Monthly Archives: March 2012

Alex Schadenberg, Mistaken Presuppositions, Religious Prejudices and Being Wrong

Standard

Alex Schadenberg, the Executive Director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, a Canadian Roman Catholic pressure group opposing assisted dying of any kind — holding even that the death of the brain-dead Terry Schaivo was murder! – and takes every possible opportunity to oppose the right to assistance in dying on the basis of Roman Catholic “pro-life” dogma (but what I choose to call the Roman Catholic death cult). He and his tiresome organisation intrudes in people’s lives even when such intervention is not only unwelcome but insulting and demeaning, and despite the fact that he has no special qualifications in bioethics, has managed to get his tendentious nonsense published in the National Post. In an article entitled “Legalizing euthanasia would leave the vulnerable unprotected,” he drags the old chestnut once again out of the fire, dusts off the burnt bits, and presents it as newly minted, hot-off-the-press, information that is vital for our society. I have (for the sake of full disclosure) a focused animus against this presumptuous and despicable man who speaks with such suffocating self-righteousness, for it was he who reported me to the police after I had returned from accompanying my wife Elizabeth to the Dignitas Clinic in Zürich, where she was helped to die before what she feared — being trapped in her body by MS — would prevent her from acting as she chose. It was a fate which, in her view, would have been far worse than death itself. It is people like Schadenberg who make sure that people like Elizabeth die before they really want to, for fear of being trapped and unable to receive the help in dying which they seek.

At the time (June 2007),  a physician spokesman for the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition claimed that it was important to have reported me to the police, in order to protect those who in future might be “bundled onto an airplane” (obviously implying that this was the case with my wife Elizabeth), and taken away to be killed against their will. And, the EPC said, it would do the same again, putting others on notice that if they should seek the release that only death would bring, they would make life as uncomfortable as possible for their loved ones. (At one point I sent an email to Schadenberg objecting to something which he had published in his newsletter, and he complained, of all things, of being harassed!) When the EPC received a great deal of unsympathetic coverage, in which it was suggested that it and its officers should mind their own damn business, Alex Schadenberg wrote a long, explanatory letter to the Halifax Chronicle-Herald, trying to convince people that there were very serious social issues at stake here which people routinely ignore, issues that need to be emphasised against what he considered widespread ignorance of the real significance of support for assisted dying (a term, of course, which neither Schadenberg nor other EPC officers will deign to use, preferring to see aid in dying as simply another permutation of murder), a significance expressed by Pope John Paul II (Pope Karol Józef Wojtyła) by the words “culture of death.” At the same time, the EPC lawyer, Hugh Scher, in a TV appearance, suggested that I had been guilty of the crime of assisted suicide, and at least some of the more extreme of those who heard him at the time rubbed their hands together in glee at the prospect of someone so dastardly and evil as me being locked up for a very long time indeed.

Continue reading →

About these ads

Darwin, Science, God and the Education of Children

Standard

I’ve been reading Janet Browne’s biography of Darwin over the last few days — riveting stuff, by the way! One of the things that becomes increasingly clear as Darwin gets closer and closer to discerning the final shape of his theory of evolution by means of natural selection, is how very careful he felt he had to be about the impact of his developing theory on the society around him. Indeed, it would not be going too far to suggest that he was afraid of being socially ostracised, both as a scientist and as a member of the society of his day, because of the theory’s implied materialism and godlessness. This concern was related to his deeper concern about its effect on his wife Emma, who was deeply devout, and who struggled with Darwin’s growing disbelief, about which he did not deceive her.

In 1843, after finishing his work on volcanic islands, he decided to put his species theory into a much more deliberate and refined form. He had already produced, in 1842, a brief pencil sketch of the theory, but this time, says Browne, “he wrote clearly …, methodically and comprehensively, covering nearly 230 pages over a period of five or six months.” (vol. 1, 446) This time he put his best foot forward. It was an attempt to persuade and convince, with an audience in mind; and, notably, he avoided, as Browne says, “dealing with any of [his wife] Emma’s concerns beyond adding a peroration glorifying the grandeur of an evolutionary view of life.” (As he does, as well, at the very end of the Origin.) Then, having worked through this task systematically and scrupulously, “he wrote Emma,” says Browne, “the strangest letter of his life”, a letter which she quotes in detail (446-7). The letter speaks of “my sketch of my species theory,” and explains what she should do with it should he suddenly die, suggesting, in strict order, men of science whom, he believes, would publish and promote the theory, and that she should consider it “the same as if legally entered in my will, that you will devote £400 to its publication & further will yourself, or through Hensleigh, take trouble in promoting it.”

