1. How to sell science to the Big Brother generation

Comment #294182 by Russell Blackford on November 30, 2008 at 5:55 pm

Yes, technically it's a leading question, and I wish journalists wouldn't ask them. Leave it to cross-examining barristers who know how to do it properly and appropriately.

But I don't see it as a great problem in this case. Richard does confront irrationalism head on, and that's a good thing.

2. Vatican thanks Muslims for returning God to Europe

Comment #293778 by Russell Blackford on November 30, 2008 at 5:36 am

I'm not actually very surprised by the idea of a strategic political alliance between Islam and the Cult of Misery. The Abrahamic religionists have more to gain than to lose by such an alliance.

3. Regenerating a Mammoth for $10 Million

Comment #293728 by Russell Blackford on November 30, 2008 at 1:21 am

Creating a Neanderthal using genetic technology would probably be a stupid idea (I agree with the general direction of some of Roger Stanyard's comments above), but not an inherently "sinful" one in the way that the Cult of Misery would undoubtedly claim. By contrast, creating a woolly mammoth or a Tasmanian tiger would be a wonderful idea. Such an imaginative project would attract resources to genetic science, and I don't see it as taking away from other areas of research. It's not a zero-sum game; we need these big, imagination-firing projects.

4. Turkey bans biologist Richard Dawkins' website

Comment #249898 by Russell Blackford on September 18, 2008 at 4:13 pm

I haven't had a chance to read the thread, so maybe someone has already pointed this out. Apologies if so.

As far as I can work out, this is something like a temporary injunction at the interlocutory stage of court proceedings, pending full trial, in a private defamation action. It might be unusual for such an order to be granted in such proceedings in Western countries, but surely not unheard of (I'm not an expert in comparative defamation law). Whether or not it's a good idea for a court to issue such orders, it's very different from government censorship.

If I've understood this correctly, the case may still be thrown out when it goes to trial.

I was a bit disappointed in the notification I received of this news, because it actually gives a quite misleading impression. My first thought was to denounce Turkey, thinking it was engaging in authoritarian action contrary to freedom of speech. Then I worked out that this is an interlocutory injunction (or whatever the Turkish equivalent might be) in private litigation. Again, prior restraint orders, or anything like them, may not be a good idea in defamation cases, but they are not the same as government censorship in the usual sense.

I realise that the article wasn't written by Josh or anyone else associated with RichardDawkins.net, but that we have simply been sent the Monsters and Critics article. But that's a bit of a problem since the article isn't very good.

I wish we could have a more analytical article, preferably with input from someone with an understanding of Turkish law - particularly defamation law.

To be fair, the article itself is not all that bad - the main problem is its misleading heading.

If my point isn't clear, I might write a book in which I present somebody in an unfavourable light. It is one thing for the government to ban my book. It is quite different if the individual sues me for defamation and manages to get a temporary order, pending the full trial of the case, requiring the publisher to suspend its distribution. Again, such an order may not be a good idea, but that doesn't turn it into a government ban.

I haven't been posting here of late - just seem to have got caught up in other things - so "Hi!" to the old regulars if any of you are still around.

For those who don't know, my main project at the moment is co-editing a book in which about 50 prominent atheists/disbelievers/sceptics will explain briefly why they reject religion (to name a few at random, they include Michael Shermer, Peter Singer, PZ Myers, Ophelia Benson, Lori Lipman Brown, Greg Egan, and on and on ...). We have a fabulous line-up and an excellent publisher (Wiley-Blackwell). So I'm still doing my bit for the cause of irreligion.

5. Ben Stein 1, Yoko Ono 0 in 'Expelled' copyright spat

Comment #188859 by Russell Blackford on June 4, 2008 at 8:34 pm

This is a good legal outcome and the judge's reasoning is very sound. My full comments over here:

http://metamagician3000.blogspot.com/2008/06/victory-for-freedom-of-speech.html

The bottom line is that I am as opposed as anyone to the message of Expelled ... but free speech, and specifically freedom to engage in criticism and commentary, applies to everyone, not just our friends and allies but also our opponents. If you don't accept that, then you are not really in favour of freedom of speech.

6. Group finds Starbucks logo too hot to handle

Comment #181407 by Russell Blackford on May 17, 2008 at 6:54 am

Damn, I must pop into Starbucks for a coffee. Maybe next time I'm out wandering the streets on a warm, sunny day licking my Kassian ice cream.

7. Is religion a threat to rationality and science?

Comment #170779 by Russell Blackford on April 28, 2008 at 1:55 am

Religion may not be the biggest threat, or the one with the most political influence, or the most fundamental (which may be something in our evolved human nature), but it has a lot to do with resistance to ideas and practices that seem strange; and it's not just a coincidence that it is often religious leaders who argue most effectively against new ideas (like that new-fangled idea of biological evolution!).

Going deeper into this, it seems that all traditional cultures have their "eternal verities" - things that seem to be immutably true about fundamental aspects of the human condition. I put the words "eternal verities" in scare quotes because some of these things may not be verities at all, and certainly not eternal ones. And they won't be identical across all cultures. In modern, pluralistic societies, you'll get different verities believed in by different people - some may still be operating with an "eternal verity" that women are intellectually inferior to men, for example, even though this is neither true nor even a universally-shared illusion. Nonetheless, there are various fundamental "verities" that are likely to be widely accepted even within a pluralistic society (which will adopt ideas from the dominant culture or cultures).

