Monthly Archives: March 2011

That’s how the light gets in

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Ophelia linked this — Howard Jacobson at Index on Censorship — over at Butterflies and Wheels. Note particularly the reference to Nietzsche about certainty and pathology. If you haven’t seen it (it’s only 8 minutes and 18 seconds lonog) it’s worth it. This story, in today’s Independent, puts Jacobson’s words in context.

And, in case you have never heard or read Leonard Cohen’s “Anthem” (I hadn’t), here it is:

Anthem

The birds they sang
at the break of day
Start again
I seem to hear them say
Do not dwell on what
has passed away
or what is yet to be.
Ah the wars they will
be fought again
The holy dove
She will be caught again
bought and sold
and bought again
the dove is never free.
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.

We asked for signs
and the signs were sent:
the birth betrayed
the marriage spent
Yeah the widowhood
of every single government –
signs for all to see.

I can’t run no more
with that lawless crowd
while the killers in high places
say their prayers out loud.
But they’ve summoned, they’ve summoned up
a thundercloud
and they’re going to hear from me.

Ring the bells that still can ring …

You can add up the parts
but you won’t have the sum
You can strike up the march,
on your little broken drum
Every heart, every heart
to love will come
but like a refugee.

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.
That’s how the light gets in.
That’s how the light gets in.

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The Staunchness of the British Soldier

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Field Marshal Alan Brooke, CIGS 1941-1946

Amongst my recreational reading at the present time is Arthur Bryant’s The Turning of the Tide, the first volume of the story of the Second World War from the point of view of General Alan Brooke, who became Chief of the Imperial General Staff in December 1941, and held that vital position for the remainder of the war. Alan Brooke kept a diary during the war in some small leather-bound diaries, with locks, remaindered by a stationery store, and which, as he filled them, he gave to his wife so that she could share in his life and undertakings while they were apart. It was a way of putting down his immediate thoughts about what was going on around him, at a time when it was important that he maintain an outward calm. So he poured into the diaries his most intimate thoughts and anxieties about the historic events in which he played such a central role.

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And the Greatest of These is Freedom

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The title of this post comes from the title of a book by Hege Storhaug, a Norwegian writer who is also the information director of Human Rights Service in Norway. Her book is about the consequences of immigration, particularly Muslim immigration, for Europe. I have not read it, so this is not about the book, but the title of the book set me to thinking about something that I think may well be important. It is often held that religion has something important to contribute not only to individual lives, but also to culture and society. I want to speak about why I disagree with this so strongly, and about the central importance of freedom to human community.

I read the other day something to the effect that in his famous thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians, Paul put love before faith. In other words, our regard for others is more important than what we believe. This, it is suggested, is the message we should take away from Paul, who is much more aware, we are led to think, of the social dimensions of religious faith than we give him credit for. But of course Paul was speaking about life in the church. In fact, in this chapter he was addressing directly a breakdown in relationship within the church based upon the kinds of spiritual gifts which are given to some and not to others. Some speak in tongues, and those so gifted were — and still are, in many cases — claiming special gifts from the Holy Spirit, and thus of being of higher spiritual standing than others to whom these gifts were not given. Paul’s response is that all are given gifts, but the most important gift is one which maintains the peace of the church, so how members of the church should treat each other, and are at peace together, is much more important than things like faith.

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Freethought Books Project

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A reader has let me know of this project, and it seems to be worthy of your support. It provides books, pen pals and other services to atheists in prison, as well as to other institutions and individuals in need. Founded in 2005 by Leslie Zukor, a board member of the Secular Student Alliance. In the words of Peter Nothnagle, “the Project seeks to collect books by atheist writers to be distributed to interested prison inmates.” This link will connect you to the Freethought Books Project. According to the project home page:

Book donation update as of November 2009:  Collected 2,900 books for prisoners, mental institutions, and others in need.  Filled requests from about 50 inmates.  Sent 1,600 books to prison-donating organizations and sent 500 books to individual prisoners.

As I say, the Freethought Books Project seems to me likely worthy of your support, especially if you are an American atheist, nonbeliever, philosophical naturalist, freethinker, or however you describe your position.

