Monthly Archives: February 2011

Myths, models and metaphors … and science?

Standard

To begin with, I do beg Dr. Alexander’s pardon. For some reason, when I wrote about his “white paper” on Adam and Eve, I thought he was a physicist, but he is a molecular biologist, and I have changed the text accordingly. He is now retired from biological research and is working full-time trying to show how religion and science can be helpfully related. But I said he was a physicist and that is wrong. Perhaps I borrowed the label from Jerry Coyne, so the fact that that particular mutation spread is perhaps not all that wonderful, as Dr. Alexander suggests.

+++++

When I began this post a couple of hours ago the pdf of the whole response was damaged and not downloadable, so I went ahead with just the first part of the response. I notified the people at Biologos, and they very quickly had it up and running, so I was able to bring things to an end. The last part of the response is really irrelevant to my purposes, so I breezed over it fairly quickly, and ignored most of it. I just don’t think that models work very well in this context, and I don’t know why anyone would bother with them, but perhaps that’s just one of my interpretive shortcomings, and I should have worked with the idea a bit longer. The first installment is available on the Biologos website. The pdf is downloadable here.

Continue reading →

About these ads

Let’s not make nice

Standard

Look at her!

Little did I know, when I sat down to write the following before going to the gym this morning, that this subject would be so thoroughly explored today in so many different places. Not only Butterflies and Wheels (as linked below), but also Russell Blackford’s Metamagician blog, Jason Rosenhouse on his science blog, Jerry Coyne’s Why Evolution is True, and even Jeremy  — “Look at her!” – Stangroom (credit to Jerry for Jeremy’s new nickname!) is getting in on the action (from a contrary perspective, of course — shoving it one more time to “Dick” Dawkins). And there are others, including Jean Kazez (who, at this point, I’m not prepared to take seriously), unlike  Jason Streitfield, who writes on public displays of atheism in response to Jean Kazez.  — And yet one more: Camels with Hammers.

Just one comment in response to Jean’s point that atheism does not provide for an objective morality, and that discussing this in public will not make atheism more publicly acceptable. In fact, the religious already think that atheists have no moral compass, and cannot have one, so it’s not going to make a lot of difference anyway. But of course religion doesn’t provide for an objective morality either. Just because you say it is doesn’t make it so. So, the status of morality will be just the same, whether you are religious or not. Besides, it is abundantly evident that religious “morality” is often sub-human, however objective religious people think their morality is. In fact, that’s precisely what I argue again and again. When religious people tell us that stoning women to death. or allowing women to die rather than perform an abortion, or forcing people to die in misery, or mutilating the genitals of boys and girls are commanded by their gods, then we need to ask them to think a bit more about morality, and what it is. Supposing that you have an objective morality is almost always a disaster, because if it really is objective, then, like the laws of the Medes and the Persians (as the Bible says), it can never change, and we must go on doing these awful things forever, and call them good. I’d like a little less objectivity, and a whole lot more sensitive humanity, anyday.

+++++++

Over at Butterflies and Wheels a discussion developed (while I slept, apparently) about atheism and politeness. If we want to make a change we have to make nice with religion … That’s the idea. We’ve met the idea before, from Phil Plait’s “Don’t be a Dick” campaign, to Mooney’s ridiculous posturing about the boorishness and unhelpfulness of the new atheism — no, the New Atheism: let’s stand proud! — done with all the artfulness of a boor — or a dick, as the case may be.

This simply misses the point. The whole point of the New Atheism was to oppose something intrusive and dangerous. It was, arguably, the religious atrocities of 9/11 that gave a fillip to atheism and made it new. Without that iconic event atheism would have gone on its boring way without making so much as a dent in the culture. But religion couldn’t stay put. It was losing ground. People were beginning to think of religion as well past its sell-by date. Church people watched with alarm as their numbers dwindled. Time for drastic action.

Continue reading →

What do believers believe and why do they believe it?

Standard

Yesterday I took the ninety minutes or so that it would take to listen to the debate on the afterlife by Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, Rabbi Wolpe and Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson (linked by Stewart over at Butterflies and Wheels). It’s well worth the time. You don’t have to watch it in order to understand the following, but it will help.