Sometimes, philosophers challenge these eternal verities directly by arguing that they are not actually true or well-founded. Sometimes science and technology challenge them less directly. Either way, many people are going to be made very uncomfortable.

What do we see in history? People will want to execute Socrates, try to deny women the vote, ban human cloning, beat homosexuals, get queasy about interracial marriage, etc.

There may be some deeper explanation as to why the world is like this, but in any event I think it probably is like this.

The theory isn't mine by the way; I borrowed it from the philosopher Richard Norman. It's Norman's theory of background conditions, or my restatement thereof. It could do with being given a more rigorous basis, but it seems very plausible based on the evidence from history and anthropology.

What role does religion play in all this? I'm not sure that I have the full answer to that, but I think that a culture's religious beliefs and its pet "eternal verities" will co-evolve. As a result, the religion will be heavily invested in the local set of supposedly eternal verities. It will have influenced them and been influenced by them. It tends to preserve them and to resist challenges to them, whether from science or from experimental lifestyles, or wherever else.

Religious images of the world will be chock full of these eternal verities, whether it's the eternal verity of human exceptionalism, the eternal verity of free will (in a very strong sense), the eternal verity that women should act in such and such a way in relation to men, the eternal verity that sex is nasty and only redeemed by its procreative potential, the eternal verity that we have only three score years and ten, or whatever it is that the locals believe to be an immutable truth about the world and our condition within it.

Any attack on the local eternal verities, even if not actually intended as an attack on religion, is likely to receive strong counter-attacks from religious sources. Moreover, because religion has picked up a whole lot of these traditional fundamental beliefs that made some sort of sense once but are largely not true, it is always likely to imagine the world in a different way from the way it is imagined by the majority of people who are highly scientifically literate and are keeping up with the developing scientific image of the world.

If we really want to challenge the eternal verities (as they are imagined to be in our place and time), we can expect opposition from at least some - probably many - religionists. If we are serious, we may feel that we have to counterattack our religious opponents head-on, by pointing out that the religion that gives them their mantle of seeming authority is just not true in the first place.

E.g. to defend the morality of homosexuality, it may not be enough to argue that, by some secular principle, it does no harm. It may not be enough to put pressure on religion to reinterpret its doctrines to accept homosexuality. The best way of getting homosexuality socially accepted, and to stop people defending the local eternal verity that "homosexuality is evil", may be for at least some people to stop talking so much homosexuality itself, and about secular moral theories, or new theology ... and to spend more time promulgating scepticism about religion.

If you really want a transvaluation of values, according to which many things once considered virtues in your society (such as chastity and certain kinds of pietistic humility) are now considered vices, and certain things that were once considered sins are now considered good or at least neutral (e.g. homosexual acts; so-called scientific "hubris"), one of the best things you can do is spread scepticism about religion.

Of course, the fundies and the Vatican are already well aware of this last point, but whereas they call spreading scepticism about religion bad, I call it good.

In the upshot, it may not be the entirety of religion that is set against reason, science, and individual liberty. But all of these things can run up against cultural beliefs about what the eternal verities are, and when that happens it's usually religion of one sort or another that's there as the strongest voice on behalf of the supposedly eternal verities that are widely accepted in the traditions of the culture, and as the strongest voice against whatever the latest taboo thing is that comes from reason, science, and liberty.

In this sense, it's not just a coincidence that religion is so frequently such a powerful force against reason and science, with all their inherent change and uncertainty. It's built deeply into the nature and role of religion that this sort of thing will happen.

8. Is religion a threat to rationality and science?

Comment #169372 by Russell Blackford on April 25, 2008 at 10:45 pm

Winston has it exactly backwards. The people who espouse certainty tend to be the religious. For myself, I'm not certain of much at all beyond what I see with my own eyes. But one thing I'm pretty certain about is that we need far more scepticism about religion. The believers don't even have to abandon their faith if they're prepared to accept that it's something that deserves only provisional belief, that there are many alternatives to believing in their pet supernaturalist views of the world, and that religion is far too uncertain to impose on others.

For Zeus's sake, Lord Winston, look at the big picture. It's not Daniel Dennett who is trying to impose his views on everyone else; it's more likely to be some pulpiteer or pontiff.

9. Humans nearly wiped out 70,000 years ago, study says

Comment #169370 by Russell Blackford on April 25, 2008 at 10:36 pm

This is pretty old news, and it is usually linked to the Toba eruption. Like others, I'm puzzled why the latest research and public reports of it don't mention this, if only to say that it's now not considered the cause of the bottleneck (if indeed that's the case).

10. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #167289 by Russell Blackford on April 23, 2008 at 9:00 pm

Or even vacuuming your cat or flossing the floor. Or maybe vacuuming your teeth while flossing your cat. These all tend to more profitable ccupations than feeding your troll, but please do use a very small vacuum cleaner on poor pussy.

11. Mecca should become core to measure time zones: scholars

Comment #167211 by Russell Blackford on April 23, 2008 at 6:08 pm

Poe's law in action. I take it that this is a serious article, but I found it pretty funny.

12. Beware the Believers

Comment #165694 by Russell Blackford on April 22, 2008 at 3:51 am

Well, it seems that I wasn't too far wrong in my earlier posts.