Browne’s comment is striking:

Reading between the lines [she writes] was not hard. He would prefer to be dead rather than suffer the controversy which he knew would break over his head. He would prefer to be dead rather than deliberately hurt Emma’s feelings, or, even worse, be the cause of her social ostracism. [447]

Those who speak confidently of the peaceful relation between religion and science, and the ready acceptance which the theory of evolution met with in Victorian England, should consider Darwin’s well-founded fears. Shortly after this, in October 1844, Robert Chambers published, anonymously, his book, Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, which adumbrated a transmutationist theory of development, and, while popular, going through several publishing runs in the year of publication, and several editions, showed Darwin what the response to his own work might be. To start with, Darwin was stunned, thinking that Chambers had, in a sense, preempted his own work. The work itself, though ingenious, and well-written in a popular style, had many faults, and little to commend it as a work of science, but it stirred up a storm of protest and opposition.

Continue reading →

What shall we do with Julian Baggini?

Standard

[This, I'm afraid, was put together rather rapidly, since I must go out, so it may contain more errors than usual. However, it seemed to me worthwhile trying to say, even if it had to be in haste.]

Julian Baggini has now published his Heathen’s Manifesto, which he begs atheists to read. I wish I could understand the motivation behind it. It seems to be based on the premise that atheists, and new atheists in particular — an unidentified assemblage of nonbelievers who are, it seems, strident, obtuse, impolite, and seek to banish religion from the world  — need to grow up, be sensible and kind, and ally themselves with their allies amongst religious believers, something that, so far, they seem disinclined to do. I sometimes simply despair when I read Baggini, because he never really identifies any of these supposedly rude, self-centred, self-praising atheists, nor does he provide an example of the kind of thing that he seems to object to so much. In order to say that we need a change in attitude, he has to show who is exhibiting the attitude he so much deplores, and the entire series on Heathen’s progress over the last six months or so never identifies any particular person as the kind of unbeliever who needs to change his or her attitude. What Baggini seems to have done is to accept that the strident responses of religious believers to the so-called “new” atheism are unquestionably justified. However, in my own reading on both sides of this divide, I have to say that the most caustic voices, the shrillest and most strident condemnations have come from the religious side of this particular divide, and Baggini has yet to show that this is not so. Indeed, it seems, based on reading every one of his Heathen’s progress series, and commenting on a fair number of them, that Baggini has read very little of what has been written by the new atheists, and practically nothing that has been written in response to them; and this, it seems to me, committed to reason and evidence as he claims to be, is something that he really needs to do, or, should I say?, really needed to do, before he undertook to write the series in the first place.

However, since this is, thankfully, the last in this ill-conceived project, let’s take Baggini’s manifesto and respond as civilly as we can. We will find, I think, that the whole thing is misconceived, and this can be shown without considering all twelve position statements. He suggests, to start with, that the problem is that our culture tends to see things in black and white, and leaves out the “moderate middle,” as Baggini calls it. “There is,” he says, “a perception of unbridgeable polarisation, and a sense that the debates have sunk into a stale impasse.” This, I think, is disingenuous. This is the way the debates began, so far as Baggini is concerned. In fact, so stale did the discussion seem to him from the start that he refused to read the books that he was complaining about, The God Delusion, god is not Great, and others, because, he said at the time, they had nothing new to teach him. How he knew that without having read them is the 64 thousand dollar question, but that is what he said. He seems, given the paucity of reference, in his Heathen’s progress series of articles, to what new atheists have said, to have maintained this moratorium on reading the new atheists.

Continue reading →

All it took was one experience — count it! — one — and Dan Poulter, MP, thinks that assisted dying is a danger!

Standard

It never ceases to amaze me, how quickly people jump to the conclusion that assisted dying would put people in danger. In a piece in today’s Guardian, MP Daniel Poulter has concluded that assisted dying would put people at risk. It has to be read to be believed:

Before qualifying as an NHS hospital doctor, I was a strong supporter of people with terminal and progressive illnesses being given greater power over when to end their lives. Who was I to stop someone with a terminal illness from ending their life when they had expressed a consistent wish to do so?