Religion, Hyper-empiricism and Polemic

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Over at Butterflies and Wheels Ophelia has started a very fruitful discussion on the reasons for the hyper-criticism of people like Berlinerblau and Joseph Hoffmann. And Jerry Coyne has joined in with his post, “Hoffmann debate continues.” I have not indulged much in this discussion since I was busy reading, as a matter of fact (despite Joseph Hoffmann’s careless accusation that I have simply “stopped reading”). Just now I am trying to read, mark, learn and inwardly digest (to use an Anglican phrase) Ronald Dworkin’s Justice for Hedgehogs (and have just finished reading David Lewis-Williams’ Conceiving God), so it came as something of a surprise when I read these words from Joe Hoffmann:

Jerry and his fans are probably right. There is no use arguing when they have stopped reading. MacDonald & Coyne are obviously exemplary of the position Berlinerblau characterizes as hper-empiricism. Their view of religion is their under-assessed and totally scientistic caricature of religion, de-historicized and dragged without context into their private psychology. From that vantage point, everyone else is a polemicist.

This is Comment # 38, and I have to admit that I really don’t understand what he is accusing me of. The words ‘scientism’ and ‘scientistic’ are, I think, sadly overused now as terms of abuse, though no one has yet indicated to me what is meant by these words in the contemporary context. Since I have spent a great deal of time making the point that science can certainly not account adequately for love and beauty and various other features of the human, I think it’s just an empty way to dismiss someone with whom you think you disagree, while at the same time not knowing enough about what that person believes about the subject in hand to be able to say anything of particular relevance.

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The Brutal Poison of Religion

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There is a BBC report with this title: ”Euthanasia in Europe: A Continent Divided” – accessible here. (And, yes, so that this is clear, the report comes from 2009.) Following is the section from this report on the situation in Italy:

ITALY

Euthanasia is illegal, but Italian law upholds a patient’s right to refuse care and the potential contradiction has resulted in several cases which have divided Italians.

The debate is especially passionate in Italy, where the Roman Catholic Church, which is deeply opposed to euthanasia, still holds great sway.

In 2006, Piergiorgio Welby – a terminally-ill man with a severe form of muscular dystrophy – died after a protracted legal dispute during which he described his life as torture.

A judge had ruled that he did not have the right to have his respirator removed, and when anaesthetist Mario Riccio switched off his life support he was investigated by a judge for “consensual homicide”. He was eventually cleared and the judges involved called on politicians to change the law.

In July 2007 came the case of Giovanni Nuvoli, a 53-year-old former football referee with advanced muscular dystrophy, who died after going on hunger strike because he was not allowed his request to die without suffering.

Police prevented his doctor, Tommaso Ciacca, from switching off his respirator. Former Health Minister Livia Turco said at the time that it was time Italy had a law “which allows sick people to express their will”.

Then in July 2008, a court in Milan awarded the father of Eluana Englaro, a 38-year-old woman who has been in a permanent vegetative state since a car crash in 1992, the right to disconnect her feeding tubes.

The judges ruled that doctors had proved Ms Englaro’s coma was irreversible. They also accepted that, before the accident, she had expressed a preference for dying over being kept alive artificially.

Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi tried to intervene after doctors at a private geriatric clinic began to withhold her food, issuing an emergency decree barring doctors halting nutrition to patients in a coma.

However, President Giorgio Napolitano refused to sign it, and three days later, before the Senate could enact a new law barring doctors halting nutrition to patients in a coma, Ms Englaro died.

Following her death, senators agreed to expedite work on a draft law to clarify end-of-life issues.

“There’s a will to urgently agree on end-of-life legislation,” Health Minister Maurizio Sacconi said.

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Vatican confirms report of sexual abuse and rape of nuns by priests in 23 countries

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In the light of the last post, about the dependence of morality on religion, this news story from The Independent is worth noting….

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Wednesday, 21st March 2011

The Catholic Church in Rome made the extraordinary admission yesterday that it is aware priests from at least 23 countries have been sexually abusing nuns.

Most of the abuse has occurred in Africa, where priests vowed to celibacy, who previously sought out prostitutes, have preyed on nuns to avoid contracting the Aids virus.Confidential Vatican reports obtained by the National Catholic Reporter, a weekly magazine in the US, have revealed that members of the Catholic clergy have been exploiting their financial and spiritual authority to gain sexual favours from nuns, particularly those from the Third World who are more likely to be culturally conditioned to be subservient to men.

The reports, some of which are recent and some of which have been in circulation for at least seven years, said that such priests had demanded sex in exchange for favours, such as certification to work in a given diocese.

In extreme instances, the priests had made nuns pregnant and then encouraged them to have abortions.

The US article was based on five documents, which senior women from religious orders and priests have presented to the Vatican over the past decade. They describe a particularly bad situation in Africa. In a continent devastated by Aids, nuns, along with early adolescent girls, are perceived by some as safe sexual targets. The reports said that the church authorities had done little to tackle the problem.