This latest revelation confirms that it came from the Expelled side, but also that it was done by somebody who was given a lot of leeway to produce something he considered funny. It still looks to me as if the intention was to satirise Dawkins, Dennett, Myers, Scott, etc., by presenting them as arrogant, self-congratulatory, venal, unscrupulous, insensitive, tribal, etc., but not necessarily to say that they are, in the final analysis, right or wrong about evolution or even atheism. It's not that deep.

13. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #164979 by Russell Blackford on April 20, 2008 at 10:52 pm

One thing that no one seems to have noticed is that the Expelled people are not the first enemies of reason to argue that there is a connection between Darwin (or modern biological science in general) and Hitler. Anti-science intellectuals have been trying to establish such connections for some time. One of the worst offenders is the anti-science British journalist Bryan Appleyard.

Appleyard argues that Hitler was influenced by Eugene Fischer's The Principles of Human Heredity and Race Hygiene and by the work of Ernst Haeckel. Appleyard advances the thesis that Nazism was not a misuse of science but somehow exemplary of it.

It's one thing to suggest that something Hitler got from Fischer or Haeckel influenced his bizarre worldview (as many other things certainly did, among them the traditional anti-Semitism that pervaded Christendom for hundreds of years). But in doing so, Appleyard ignores the various kinds of race hatred and xenophobia that have existed through most or all of known history, and which were certainly not a product of the scientific revolution in Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, or of the revolution in biology, geology, and other sciences in the nineteenth and twentieth. Nonetheless, Appleyard's fevered thinking - with all the Luddite diatribes it has generated throughout the man's lengthy career in highbrow irrationalism - is coloured by his perception of science in general as somehow tainted by Nazism.

I'm afraid that Bryan Appleyard is not the only one. You can be pretty sure that many intellectuals on the humanities side of things have similar beliefs. Call it trahison des clercs, as I do, but it's there.

Ben Stein and the rest of these fundamentalist propagandists have grabbed on to a thesis that is not original to them, and which will resonate in (parts of) the academy. This thesis has been lying around like a length of wood, just waiting for the fundies to pick it up and use it as a club.

A lot more needs to be done to debunk such misconceptions, which is one reason why I'm particularly pleased to see the efforts by Richard and others to explain the facts.

14. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #164838 by Russell Blackford on April 20, 2008 at 6:30 pm

To hmmm: no one has ever answered how the will of a god could provide the basis for morality. It was already known in antiquity that this kind of explanation ends up being incoherent. So whatever the source(s) of morality may be, we know that that is a bad answer.

For better or worse, questions relating to the naturalistic sources of morality are difficult ones that are investigated by moral philosophy (with the aid of various fields of science). I'm working on a book on that very topic, among my other projects, but it's difficult - who knows whether I'll be able to complete it and find a publisher?

It may well be that philosophical and scientific investigations will, in fact, force us to revise some of our morality in the end, because some of it may turn out to have a basis that is not rational. Even if some moral ideas made sense at the time they were adopted in our cultural history, they may not serve us well in the twenty-first century.

But these are large and complex questions. I can understand why people might hope that there is a simple answer that will leave their own moral code unscathed, but I don't think there is any good reason to expect that it will turn out like that.

On the other hand, we can be pretty sure, even now, that there's a rational basis for encouraging such virtues as kindness, courage, honesty, and the capacity for love. Such virtues are necessary for individuals to flourish and for societies to survive. You have every reason to try to encourage those qualities in your children and to be glad if you possess them yourself, as I imagine you do (fortunately, most people do, to a greater or lesser extent).

(Other virtues, however, may not have such a rational basis: it's not at all clear that piety, chastity, or the more religious kinds of humility - as opposed to a bit of basic modesty about your abilities and achievements - are virtues at all, though they were long considered such in Christendom.)

Richard, thank you so much for writing this open letter. It sets the record straight very clearly, whether or not Mr J himself is persuaded. It also shows, yet again, that you are yourself a kind and decent, as well as courageous, man.

15. Yoko Ono, Filmmakers Caught in 'Expelled' Flap

Comment #164173 by Russell Blackford on April 19, 2008 at 4:59 pm

I understand your argument, Jayday, though I disagree with it (and I think that your comments about copyright law rely on a superficial understanding of the policy basis that underlies intellectual property). I believe I've addressed most of your points previously - in the long post over on my blog (and my follow-up comments there) if not here.

On one point you make, I for one have nothing against Yoko Ono. Quite the opposite: I admire her immensely.

My essential point is that, strategically, we are better off being principled about issues such as freedom of speech than we are being blown about by every wind of expediency in particular cases. I won't elaborate on that here, since I've done so at length elsewhere and will doubtless do so again. However, for me at least, it includes taking a position on the current overreaching of IP law, which ZekeCDN described well.

But let me just emphasise for the benefit of huzonfurst, who says a lot of things that I agree with, that I am not at all interested in appeasement. I am interested in advancing the cause of freedom and reason, which includes (but is not limited to) promulgating scepticism about religion. To hell with "framing" strategies that involve appeasement of the faithful.

With my pal Udo Schuklenk, I'm even editing a book designed to promulgate scepticism, to the small extent that I can without having the fame and clout of a Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens (working title "Voices of Disbelief", to be published by Wiley-Blackwell in 2009).

I yield to no one in my concern to fight againt unreason, rather than appeasing it. But, strategically, it's always going to be better to go about the fight in an intellectually principled way than to judge every day-to-day issue by whether taking a particular stance that day will put you on the side of the "good guys" or the "bad guys".