But an [my italics] experience as a junior doctor changed my views. Alice (not her real name) was a woman in her 40s with advanced multiple sclerosis, no longer able to speak, and completely dependent on family and carers for all her activities of daily living. She was regularly admitted to hospital with chest infections, and on this occasion had been admitted with a pneumonia that was not responding to antibiotics. She was clearly in great pain and distress.

Continue reading →

The «Québec Commission speciale sur la question de mourir dans la dignité» has issued its report recommending legislation to permit assisted dying in exceptional circumstances

Standard

The Report of the Commission is accessible here (in French). You can access a news report by Jacques Boisinoit from Canadian Press here. And, of course, already the death cult is out in force with its prognostications of chaos and catastrophe. The American right-wing lawyer turned pretend ethicist Welsey J. Smith has already come out with a typically jaundiced post entitled “Quebec in Danger of Radical Euthanasia,” but since euthanasia of any variety would be a radical departure for Smith, this says no more than that there is a possibility that Quebec will pass legislation legalising assisted dying. Smith, of course, thinks that there should be an unending conversation about ethical matters, and that, so long as there is dissent, no conclusions should ever be reached. Thus, he says, here’s the strategy:

We have to have a “conversation” about euthanasia. Commissions are appointed. If it comes to the conclusion that assisted suicide or euthanasia should not be legalized, we have to continue the conversation. Another commission might be appointed. Repeat, as necessary.  But when a commission concludes that some form of doctor-hastened death should be permitted, the conversation is over and it’s implementation time. And if anyone tries to revoke the law, they are accused of “taking away rights.”

Of the 22 recommendations of the Commission, Wesley Smith chooses to concentrate on only one, the one pertaining to assisted dying itself, failing to mention that the recommendations under Recommendation 13 are contextualised within a network of recommendations in which highest priority is given to the provision of palliative care for every citizen of Québec. Here is Recommendation 13:

La Commission recommande que les lois pertinentes soient modifées afin de reconnaître l’aide médicale à mourir comme un soin approprié en fin de vie si la demande formulée par la personne respecte les critères suivants, selon l’évaluation du médecin :

  • La personne est résidente du Québec selon les dispositions de la Loi sur l’assurance maladie ;
  • La personne est majeure et apte à consentir aux soins au regard de la loi ;
  • La personne exprime elle-même, à la suite d’une prise de décision libre et éclairée, une demande d’aide médicale à mourir ;
  • La personne est atteinte d’une maladie grave et incurable ;
  • La situation médicale de la personne se caractérise par une déchéance avancée de ses capacités, sans aucune perspective d’amélioration;
  • La personne éprouve des souffrances physiques ou psychologiques constantes, insupportables et qui ne peuvent être apaisées dans des conditions qu’elle juge tolérables.

Continue reading →

The Strange Twists and Turns of Heathen’s Pilgrimage

Standard

Julian Baggini tells us today that he is bringing his “heathen’s progress” to an end this Saturday with a Manifesto which, he suggests, if we agree with his conclusions today, we will find much to agree with, or if not, we should rub our hands together in eager anticipation of yet one more opportunity to rant. For someone who is seeking to common ground, this seems a strange way of putting it. Agree with me or rant: those are your options. When he began his journey, he says,

I was particularly keen to reposition atheism, to move away from the focus on hostile attacks on religious metaphysics and more towards a positive, constructive alternative that was capable of seeing the virtues as well as the vices of faith.

Yet, as I have commented all along – in what, no doubt, Baggini holds to be a ranting way — Baggini does not seem to have been too sure of his position. Sometimes, he spoke with unvarnished vigour in terms compatible with the so-called new atheists. At other times, he seems ready to tip over into a kind of liberal adherence to the convictions of faith. Indeed, Baggini’s path has been nothing, if not confusing, a desultory journey through a maze of belief and unbelief. Yet today he comes to some conclusions, a propaedeutic, it seems, to the looming Manifesto. Let’s consider them now.

He begins by complaining about tribalism:

First of all, it is dispiriting to see how tribal so many people seem to be. For all the interesting, thoughtful comments that have been posted on the pieces I’ve written, and supportive emails I’ve been sent, there have been many more that have used whatever the subject of the week is as a simple pretext to get in the familiar old digs against whoever the other tribe happens to be.