The Vatican reports cited countless cases of nuns forced to have sex with priests. Some were obliged to take the pill, others became pregnant and were encouraged to have abortions. In one case in which an African sister was forced to have an abortion, she died during the operation and her aggressor led the funeral mass. Another case involved 29 sisters from the same congregation who all became pregnant to priests in the diocese.

Read more ….

Imagined Gods, Pretended Absolutes

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Just as I began writing this post I got a notice (via email) of a new post on the same subject over at Why Evolution is True. I don’t mean to compete, but this follows so naturally from the concern I expressed yesterday about the election ”flyer” prepared for distribution in parishes by the Roman Catholic anti-choice movement called (inaccurately) “Priests for Life” — the Canadian Edition.

One thing you can be assured of is that the religious will continue to claim authority for their own value judgements, and to deny that others have any basis for morals at all. The truth, of course, is that the religious have no basis for moral authority — none whatsoever. In fact, it very often turns out that what they think morally good is often anything but that. Not only do different religions claim different things as morally good or bad, but also the religions themselves have internal disagreements as to what is good and bad. They have no more clarity about such things than the five-year-old kindergarten child, although they pronounce on things with the same peremptory certainty as a five-year-old.

I was just listening to an exchange between a Muslim “scholar” and Wafa Sultan. Dr. Sultan had just said that Islam was really responsible for the clash of civilisations — or, as she called it, the clash of eras – and she read from the Qu’ran and other Islamic sources commands to the effect that Muslims must fight and continue to fight against unbelievers, until the offence of false belief is expunged, and the unbelievers have either been killed or have become true Muslim believers, and have submitted to Allah. The Muslim “scholar” disagreed with Dr. Sultan’s interpretation of Islamic teaching. The Muslim is called, he averred, to struggle against those who attack Islam, but then he went on to interpret the immorality and impurity of other peoples — that is, their failure to live as good Muslims – as an attack upon Islam against which Muslims are called to fight, so that all the powers that are at war with Allah will be defeated.

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Priests against Life

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“Priests for Life Canada,” one of the heads of the many-headed hydra that comprises the Roman Catholic Church wherever it is found, and which reaches into every area of private and public life in Canada, accompanied the call to election yesterday with a “One Page Flyer” to be distributed in parishes. In it, these Ghouls for Life, whose latest banner case was the prolongation of a dying baby’s life, a story told with scant respect for the truth, and none for compassion for the dying, state their contempt for the Canadian electorate with these words:

The right to life is the right through which all others flow. To the extent candidates reject this fundamental right by supporting an objective evil, such as legal abortion, euthanasia or embryonic stem cell research, Catholics should consider them less acceptable for public office. As faithful citizenship teaches, “Those who knowingly, willingly, and directly support public policies or legislation that undermine fundamental moral principles cooperate with evil”.

Whether a church organisation’s direct involvement in the election by way of propaganda is or is not contrary to Elections Canada rules I do not know, but it illustrates, in the clearest terms, the Roman Catholic insistence on maintaining control over its own people and its desire to impose its rules on everyone else.

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Your comment is awaiting moderation

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Over at The New Oxonian I made the following brief comment on Hoffmann’s Belinerblau is right and you’re all wrong post, and it has been in moderation for the last hour or so; meanwhile Hoffmann has put up one by Ophelia and has commented on it. So it seems as well to put it here, even if R. Joseph Hoffmann does get around to giving it the nod of editorial favour:

This is an astonishingly thin piece of criticism. In fact, it is in the nature of a thoughtless diatribe. You’re not even, like Fred, treading water. You provide virtually no evidence, and what evidence you do provide is selected from fringe elements of the “new” atheist phenomenon. A glancing reference to Sam Harris, a citation of one of Dawkins’ less than felicitous impromptu remarks, is about the extent of the “evidence” provided. Don’t you have to do more than this? Berlinerblau and Ruse don’t do any better, of course, as you might have noticed, had you not been on such a furious witch hunt, but someone who styles himself a new Oxonian should be able to provide at least the semblance of argument, if not the real thing. I have sometimes been impressed with your quiet thoughtfulness. On this occasion you seem to have mislaid thought and quiet altogether in favour of the empty rhetoric of condemnation.

Ophelia’s comment is similar to mine, although much more direct. Here it is, or at least part of it (I hope you don’t mind, Ophelia!):

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