My plea is that we try to think like strategists, rather than responding to every issue on the basis that the bad guys must be in the wrong every time. It just doesn't work like that.

16. Ethical storm as scientist becomes first man to clone HIMSELF

Comment #163869 by Russell Blackford on April 19, 2008 at 8:14 am

I see nothing wrong with this research whatsoever. All the arguments that have been put up by the Vatican, by Leon Kass, etc, etc, are pretty much rubbish. I think it's driven mainly by fear of the new, or by religious fears of playing God, or by abysmal ignorance of what is involved.

Really, the arguments have been done to death, and have been refuted so many times that it's getting ridiculous. I could provide a fairly extensive bibliography just of my own writings on the subject, and I'm by no means one of the MAJOR voices of reason in the debate so far - go and have a read of On Cloning by John Harris as a good place to start. Who's Afraid of Human Cloning? by Gregory Pence is another good book on the subject.

The arguments against therapeutic cloning have about the same status as the arguments for diluvian geology. I'm sorry, bonzai, but I feel just as impatient with this, by now, as I do with the latest idiot who turns up complaining about biological evolution because of the supposed lack of transitional fossils. The arguments come from the same kindergarten.

17. Ethical storm as scientist becomes first man to clone HIMSELF

Comment #163850 by Russell Blackford on April 19, 2008 at 7:19 am

If this story is all true, despite the source, it's a great advance.

I have to laugh (in a kind of hollow way) when the cult of misery comes out with its usual rubbish every time something like this is raised. As for the idiot who made the point about offending millions of people in the UK, so what? Let them be offended. The UK is supposed to be a liberal society; they can be as offended as they want but they can't use it as a basis to try to get whatever offends them stopped. They'll just have to put up with being offended, the same as I do whenever the latest pope or bishop or other representative of the cult of misery opens his mouth.

18. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #163841 by Russell Blackford on April 19, 2008 at 6:53 am

When I read posts such as the one by Remnant, which displays the same old total ignorance, I don't wonder that a few of the regulars here get impatient. "No transitional fossils", indeed. What kindergarten did that come from?

19. Sexpelled: No Intercourse Allowed

Comment #163695 by Russell Blackford on April 18, 2008 at 7:44 pm

I loved it! I really did.

But for the analogy to be right, surely the subtitle should be something like "No Aviation Allowed". Or maybe "No Avians Allowed". Or how about "No Bird Brains Allowed"? The equivalent of ... ahem ... "Intelligence" in the stork theory is aviation, or something related, not sex. The equivalent of evolution is sex.

Sorry to be a pedant. :(

But, hey, it would have been cool if the sub-title had been "No Bird Brains Allowed", backed up by some reference in the flick to the obvious cleverness of the alleged storks in delivering all those babies to the right parents.

20. The Child Preachers

Comment #163688 by Russell Blackford on April 18, 2008 at 7:22 pm

Unfortunately, not all actions that I consider child abuse are amenable to criminalisation in a liberal society. In some cases, the state can't take a stance on whether I'm right or wrong without breaching the wall of separation between church and state. In those cases, we are left with consciousness raising.

But for the record, I do consider terrifying children with threats of hellfire to be abusive. I don't think Dawkins is being at all too strong or strident in saying this, or that he's being intolerant in any bad sense.

He quite explicitly is not asking that such actions be stopped by means of the coercive power of the state, so he's conforming with basic liberal tolerance. I see no reason to tolerate such abuse in any more generous sense than that. I think we should go on saying that it is serious child abuse, even it's not a form of abuse that's apt for legal prohibition.

To tolerate something something doesn't mean liking it; it means putting up with it even though you don't like it (and may even think it morally wrong). Liberal tolerance requires that the state put up with many things in the sense of not actually banning them, but that's not a reason for individual citizens to back off condemning those things in strong terms.

21. Yoko Ono, Filmmakers Caught in 'Expelled' Flap

Comment #163667 by Russell Blackford on April 18, 2008 at 6:26 pm

ZekeCDN, that wasn't a long rant; it was a well-structured argument for the case that IP law has been taking on a life of its own that goes far beyond the original policy concerns that justified it in the fist place. The balance has gone too far in the direction of supporting major corporate holders of intellectual property.

Since I make some of my living as a freelance writer, I need IP law - more specifically, copyright law - to exist; however, there has to be a balance.

22. Yoko Ono, Filmmakers Caught in 'Expelled' Flap

Comment #163062 by Russell Blackford on April 17, 2008 at 11:50 pm

Well, I really hope my credentials and bona fides aren't doubted. But I actually think we should be defending free speech on this point. I hope Yoko Ono doesn't sue. I always want to defend my enemies' free speech if I can. It's more credible when I come to defend my friends' free speech ... and besides, it's simply the right thing to do.

I have a lot to say, so I blogged about it over here.

http://metamagician3000.blogspot.com/2008/04/expelled-defended-on-one-point.html

And, bonzai, if you read this, I've also written a long response to the points being made by you, Athena Andreadis, and others on my post about religion and poetry, etc.

23. Yoko Ono, Filmmakers Caught in 'Expelled' Flap

Comment #162638 by Russell Blackford on April 17, 2008 at 6:56 am

Bonzai, kk, I'll have another look at it tomorrow. I thought it was good stuff when I read it a couple of days ago.