But consider Baggini’s original statement of purpose:

Broadly speaking, the problem is that the religious mainstream establishment maintains a Janus-faced commitment to both medieval doctrines and public pronouncements about inclusivity and moderation; agnostics and more liberal believers promote an intellectualised version of religion, which both reduces faith to a thin gruel and fails to reflect the reality of faith on the ground; while the new atheists are spiritually tone-deaf, fixated on the superstitious side of religion to the exclusion of its more interesting and valuable aspects.

In which, not to put too strong a point on it, he divides people up into tribes, including the rather jaundiced view of the new atheists as spiritually tone-deaf. If his intention was to mitigate the tribalism, perhaps he shouldn’t have started off in quite this way. The real problem seems to have been that Baggini didn’t really know what he wanted to accomplish with his series. The Guardian gave him free rein, and he’s taken full advantage of it. At one point he says things that make him sound just like a new atheist. The next moment he thinks it more appropriate to veer off in the direction of religious believing, and rant about the new atheists, and their failure to see how emotion and thought are combined in rational deliberation, and how this contributes to their misunderstanding of religious believers who take their experiences more seriously than their beliefs. But then, again, he acknowledges that many Christians take orthodox beliefs at face value. Indeed, he goes so far as to say:

 … whatever some might say about religion being more about practice than belief, more praxis than dogma, more about the moral insight of mythos than the factual claims of logos, the vast majority of churchgoing Christians appear to believe orthodox doctrine at pretty much face value.

But what about the spiritual tone-deafness of the new atheists, and their failure to recognise the more valuable aspects of religion?

Continue reading →

The Emptiness of George Pitcher

Standard

You may remember George Pitcher from his rather sour dismissal of Evan Harris, MP, who lost his seat in the last British general election: “The best result of the election: Let’s rejoice that Lib Dem Evan Harris has lost his seat.” It was a scurrilous attack on a thoughtful politician of intelligence and integrity by an Anglican priest who seems to lack both. Yet Pitcher, a religious hack who seems to lack both humanity and common sense, and tends to see things as though his brain doesn’t correct for the upside-down and backward image received from his eyes, saw Harris through a filter created wholly by his religion, and condemned Harris for shortcomings most evident in Pitcher himself:

A stranger to principle, Harris has coat-tailed some of the most vulnerable and weak people available to him to further his dogged, secularist campaign to have people of faith – any faith – swept from the public sphere.

Harris made no secret of his support for a secular Britain, and his opposition to the outsized influence of religion on a British society which is increasingly non-religious or anti-religious. He also attracted the slur, “Dr. Death,” because of his support for assisted dying, and freer abortions, and it is likely that Pitcher’s glee at Harris’s loss in the election is linked as much to Harris’s advocacy for relaxed abortion laws and the legalisation of assisted dying as it was to anything else about him.

Here, as an example of Harris’s advocacy for secularism and an end to religious privilege, is part of an advertisement in which Harris was asking for support for the Secular Europe campaign last September (2011):

Error
This video doesn’t exist

Contrary to Pitcher’s slander, Evan Harris is a man of principle, principles which, given Pitcher’s leaning towards yellow journalism of the most sleazy variety, are clearly higher than Pitcher’s own, which are rooted in authority and grounded in nothing but religious privilege.

Continue reading →

Beyond Belief!

Standard

According to reports which have just been made public, some boys who were abused by priests in the Netherlands, and who complained about the abuse, were sent to psychiatric hospitals run by the church, where they were castrated, because of their homosexual tendencies! As I say, this is simply beyond belief. The bishops must have known of this, and if they knew, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith — the Holy Office of the Inquisition — must have known, and so did the civic authorities, and this has been kept  secret these many years. Cases such as this go back to the 1950s! It is truly beyond belief. And this same organisation, remember, is the one that is screeching like scalded cats over extending the right to marry to homosexual people! The pope should be ashamed to show his face in public. And for other leaders, cardinals and archbishops of the church to make claims to moral leadership is ludicrous and risible. (Thanks to Ophelia for the link.)

PZ Myers has also addressed this issue, with these poignant thoughts:

As you might guess, this is a major scandal.

It’s also a truth. Catholicism is a horror, a nightmare, a medieval monstrosity that has ruined far too many people’s lives. It’s about time people woke up to it. You can tell me that there are good people who become priests, and I’d agree with you…but when do good people stop colluding with an evil institution, tear off the clerical collar, and refuse to further a cause so tainted with corruption and wrongness?

It’s time for thoughtful, reasonable people to leave the Catholic Church. Does there not come a time when you just have to say, “So far and no further”?

