nit-pick against these men, but a major hole in the argument for belief in a deity of any kind. Any rational discussion of theology (a contradiction in terms, I know) must somehow address this issue. Preferably without saying “you need to have faith to see it” (perhaps a discussion for another post).

TL/DR: The so-called “compelling” arguments for the existence of God are merely different incarnations of the fallacy of the argument from ignorance. Even if they did somehow show that God must exist, they don’t say anything about His characteristics.

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7 The short answer is ‘yes’

September 15, 2010
by Crommunist
· blog · conservativism · crapitalism · forces of stupid · funny · politics · race · racism

I laughed my ass off when I saw this. That being said, obviously not everyone in the Tea Party is there because they are racist – smaller and more efficient government has nothing at all to do with race. However, due to its stubborn opposition to any program designed to level the playing field or correct for historical injustices, it tends to attract the racist fringe with open, monochromatic arms. In the same way that supporting a larger role for the federal government isn’t a gay thing, but homosexuals tend to fall on the left side of the political spectrum (because that’s where all the equal rights are).

A commenter pointed out something that didn’t occur to me right away: how racist do you have to be to print out signs and go looking for a black person? I’m trying to imagine their thought process:

“Okay, so we’re going to print out these signs and take them to the rally, right?”

“Yeah, that’ll show all those liberals that the Tea Party is about state’s rights and small government, not a thin veneer of politics hastily brushed over a rotten core of deep-seated xenophobia, unwarranted entitlement and good old-fashioned ignorance!”

“Wow, that was deep.”

“Thanks. I read the New York Times today, and just said the opposite of what was written there.”

“I wish I could read.”

“Hey Steve?”

“Yeah Larry?”

“Wouldn’t it be easier to just take these signs over to the houses of one of our many black friends and/or work colleagues and/or neighbours, rather than having to sleuth around at a rally to find the token fanny-pack-wearing dark-skinned guy at a rally of thousands of white people?”

“We don’t have any black friends and/or work colleagues and/or neighbours, Larry.”

“How come?”

“Uh… because of LIBERALS!”

“Yeah! Fuck those racist asshole liberal faggot commie Muslim terrorist Mexicans!”

“You said it, Steve.”

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