Oh, and someone above me has left their italics open.

24. Yoko Ono, Filmmakers Caught in 'Expelled' Flap

Comment #162621 by Russell Blackford on April 17, 2008 at 6:28 am

hao, strictly speaking it might not be a parody, but if it's played over the kind of images that I gather it is - in an attempt to create some kind of ironic or undercutting effect - I think it's conceptually very similar to a parody and that a court just might think the same way.

Not only am I not an American IP lawyer, but it's some time since I've practised law at all, and never in this field. For this purpose, I'm just a thinking about it from first principles. But all that said, I don't think these folks are poorly resourced or lacking in cunning. They probably obtained legal advice on each of the alleged copyright infringements. I don't see how they can defend the one re the Harvard cell film (and am surprised that they're seeking declaratory relief, though I suppose that's one of their few options with it hanging over their heads). But I'm guessing that they may be able to defend their use of "Imagine".

25. Yoko Ono, Filmmakers Caught in 'Expelled' Flap

Comment #162440 by Russell Blackford on April 17, 2008 at 1:31 am

PJG, to stop the movie being shown pending trial the plaintiff (Harvard, Yoko, or whoever) would have to obtain an interlocutory injunction (or whatever it's called in America). In doing so, they would have to give an undertaking to pay for any damage they thereby caused to the defendant (presumably whatever company or whatever is flogging Expelled) in the event of losing at trial.

I doubt that courts in the US would be interested in issuing an injunction in a case like this where it would be blocking someone's message from going out, but maybe I'm wrong. You need advice from an American lawyer with experience in such cases.

From where I sit, however, it doesn't look as if it would be straightforward. And that's just as well. Remember, next time there's such a case it could be some shonky law suit against you or me or Richard Dawkins, brought by some wingnut from the American religious Right. The rules have to protect everyone in all the cases that come before the courts.

26. Yoko Ono, Filmmakers Caught in 'Expelled' Flap

Comment #162432 by Russell Blackford on April 17, 2008 at 1:11 am

I'm glad that Yoko is exonerated. :)

As for the Expelled people, you know they just may have a legal and moral case in support of their use of Lennon's song. I haven't seen the movie, but judging by the description they used a brief segment of it in such a context as to comment ironically on its message. I'd defend the right of people to do that if it turns out to be an accurate interpretation of what happened. It doesn't matter whether they are my ideological opponents (as the Expelled folks certainly are) or my friends. In fact, I think it's important to the credibility of the whole atheist/rationalist movement that we always defend everyone's rights, even those of our opponents, in a principled way.

Again, I say this without having seen the film, but it's a plausible interpretation and might explain why they received the legal advice that they (supposedly) did.

This scenario should also have occurred to Mr Boyce before he accused Yoko Ono of selling out.

27. Richard Dawkins' secular army must be stopped. God is behind some of our greatest art

Comment #160362 by Russell Blackford on April 14, 2008 at 1:51 am

It's a silly article - naive in its approach and only mentioning Richard Dawkins because his name makes good copy.

It does touch on some interesting issues, though. If anyone wants to take part in a more informed and rigorous discussion of them than Ravenhill's, come over here ...

http://metamagician3000.blogspot.com/2008/04/nice-pro-religious-argument.html

... where we happen to be discussing some similar things, and I'm talking with some really smart people.

28. Scientists take drugs to boost brain power: study

Comment #159289 by Russell Blackford on April 11, 2008 at 9:36 pm

Jeez, I could really do with another cup of coffee.

Meanwhile, I agree with the people who are complaining about all the moralism. What's the rational basis for someone to object to my use of neural enhancers such as coffee and Coca Cola? And in any event, it's my life. Rack off, wowsers!

I also agree with the comments about how this survey is so methodologically bad as to be almost meaningless.

29. The List: The World's Worst Religious Leaders

Comment #159284 by Russell Blackford on April 11, 2008 at 9:21 pm

Funny, you know. I can be all calm and tranquil, and then I read something about the latest sactimonious rubbish uttered by the grand poobah of the cult of misery ... and I feel my blood pressure go up. I must go and indulge in some deadly sins and calm down again. The only one I'm really up to, these days, is gluttony, so it'll have to do. Just as well we have guests coming around for dinner.

30. Inadequate, private and late apology with grotesquely inadequate excuse

Comment #159282 by Russell Blackford on April 11, 2008 at 9:13 pm

Bonzai, I agree with you up to a point, but I also think you're overreaching a bit (even while some of your interlocutors are overreacting a bit with the calls for resignation and so on).

She may not have been able to enforce her command that he leave, but she still gave it from her chair as an elected official, with at least some ostensible authority (and surely knowing this). It's not like she stepped out of the building at lunch time and said to waiting cameras and microphones, "Atheists are wrong, dangerous, blah, blah." If she'd just done that, it would fall squarely into freedom of speech.

31. Inadequate, private and late apology with grotesquely inadequate excuse

Comment #159225 by Russell Blackford on April 11, 2008 at 5:25 pm

I haven't read all of this, but must comment on the bigotry and freedom of speech issues that people are raising.