***********

Catholic church abuse: inspectors knew minors were castrated

Monday 19 March 2012

Government inspectors were aware that minors were being castrated while being looked after in Catholic-run psychiatric institutions, local paper the Limburger reported on Monday.

The NRC reported on Saturday at least one boy under the age of 16 was castrated to ‘help’ his homosexual feelings while in Catholic church care in the 1950s.

Minutes of meetings held in the 1950s show inspectors were present when the castrations were openly discussed, the Limburger said. The minutes also showed directors of the institutions did not think parents needed to be involved in the decision-making process when minors were involved.

Read more . . . .

Can Christians interpret the Bible without ending up with nonsense?

Standard

Over at Why Evolution is True, guest author Sigmund addresses himself to a Biologos guest voice trying to sort out the details of biblical interpretation. The problem, often pointed out, is: How do you know when to interpret the Bible figuratively, and when to interpret the Bible literally? The problem, of course, is obvious. If there is no basis, other than simple expediency, for reading the Bible one way or the other, then the obvious conclusion is that biblical interpretation, rather than producing a view that can reasonably be thought to be based on the Bible itself, is merely the product of individual imaginative responses to the text, guided by what is now believed to be the truth about the world or about history.

So, when we come to something like the first couple, Adam and Even, and their fall from grace, is this to be interpreted as a real historical event, something that happened in history, or is it an interpretation of human nature, based upon later understandings of Jesus as the one who redeems us from Adam’s sin? And if there was no first couple, and no fall from grace, then what on earth is Jesus all about? What, in particular, is the supposed sacrifice of Jesus on the cross all about? For if there was no first sin, so that, as Paul says rather dramatically, everyone has sinned in Adam — however the connexion with Adam and later human beings is understood — then there is nothing that we need to be redeemed from. And if there is nothing that we need to be redeemed from, then the whole drama of redemption, in the crucifixion of Jesus and his resurrection, is unnecessary. It addresses a problem that does not exist.

Continue reading →

New Scientist on the Science of Religion

Standard

New Scientist has just published “The God Issue”, which begins with an Editorial: “To rule out god, first get to know him.” The subtitle is: “The new science of religion tells us where secularists are going wrong.” The surprising thing is that there’s nothing really new here that most of us haven’t heard before. Indeed, practically everything mentioned in the articles published in The God Issue is included in Anderson Thompson and Clare Aukofer’s Why We Believe in Gods: A Concise Guide to the Science of Faith. I don’t want to repeat it all here, since you can read the articles for yourself. Just register — it’s free — and you will be given access to all the articles in The God Issue. What I want to do is to put some pressure at a few points, because (i) I don’t think secularists are going wrong, and (ii) I think some of the claims made about the science of religion are less convincing than they may appear at first sight.

First, consider the point made in the introductory editorial. The claim is that most people perceive religion

as something that must be imprinted on young minds. [But on this, the editorial continues] The new science of religion begs to differ. Children are born primed to see god at work all around them and don’t need to be indoctrinated to believe in him.

And then we are referred to Justin Barrett’s “We are all born believers.” According to Barrett,

Children are born believers not of Christianity, Islam or any other theology but of what I call “natural religion”. They have strong natural tendencies toward religion, but these tendencies do not inevitably propel them towards any one religious belief.

Instead, the way our minds solve problems generates a god-shaped conceptual space waiting to be filled by the details of the culture into which they are born.

Now, this is, strictly speaking, untrue. Barrett provides not a shred of evidence that we are born believers in what he calls “natural religion.” What Barrett does show — and what is shown as well by researchers like Anderson Thompson, Pascal Boyer, Scott Atran, and others — is that children’s cognitive development makes belief in non-natural agents attractive. Here’s what he says:

Drawing upon research in developmental psychology, cognitive anthropology and particularly the cognitive science of religion, I argue that religion comes nearly as naturally to us as language. The vast majority of humans are “born believers”, naturally inclined to find religious claims and explanations attractive and easily acquired, and to attain fluency in using them. This attraction to religion is an evolutionary by-product of our ordinary cognitive equipment, and while it tells us nothing about the truth or otherwise of religious claims it does help us see religion in an interesting new light. [my italics]

That is worded deceptively. Saying that “it tells us nothing about the truth or otherwise of religious claims” is not only an understatement; it is misleading.

Continue reading →