One interesting feature of the presentation is precisely the way the names appear on the screen, like so:

Christopher Hitchens
Rabbi David Wolpe
Sam Harris
Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson
moderated by
Rob Eshman

Notice how the clergy get listed with their titles. Had they been Christian, they would have been called Rev or Father, if Muslim, Imam, if Hindu, Pandit, etc., but Sam would have still been plain ‘Sam’ and Christopher would have been plain ‘Christopher’. In other words, it’s professionals against amateurs, officialdom vs. interlopers, insiders and outsiders. That is already to privilege the religious voice, and to give it a sense of presence that is lacking for unbelief. This sense is profoundly deceptive.

Continue reading →

The 7% Solution ….

Standard

An argument against assisted dying or euthanasia often goes like this one from the blog BioEdge (a bioethics blog run by an Australian Roman Catholic). Under the headline “Locked-in patients are happy, says Belgian researcher,” Michael Cook, the author, points out that

Only 7% [of those with Locked-in Syndrome] were interested in euthanasia.

And since, he says, if they would only wait, they would find that they can adapt to being locked-in — that is, conscious, but unable to move, or to communicate except (possibly) by moving their eyes — there is no reason to provide euthanasia for that small percentage. Hence: “the 7% solution.”

Continue reading →

Let’s pretend that we know…

Standard

I know. I know. Jerry Coyne has already dealt with this. Sometimes I wonder how he so quickly gets to know of the latest idiocy to run off the religious press, but Chicago is clearly in the loop, and standing as it does out to sea, Nova Scotia is a bit out of it, even in this electronic age, but really, the latest argument against atheism does deserve to be noted at least one more time. In fact, it’s so funny that it really needs a stand up comic to do it some justice.

I’m talking, of course, about Jim Spiegel’s argument in Christianity Today that atheism leads to sin, or sin to atheism — well, anyway, that’s obviously going to be a problem for his argument. For, if sin leads to cognitive problems — and, believe it or not, that’s the claim — then, since all have sinned, Jim seems to be caught with his pants down. In fact, perhaps that’s what explains why his argument is really so hopeless! After all, notice that he takes Paul’s point as given. Namely, that we have no excuse, since we can — now, let’s get this straight, folks! — know that God exists.  One’s tempted to say that if this is an example of Christianity today then Christianity is in deep deep trouble! 

Continue reading →

Learning about the media, one interview at a time

Standard

Yesterday (24th February 2011), the Halifax Chronicle Herald – Nova Scotia’s major newspaper — reported an act of euthanasia performed by a man in Liverpool on his wife without her consent. He spoke first with the newspaper, and then went to the police, claiming that he had given his wife, who was suffering from end stage breast cancer, an overdose of painkillers. He was, he said, wracked with feelings of guilt, and could no longer live with what he had done. He wanted (according to the newspaper report) someone in authority to tell him that what he had done was not wrong. He also seemed to have in mind that perhaps what he had done would reanimate the much-needed discussion about euthanasia.

The response of the CBC in Nova Scotia was to lead with the story on news and talk shows, and, since I had been in the news in a vaguely similar situation nearly four years ago I was asked to do a number of interviews. This shows, I think, that in the minds of newsmakers, the issue of euthanasia is an important one, in need of open public discussion. The truth, I think, is that it is almost impossible for news media to provide the context for such a discussion, however needed it is. News goes from one dramatic event to the next, and cannot sustain the kind of discussion that is needed, where people get involved at many levels over a period of time sufficiently long to allow people’s views to be thoroughly aired.

Continue reading →

Rodriguez Redux

Standard

I mentioned earlier that I would get back to you about Jocelyn Downie’s proposed statute governing assisted dying. It is contained in a paper published in the Health Law Journal. It was downloadable at one time from the Health Law Journal online, and is accessible online here, so I have included it here in pdf format (downloaded last Summer). This will give you an idea of what a proposed law governing assisted dying might look like. The title of the paper is “Rodriguez Redux,” and is co-authored by Jocelyn Downie (Professor of Ethics and Law at Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS) and Simone Bern (a student in the Faculty of Law, Dalhousie University).