I don't think "bigotry" is the best way to describe this. Atheism is just an opinion, or a lack of opinion if you like. An atheist is a person who does not believe in any gods or who positively denies the existence of any gods. To me, that's the most rational position to hold. But Monique Davis is quite entitled to think it's wrong and even dangerous. Similarly, some of us may think that Christianity or Islam, or some version thereof, is wrong and dangerous. Davis may be stupid, or wrongheaded, or thoughtless, or naive, or whatever, but I do think that "bigotry" gives the wrong idea when what is disliked is someone's opinion, belief, worldview, or whatever, rather than, say, the person's racial background.

I don't see any free speech issue. She can say what she likes about atheists. If she thinks that atheism is leading us all to Hell, or whatever, let her say it. There should be no law against it. It might affect people's view as to whether they trust her with the great privilege of public office, but that's a different matter.

She has every right to be as nasty about atheists as she likes, just as I have every right to be nasty about radical Islamists or neo-Nazis, or (if I were that way inclined, which I'm not) Anglicans. (It's a different story with the Jews - Christendom's traditional hatred of the Jewish people is not based on a mere rejection of the epistemic content of Judaism.)

However, you don't get to use your freedom of speech in every possible situation. In particular, if you are an elected official exercising the power of the state, you don't get to tell a citizen to go away and not exercise his right to put his views and evidence to the government in the appropriate forum. That's where she was totally out of line.

Freedom of speech is freedom from the government using force to shut you up. It's all about the might of the state - the power of fire and sword, as Locke called it - not being used to control what viewpoints people may hold and express. It has nothing to do with whether you retain the confidence of your employer or your friends or (if you're an elected official) your electorate, or just the general public.

As for whether she should, um, depart, that depends entirely on whether she retains the confidence of her electorate, which she'll find out next time she has to face them.

32. Russell T Davies: Return of the (tea) Time Lord

Comment #156167 by Russell Blackford on April 7, 2008 at 1:59 am

Oh my Zeus, I'm really feeling my age. I didn't realise until I read this that that other Russell is younger than me I am, Poseidondammit. Never mind, I lurrve Dr Who and have followed it since I was a little kid. Can't wait to see the new series when it gets to Australia.

33. Who wants to kill the elderly?

Comment #153771 by Russell Blackford on April 2, 2008 at 3:46 am

I've never much bought into this business about moderate religionists being "enablers". My problem is more that so many ostensibly moderate ones aren't really so moderate when you scratch the surface. Besides, the real enablers are often not religious moderates but non-believer who believe in belief.

All that said, I don't see any analogy with drinking alcohol. First, alcohol is a positively good thing in relatively small quantities (as are many other recreational drugs). I don't think that that's necessarily the case with religion. Second, people who drink alcohol in relatively small quantities don't go around saying that everybody must respect drunken yobbos. If there are some moderate religionists who go around saying that we must respect the crazy religionists (and there probably are quite a few), then once more the analogy breaks down.

34. Who wants to kill the elderly?

Comment #153646 by Russell Blackford on April 1, 2008 at 6:13 pm

Bobington, we all die eventually - but the issue is about whether the elderly should die sooner rather than later. The supposed duty to die is a duty for the elderly not to try to stay alive beyond a certain point. As I said, it tends to be people with a Luddite perpective who argue for this, not people who support advanced biomedical research. The bishop has things exactly backwards.

35. Who wants to kill the elderly?

Comment #153615 by Russell Blackford on April 1, 2008 at 4:51 pm

Actually, a lot of people claim that there is a "duty to die", applicable to the elderly, but, in my experience, the duty to diers are usually folk who are more or less hostile to advanced biomedical research.

36. Beware the Believers

Comment #153088 by Russell Blackford on April 1, 2008 at 2:48 am

I don't have a copy of The Demolished Man to hand, so I have to quote from memory ... and am not sure of the proper layout and punctuation.

Writing in the early 1950s, Alfred Bester didn't know about memes either. However, the following is, as advertised in his novel, impossible to get out of your head once you let it in there. It's been in mine for decades:


Eight, sir. Seven, sir.
Six, sir. Five, sir.
Four, sir. Three, sir,
Two, sir. One.
"Tenser!" said the tensor.
"Tenser!" said the tensor.
Tension, apprehension, and dissension
Have begun.

37. Anti-Quran Film Fitna Pulled From Web Due to 'Threats'

Comment #153077 by Russell Blackford on April 1, 2008 at 2:22 am

And stop being so pessimistic. This is a wonderful time to be alive, and an even more wonderful time to be young. I envy the kids being born now - in countries like mine - who will see things and do things that I can't even imagine.

Sure, there are problems in the world, but countries like contemporary Australia and Canada are goddamn utopias compared to everything that has ever gone before in human history. The point is to fight, if needed, to keep them that way. And before someone jumps down my throat, I don't mean "fight" as in use violence - though that could be needed in some circumstances. I mean, show courage and conviction, forget about being merely fashionable, and be prepared to struggle for the values of liberty, reason, and science.

38. Anti-Quran Film Fitna Pulled From Web Due to 'Threats'

Comment #153074 by Russell Blackford on April 1, 2008 at 2:09 am

All right, I delayed commenting until I found time to watch Fitna. I've now seen it, and I'll just say this:

I know nothing about this Geert Wilders guy, since I don't follow Dutch politics much. Perhaps, for all I know, he is a racist and a hypocrite, and has sex with his pet parrot every night. Whether or not that's true, I see nothing in the movie that should be condemned by liberal people. The message - presented powerfully, but solemnly, through juxtapositions of passages from the Koran with footage of atrocities and Islamist rantings - is quite simple: the Koran contains material that can only incite hatred of non-Muslims and violence against them. It is up to Muslims to tear those parts from their holy book. I assume this would just mean ignoring them, as most Christians, to their credit, ignore the most atrocious passages in the Bible.

That's a perfectly reasonable view to express, and I don't care how sore that poor parrot is getting by now. Dammit, I don't care whether Wilders made his fortune by clubbing baby seals to death with a large-text edition of Mein Kampf that he bought from David Irving, back in their student days, during a six-week orgy of Nazism, Frauleins, and booze in the Austrian Alps.

It doesn't matter. His freedom of speech should still be protected.

What we must do, as loudly as we can, is protest against politically-correct, or just plain cowardly, Western leaders who want to denounce or even suppress what Wilders has to say. Wilders may be Satan himself, but he has every right to express this viewpoint.

39. Vote on freedom of expression marks the end of Universal Human Rights

Comment #152985 by Russell Blackford on March 31, 2008 at 7:46 pm

The UN has just lost its remaining moral authority in one hit. That's a terrible pity because we desperately need international bodies with moral authority to help solve some of the pressing problems of the world, such as the burden of global poverty.

Previously, the UN has merely looked inept. With this move, it looks positively malevolent. I don't see how its pronouncements can ever be taken seriously again after this flagrant attack on the most important human right of all, which all the others depend on: freedom of speech.

40. Beware the Believers

Comment #152414 by Russell Blackford on March 31, 2008 at 1:48 am

I'm still surprised that people are divided between its being either a piece of ID propaganda and its being some kind of celebration of "our" side.

There are elements of both, but it still looks to me like it's from someone very clever with a kind of South Park mentality. I.e., someone who doesn't deny that evolutionary theory is (as they'd see it) most likely true or even that atheism might well be right ... but who buys into all the schtick about "Dawkins and the New Atheists are arrogant."

Surely what we are seeing portrayed on the screen is a tribe of obnoxious, self-congratulatory people glorying in their success and superiority, treating outsiders ruthlessly, and so on. This is exactly the sort of message that South Park might deliver about high-profile science advocates and atheists ... without actually supporting ID.

I'm only using South Park as an example, not arguing that it was done by those people in particular. But there are stances from which you can slag off anti-religious and pro-science viewpoints, without actually thinking that, at the end of the day, there really is likely to be a God or that Intelligent Design, or any religion, is likely to be true.

And sure, there's a sense in which authorial intention may not matter, but (a) I always find authorial intention at least interesting, and (b) all the discussion can be translated into argument about how it is likely to be understand by an ideal viewer versed in the relevant conventions of interpretation, and so on.

It's even possible that we'll eventually find it was done by someone who didn't actually achieve the effect they wanted. Even that would be interesting.

41. Beware the Believers

Comment #151980 by Russell Blackford on March 29, 2008 at 8:52 pm

sent2null, if this were simply a rap video then we would interpret it as such ... and your advice might well be correct. But it isn't.

It purports to be an anti-ID movie created by the Ministry of Science Propaganda. It features a smiling, somewhat sinister Richard Dawkins who introduces a monstrous, destructive machine - in a scene reminiscent of the equivalent scene in King Kong, and with other similar resonances.

In order to explain the history of the machine, Dawkins then bursts into an over-the-top, and as others have mentioned incongruous, rap routine, assisted by PZ Myers, Eugenie Scott, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, Charles Darwin, and Sam Harris, all presented in humorous and somewhat incongruous ways.

This kind of multiply-framed narrative (in a sense that has nothing to do with the "framing" that Matt Nisbet talks about) is open to interpretation, but a lot of us who are familiar with it instinctively pick up that the rap routine itself is presented at an ironic distance, while the real-world people who are cast as boastful rappers are being satirized.

I think the most that can be said in support of your position is that the sheer energy and fun of the rap routine tends to cut in the other direction, so we tend, in part, to identify with the arrogant, self-congratulatory, tribal, etc., scientific types, even as we see how they are being made fun of.

That kind of ambiguity is actually very familiar from science fiction. Often, there is some element that is being presented for ironic, even savagely satirical, effect, but it embodies so much energy and has so much allure, that the total effect is to accommodate the values associated with it, at least in part - and whether or not it was the author's intention. Think of the original Terminator movie, in which Arnie's character was so damn cool that many people in the audience identified with him.

This kind of unstable irony is not necessarily a bad thing. Still, I don't think the video we're seeing is all that unstable in its irony.

In the end, it's pretty clear to me that Richard and others are being satirized, though not from a position that necessarily thinks they are factually wrong. This video could easily have been done by the South Park folks, because it has the same kind of attitude. (Not that I'm saying they did it ... but it was done by someone with a similar sensibility.)

42. Beware the Believers

Comment #151895 by Russell Blackford on March 29, 2008 at 4:20 pm

It seemed clear enough to me.

It satirizes Richard along with the people who are presented as his supporters - Eugenie Scott, Christopher Hitchens, PZ, Daniel Dennett, etc. - but not for being wrong. They're depicted as probably right in their science (though unwilling to abide criticism or doubt), their arguments, and even their rejection of religion. They're depicted as smart and confident. But the main message is that they are also ruthless, arrogant, self-congratulatory, insensitive, materialistic, tribal, and generally up themselves - and deserving of being cut down to size. In short, they're smartarses.