Religious Grab Bag for a Thursday Morning — or: How to believe in the teeth of the evidence and have people think you really know

Standard

The news never disappoints. Every morning when I wake up I tour a number of online newspapers. My internet homepage is aldaily.com, managed by the Chronicle of Higher Education. I start with the Globe and Mail and then work down, through the Guardian, Indpendent, Telegraph, National Post and New York Times. Life is short: I can’t do them all. Every morning, without fail, there is some religious madness or other. Very seldom do atheists make the news: but religion is always there in living colour. And yet it is the new atheists who are called strident, uncivil, contemptuous — and other terms intended to be opprobrious, though actually pointing out the refreshing candour of nonbelievers. No mysteries for them to skulk behind. Set alongside the iterated idiocies of religion atheism turns out to be surprisingly civil and compassionate and refreshingly honest.

Continue reading →

The Despicable Cruelty of Religion

Standard

Those who have visited choiceindying.com before will know — and if not, if you check under the “About” tab above you will discover — that my main purpose in writing is to advocate the legalisation of assisted dying for those who choose to die rather than to continue with intolerable suffering. Since religion stands almost everywhere in the way of a reasonable ordering of human affairs, the only way is through the ruins of religion. There is no way around. The destruction of religion would be a great good. Religion’s cruelty and violence alone should be enough to defeat it. Unfortunately, too many people see religion and call it good. We need to take every opportunity to disabuse people of this serious misunderstanding.

The idea that the privilege of assisted dying should be reserved only to those who have been diagnosed with “terminal” illness, and for those only at a time shortly before their expected death, is ridiculous. The reasons for permitting assistance in dying are compassionate, and all that should be required is a condition such that the person suffering from has an enduring belief that not to be is preferable to being, and the person, so believing, requests help to die. Every human being has a liberty interest in the right to die. Some may, for religious reasons, choose not to avail themselves of this right, but no competent, informed person should be prevented from dying, if that is what they choose as best for themselves, all things considered.

All the major monotheisms oppose assistance in dying. The degree or duration of suffering is irrelevant. Jews, Christians and Muslims all agree: the time and manner of one’s death are in the hands of God. It is not something over which we are competent to rule. Neither suicide, nor assistance in dying of any kind, is permissible. When it comes to religions, cruelty is more important than compassion, and dying in misery is holy.

This becomes perfectly evident when you consider the way animals are required to be killed in Islam and Judaism. Halal or Kosher meat is from animals that are killed with maximum cruelty, as the video clip linked below testifies. PZ Myers put it up on his blog Pharyngula. It comes from YouTube via the Religion Poisons website, under the title, “God says animals must suffer more.” Fair warning: this is a very troubling video. The question is: How do we bring this madness to an end?

I don’t know that animals are made to suffer more — as the Religion Poisons website suggests. Many animals are made to suffer needless torment when they are killed, but if you think this is greater suffering than people endure while they die, or while they live with debilitating degenerative conditions, you would be wrong. This is only one of the ways.

Darwin meets Job

Standard

Over at Why Evolution is True Jerry Coyne posted an article (yesterday, 21 February) about the mindlessness of evolution. He quotes the following from the text he is using, Evolution, by Douglas Futuyma:

[Darwin's] alternative to intelligent design was design by the completely mindless process of natural selection, according to which organisms possessing variations that enhance survival or reproduction replace those less suitably endowed, which therefore survive or reproduce in lesser degree. This process cannot have a goal, any more than erosion has the goal of forming canyons, for the future cannot cause material events in the present. Thus the concepts of goals or purposes have no place in biology.

But of course they don’t! Job could have told you that. And this is why the theological shenanigans over at the National Center for Science Education are really way out of line. For, try as they might, theologians had to give up on a strong teleology a long time ago. Rabbi Harold Kushner, after the death of his son, had to rationalise it by saying that God really doesn’t have the power to influence outcomes. Others try different expedients, but only the blind can think that the evils of the world express a good purpose. No one, with an ounce of sense, can look at the world and say that it was designed for a purpose. On the one hand, it’s practically impossible to keep our teleological fingers off things; but on the other, life has a tendency to go so badly that supposing there is a purpose to the things that happen stretches credulity so far that anyone who tries to do it literally has to have a bad intellectual conscience.

Continue reading →