The presentation is slick, and (despite not being young, since I'm PZ's sort of vintage) I actually found the lyrics catchy. I did laugh at its cleverness, but the joke is very much on Richard and on the rest of us who support science and attack religion.

Overall, it won't give comfort to the ID crowd. Too much of what these arrogant rapper scientists are depicted as saying makes sense, and its actual content is not undermined by anything in the clip. But it certainly doesn't present Richard and the others in a favourable way.

43. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #148771 by Russell Blackford on March 23, 2008 at 10:06 pm

I tried to post here earlier, but the site wasn't working. Oh well, posted this over on my own blog.

http://metamagician3000.blogspot.com/2008/03/dawkins-reviews-expelled.html

Richard Dawkins now has a superb review of Expelled over on his site - which, unfortunately, seems to have been overloaded with traffic all morning.

The best part of the review, when you can actually read it, is his cogent response to one of the main points that Expelled evidently tries to make in a ham-fisted way: that Darwinian evolutionary theory leads to Nazism. Dawkins says it better than I can, but his point is something like this. Yes, Hitler may have been influenced by some garbled version of Darwinian theory, to which he added a good dose of Humean fallacy, thus producing one ingredient in the racist, totalitarian witches' brew of Nazi ideology. That by no means entails that Darwinian theory leads to Nazism. It also has nothing to do with whether the essentials of Darwinian evolutionary theory are actually true. (And while it likewise doesn't disprove the truth of Christianity, Hitler is likely to have been influenced at least as much by the long history of anti-Semitism in Germany, founded on Christian hostility to the Jews.)

44. Discussion on PZ Myers being expelled from Expelled

Comment #148102 by Russell Blackford on March 22, 2008 at 4:25 am

My comments, a bit belated, over here:

http://metamagician3000.blogspot.com/2008/03/myers-expelled-from-expelled.html

45. Religion 'linked to happy life'

Comment #146431 by Russell Blackford on March 19, 2008 at 4:43 am

I don't see any reason to doubt this result. If you have a belief system that explains the world to you in a way that makes you feel special, why wouldn't you be happier than all the rest of the (largely) confused mass of humanity? I expect that you'd also find that people who are committed to one or another political ideology, or to some secular moral theory, are happier than the average.

That doesn't make any of these belief systems true. Nor does it make them any less a threat to our freedoms.

46. Bishop accuses gays of 'conspiracy' against the Catholic Church

Comment #143908 by Russell Blackford on March 14, 2008 at 3:34 pm

It's all very well saying that some ideas are beyond the pale of toleration if you are the one getting to choose which ideas. In practice, one you let a government start deciding that this idea or that idea is beyond the pale of toleration, should not be expressed publicly, and ought to be suppressed by the coercive power of the state, you are sowing the wind.

Don't forget that it's not that long ago that people were in great trouble in Western countries for expressing such "intolerable" ideas as that women are morally and intellectually equal to men, that the marriage bond is not so absolute as to preclude all sex outside of it, that religion may be false, and so on. It's not that hard to imagine a future government deciding that pro-gay speech is intolerable (though fortunately there's no sign of that happening in the West and the momentum is currently running the other way). But you can never be confident that in the long term the government is going to agree with you on what speech is tolerable and what speech is not.

Governments have to make decisions of course, and we have to trust them with some things. But decisions can be monitored and opposed - using speech and ideas. Once it is considered acceptable for governments to decide which ideas and forms of speech are intolerable and should be repressed by political coercion, we are on the way to tyranny.

47. Bishop accuses gays of 'conspiracy' against the Catholic Church

Comment #143326 by Russell Blackford on March 14, 2008 at 2:29 am

Nah, Steve, let him say what he likes. We don't want to suppress freedom of speech.

The best situation is to create a political ethos where the government does not suppress any speech, except maybe narrowly-defined defamation of a quite specific identifiable person whose life could be ruined by lies about him or her.* Once we have an ethos where it's considered acceptable for governments to make this exception to freedom of speech and that exception ... well, we might not like the outcome. Better to get speech prohibitions right off the political agenda.

I always like to do my bit to campaign against religious vilification laws, but we can't have it both ways.


*Note: I'm not thinking in this post about things like false commercial speech, i.e. misleading advertising and the like. I think that raises a different set of issues.

48. Bishop accuses gays of 'conspiracy' against the Catholic Church

Comment #143296 by Russell Blackford on March 13, 2008 at 10:18 pm

I suppose it might just be that more of their really nutty pronouncements are getting reported, but it sure looks like the more extreme religionist have been growing distinctly nuttier of late. Even nuttier, even more totalitarian in their thinking, and even more dangerous to our freedoms.

49. Ban anti-Catholic books in schools, says bishop

Comment #143243 by Russell Blackford on March 13, 2008 at 5:55 pm

I'd love these cute and cuddly Catholic Bishops, as I do all the exotic mega fauna found on this wonderful planet, except that they are so much more dangerous than lions, tigers, bears, hippos, gorillas, giraffes, professional wrestlers, Paris Hilton, and so on.

50. Two More Fleas

Comment #142598 by Russell Blackford on March 12, 2008 at 8:14 pm

Talk about opportunistic trivia. I wouldn't mind if a serious book came out from someone like Plantinga (who does have a new book out soon, I hear on the grapevine, but not a flea book). But all these books by all these second-rate authors who want to say much the same thing.

Oh well, I'll look forward to Paula's review.